Here are 56 books that Earth Cell fans have personally recommended if you like
Earth Cell.
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As a kindergarten teacher and a mother of three boys, I live at the intersection of weird and wonderful, so I expect nothing less from my library. Indie authors offer unique points of view, aren’t afraid to break the rules, and are motivated by their passion for the craft of writing. I'm drawn to those writers who let the voices in their heads lead the way, creating characters you become invested in from page one. I love writing around my characters, because once I have them developed, the books tend to write themselves. Some of my best storylines are ones where my characters took over and led me in weird and wonderful directions.
The Other F Wordis a fun fantasy featuring freaky fairies. Stec’s characters are what draw me to her work. Sassy, strong women always lead the way in her stories. Reading about these fairy teens brought me back to high school: cliques, drugs, crushes, being embarrassed by my parents. I particularly enjoyed Stec’s clever fairy-sized world where dragonflies are the main mode of transportation, kids get high on honey, and Disney references are used as curse words. It’s a fun read with fabulously flawed characters and a fascinating twist.
Wandermere is anything but your typical fairy forest kingdom. You won't find any dainty, innocent, classical fairies sitting on toadstools petting baby bunnies. Instead, you'll stumble upon mouthy teen fairies wearing designer knockoffs and texting on their smart phones. It wasn't always like this, and the adults claim the reasons behind the change is to help them better deal with trips to the human world, but Dekram begins having doubts about what is real and who has been lying.
As a kindergarten teacher and a mother of three boys, I live at the intersection of weird and wonderful, so I expect nothing less from my library. Indie authors offer unique points of view, aren’t afraid to break the rules, and are motivated by their passion for the craft of writing. I'm drawn to those writers who let the voices in their heads lead the way, creating characters you become invested in from page one. I love writing around my characters, because once I have them developed, the books tend to write themselves. Some of my best storylines are ones where my characters took over and led me in weird and wonderful directions.
This book is unlike anything I have ever read before. I love that it is quirky and bizarre, yet meaningful and relatable at the same time. Elizabeth Fountain puts a piece of her soul into her characters, which is what makes this story memorable. Having grown up with schnauzers as pets, I especially love that she gives a schnauzer some of the best lines in the book. Talking dogs, vivid characters, aliens that resemble snot, and a world in peril – what more could you ask for?
Louise Armstrong Holliday is the last person on Earth you’d expect to save the human race. But when she uncovers proof that her boss is an alien the color of lime jelly gone horribly wrong, and is at the center of a plot to destroy humanity, Louie decides to do exactly that. She begins a journey from her company’s suburban Seattle office park to the old cities and castles of Eastern Europe. Along the way, Louie is attacked by flying books, overly-sensitive bat-crow monsters, and her own self-doubts. She must learn the truth about her closest friend, stand up to…
As a kindergarten teacher and a mother of three boys, I live at the intersection of weird and wonderful, so I expect nothing less from my library. Indie authors offer unique points of view, aren’t afraid to break the rules, and are motivated by their passion for the craft of writing. I'm drawn to those writers who let the voices in their heads lead the way, creating characters you become invested in from page one. I love writing around my characters, because once I have them developed, the books tend to write themselves. Some of my best storylines are ones where my characters took over and led me in weird and wonderful directions.
I’ll be honest with you, this one is a brain-bender, and I love that about it. I may not have been able to wrap my brain around all of the unique twists and turns in this story, but the characters are so well-developed, the description is so vivid, and the action scenes are so well-crafted, it really didn’t matter. Set in the middle of a dystopian cancer plague, the eerie biblical and sci-fi elements make this one a real page-turner.
Global pandemic is raging. Olivya Wright-Ono's once loving home has been converted to a hospice for the dying. Her ability to see auras forces her to witness, with agonizing detail, the vibrant colors of life consumed by malignancy. The beautiful and troubled, Mikah, is an elite Empath in the ancient Kindred clan, led by the brooding, ever-morphing, monster named Prime. Mikah has learned a terrible truth . . . the plague is linked to Kindred origins. When Olivya sees evidence of disease creeping into her mother's aura, she has no one to turn to but Mikah. Can he unearth the…
As a kindergarten teacher and a mother of three boys, I live at the intersection of weird and wonderful, so I expect nothing less from my library. Indie authors offer unique points of view, aren’t afraid to break the rules, and are motivated by their passion for the craft of writing. I'm drawn to those writers who let the voices in their heads lead the way, creating characters you become invested in from page one. I love writing around my characters, because once I have them developed, the books tend to write themselves. Some of my best storylines are ones where my characters took over and led me in weird and wonderful directions.
