Here are 100 books that A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking fans have personally recommended if you like
A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.
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I’ve been reading mysteries since I “borrowed” my Grandpa’s Miss Marple’s as an elementary schooler. (And yes, my maiden name really IS Marple) And I’ve always been drawn to smart, competent women characters–even better if they’re funny. Women who do their own fighting and their own detecting and then hand the killer off to the cops with a smile and a great line. These women inspired me–and now I get to write a lady who at least belongs in the room with them!
This book made me love historical mysteries. I absolutely adore the main character, Amelia Peabody, who lives in Victorian times but is very much NOT a Victorian woman: smarter and tougher than the guys and not afraid to own it. Like Amelia, Ancient Egypt has always fascinated me, and I love a good adventure.
The only thing I enjoy more is a will-they-or-won’t-why with whip-smart banter, and Amelia and Emerson deliver there, too. They drew me in immediately, with plenty of historical background, a twisty plot that kept me guessing until the end, and a great romantic payoff, too. I think the Peabody and Emerson books are the best historical mystery series ever. Fight me.
Amelia Peabody is Elizabeth Peters' most brilliant and best-loved creation, a thoroughly Victorian feminist who takes the stuffy world of archaeology by storm with her shocking men's pants and no-nonsense attitude!
In this first adventure, our headstrong heroine decides to use her substantial inheritance to see the world. On her travels, she rescues a gentlewoman in distress - Evelyn Barton-Forbes - and the two become friends. The two companions continue to Egypt where they face mysteries, mummies and the redoubtable Radcliffe Emerson, an outspoken archaeologist, who doesn't need women to help him solve mysteries -- at least that's what he…
Since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the supernatural. I’ve always been especially captivated by vampires. My love for vampires and many of the books I’ve read about them contributed to the inspiration that led me to write my own stories. My passion for the series I created drives me. Building my own fantasy world and creating the characters within it has been an amazing experience. Most days, I feel like I’m just a spectator in their world, and they’re writing the story themselves. I hope you, too, will find enjoyment and possibly inspiration in the books from this list, just as I have.
It’s been many years since I read this book, but I recall the moment I fell in love with Sookie’s story so clearly; it was like last week.
It was a usual busy night. I was making dinner for my family, and while I kept an eye on what was cooking on the stovetop, I flipped this book open to the middle, curious if I’d enjoy it. I quickly read about half a page, and I was immediately amused and sucked right in. Just those few lines hooked me, and I especially loved how the author told the story. I couldn’t wait to start from the beginning and make my way through the series. That night, I started book one of Sookie’s story and continued devouring each book as quickly as possible.
It’s been years since I finished Sookie’s story, and I often think about her and the world I…
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is ...but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, he's dark and he's handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting all her life for. But Bill has…
For the last decade, I’ve spent the majority of each year traveling. I’ve been to 60 countries across 6 continents and every US state. My love of travel was inspired and encouraged by my parents from a very early age. I’ve also been inspired by a wide variety of other sources, like movies, TV, photography, and, of course, books. Often, I’ll plan an adventure around a cool location I saw or read about and then just go. I’ll just show up and see what happens. All it takes is that little initial nudge, like what I found in these books.
No book has had a bigger influence on me as a person or a writer than this one. I suppose a lot of hoopy froods could say the same. It’s an adventure on a galactic scale, and yet, at its core, it’s just about a guy who wants to go home and have a cup of tea.
It’s a brilliantly funny satire and full of jokes and moments I’ll never forget. All four books in the series are amazing, and I’ve re-read them countless times. The fifth and final book is a downer worth skipping.
This box set contains all five parts of the' trilogy of five' so you can listen to the complete tales of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android! Travel through space, time and parallel universes with the only guide you'll ever need, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Read by Stephen Fry, actor, director, author and popular audiobook reader, and Martin Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He is well known as Tim in The Office.
The set also includes a bonus DVD Life, the Universe and…
I’ve never been a fan of polemics or schmaltz. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn or see new perspectives or feel deep feelings; I just think humor is the best way to get past people’s defenses. (All the better to sucker punch them in the feels.) I also think the world can be a pretty dark and scary place. I love books that give us hope, enough hope to have the courage to change what we can to make the world a little brighter.
I love Pratchett’s work so much in general that it’s really hard to pick just one. His work was side-splittingly funny but also the very best kind of satire. He had pointed things to say about society while also making you care deeply about his characters and making you laugh until your face hurts. Do you know how hard that is?
