Here are 94 books that Arianna and the Spirit of the Storm fans have personally recommended if you like
Arianna and the Spirit of the Storm.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
I love the characters in this book. Don’t get me wrong, the world-building is great and the magic fantastic, but the bond between the two brothers, Jake and Louie, is so real and touching.
I’m a sucker for deep friendships, including siblings, as well as characters with some quirks (and spice). In addition to that, the fast-paced adventure in this book had me flipping pages like I didn’t have a bedtime.
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
For this one, it is honestly difficult to say what I liked the most. The writing is superb and even masterful. You sink right into the character and fall in love. Then the POV changes and you meet the next character, and you think she/he is brilliant.
Maybe that is what I love the most: how well written and chosen each of the characters are. They represent the world, and through them, you enter a magical place without missing a step.
An Eternal Flame.
A Powerful Secret.The Republic of the Sand Sea is a dangerous land where fire wielders are forced to battle dragons for the entertainment of the wealthy families.
There are none wealthier or more dangerous than the Thirteen.
But the First of the Thirteen has gone missing and Jura, his only heir, is thrust into a world of political intrigue and threats from assassins.
In the arena, Ash, a retired Fire Dancer, is determined to reclaim his glory, no matter the unthinkable cost. Might the life of a captured child be the ultimate price?
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
This story is decidedly YA, but I like to sneak them in on occasion! There is something sweet and powerful in a coming-of-age, young adult fantasy that I find hard to ignore.
And this one has it all: two unlikely friends who must find a way to work together to save their world, surprising twists and turns, and a rich, vivid world that feels completely real. It reminds me a bit of what I loved about Narnia in a new take.
Torn from Earth, Brave Kingsfort lands alone in a wild new world. On the run from a ruthless tyrant, his unpredictable elemental power is the least of his worries until he discovers it might be his only way out.
True Harboursfort is determined to impress her parents but when a heart-breaking decision at the root of her family’s downfall is revealed, everything changes. Including herself. It’s terrifying. So why does it feel so good?
Forced to make an alliance, Brave and True must overcome their families’ lies to trust one another and survive, while…
I’ve been hooked on fantasy since my early teens. I’ve devoured all the classics, from Tolkien to classical classics (think ancient Grecian myths). Elemental magic might not be new, but it has ancient roots and multiple ways of imagining the powers that I love. As for adventure…I’m a sucker for travel, especially in a whole new land. Combine elemental magic with adventure across a new world, and I’ll happily tag along! If the group includes some awesome new and snarky friends, well, you probably won’t be able to get me out of the book.
For this one, I loved how utterly surprising the plot was. The book is well written, and the characters are so dynamic, but just when I thought I had things figured out, I realized I was completely wrong. There is an adventure in this one, but it really weaves around a love story… maybe a potential love story? I don’t want to give too much away!
The world is really well built, the characters are fun, and I found it difficult not to root for some sparks to fly (beyond the magical ones, of course!).
The first book in a brilliant epic fantasy series about a young woman who goes from having nothing to fighting for everything. Perfect for fans of Throne of Glass and Shadow and Bone.
She wasn’t supposed to become so powerful. She wasn’t even supposed to survive.
In an empire divided into three rings, Talise is from the lowliest and most dangerous outer ring. To escape that life, she just has to do three things.
1) Attend an elite academy for manipulating the elements of water, air, earth, and fire. 2) Become the most powerful student in her year. 3) Prove…
I write children’s books, both fiction and non-fiction, including One Duck Stuck, Big Momma Makes the World, Rattletrap Car, Plant a Pocket of Prairie, and, in collaboration with Jacqueline Briggs Martin and Liza Ketchum, Begin With A Bee, a picture book about the federally endangered rusty-patched bumblebee. Recently I have been putting my garden to bed for the winter, pulling tomato vines, harvesting beans that have dried on the vine, cutting herbs, and planting cloves of garlic to grow into heads in next year’s garden. In a couple of months snow will bury the garden beds, and the only gardens will be in the pages of books. Here are five of the children’s books that I love about growing things.
First published in French and illustrated with wonderfully vivid art, this is a story of a farmer who works hard mowing, raking, digging, watering in his fields. He rejoices when things begin to grow, but a drought threatens all his hard work. The farmer is not alone, though, in his efforts, and the art shows the farm animals helping, followed by rain falling and bringing his fields to colorful and joyful abundance. Hard work matters, and so do friends.
A farmer's hard work is rewarded in this eco-friendly and elegantly illustrated picture book.
A New York Times/New York Public Library Best Illustrated Book of the Year!
In the town, everyone is sleeping. But not Paul.
Paul mows. Paul rakes. Paul sows. Paul draws water. And soon Paul has beautiful plants and flowers growing all around him. But one day, the water dries up. The sun beats down. Paul despairs. But thanks to his animal friends, and a bit of rain, help is on the way . . .
Filled with vivid illustrations of Paul's hard work, the brilliant blooms…
I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.
