Here are 100 books that High Strangeness in the Mountains fans have personally recommended if you like
High Strangeness in the Mountains.
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I’ve been a fan of dinosaurs and other mega-monsters ever since I watched the original Godzilla movie as a kid. It scared me half out of my wits! There’s something about big, scaly, dangerous beasts that makes for a great adventure story. Add fascinating human characters and you’ve got my full attention. I started writing my Dinosaur Wars books precisely to fill the void where there are far too few stories of this type in current literature. Challenges between human heroes and giant beasts have been part of literature from the start, featuring dragons, titans, and ocean leviathans. I see my writings as efforts to continue that tradition.
In addition to his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s dinosaur adventure story delivers world-class excitement and deeply satisfying reading. Doyle’s story of explorers who find living dinosaurs in the Amazonian rainforest can hardly be matched for its originality.
I read it long ago and found it so memorable it was worth another read more recently. And I’m glad I did. The dinosaurs are portrayed dramatically, to say the least, but I was also impressed by rereading that the characters were quite ingenious. Professor Challenger, the expedition leader, is a gruff, highly irascible fellow, given to brawling as much as to debate. Ned Malone, newspaper reporter, and central “I “ character is a riveting taleteller and keen observer of dinosaurian and human nature.
Originally published serially in 1912, “The Lost World” is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale of discovery and adventure. The story begins with the narrator, the curious and intrepid reporter Edward Malone, meeting Professor Challenger, a strange and brilliant paleontologist who insists that he has found dinosaurs still alive deep in the Amazon. Malone agrees to accompany Challenger, as well as Challenger’s unconvinced colleague Professor Summerlee, and the adventurer Lord John Roxton, into the wilds of South America and the Amazon in search of Challenger’s fantastical beasts. There, cut off from the rest of civilization and high atop an isolated…
I like to go on trips, particularly overseas. This gives me the ability to write travel books—but moreover, I love adventure. I love to see the fantastic in the world in which we live. I’ve written other kinds of books that helped shape my writing style, including a kaiju novel series, which gives me a bit of a different approach than more encyclopedic travel writers. That’s what I try to bring to the table—the magic and esotericism in the world, presented like a pulpy Saturday matinee that you can enter yourself if you follow my travel tips.
Momentarily leaving the fantastic behind, let’s look at a real-life adventure in a time when travel to Earth’s extremities was not as easy as it is today. Even a single century in the past, explorers like Amundsen endured great hardship trying to reach places like the South Pole. On a journey of relative comfort, consider what it might’ve been like with a slightly lower level of technology, and face a reminder that humans are not quite the masters of the world’s untamable elements that we may think we are.
The South Pole is a book by Roald Amundsen and it represents an interesting first-hand account of the Norwegian expedition's successful attempt to reach the South Pole in 1911. Amundsen spends a great deal of time talking about logistics and placing of depots in preparation for his polar attempt all the way from the preparation leading up to the initial sea voyage, the voyage itself and then the establishing of a camp at the Antarctic. Although they were lucky with the weather, and Amundsen attributed the success of the expedition to "good luck", it is obvious that the Norwegian expedition…
I like to go on trips, particularly overseas. This gives me the ability to write travel books—but moreover, I love adventure. I love to see the fantastic in the world in which we live. I’ve written other kinds of books that helped shape my writing style, including a kaiju novel series, which gives me a bit of a different approach than more encyclopedic travel writers. That’s what I try to bring to the table—the magic and esotericism in the world, presented like a pulpy Saturday matinee that you can enter yourself if you follow my travel tips.
The Aswang mythology of the Philippines is fascinating and storied, a menagerie of creatures as horrific as any from Transylvania. This novel by a Filipina-Canadian author about a young man returning to his roots to find more werewolfery than he bargained for delves into its fascinating lore with cultural authenticity.
A teenage boy discovers family in the last way anyone wants to: as bloodthirsty monsters from the countryside.
Pablo Santos probably shouldn't try to crack the secret question to his dad's email account. Probably. But after getting into trouble in school yet again--for something that he swears wasn't his fault--he decides to run off to the countryside with his best friend, Rachel Ann, to discover the answer to such a mind-numbingly simple question: "Where was my father born?" Because Pablo knows nothing about his father and even less about his past.