Sugar Man’s Daughter follows Nicola’s journey as she tries to escape her demons by returning to her childhood roots. It’s mysterious and dark; the characters are vivid and perfectly flawed; it sucks you in and keeps you turning the page. Sugar Man’s Daughter is an introspective piece that examines the dysfunction created in the wake of illegal drugs and corruption.
“Dear Daddy: It’s been a year tomorrow. A whole long and sorrowful year gone by, and I still looked for you to be at the kitchen stove tonight, a cigarette propped between your lips, and a scowl set in deep around your eyebrows . . . “ The alleged suicide of heroin king Jimmy “Sugar” Thomas has a lot of the locals in the backwater town of Mount Bloom asking questions. And the fall-out from his death has his only daughter delving – albeit unwillingly – into the spirit world and running from some harsh allegations made by her current…
Throughout my childhood, my mother repeated the mantra, “Love your own, leave others alone.” Her purpose was to prevent me and my siblings from begging to keep every animal we saw. Arguably, the phrase had some impact because we obviously didn’t bring home every animal. (But we also adopted a opossum from the backyard and named him Mr. Jenkins, so you be the judge.) For as long as I can remember, I have loved finding fantasy adventure books that feature the animals I love so much as trusted companions. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I do!
Moving away from middle-grade-specific books, my next recommendation is aimed at young adult and adult audiences.
When people hear animal companions in fantasy, wolves tend to come to mind pretty quickly. Toothbreaker focuses on a special group of people, Eritam, who have a unique gift of taming and working with wolves. So, there are wolves within this narrative!
A spin-off novella of Elrich’s Daughters of Tamnarae series, Toothbreaker is a fast-paced yet beautiful story of second chances, granting others and yourself grace, and finding purpose. My favorite part of this book, after the wolves, includes the ease in which readers can connect with Sage and the other characters.
Plus, there are references to other groups within the fantasy world—did someone say dragon tamers??
Is there any genre so purely escapist as a portal fantasy adventure? I grew up on stories like these, devouring any book I could find that had a portal in it, from Alice in Wonderlandto The Chronicles of Narnia to Tunnel in the Sky. Books, in a way, are portals to other places and times, and as a child I wandered through the stacks of the local library, plumbing the depths of every strange world I could get my hands on. If you want to experience the long-lost thrill of falling into a story, few do it like those that take their characters through portals to other worlds.
The doorway in this novel is a departure from the usual.
And though it is unusual, yet it ties to humankind's fascination with portals.
The first portal in storytelling history, really, is the threshold a person must pass through to get from life to death.
That threshold has been epitomized in mythology as long as human beings have been using stories to explain the strangeness of existence.
In this sci-fi story, deathis once again the portal between worlds. What would you do if, right before you died, an alien entity asks if you’d like to be saved?
Would you do it?
That’s exactly what happens to Meredith Gale. She regrets jumping off that bridge, so she says yes.
The story that follows is surprising and witty and full of heart. A friendly robot pulls the girl from the sea, along with a dozen others like her, every one of…
Welcome Children of Earth. Do not be afraid. After a devastating car crash leaves her addicted to pills and her best friend dead, Meredith Gale has finally been pushed to her breaking point. Ending her life seems like the only way out, and that choice has left her dangling by her fingertips from a bridge above the freezing water of the San Francisco Bay.
But someone, or some thing, has other plans for Meredith. As her fingers slip from the cold steel of the bridge, a disembodied voice ask her a simple question: “Candidate 13: Do you wish to be…
I’m a science journalist in Colorado, living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that were raised by millions of years of mountain-building. I studied geology in college and now write about the earth and space sciences, primarily for the journal Nature. On reporting trips I’ve camped on floating Arctic sea ice and visited earthquake-ravaged mountains in Sichuan, China. But my favorite journey into deep time — the planet’s unfathomably long geologic history, as preserved in rocks — will always be a raft trip with scientists along a section of the Colorado River in Arizona.
This gorgeously illustrated coffee-table volume draws on Black’s expertise in science writing and paleontology. She begins with the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, then moves in short chapters through milestones of the rise of life on Earth. Prehistoric plants harden into coal in the Carboniferous Period, 359 million years ago; dinosaurs roam the Morrison Formation of the western US, 156 million years ago; and small blobs of molten glass from Laos reveal a powerful meteorite impact 790,000 years ago. You’ll never see the timeline of life the same way again.
