90 books like Dragonfly in Amber

My final selection was surprising in all the best ways. It is the story of conservationist Inti Flynn and her quest to reintroduce wolves to the Scottish Highlands, hoping to save the crumbling ecosystem while she struggles with the collapse of her own life. What makes this story special is that it not only evokes empathy for the wolves, it also emphasizes the connections we have to the earth and to each other, and how our individual, often trauma-informed decisions have cascading and unintended effects. The whole story is an allegory for the environmental balance that is essential for survival, but it is also a love letter to human-animal-earth connectedness. It is a reminder that we are more than individuals in a way that inspires hope and passion for change.

Okay, this might seem like a bit of a strange choice to be included in a list of best “ripped from the headlines” crime novels, but it really isn’t. I mean, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, is probably the most famous big news headline of our times. 

I was totally blown away by King’s brilliant concept of using that legendary date in history to write this fascinating thriller about what “might have been” if someone could somehow go back in time and stop it from ever happening.

Like the other four books on my list, King takes a major real-life news story and uses it to create a fascinating work of fiction. I just love books like this!  

I am, to put it lightly, obsessed with the way Octavia Butler revolutionizes the timescape and invites us to speculate about worlds that could be. In this and so many of her books, her vision of Afrofuturism is one that reminds us that our ancestral pasts and our imagined futures are always connected. 

I thought a lot about the future when I wrote my book, and I share Butler’s conviction that there is collective healing and liberation in revisiting and reimagining the past.

I also love that my neighborhood library in Pasadena is the one Octavia Butler used to frequent!

This novel may seem an odd choice since King Arthur is likely more fictional than historical, yet Mark Twain, for all his humor, uses the novel as a satire upon the wrongs of capitalism and his late nineteenth-century society.

Hank Morgan, the Connecticut Yankee, intentionally tries to change history by making medieval England a better place. He does this by trying to rid the land of superstition and the hold that charlatans like Merlin have over the country, but he is also a complex character who is not unwilling to use medieval superstition to his advantage.

By the end of the novel, he has turned medieval England into a medieval version of the nineteenth-century complete with modern inventions including the bicycle and telephone. However, the most memorable scene occurs when Hank and King Arthur travel the country in disguise and end up enslaved and nearly hanged.

The experience causes King… show more.

I adore sweeping family sagas with strong women characters and with tragedy, romance, and heartache set in Australia, The Thorn Birds is a beautiful example of the genre.

Meggie is rebellious and headstrong and makes questionable choices, but we empathize and root for her. All the well-rounded characters each come with their own secrets that will keep you turning pages.

At first, I was scared by the thickness of the book. More than 600 pages? I didn’t think I would have the patience and time to finish it. My book club chose the book as a reading challenge for everyone. A challenge indeed. But a colorful one.

I remember carrying the book with me everywhere I went. As I finally reached the last page of this riveting family saga set in Africa, I felt older and wiser. Wow, I actually finished the thick novel. It was a great achievement.

I was never bored or tired. I did not want the story to end. It could have been 6000 pages and I still would have thrown myself into this epic story.

Shining Through is the story of Linda Voss, a half-Jewish secretary in WW2 New York City who falls in love with her boss with wit and admirable self-awareness, and then finds herself volunteering to spy for him in Nazi Germany in a serious twist. If the plot sounds far-fetched, then you have to give the author credit for her skill in making it not only believable, but filling it with tension and heart. I love this story because of how close we become to Linda through the first-person POV, how we grow to love her and root for her and be terrified for her. She is a beautiful, every-woman hero, and she will stay with you long after you finish the book.

Mark Twain’s King Arthur time travel novel led to numerous others.

While Twain’s novel is more of a veiled attempt to depict his own time, other authors have depicted Camelot as a utopian place and asked what the world would be like if it had not fallen. In The Forever King, a young boy, Arthur Blessing, turns out to be a reincarnated King Arthur. He travels back in time to Camelot to try to restore its past glory.

He failed in the past, but with the help of the Holy Grail, he is determined not to fail again. The novel led to two sequels. Like all these time travel novels, the goal is to change the past to create a better future. But utopias are always hard to achieve.

I am in awe of Diana Gabaldon’s achievements as I relate to her writing while raising three children.

At first daunted by the 850-page length, once I started reading, I became enthralled with the fantasy of Claire’s time-traveling into the past and meeting the love of her life. I fell in love with the beautiful boy-man, Jamie. He reminded me of the love of my life. Gabaldon’s handling of the attraction between Claire and the Scottish highlander is beguiling, especially in the sexual scenes.

Weaving their love story into real history, her descriptions, plots, and prose are exquisitely compelling. I am committed to reading the entire series. In a word, Outlander is un-put-downable! 

This is the third in the Outlander series and was quite serendipitously the first of her books my husband and I listened to. He checked out the audio cassette version from the library and brought it on a kids-free trip to Maui…Maui, no kids, a hot-date-night book every day and night. This third book stands alone and has enough backstory to bring the listener/reader up to speed on this adventure/romance across time and distance even without reading Outlander or Dragonfly in Amber (which we did as soon as we got home). Living history through the lens of Jamie Frazier in 1740s Scotland and the Caribbean, and the dual time perspective of Claire, a 1940s time traveler is a riveting ride, again with characters that cause me to laugh, cry and, of course, bleed out. Ms. Gabaldon is also a gracious woman with her time and inspiration at writer’s conferences and… show more.