Here are 99 books that Fire In The Sea fans have personally recommended if you like
Fire In The Sea.
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I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (urban fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic). With The Rephaim series, I wanted to put angels, half-angels, and demons in a sunny coastal Australia setting, rather than the gloomy European forests we’re mostly used to for those types of stories. It was a lot of fun.
Australian author Kirsty Eagar’s love of surfing and the ocean comes through in every book she writes.
Here, she combines quintessential Aussie surf culture with vampires. Not sexy, heart-throb vamps, but soulless killers with an unquenchable thirst and increasingly disturbing plans for themselves and humanity. This novel is equal parts edgy contemporary Aussie coming-of-age story and skin-crawling horror. It’s no mean feat, and Kirsty hits it tone-perfect.
As always, there are well-written, believable characters (teen protagonists, unhinged vamps, and dodgy adults), plus a tense plot that builds to a frenetic pace with high stakes. Kirsty gives us classic mythology, refreshed and transplanted into a sun-drenched beach setting, underpinned by a reimagining of the brutal real-life story of the Batavia shipwreck in 1629.
I first read this over a decade ago and I loved it even more the second time around.
A fast-paced thriller about surfing, the supernatural, and one of history's bloodiest maritime incidents. Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Award for Young Adult fiction.
Holidays in the coastal village of Rocky Head should mean surfing, dodging tourists, and partying at the local music festival. But when Jamie Mackie is savagely bitten in the surf by a friend, he realises things are going to be different this summer. The Mutineers are in town, a coven of brutal vampires created in the shipwreck of the Batavia, four hundred years ago. If their plans succeed, nobody in Rocky Head will survive to…
I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (urban fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic). With The Rephaim series, I wanted to put angels, half-angels, and demons in a sunny coastal Australia setting, rather than the gloomy European forests we’re mostly used to for those types of stories. It was a lot of fun.
This is one of my all-time favourite novels. It’s a deeply moving coming-of-age story, set in a future Australia ruled by vampires known as The Masters.
It’s the story of Mark, and the monster who teaches him to be a man. Mark’s voice is perfect and the world building is totally original. The plot, with its dark undertones, moves at a measured pace towards a series of life-changing, violent moments.
I love how Australian this book is, and the fact Trent never once uses the 'v' word.
Day Boy is gentle and wild. It offers a rare and surprisingly moving study of manhood and masculinity, and the relationships between boys and father figures. The writing is sublime. This is a novel to be savoured.
Winner of the Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy and Best Horror Novel
With brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy-and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man.
The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will.
Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master,…
I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (urban fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic). With The Rephaim series, I wanted to put angels, half-angels, and demons in a sunny coastal Australia setting, rather than the gloomy European forests we’re mostly used to for those types of stories. It was a lot of fun.
This witty young adult novel cleverly up-ends the traditional vampire mythology.
These Australian urban vamps are sickly, socially isolated, and barely able to defend themselves. Fifteen-year-old Nina has been a vampire since 1973. She’s part of a group of vamps who meet once a week for therapy sessions to help them refrain from attacking humans.
When one of their members is murdered, they decide to track their enemy, assuming that once the slayer sees how pathetic and harmless they are they’ll be left alone. Ill-equipped for danger, Nina and her fellow vamps stumble into a world of guns, thugs, werewolves, and vicious humans.
This is a fun read, packed with plenty of suspense, a clever plot, and a nice sprinkle of understated romance.
The trouble with being a vampire is . . . You can't get a decent haircut. You live on guinea-pig blood. And even worse, most of the world's population wants to kill you. For no good reason. Nina Harrison became a vampire in 1973, when she was fifteen. Since then, life's been one big drag - mostly because she spends all her time with a bunch of vampires, in a vampire therapy group. Then one of them gets staked by an anonymous vampire slayer, and things become even worse: while tracking down the culprit, Nina and her fellow vampires end…
I’m Australian and there’s a big place in my heart for Australian-set stories. I read mostly for escapism, but there’s a deeper connection with tales from my own backyard. I’ve also always loved speculative fiction and I’m excited when my favourite genres and setting come together. I’m the author of five speculative fiction novels with Australian settings: the four novels in The Rephaim series (urban fantasy) and The Undercurrent (slightly futuristic/pre-apocalyptic). With The Rephaim series, I wanted to put angels, half-angels, and demons in a sunny coastal Australia setting, rather than the gloomy European forests we’re mostly used to for those types of stories. It was a lot of fun.