Deep time is the timescale of the geological events that have shaped our planet. Whilst so immense as to challenge human understanding, its evidence is nonetheless visible all around us.
Through explanations of the latest research and over 200 fascinating images, Deep Time explores this evidence, from the visible layers in ancient rock to the hiss of static on the radio, and from fossilized shark's teeth to underwater forests. These relics of ancient epochs, many of which we can see and touch today, connect our present to the distant past and answer broader questions about our place in the timeline…
I‘m a Sydney-based exploration geologist and science writer, travelling the world in search of gold, exotic metals, gemstones, and the stories they have to tell — writing is my tool to bring alive ideas and concepts important to me, and my popular books include Rocks, Fossils and Dinosaurs;Natural Disasters; and Geologica. Working in the world's poorest regions has also sparked a strong humanitarian interest. I'm the founding president of FreeSchools World Literacy – Australia, a charity dedicated to education of underprivileged children, and towards which earnings from my writing go. It is my belief that education for all, not just a privileged few, is key to solving the world's problems.
This book stands as one of the last great paper encyclopedias created for children in this day and age of digital searches, and that is what I love about it. As you leaf through its pages, it is reminiscent of turning the stone pages of our own planet’s 4.6 billion-year-old story, featuring the evolution of life, culminating in us! This beautifully illustrated and written encyclopedia presents the most up-to-date information about planet Earth in a style and format designed for children, but which will appeal to a wide range of readers. With hundreds of photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps, it presents an impressive overview of our globe—beginning with the history of the universe and ending with today's conservation issues. A truly spectacular reference.
How do twisters form? What makes lightening strike? Why are tropical rain forests the lungs of our planet? Curious kids want to know everything about their planet. They’ll find the answers to their questions here, as they investigate our world from its core to its cosmic connections.
I have always been astounded by the mysteries of life and the cosmos. I soon realized that religion did not provide a satisfactory answer to these mysteries. Majoring in philosophy in college, I studied the world’s great thinkers and began an ongoing exploration of scientific theories purporting to explain the world we live in. These theories, based on scientific materialism, also proved unsatisfying, though for different reasons than religion. Consequently, I devoted 35 years–during a legal career–to researching and writing my book, intended to go beyond science and religion in the quest to explain the mysteries of the cosmos.
I love this book because it takes a creative and mind-expanding approach to the fine-tuning of the universe. Against modern-day proponents of the principle that humankind, resting on a “pale blue dot” in an insignificant solar system, holds no privileged place in the universe, the authors argue that Planet Earth is not only uniquely fit for habitability but also for scientific discovery.
The authors weave together the coincidences that make life possible with the conditions that allow science to even exist: a clear atmosphere; a viewing location in the Milky Way allowing deep observations of surrounding galaxies; and a habitable planet that allows technological life to thrive, with all the scientific instruments now used to probe the inner and outer depths of the cosmos.
I particularly like how the authors highlight simple natural phenomena, such as tree rings that mark time naturally and the seemingly harmonized shapes and orbits of…
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is not an insignificant blip on the universe's radar. Our world proves anything but average in Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards' The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery.
But what exactly does Earth bring to the table? How does it prove its worth among numerous planets and constellations in the vastness of the Milky Way? In The Privileged Planet, you'll learn about the world's life-sustaining capabilities, water and its miraculous makeup, protection by the planetary giants, and how our planet came into existence in…
As a frequent writer of science fiction, I focus not on real or imagined science, on aliens or other worlds, but on the impacts those things have on individuals, groups, and societies. Similarly, as a reader, I enjoy visiting places, cultures, and ideas with which I am unfamiliar, particularly when unveiled with elevated artistic expression. In my writing, often in the Star Trekuniverse, I attempt to avoid feeding the perception that media-tie-in writing is less-than, instead working to weave complex tales exploring the human condition. I don’t know if my reading tastes follow from my writing, or if the converse is true, but the two go hand in hand.
I generally don’t enjoy works of fiction that feature writers as their main characters. The process of writing, while influenced by life, is nevertheless a solitary process, difficult to capture in an interesting and meaningful way. William Goldman manages to do that, mostly by focusing on the backstory of story, on the flow and emotions of existence that contribute not only to the tales a writer tells, but their need to do so. The Color of Lightfeels both fantastical and real, steeped in preposterous events and genuine emotion, in a way that traces both the artistic process and the vagaries of life.