In this book, the protagonist is a con man forced into trying to resuscitate a dying postal service. He’s petty evil, the kind of selfish who has never thought about what happens to his victims. By the end, you can’t help but root for him to triumph over the much less petty but equally hidden evil of systems and big money. But you also can’t look away from the chaos of ravening stamp collectors, hapless wizards, and a literal avalanche of dead letters.
A beautiful new hardback edition of the classic Discworld novel.
Moist von Lipwig is a con artist and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet.
It was a tough decision.
But he's got to see that the mail gets though, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer.
Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too.
When I was a child, the thing that plagued me most about my favorite genre, sci-fi, was that none of the protagonists were women! As a daughter to doctors and research scientists, it felt strange that the only female characters in sci-fi were these buxom, mystical healers or seamstresses who meekly repaired their crewmates’ uniforms. While that problem has been remedied over the last two decades of excellence in mainstream sci-fi with some truly unforgettable female heroines, they’re not as plentiful in the niche market of humorous sci-fi. I am thrilled to share this list of my favorite lighthearted, humorous sci-fi reads with female protagonists.
I enjoyed the silly and irreverent humor in this book and was happy to hitch a ride along with protagonist Thursday Next, a literary detective for an English government agency that safeguards literary masterpieces against time travelers.
Having majored in English literature myself, I was delighted by the characters’ discussions on literature, including the evergreen debate on the true author of Shakespearean plays. I also relished the setting–an alternative England in the 1980’s. All in all, this novel is a classic and well worth the read.
Meet Thursday Next, literary detective without equal, fear or boyfriend
Jasper Fforde's beloved New York Times bestselling novel introduces literary detective Thursday Next and her alternate reality of literature-obsessed England-from the author of The Constant Rabbit
Fans of Douglas Adams and P. G. Wodehouse will love visiting Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, when time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously: it's a bibliophile's dream. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic…
I’ve always been a fan of swords and sorcery, but Urban Fantasy brings those elements into a more relatable field, turning real-world locations into sandboxes filled with magic and monsters. I might love Aragorn as a character, but I can’t fully relate to him. Now, give me an “average” guy with real-world problems, running around a modern metropolis, slinging spells, and fighting monsters in dark alleys, and I’m right there with him. Urban Fantasy opens up the imagination to anything you want. Dragons in New York? Sure. Giants using the Eiffel Tower as a baseball bat? Why the hell not? Nothing is off-limits. It’s just pure, unadulterated fun.
An immortal druid and a talking dog. What’s not to love?
Think American Gods, but funnier. In the Iron Druid Chronicles, the gods are real, and Atticus O’Sullivan loves to piss them off. The immediate blending of humor and suspense pulled me in right from the start, and I didn’t stop reading until well beyond this book and only took a breath when I ran out of books.
The first novel in the New York Times bestselling Iron Druid Chronicles—the hilarious, action-packed tales of a two-thousand-year-old Druid pursued by ancient gods in the modern world
“A page-turning and often laugh-out-loud-funny caper through a mix of the modern and the mythic.”—Ari Marmell, author of The Warlord’s Legacy
Atticus O’Sullivan is the last of the ancient druids. He has been on the run for more than two thousand years and he’s tired of it. The Irish gods who want to kill him are after an enchanted sword he stole in a first-century battle, and when they find him managing an…
I’m a voracious reader and watcher of movies and TV shows—in other words, I’m in love with stories. But after a while, it becomes harder and harder to find a story I haven’t heard, seen, or read before, so I get so excited when I find something completely new to me or a quirky take on a familiar story. These are books I really treasure for their ability to take me by surprise.
In which Feste, the fool from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night returns to Thirteenth Century Illyria to solve the mystery of Duke Orsino. And why is a fool investigating crime? Because he’s part of the Fool’s Guild, a group of fools, bards, and jugglers that act as secret agents to influence the politics of the day. Really. Exciting, well-researched, and plenty of puns, so what’s not to love? There are six books and a handful of stories in the series, and each one is a delight.
A historical mystery set in the thirteenth century in the mythical Duchy of Orsino on the Adriatic Coast (ie Dalmatia, part of the former Yugoslavia) and featuring characters of Shakespeare's play TWELFTH NIGHT. Twelve years after the events of the play, the Duke of Orsino has been murdered and the duchy is in a state of political turmoil. Feste (the fool), believing he sees the hand of Malvolio in all of this is sent by the Fool's Guild to stabilise the political situation and uncover who is responsible.