I enjoyed The Opposite of Life (which preceded this book) for its wit, originality, unexpected poignancy, and Australian urban setting. I think Walking Shadows is even better.
Librarian Lissa and her very uncool, but lovable, vampire buddy Gary return, and Lissa is drawn further into Melbourne's vampire underworld to protect Gary (the first of many wonderful ironies).
Someone is hunting vampires and Gary's on the hitlist, despite the fact he doesn't bite people or drink blood. (In Harris’s mythology, vampires don't need human blood to survive, it simply enables them to feel alive.)
There are still themes of death, grief, and consequences of choices, but these are balanced by moments where simple joys in life are celebrated and relished. I loved the deepening friendship between Lissa and Gary—theirs is a unique relationship in the world of vamp-based stories.
I love knowing about things. Science is both a knowledge base and a way to discover new knowledge. I’ve been looking through microscopes and telescopes (that my dad built) from my earliest toddling. Though I have never been to university I have picked the brains of my scientific siblings (one of whom is a biology professor) and I read widely. Gathering crumbs from many sources gives a wider knowledge base than one university child afford. Scientists begin with speculation. I love inventing systems and worlds where we break one or a few of our known laws of nature or physics. Marrying science with fantasy births marvelous offspring!
Gripping character introductions, organic magic systems, extraordinary world-building, and superb writing. I felt the fire burn Selah and the yearning in William’s heart to do good despite loyalty to faulty leadership. Fighting galore!
I love weaving on a loom. I almost always write a weaver into my novels and Walker-Henderson’s series has a weaver too!
The Legendaries’ abilities - speed, strength, magnetic attraction, lung capacity, and resistance to fire are measurable and augmented in this story. Through the whole series geography is explored. Each Legendary comes from a different environment and climate. Selah comes from the desert. William comes from the mountains with mixed forest. They travel to the plains and the icy regions in their quest for the ancient relic that gives the possessor power over their destiny.
In a land of legends, three rival nations hunt the ancient relic that can control rare and powerful warriors.
With lightning speed and an affinity for knives, Desa is a legendary, one of the warriors the relic can enslave.
Disguised as a mercenary, she joins a band of enemy warriors who also hunt the relic. In the height of battle, a startling connection links her to their leader.
Will he help her find the relic or betray her for the glory of his northern kingdom? His aid could be worth the risk.
I developed a passion for history as a child in Warrington, Cheshire. I would lose myself in tales of Achilles, Alexander, King Arthur, and King Alfred the Great. My love of the Viking Age became nurtured through visits to Viking exhibitions like the Yorvik centre in York, and Dublinia in Dublin. The catalyst for my first book, Viking Blood and Blade, was a trip to the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. That museum holds a full-size Viking warship, which is truly breathtaking. I have published seven historical fiction novels set in the Viking Age, and I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have…
The descriptions of Vikings in this book are unique to others in the Viking Historical Fiction genre.
Robert captures the Viking Age with realistic grit and blood-spattered realism, and this is a difficult book to put down. Orm Bearslayer and his crew are classic anti-heroes, and Finn Horsehead is a magnificent character.
The Whale Road is the first in the Oathsworn series, and I would advise any fan of Viking novels to give this one a try.
The first in a brand new series charting the adventures of the Oathsworn, a band of Vikings on the chase for the secret hoard of Attila the Hun.
Life is savage aboard a Viking raider. When young Orm Rurikson is plucked from the snows of Norway to join his estranged father on the Fjord Elk, he becomes an unlikely member of a notorious crew. They are the Oathsworn - so named after the spoken bond that ties them in brotherhood - and they ply a casual trade on the ocean wave, selling their swords to the highest bidder.
For much too long a perennial student, I hold degrees in Anthropology, Arabic Studies, and Library Science. I’ve studied nine languages and lived or traveled on five of the seven continents. I do not hunt tangible treasure—gold or jewels or sunken ships; I hunt knowledge. My love for rooting out treasure troves of information began with my first job. I held passes to the Library of Congress stacks, where I tracked down sources on Ethiopian history. After months of unearthing mostly obscure references, I came upon the mother lode—the great explorers’ accounts. It was like finding a chest of doubloons. I was hooked on the treasure of the mind.
