Here are 100 books that Lineage fans have personally recommended if you like
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I've been reading fantasy for 42 years and writing it for 40, and because I was raised by badass women, I've always enjoyed tales of clever, kickass, indomitable heroines. I've written a bunch of them (a dozen books in an urban fantasy series about a sorcerer named Marla Mason; four books in the Axiom space opera series about ship captain Callie Machedo and her love interest, time refugee xenobiologist Elena Oh; contemporary fantasy/romance Heirs of Grace, about an art student who discovers a magical inheritance, and more). I'm also a longtime book reviewer, editor at SF/fantasy trade magazine Locus, and frequent award juror (Bradbury Prize, Philip K. Dick Award, and more), so... I think about SF/fantasy books a lot.
The Library at Mount Char is an astonishing puzzle-box of a novel, and one of the strangest and finest fantasies I've ever read.
Main character Carolyn was raised in a bizarre family of adopted siblings, taught magic by their enigmatic "father," and forced to live in isolation... but when their father dies, their world changes forever (and so does everyone else's). I actually re-read this novel immediately after finishing it the first time, because I wanted to experience it again while knowing how everything turned out, and it was even better.
“Wholly original . . . the work of the newest major talent in fantasy.”—The Wall Street Journal
“Freakishly compelling . . . through heart-thumping acts of violence and laugh-out-loud moments, this book practically dares you to keep reading.”—Atlanta Magazine
A missing God. A library with the secrets to the universe. A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn's not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas…
I love reading about monsters as much as I love writing about them. Unfortunately, it also means I’m super picky about the dark fantasy I read. These authors don’t disappoint. Dark fantasy is a genre that I continue to return to, whether it’s aimed at teens or adults. I’ve had to deal with many monsters in my life and I understand that they can take many shapes and forms. These books are some of the very best I’ve read and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have.
Let me emphasize how gorgeous this book is. Imagine a Tim Burton world filled with bones and two skeletons having a heart-wrenchingly beautiful love story. That is the landscape of The Bone Valley by Candace Robinson. This book gets quite gory and dark but is absolutely my favorite of her books for its sheer originality and incredibly unique world. Not to mention the horrible villain who literally takes over the underworld just so she can torture people. Yeah, it’s dark. Robinson is known for her incredible balance of romance and horror nestled within a beautiful world, and this book is the epitome of that.
He’s a lover. She’s a thief. A magic like no other will bind them together.
After the death of his parents, Anton Bereza works hard to provide for his younger siblings. Love has never been in the cards for him, especially after desperation forces Anton to sell himself for coin. And he has no idea that, beneath the city of Kedaf, lies a place called the Bone Valley.
When Anton’s jealous client plots against him, he is cursed to spend eternity in a world where all that remains are broken bones. There, Anton meets Nahli Yan—a spirited woman who once…
I love reading about monsters as much as I love writing about them. Unfortunately, it also means I’m super picky about the dark fantasy I read. These authors don’t disappoint. Dark fantasy is a genre that I continue to return to, whether it’s aimed at teens or adults. I’ve had to deal with many monsters in my life and I understand that they can take many shapes and forms. These books are some of the very best I’ve read and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have.
A dystopian novella that seems confusing at first but makes sense as you continue along. It requires piecing together broken memories, broken friendships, and flashes of emotion that are rarely understood. Each glimpse lasts only eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. It’s quite an incredible feat of storytelling. I read this in one sitting with the sun setting outside and me barely even noticing that time existed. I was fortunate enough to know and work alongside Salomon before his recent passing and this was a book I was privileged to provide a blurb for. I was blown away by the story that unraveled before me. I promise you will be too.
Over eight billion people died when the world ended. Two survived.L and M don’t know why they’re alive. They don’t remember what happened. Addicted to a drug that kills them for eight minutes and thirty-two seconds, they risk the end of humanity in order to learn the truth.
I love reading about monsters as much as I love writing about them. Unfortunately, it also means I’m super picky about the dark fantasy I read. These authors don’t disappoint. Dark fantasy is a genre that I continue to return to, whether it’s aimed at teens or adults. I’ve had to deal with many monsters in my life and I understand that they can take many shapes and forms. These books are some of the very best I’ve read and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I have.
Yes, this book is based on the Great Blizzard of 1888, but trust me when I say this isn’t a historical document. Morgan introduces a wicked new twist with supernatural creatures known as the Wanageeska. This book had me gripped from the very first chapter, and in true Morgan fashion, drew me in deep until I was in over my head. This book is gruesome, intense, and fast-paced, serving as a testament to the dangers of mother nature. Morgan easily blends the fantastic with the historical into one incredible tale that I continue to think about years after reading it.
When a day dawns warm and mild in the middle of a long cold winter, it’s greeted as a blessing, a reprieve. A chance for those who’ve been cooped up indoors to get out, do chores, run errands, send the children to school… little knowing that they’re only seeing the calm before the storm.
The blizzard hits out of nowhere, screaming across the Great Plains like a runaway train. It brings slicing winds, blinding snow, plummeting temperatures. Livestock will be found frozen in the fields, their heads encased in blocks of ice formed from their own steaming…
I’ve loved mysteries since I was a kid and became hooked on the Fear Street books by RL Stine. In college, I took a class on suspense and mystery and was introduced to the greats: Chandler, Hammett, Collins, Christie, Doyle… I could go on and on. As I consumed more, I became enamored with mysteries that were more than just stories about victims but also used crime as a vehicle to comment on the region’s social and economic issues. My favorite mysteries are more than the sum of its body parts. They also scrutinize the worlds where these heinous crimes were allowed to occur.
