Here are 64 books that Heroes Are My Weakness fans have personally recommended if you like
Heroes Are My Weakness.
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As a child, I received an electronic typewriter as a gift and immediately got to work on a story about a family living on an island. Even at ten, I recognized the power of islands, with their built-in problems of isolation and rich possibilities for metaphors. So it only made sense I’d one day publish a book set on one. If you’re like me and can’t resist books with island settings, you’ll love these book recommendations. Each island in this collection has its own personality that becomes a character of its own, and none of these books could exist in the same way without their unique settings.
I loved this YA because it contains many of my favorite things: an evocative island setting, strong characters, high stakes, some romance, and animals.
The Celtic-inspired island of Thisby felt so incredibly real to me, as did the dangerous water horses the men raced every fall. I loved how brave the female protagonist, Puck, is to want to enter this race with her ordinary pony, Dove. Sean, an island boy, has his own sympathetic reasons for entering the race.
I’m always drawn to books with impossible problems. Neither Puck nor Sean can afford to lose, even as a romance develops between them. I also really like a YA book that touches on sibling relationships. This book stayed with me for a long time.
A spellbinding novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater.
Some race to win. Others race to survive.It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line. Some riders live. Others die. At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them. Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio…
I love to take destination thrillers with me on vacation. It’s like a double whammy of travel. I also love to write destination thrillers and have written quite a few, including my first book, set in a charming lakefront community on Lake Erie, Ohio. My other destination thrillers include Beneath the Surface, set on a luxurious super yacht on a trip to Catalina Island from Newport Beach, California, and my latest, Under the Palms, set at a fabulous Laguna Beach luxury resort. I love to write about grown-ups behaving badly. Dropping the characters into a beautiful resort or vacation setting increases the suspense.
This island mystery is set on a chilly resort off the coast of Ireland, so you won’t need sunscreen here, but you will need stamina as you’re once again trapped.
I loved this cast of characters attending the wedding of a glamorous and famous bride and groom. Media celebrities are so much fun to read about. But the real star of the show is the hostile setting and the menacing characters who are all there for something, some cleverly hiding their true motives until the very end.
*The brand new thriller from Lucy Foley - THE PARIS APARTMENT - is available to pre-order now*
The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller
*Over 1 million copies sold worldwide*
*One of The Times and Sunday Times Crime Books of the Year*
*Goodreads Choice Awards winner for Crime & Mystery 2020*
A gripping, twisty murder mystery thriller from the No.1 bestselling author of The Hunting Party.
'Lucy Foley is really very clever' Anthony Horowitz 'Thrilling' The Times 'A classic whodunnit' Kate Mosse 'Sharp and atmospheric and addictive' Louise Candlish 'A furiously twisty thriller' Clare Mackintosh
As a child, I received an electronic typewriter as a gift and immediately got to work on a story about a family living on an island. Even at ten, I recognized the power of islands, with their built-in problems of isolation and rich possibilities for metaphors. So it only made sense I’d one day publish a book set on one. If you’re like me and can’t resist books with island settings, you’ll love these book recommendations. Each island in this collection has its own personality that becomes a character of its own, and none of these books could exist in the same way without their unique settings.
Two words: cursed island. As soon as I saw this YA’s description of a beautiful island that isn’t what it seems, I was hooked.
Addie intrigued me as a protagonist. She’s a free diver who almost died and, as a result, still coughs up blood from the damage to her lungs. That doesn’t stop her wanting to return to the water, a desire I can relate to since I love the ocean. Addie gets dragged along on her mother and new stepdad’s honeymoon, but I like that she isn’t portrayed as a whiny teenager. She’s trying to make the most of what should be a dream island vacation—but in time, it turns into a nightmare. Skirting magical realism and horror, this book was unique and captivating.
A tropical island full of secrets. Two Victorian ghosts, trapped for eternity. And a seventeen-year-old girl determined not to be next.
Eulalie Island should be a paradise, but to Addie Spencer, it’s more like a prison.