Not all treasure is gold—in Map of Bones, one of Rollins’ many excellent novels, it is bones. Ancient bones. In the aftermath of a horrific crime, the bones of the Three Magi are stolen from a German cathedral. A Vatican investigator and an American covert operative chase the thieves—an ancient cult of assassins—across two continents to recover the relics. Map of Bones is especially appealing to me, being a sucker for historic or exotic settings with which I’m familiar. Rollins’ books are all page-turners, fast-paced and compelling, and the Sigma Force series is perfect for those of us who love heroes who can extricate themselves from any predicament. I like my hero complex, yes. Sexy, yes. But above all, really, really good at what he does.
When a group of parishioners is burned to death in a German cathedral, the US sends in Sigma force. For this tragedy is more than a case of arson - someone has stolen the priceless treasure stored in the cathedral's golden reliquary: the bones of the biblical Three Kings. Commander Gray Pierce leads a team on the hunt for the Royal Dragon Court, a clandestine aristocratic fraternity of alchemists that dates back to the Middle Ages and seeks to establish a new world order using the mystical bones. Pierce and his team follow a trail that leads from Europe's Gothic…
Part-Cornish, as a child I spent family holidays in Cornwall and was told family stories of Cornish relatives, especially of great grandfather Philip Henry Hammer and his numerous children who left Cornwall for destinations near – London and Wales – and far–South Africa, Australia, and Tasmania – to make a living. Old family photographs, some from the 1870s helped to bring these men and women alive and inspired me to write The Hammers of Towan. The more I research Cornish history, the more I learn, and the more I want to write about Cornish people and their place in the world.
A fascinating description of the Cornish way of life as it was in the late 19th and earlier part of the 20th century.
I especially enjoyed the many early photographs of places, activities, and people which really enliven the text – good background information for my writing project.
Cornwall's spectacular shoreline, with its brutal cliffs, desolate moors and pre-historic coastal settlements, has long held a source of fascination for those who cross the Duchy's boundary line. Yet despite the endurance of seascapes and ancient landscapes, which remain hidden from mainstream tourist routes, there are, throughout Cornwall, stories of change. Patterns of life have adapted to a shifting world, and whole communities have been affected as traditions are gradually subsumed in the struggle for 'progress'. However, remnants of recent history are still evident in Cornwall's architecture, its redundant transport systems and its cultural relics. This book is an exploration…
I have degrees in history and Christian theology, and enjoy science fiction and fantasy stories, whether set on earth, or in other worlds, whether real (other planets of our solar system), hypothetical (possible planets in other galaxies), or imaginary (Narnia, Wonderland). But I like those set in this world best, and value them especially for the insights they give into life, the universe, and everything. As C.S. Lewis once said to his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, if we want more of the kind of stories we like, we shall have to write them ourselves. The books I’ve recommended are the kind I like, and I’ve tried to write a few more.
Charles Williams’s books have been described as “supernatural thrillers.” Many later authors have tried to use the theme of a recently-rediscovered ancient holy relic, which various people want to get hold of for good or evil purposes, in this case the Holy Grail or Graal, but few have done it as well as Charles Williams. I’ve read it at least five times, and I also think it has one of the most attention-grabbing opening lines in fiction: “The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.”
"War in Heaven" is a horrific romance, with many mythical creatures present. Instead of creating a unique secondary fantasy world or switching between two universes, Williams allows the supernatural to invade his modern world. This allows him to explore the influence of another reality on different characters. The object that guides the supernatural to the natural in this novel is the Holy Grail
My love of realms and fantastic imagination comes from growing up in the backwoods of Alabama. The woods inspired me and beckoned me to dance and build and imagine among the trees. I created characters and worlds and could be a witch, a fairy, a troll, or a girl lost in time. I owe my love of creating characters to the woods that built me and one day I will go back and thank them for the beautiful life they gave me.
Most fantasy books take so long to tell the story. This series starts quickly and enchants the entire time! A hero who defends a blind priest against all manner of evil and danger. This is a story you will fall in love with and will not be able to put down! Without revealing too much... Not all heroes wear capes
A blind priest. A book that can't be seen. Can a young hero protect one long enough to save the other?
Tormjere has never left his home valley, peaceful in its isolation from both monsters and men. His first journey into the outside world meets with disaster, thrusting him into the realities of a kingdom on the brink of war.
To save the life of a friend, he pledges himself to a path for which he is ill-prepared: guiding a blind priest on a quest to retrieve a sacred relic that only he can find.