Come and explore the Bicol countryside with Pablo and…
I like to go on trips, particularly overseas. This gives me the ability to write travel books—but moreover, I love adventure. I love to see the fantastic in the world in which we live. I’ve written other kinds of books that helped shape my writing style, including a kaiju novel series, which gives me a bit of a different approach than more encyclopedic travel writers. That’s what I try to bring to the table—the magic and esotericism in the world, presented like a pulpy Saturday matinee that you can enter yourself if you follow my travel tips.
Described by author William Cope as a “road trip” story, the first Tyrantis novel is a fairly mundane and relatable narrative about a young woman’s trip across the United States of America with her close companion—a giant, fire-breathing dinosaur. Yes, this is a “kaiju” novel, and it’s one of the really good ones. It’s also a road trip story, a rollicking adventure through subterranean caverns, colonies of gigantic ants, and sights one might see on a drive across the 50 states. The combination of fantastic and mundane is exactly my jam.
It all begins with the Superquake of 1954, a geological calamity of unprecedented scope. Though this on its own is more than enough to shake humanity to its very core, what follows proves to be all the more terrifying - for soon colossal monsters begin emerging from the newly formed cracks in the earth’s surface. Impossible both in scale and durability, these titanic beasts prove to be far more than humanity can handle, and the end of civilization seems to be drawing near!However, there is hope! Within one of the newly formed caverns, a young paleontologist, Mina Lerna, discovers a…
Before I could walk, horses were my passion and every thought. At five, Blackie came into my life a black Shetland stud and from there, I've never stopped enjoying a life with horses. Having been born in the 1970's I witnessed some of the horse racing greats from the television, and ever since the Thoroughbred racehorse has been my favorite breed. I've been involved in a variety of ways with the rehabilitation and transition of the thoroughbred from the track to new careers. My most beloved OTTB, Blue Blue Sea, overcame so much, and naturally, I had to memorialize his amazing life as a book.
While learning letters youngsters can also learn about the most exciting two minutes in sports. Jaime Corum's illustrations are deeply moving and the action springs to life through them and the poetry that Helen Wilbur's words provide. Although a young reader wouldn't be able to read the book to themselves, that is actually a benefit. I love how the book demands that an adult sit down, slow time, and enjoy it with the youngster they are reading to. There is no more beautiful ride than that.
The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuous sporting event in the United States. But don't call it just a horse race. This annual May event, known as "the most exciting two minutes in sports," is steeped in tradition and pageantry far beyond what happens on the track. Following the alphabet, D is for Derby: A Kentucky Derby Alphabet uses poetry and expository text to explain this world-famous event. Topics include famous jockeys, legendary horses, fabled Bluegrass farms and owners, as well as offering a behind-the scenes view of thoroughbred breeding and racing. Readers young and old, along with horse enthusiasts…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
When I moved to Kentucky many years ago, the large Confederate memorial on a downtown street was a puzzle to me because I knew that Kentucky had been a Union state. As one historian said many years ago, “Kentucky seceded after the war was over.” Marshall’s book walks us through that process. She covers everything from politics to postwar violence to children’s literature to the resistance efforts of Kentucky’s African Americans as she explains why those Confederate memorials and monuments went up all around the state.
Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky ""waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union."" In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that more Kentuckians fought for the North than for the South. Following the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties, embracing the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with formerly Confederate states. Although, on the surface, white Confederate memory appeared to…
I’ve always loved reading memoirs, especially about a hero’s journey—whether it’s a teacher figuring out a tough group of students or a kid figuring out how to change the story they’ve been written into. I love nothing more than the triumphant ending that makes me cheer and cry happy tears. As an English teacher and debut author of my own memoir, I’ve found that honest storytelling opens a door for others to walk through and tell their own stories. I love seeing my students connect with stories like theirs because it shows them they’re not alone in their struggles and that living happily ever after is possible.