Forced to tag along to the remote island on her mother’s honeymoon, Addie isn’t thrilled about being trapped there for two weeks. The island is stunning, with its secluded beaches and forests full of white flowers. But there's something eerie and unsettling about the place.
After Addie meets an enigmatic boy on the beach, all the flowers start turning pink. The island loves you,…
As a child, I received an electronic typewriter as a gift and immediately got to work on a story about a family living on an island. Even at ten, I recognized the power of islands, with their built-in problems of isolation and rich possibilities for metaphors. So it only made sense I’d one day publish a book set on one. If you’re like me and can’t resist books with island settings, you’ll love these book recommendations. Each island in this collection has its own personality that becomes a character of its own, and none of these books could exist in the same way without their unique settings.
I’m a school librarian, so I couldn’t pass up a book about a librarian who works in an island school! This is set on Galveston Island, and the Texas culture there definitely brings its own flavor to the story.
The friendly community feel of the school and town really appealed to me and gave this book a cozy dimension despite its darker themes. A new principal arrives and immediately begins ruining the happy librarian’s life with new rules that she fights at every step—so naturally, the two begin to fall in love. I loved the animals in this book. I couldn’t stop smiling when I finished this one.
Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn't always that way. Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn't always that way.
And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before - at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him - but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a…
I’m a native of Texas who loves bluebonnets, big skies, and barbecue! With 25+ books in print, I write about imperfect characters who discover their inner strength as they lean on God and learn to trust each other and themselves. I’m fascinated by the dynamics of personalities and relationships, as well as the backstories that made the individuals who they are now. If you’re looking for stories of true-to-life characters growing deeper in faith while dealing with all the messiness human relationships entail, here are some novels you may enjoy.
I love a good sisters novel—maybe because I always wished for a sister of my own? This cast of unique and engaging characters quickly drew me into their lives as these young women with very different personalities found ways to accept their widowed dad's plans to reopen the summer camp where he’d met their mother. I also enjoy a good plot twist, and the one at the end of this book was just right, a touching way to tie everything together. This book was primarily the eldest sister Cam's story, which means more books to follow with insights into the other sisters’ lives. Have I mentioned I love sequels? Once I connect with a set of characters, it’s hard to let them go!
Sometimes love hurts--and sometimes it can heal in the most unexpected way.
Camden Grayson loves her challenging career, but the rest of her life could use some improvement. "Moving on" is Cam's mantra. But there's a difference, her two sisters insist, between one who moves on . . . and one who keeps moving.
Cam's full-throttle life skids to a stop when her father buys a remote island off the coast of Maine. Paul Grayson has a dream to breathe new life into the island--a dream that includes reuniting his estranged daughters. Certain Dad has lost his mind, the three…
I’ve read everything I could lay my hands on since I was young, and like so many others, I’ve always preferred to read about unusual characters, uncommon situations, or both simultaneously. The books I described here fulfill those requirements for me, even though they are superficially very different from one another. Now that I write my own novels, my over-arching goal is for each of my books to be better than the one that precedes it. I do my best to offer my readers interesting characters in compelling situations, and if my readers think I’ve succeeded, I will be a very happy author.
This book checks all the boxes. I love books with interesting and off-beat characters, and I'm delighted if they’re in unusual settings. The setting is a remote island off the coast of Maine, inhabited only by the descendants of native people and survivors of a 1700s shipwreck. The setting in this book is a character itself, and I loved it.
The people are just as fascinating. Kathleen Halloran returns to the island after a long absence, and Molly Cooper, a lifelong resident who’s unhappy when Kathleen shows up. My favorite characters were elderly sisters Louisa and Olivia. There’s a long-time mystery, island “woo woo,” and some romance. The storylines are well-done, but the setting and characters made this book one of my favorites.