I’m a voracious reader and watcher of movies and TV shows—in other words, I’m in love with stories. But after a while, it becomes harder and harder to find a story I haven’t heard, seen, or read before, so I get so excited when I find something completely new to me or a quirky take on a familiar story. These are books I really treasure for their ability to take me by surprise.
I’m a big fan of vampires and werewolves in fiction, and I think the Fangborn series is one of the most original takes on the legends I’ve encountered. Vampires and werewolves are parts of the same family—as in a vampire sister and a werewolf brother in the first Fangborn story—and both types of supernatural creatures use their special abilities to fight evil. After debuting the series in the mystery story “The Night Things Changed,” Cameron went on to write three excellent Fangborn books, but I really enjoy the variety of the short stories, and I’m so pleased that she recently collected them into this volume.
The Fangborn are werewolves, vampires, and oracles dedicated to protecting humanity. Known as “Pandora’s Orphans,” the Fangborn Family is the hope that was left behind when evil was released into the world. Through the millennia, they’ve tracked and fought that evil in secret.
Since 2008, and the publication of “The Night Things Changed,” ten award-winning tales of the Fangborn have been published in best-selling anthologies and magazines. They are collected here for the first time, with an all-new adventure, never before published.
Nationally best-selling author Dana Cameron writes across many genres, but especially crime and speculative fiction. Her work, inspired…
As someone with ADHD, anxiety, and a brain prone to rumination, life can be turbulent. Fantasy has long been my preferred method of escapism, and when I discovered the cozy variety a few years ago, I was immediately enthralled. It gives me that warm-fuzzy feeling I so desire in troubling times, while still providing my dopamine-deficient brain the hits it needs to remain immersed. More than anything, I want to share with others the way that cozy fantasy makes me feel. Crafting such fiction is my purpose.
Within a few chapters, I knew I would love this book. I could smell the coffee, feel the flour on my hands, and taste the pastries each time someone bit into one. The low-stakes trials of opening a cafe were so wonderfully written that I momentarily dreamed of doing so (which, for the record, would be a terrible idea for my chaos-goblin brain).
Even years after reading this book, Thimble and his mannerisms live rent-free in my head, which speaks to the impact this story had on my psyche.
High fantasy, low stakes - with a double-shot of coffee.
After decades of adventuring, Viv the orc barbarian is finally hanging up her sword for good. Now she sets her sights on a new dream - for she plans to open the first coffee shop in the city of Thune. Even though no one there knows what coffee actually is.
If Viv wants to put the past behind her, she can't go it alone. And help might arrive from unexpected quarters. Yet old rivals and new stand in the way of success. And Thune's shady underbelly could make it all…
I’ve been a Pratchett fan since I first read The Colour of Magic in 1986. I was nine and suddenly obsessed. When he died, I cried; when I found out he left me – us – one last gift, I cried again. The best satire doesn’t just make you laugh through the tears and cry with laughter; it makes you think. Over the decades, Pratchett perfected this art. Nobody can replace him, although many authors, including myself, try to follow. Searching for them between the rock and the trying-too-hard place, sometimes I find diamonds. May they shine as brightly in your eyes as they do in mine.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that someone with a name like Miss Mildred Percy, a noted spinster living under her overwhelmingly generous and loving sister’s roof, does not inherit dragons’ eggs. Or bump into helpful and – one can’t help but notice – broad-shouldered, hat-wearing, single vicars. She’d swoon herself into dehydration if she knew what was still to come: raising a baby dragon (named Fitz); a proper Bad Boy villain with little money and relentless motivation (named Belinda); and, perhaps the most difficult, finding her own agency. Agnes Nitt would never. Perdita X Dream, however, might…
Miss Percyis the best book I’ve read in 2021 – it felt as if I inherited a manuscript signed by three of my favourite authors. Couldn’t recommend it more.
Miss Mildred Percy is a spinster. She does not dance, she has long stopped dreaming, and she certainly does not have adventures. That is, until her great uncle has the audacity to leave her an inheritance, one that includes a dragon’s egg.
The egg - as eggs are wont to do - decides to hatch, and Miss Mildred Percy is suddenly thrust out of the role of “spinster and general wallflower” and into the unprecedented position of “spinster and keeper of dragons.”