Bobi Conn’s story of growing up in poverty was too familiar: the cheap food, a car they push to start, a motel they move into when her father hits her mother, and the frustration of watching our mothers go back because they don’t have the courage to stay gone. Bobi also found refuge at school, which I related to because this was where life was predictable—and we were fed.
The author’s voice is powerful and honest as she shares her trauma, humiliation, and loss. Bobi Conn comes from the holler, deep in Appalachia, and her story is a beautiful testament to the resilience and bravery children are forced to have—and the childhood too many lose along the way.
A clear-eyed and compassionate memoir of the Appalachian experience by a woman who embraced its astonishing beauty, narrowly escaped its violence, and struggles to call it home.
Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny's; and her abusive father, an underemployed alcoholic whose untethered rage and violence against Bobi and her mother were frighteningly typical of a community marginalized, desperate, and ignored. Bobi's rule of survival:…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
I have long been interested in the history of US religion but a lot of religious history can be, well, boring. Harlow’s book is not. People interested in the Civil War often forget about the role religious belief played in the lives of 19th-century Americans, preferring to focus on military strategy or the politics of emancipation and Reconstruction. Harlow’s book foregrounds religion and shows how pro-slavery theology united Kentuckians even as they split over the war. And how that same theology helps explain why they turned their back on their wartime Unionism and embraced the Lost Cause version of events.
This book sheds new light on the role of religion in the nineteenth-century slavery debates. Luke E. Harlow argues that the ongoing conflict over the meaning of Christian 'orthodoxy' constrained the political and cultural horizons available for defenders and opponents of American slavery. The central locus of these debates was Kentucky, a border slave state with a long-standing antislavery presence. Although white Kentuckians famously cast themselves as moderates in the period and remained with the Union during the Civil War, their religious values showed no moderation on the slavery question. When the war ultimately brought emancipation, white Kentuckians found themselves…
I have always had an interest in the American frontier and the Native peoples. But while researching the novelBrave Enemies and Boone: A BiographyI spent years studying and visiting places where the stories occur, and using archives and libraries. However, the most important consideration is storytelling, rewarding the reader with a good story.
From the extensive Draper Collection of interviews with Boone’s son Nathan, and daughter-in-law Olive, Hammon has put together one of the most valuable portraits of Boone and the Boone family that exists, in the authentic words and voice of the younger son. When I was writing the biography I found it invaluable, both for the information it contains, and for a sense of the family connections.
One of the most famous figures of the American frontier, Daniel Boone clashed with the Shawnee and sought to exploit the riches of a newly settled region. Despite Boone's fame, his life remains wrapped in mystery.The Boone legend, which began with the publication of John Filson's The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boone and continued through modern times with Fess Parker's Daniel Boone television series, has become a hopeless mix of fact and fiction. Born in 1819, archivist Lyman Draper was a tireless collector of oral history and is responsible for much of what we do know about Boone. Particularly interested…
I have not served in the military nor been subject to a manhunt. However, I have been battling PTSD for almost 5 years. There are many, many misconceptions of PTSD in the media, and finding it portrayed accurately is a difficult task. My goal with Polaris was to first depict mental illness as realistically as possible, with all its ugly messiness. Secondly, the social commentary of a dystopian-sci-fi setting fascinated me. Polaris came about when I combined the two. In my own personal experience, most people do not understand the totality of PTSD and how it overtakes one’s life.
As one of the most unflinching, realistic depictions of PTSD in modern history, First Blood gave me shivers. It provides an intense dive into the psyche of someone traumatized by warfare and how messy and unpredictable one can become when attempting to adjust to civilian life. It may be hard for some to stomach.
From New York Times bestselling author, David Morrell, comes a classic thriller that introduced the character of Rambo, one of the most iconic action heroes of the twentieth century.
Called “the father of the modern action novel,” FIRST BLOOD changed the genre. Although the book and the film adaptation have similarities, they are very different, especially its unexpected ending and its greater intensity.If you’ve only experienced the film, you’re in for a surprise.
Once they were soldiers. Rambo, the ragged kid whose presence in town is considered a threat. And Teasle, the Chief of Police of Madison, Kentucky. Both have…
