100 books like Behind the Gates

Set in Holland during WWII, this autobiography gives an up close and personal look at life in a German concentration camp.

The vivid descriptions of the horrid living conditions and prevailing illnesses made me feel like I was there. Most memorable was the discussion of the flea-infested straw bedding and the notion of being thankful for the fleas. The author and her sister were devout Christians, but why be thankful for fleas? However, the guards left the women alone because of the fleas.

I will also always remember how the author was given a small bottle of liquid vitamin D and how she never hesitated to share it with the sick, yet it never ran dry. She makes it clear this was God’s work. 

The Wingfeather Saga is a great in-between series for fans of Narnia and Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings (I did read The Hobbit to my kids but they didn’t always get why things were funny or scary, and I think with the later Harry Potter books especially, it would be more in my interest to start those when my children are over 10 so they can grow up along with Harry in the series). 

The Wingfeather Saga starts off a little darker, with a family dealing with the past and the secrets. Two boys, Janner, Tink, and their sister, Leeli, are all gifted objects, and they set out to find answers; in the process, they are captured and their mother and grandfather step up to help them. Part fantasy, with a historical feel to it, the book centers on unraveling a mystery while facing down fearful creatures… show more.

This book was an interesting challenge to my personal view of what happens right after death. It was really amazing the way the author wove Biblical characters into a story populated with modern and historical people, many of whom had forgotten who they really are. 

While The Blue Tower did not change my mind about whether or not purgatory is real, it was a fun, clean, ride with a strong theme of redemption.

The Last Battle stopped me in my tracks growing up. I was the kid who sat in church and flinched when the music minister joyfully proclaimed we would all sing forever when we reached heaven’s shores. I flinched because I wanted to fly. I wanted to climb mountains. I wanted Jesus to show me stars flung out where I couldn’t possibly go now.

My attention span was not built for singing eternally.

So when I first read The Last Battle, I’m pretty sure I cried with relief. I decided that if C.S. Lewis could imagine a heaven like that, then surely God would come up with something even better (no matter what the music guy said).

In Wilder Girls, a bizarre, unprecedented plague called the Tox has infested an island home to an all-girls boarding school. The Tox causes those it infects to mutate in gruesome ways—growing gills, claws, an extra spine, et cetera. The schoolgirls and remaining sparse crew of staff members have developed a system of survival, but when one girl goes missing and her friend determines to find her, everything is thrown into chaos.

This book will grip you hard from the first sentence, sink its teeth into you, shake you around, then have you gasping for air on the floor by the time you hit the last page. Seriously, this is an insane, intense ride, perfect for any fan of weird fiction and body horror. (That’s me.)

This book has a unique take on the apocalyptic genre and the interest the story and characters offered.

In old New York, living in the tunnels of the ancient subway system, the book documents what might happen to those left to fend for themselves in a city whose social and political construct collapsed due to a violent strain of some virus. (Sound familiar?)

The way the female lead, Deuce, discovers this new world where the sun is a threat and the wide-open spaces, claustrophobic, is a testament to the way the author captured the character’s innocence. Aguirre expertly relates Deuce’s apprehension when discovering anything could be different from the darkness she’d grown up in.

This book is creepy! When girls are sixteen they are sent away for a year, into the woods, to get rid of their ‘magic’. It is called their Grace Year, and it is very extreme, and nothing fun about it. This story has a creepy atmosphere, and creepy old men trying to choose their innocent teenage brides (if those brides make it back from the journey!). There are some sick and twisted death scenes, and romance, which of course I love a little romance in all the creepy stories I read.

I picked this novel because, for lack of a better phrase, it’s too real. In an entirely believable and horrifying future lies Silicon Isle, an island made of trash. It’s where the world dumps all its electronic waste, for generations of poor, marginalized people to sort through, while pollutants make the tiny world they call home uninhabitable and hostile.

It also happens to be where a powerful biological weapon is hidden, unknowingly discovered by Mimi, one of the novel’s protagonists. It transforms her. Class disparities come to the fore, leading to revolution. This is classic cyberpunk, refreshingly set in a future outside the UK/ US, translated from the original Chinese by Ken Liu.

This book equally moved and unnerved me because its premise is all too possible. It’s a brilliantly written end-of-the-world story with an understated sense of menace and an unmistakable Australian flavour. 

The novel offers an intimate and fascinating first-person view of what happens to a ‘normal’ neighbourhood when life as we know it irrevocably changes – in this case through a nuclear winter. Often, apocalyptic/dystopian stories skim over the transition from order to chaos/social breakdown, and Claire handles it in a way that’s unsettling by its understatement.

I cared deeply about these characters. And while this novel is gritty, it’s also a story of hope and what it means to survive. 

Call me weird. I’m not a fan of series books. Unless, that is, they’re written by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. The problem with a book series for me is that I get bored of the same idea book after book after…zzzzzz. But when someone writing a book series is constantly bringing new ideas to the table, it keeps me reading. Couple that with characters we care about, and a heavy focus on moving the plot forward, and I’ll finish a book in no time and be eager to read the next one. This, my friends, is the first book in one of those series.