Fans pick 100 books like A Mercy

The Earth’s Children series fully immersed me in Stone Age Europe, thanks to Jean M. Auel’s nerd-level research. But what hooked me was her protagonist: Ayla, a courageous, spiritually gifted, neurodivergent genius. Though Ayla’s a white Cro-magnon, and I’m a Latina Homo sapiens, I relate to this fish out of water.

In this book, she’s wildly different from the Neanderthals who adopt her, echoing my own family experience. Ayla’s unique problem-solving skills also set her apart, sending her careening between loneliness and leadership. What excites me most about her journey is that the demands of the Ice Age give her more opportunities to explore her potential than many modern women. I recommend starting with Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla’s origin story, which stands on its own. 

Several Luis Alberto Urrea novels feature powerful women, but this one resonates with me the most. One reason is that, like my novel, his also reimagines the history of a real-life great-aunt from Mexico. Urrea’s protagonist, Teresita, Saint of Cabora, is so full of heart that she gives me hope more readers will embrace Latinas in American literature.

Teresita Urrea exemplifies the strength teenage girls can wield when people encourage them to speak up instead of pipe down and when people value all their gifts regardless of whether those gifts were once labeled “masculine,” like boldness, or “feminine,” like empathy. For me, Teresita offered timeless wisdom: because she led with love, she saw through the lies of the powerful to the hearts of people who needed healing and justice. 

In this book, I admire how author Vanessa Hua blends intimate storytelling about one teenager into a vast historical saga—drawing on her research skills as a journalist, a background we have in common. In this coming-of-age tale about a secret enclave of pampered and abused teenage girls, I could see why Mei was lured by a promise with feminist allure: that girls can become heroes.

My life experience told me she would get used, yet I loved Mei’s awakening: an idealist transformed into a sexual slave sharpens her wits against Chairman Mao’s even as she becomes his prey, then must use all she’s learned to save herself. Mei’s story is a wake-up call about the dangers women face when societies decline and the price we pay to become heroes.

This is one of the strongest survivors I've met in historical fiction. I related to Gussie feeling like an outsider in her family, though for different reasons. I’m a mixed-race woman of Latina, Asian, and Anglo roots, and grew up bouncing between family members in an ethnic patchwork of neighborhoods. Like Gussie, I don’t look or act like anyone in my family—or anywhere.

Like Gussie, I’ve never conformed to society’s expectations of “ladies.” Some see my opinionated, independent, wandering nature as masculine—again, like Gussie. Her confidence, adventurousness, and determination are qualities I’ve cultivated with gusto. Her loneliness feels familiar, but it clarifies the bonds she creates and her loyalty to those she loves. Though most folks in Gussie’s world consider her plain, I find her beautiful.

Barack Obama’s father was part of the story of Kenya’s road to freedom, and yet his son, Barrack, hardly knew him. His father met Barack’s mother while on a scholarship to the USA but abandoned her and his son when he returned to Kenya in 1964 and became a senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance.

We researched his life when writing our book. My co-author, Nancy Mudenyo Hunt, is also of Luo ancestry. Her father attended Obama’s funeral. This memoir is a testimony to the struggle of children of mixed heritage to decide on their identity. I find it sad that the young Obama is identified by the father who left him and not by his mother who cherished him.

This is the most moving “academic” book I’ve ever read, and really that’s because it blends academic subjects like cultural studies with more personal, memoir-type writing about being a Black woman in the 21st century.

In the Wake is concerned with more than just death, of course, but death looms large throughout the book, as it has in all of Black life throughout American history. Indeed, the first sentence is “I wasn’t there when my sister died,” and over the course of the book we bear witness to many other deaths that have affected the author as well.

Over time, readers come to understand the various meanings of “wake” operating as overlapping metaphors through which the author understands her own experience. There is “wake” as coming into consciousness/waking up to a world full of injustice, there is “the wake” like the path behind a ship, in this case a slave… show more.

In colonial North America, plantation owners were equal opportunity exploiters who mistreated European and African laborers alike, and workers frequently resisted by running away, stealing or destroying property, and engaging in occasional rebellions. Theodore Allen explains how colonial elites invented America’s racial divide through a series of laws that ended up enslaving most African Americans for life and reserving the rights of freedom and citizenship for European Americans. Since then, race and class have been intertwined, laying the basis for white supremacist practices and beliefs that shaped the development of the United States and continue to allocate wealth and power unequally today.

D.A. Bourne weaves a story of Christian Fiction and overcoming racism during a time it’s at an all-time high. We all know racism is a touchy subject a lot of people don’t like to talk about, but it’s a sad reality many face every day. This story surrounds autoworkers and their families who find themselves faced with racial conflict that tests their faith, patience, ability to forgive, and all the things they’ve always believed in. 

I loved Ayo, this book’s fourteen-year-old main character. She’s burnt out on activism, having been raised by a famous activist mom fighting for Black rights in America. All Ayo wants is to take a break and live a normal teen life. This makes so much sense to me—why do people who are at a disadvantage have to spend their time fighting for basic rights—what if they just want to spend their time making art or writing books like selfish white dudes are free to do?

But when something terrible happens at a big march, Ayo skipped, all the education and activist spirit her mom drilled into her no longer feels like a burden. I loved how she figured out she wanted to fight and really came into her own.

This book has everything: found family, family scandal and mystery, and sports drama galore!

As someone who always wanted to play softball but was scared of striking out, the bravery of this story on all fronts inspired and thrilled me. Stone balances sports and STEM in such a creative way, showing rather than telling young fans they don’t have to go all in for one column or clique. They can be a little bit of everything and never be “too much” for their true team.