This book is different in perspective from the other ones on my list, since it focuses on climate change caused drought and the actions individual human beings might have to resort to in the face of the stresses of the environment and a corrupt political world. Yet this is an engaging climate change-related thriller, more at the micro-level. Ex-Marine Martin Makepeace is faced with dire choices as he has to save his loved ones in a world where water has become an impossible scarce resource…
Ex-Marine Martin Makepeace only learned the truth of the maxim that you don't know what you have until you lose it, the day his wife walked out on him with their two kids. Now, the social worker does his best to take care of those who need it most.
But good deeds mean nothing when the water just . . . disappears. It hasn't rained for months, and now, in the height of summer, the taps run dry. And not, as they first suspect, because of a burst water main. In the…
Even though I’m from humid DC, I’ve been drawn to the desert since I first set foot there as a kid on a family road trip. Now, I’m lucky enough to live in Utah, home to some of the world’s most legendary desert landscapes. One reason I love the desert is the otherworldly scenery: uncanny arches, bizarre hoodoos, and sand dunes you could disappear into. Before your eyes, layers of geologic time unfold in epochs. The desert is a great place for contemplating the past and future—and for great adventures, with endless sandstone walls to climb, slick rock to bike, and sagebrush-lined trails to hike.
This novel considers what will happen when the Southwest runs out of water, a very real possibility, especially with climate change, and something I care about as a Utah resident.
It pulls you into the action right away and keeps you on your toes until the very end, weaving together the narratives of a few different characters, including a journalist, a refugee from Texas, and a henchman (aka “the water knife”) who’s paid to destroy rival water supplies.
An alum of Oberlin College (like me!), Paolo Bacigalupi is a master of telling engaging stories about possible futures defined by climate change. I highly recommend this thoughtful novel and his other books!
From the international bestselling author of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning The Windup Girl, comes an electrifying thriller set in a world on the edge of collapse.
WATER IS POWER
The American Southwest has been decimated by drought, Nevada and Arizona skirmish over dwindling shares of the Colorado River, while California watches.
When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in Phoenix, Las Vegas water knife Angel Velasquez is sent to investigate.
With a wallet full of identities and a tricked-out Tesla, Angel arrows south, hunting for answers that seem to evaporate as the heat index soars and the landscape…
I taught for more than 26 years in classes ranging from first grade through college. No matter the age of the students, I used children’s books to introduce topics in history. I never shied away from using a picture book with older students and often found they were more engaged in a picture book than in an article. I also used historical fiction as a hook to lure students into picking up a related non-fiction book. In fact, historical fiction was the gateway that taught this writer of 13 nonfiction children’s books to love non-fiction history.
This nonfiction book is not only dear to my heart, I can also honestly say it changed my life.
It’s about the only Federal Emergency School ever created. Built for the children of farm workers displaced by the Dust Bowl in 1940, it tells of School Superintendent Leo B. Hart’s ingenuity and steadfast devotion to children who faced seemingly insurmountable hardships and discrimination as occupants of the migrant camp outside Bakersfield, California that inspired John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.
I taught at this school, now known as Sunset, for many years, and I kept a note in my lesson planner that read What would Leo B. Hart do?
Illus. with photographs from the Dust Bowl era. This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.
California’s San Joaquin Valley is so congenial to plants I thought it made me a gardener. When I got my first job in a retail nursery I quickly realized how little I knew. Twenty years in the nursery trade expanded the depth and breadth of my garden skills. I owe my horticultural education to knowledgeable colleagues, an unending stream of interesting questions from nursery customers, and especially to Ed Laivo who introduced me to an ArcticGlo nectarine that commanded my attention.
Because of obvious limitations—space in the garden, sun, availability, and one’s responsibility to be a conscientious steward during a probably unending California drought—it’s impossible to grow as many roses as one would like. It’s not impossible, however, to content oneself with two or three plants for cutting flowers, and, instead, moon over this comprehensive collection of gorgeous photographs, descriptions of form, petal counts, habits, parentage, and scents. Keep 2,000 roses on the bookshelf. This book is a treasure.
I’m a science communicator turned fiction writer with a special interest in the impact of environmental crises on small towns and overlooked places. My short fiction has appeared in various journals, including The Fiddlehead, Nimrod, Barren, and Reckon Review. I’m currently writing a novel about hurricane chasers along the Gulf Coast.
This speculative dystopia about drought-ruined California is equal parts lyrical gut-punch and surrealist adventure story. Main characters Luz and Ray set up residence in an abandoned celebrity mansion, subsisting on whatever they can scavenge. Their precarious existence is upended when they cross paths with a toddler, and the trio sets off into the Dune Sea in search of a life that offers more than mere survival. A warning: this is not a cool breeze of a read. But if you’re curious about the psychic impact of prolonged heat, thirst, and desperation, Watkins offers a masterclass on the grimy reality of human resilience in a hostile world of our own making.
Haunting and beautifully written first novel by the award-winning author of Battleborn, set among a cult of survivors in a dystopian American desert
'A Mad Max world painted with a finer brush' Elle
'An unforgettable journey into a hauntingly imagined near-future' Ruth Ozeki
'Set in a drought-ravaged Southern California trolled by scavengers, Gold Fame Citrus burns with a dizzying, scorching genius' Vanity Fair
Desert sands have laid waste to the south-west of America. Las Vegas is buried. California - and anyone still there - is stranded. Any way out is severely restricted. But Luz and Ray are not leaving. They…