Nearly twenty-five years ago, Kathleen Halloran’s brother drowned during the last summer they ever spent with their grandmother on a remote island off Maine’s coast. Like a siren’s call she can’t resist, Kathleen is pulled back to Little Sister Island. She leaves her job and her girlfriend, packs up her few belongings, and moves into her grandmother’s cottage.Molly Cooper loves life on Little Sister, where the islanders take care of their own. Kathleen Halloran doesn’t belong here, and her arrival stirs up unwelcome memories for the islanders—including Molly’s brother. Molly is certain Kathleen will pack up at the first big…
As a born and bred Mainer, there are dozens of great books I could recommend set in the Pine Tree State. But the five I’ve curated capture, for me, the diversity of the Maine culture, from the long-gone loggers who made their living from the woods to the often-overlooked Indigenous communities to the mill towns struggling to survive. When a non-Mainer thinks of our state, what usually comes to mind are quaint coastal villages, lighthouses, lobster… And while those things are part of what makes Maine the place it is, there exists, both on and off the page, plenty of other experiences and histories to discover here.
Even though Jewett wrote the stories in this book in the late 1800s, there is a timeless feeling to her prose that reverberates today.
I love Jewett’s attention to and reverence for the natural beauty that surrounds the fictional town of Dunnet Landing. Her descriptions of the Maine coastline—a blend of craggy rocks, forest, meadows, and sea—are visceral, sensory, and alluring. Jewett also nicely captures the hardworking, humorous, quietly resilient spirit of the year-round residents of Dunnet Landing, with a particularly keen and kind eye toward her female characters.
Her care for the everyday rituals of life, the small moments that make up an existence, are lovingly rendered and evocative. There’s a reason this is a Maine classic.
A rich collection of classic American literature potraying the beauty of a 19th-century New England town.
A female writer comes one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town, where she follows the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal communities. Here, lives are molded by the long Maine winters, rock-filled fields and strong resourceful women.
Throughout Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel and stories, these quiet tales of a simpler American life capture the inspirational in the everyday: the importance of honest friendships, the value of family, and the gift of community.
“Their counterparts are in every village in the world, thank heaven,…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
Olive is not a likable character, yet so many readers related to her in the first book, as I did. Strout took a completely different approach in this sequel, which appealed to me even more. We see the larger community in Olive’s life, looking at her through her interactions with friends, neighbors, and a lover who becomes her second husband.
Strout weaves present and past using these different perspectives, showing the rare kindnesses that Olive allows herself. By the end, she was a hero to me because of her changes as a person—the increased compassion tempered her frankness. A brilliant and realistic exploration of aging, illness, and death.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Number One New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel
'A novel to treasure' Sunday Times
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her.
Like most people, the carefree days of childhood are brought to a halt with the passage of time and the death of loved ones. As a wistful, dreamy, and introspective person, I wished to revisit the past, if only for a moment, to see what my grandparents experienced in their earlier lives. Currently, I’m under the spell of the 1930s and 1940s, and historical fiction books are an engaging way to learn about these marvelous decades.
The Orphan Train is a novel about forgotten and neglected children left to fend for themselves in an antiquated welfare program. The story weaves memories of an old woman with the naiveté of a present-day teenager teaching the reader that everything is not as it appears.
Christina Baker Kline breathes life into a horrible moment of American history making us rip the bandage off, look at our past and see the unexpected silver lining.
“A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Beautiful.”—Ann Packer
Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, and unexpected friendship.
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they…
Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
Sanctuary is an epic, three-volume-long ride of feels. As with many modern Austen variations, Pride & Prejudice is a jumping-off point, but Andrews puts her own spin on the tale. I love stories that develop the setting almost as another character, and Sanctuary does that with Maine. The essence of Elizabeth and Darcy is in the details, even though the modern world has had their way with the beloved characters. Darcy as a dad? *chef’s kiss*
“Do you ever wish you had a second chance to meet someone again for the first time?”
When Elizabeth Bennet left her Massachusetts hometown two years ago and settled on Great Diamond Island, off the rocky coast of Maine, all she wanted was a fresh start, somewhere to forget a past full of heartbreak and trauma—a place that would allow her to rediscover herself and what it felt like to be happy.
Will Darcy is ready to leave the family drama and noise of New York City behind. He moves to Great Diamond Island in an effort to build a…