In this book, the protagonist escapes to modern-day London and uncovers a centuries-old mystery. The story is told in parallel timelines juxtaposing modern-day and Victorian London, and it’s such a cool vibe. I loved how the FMC, Caroline, walks the same roads and travels the same paths as the long-dead apothecary and how their stories of women in a misogynist society mirror each other.
I loved following Caroline as she pieced together the story of the poisoners and the “crimes” they committed and how she stepped into her own and found her confidence.
Named Most Anticipated of 2021 by Newsweek, Good Housekeeping, Hello! magazine, Oprah.com, Bustle, Popsugar, Betches, Sweet July, and GoodReads!
March 2021 Indie Next Pick and #1 LibraryReads Pick
“A bold, edgy, accomplished debut!” —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network
A forgotten history. A secret network of women. A legacy of poison and revenge. Welcome to The Lost Apothecary…
Hidden in the depths of eighteenth-century London, a secret apothecary shop caters to an unusual kind of clientele. Women across the city whisper of a mysterious figure named Nella who sells well-disguised…
I’ve never belonged to a secret society, but I’ve always been drawn to the idea. When I wrote Stone Cove Island, I was thinking about secrets passed down between generations of the islanders, and I liked the idea that even within, but I liked the idea that even within this tiny community, there was an inner circle of people invisibly controlling things. I’d heard a story from a friend—and it might just be a story, but I’m not the only one who’s heard it—about a rich, private island where if you did something to displease the residents, they sent you a black sweater. No note. Just the sweater. The message was clear: time for you to go.
How I wish I could read this one all over again for the first time. I can’t, but you can! In this semi-magical spy thriller, 14-year-old Janie is suddenly forced to move to London from Los Angeles with her family, where she fits in badly in her new school as the awkward American. She’s quickly drawn into a secret network of spies – mostly of the amateur variety – who, thanks to an ancient book of potion recipes, can do all kinds of things, like turn into birds.
Fourteen-year-old Janie Scott is new to London and she's finding it dull, dreary and cold - until she meets Benjamin Burrows who dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father, the mysterious apothecary, is kidnapped he entrusts Janie and Benjamin with his sacred book, full of ancient spells and magical potions. Now the two new friends must uncover the book's secrets in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons.
I’m addicted to Gothics. It started with reading Jane Eyre as a teenager. Gothics have it all – crime, mystery, secrets, lies, atmosphere, dread. I love history, particularly the stories of women’s lives. These are found not in textbooks but unearthed from more private and arcane places – diaries, mill worker records, letters, tintypes. I’m also drawn to writing dangerous women, those who live at the margins and need all their wits to survive. They don’t always stay within the law, and they aren’t always the heroine. I’m the author of The Companion, After Alice Fell, and The Deception (out in October 2022) - historical thrillers with a quite Gothicky edge. Naturally.
Jem Flockhart is an apprentice apothecary at St. Saviour’s Infirmary in London. The building is falling down around the patients. The doctors hate each other. Jem finds six tiny coffins in the crumbling dank chapel – and a murder mystery begins. This book pulled me right into the dark rancid squalor of gaslit London and doesn’t shy in its horrific details. It’s dark, it’s atmospheric, it’s an amazing read. So glad it’s the first in a series!
Ramshackle and crumbling, trapped in the past and resisting the future, St. Saviour's Infirmary awaits demolition. Within its stinking wards and cramped corridors, the doctors bicker and backstab. Ambition, jealousy, and loathing seethe beneath the veneer of professional courtesy. Always an outsider, and with a secret of her own to hide, apothecary Jem Flockhart observes everything but says nothing.
And then six tiny coffins are uncovered, inside each a handful of dried flowers and a bundle of mouldering rags. When Jem comes across these strange relics hidden inside the infirmary's old chapel, her quest to understand their meaning prises open…
I write adventure and mystery stories for children aged 9 - 13, involving battles with mythical creatures, dangerous pacts with demons, and other supernatural chills. My first book, Ante’s Inferno, won the People’s Book Prize and a Silver Wishing Shelf Award. For The Fall of a Sparrow, I drew on my love of ghost stories, not just for their scariness but also for their emotional complexity: ghosts don’t haunt just for the sake of it. They need something only the main character can give. Friendship, perhaps, a companion in their loneliness… or something much darker. Here’s my choice of classic stories in which ghosts pursue a wide – and sometimes terrifying – variety of agendas.
What I love about the ghost story genre is how it can lend itself to comedy as well as spookiness. Here the plight of poor James, moving to a new house only to find himself seized on as Apprentice to ghostly 17th century apothecary Thomas Kempe, is irresistibly funny. No one will believe it’s not him scrawling advertisements for ‘Sorcerie, Astrologie, Geomancie, Alchemie, Recoverie of Goodes Loste and Physicke’ on notice boards outside his house and all over the village. Lively’s accurate use of 17th century English heightens both the humour and historical realism in this beautifully written book.
The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults and children alike.
James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage - with grounds that are great for excavations, and trees that are perfect for climbing - and stuff is happening. Stuff that is normally the kind of thing he does. And he's getting blamed for it. But it's not him who's writing strange things on shopping lists and fences. It's not him who smashes bottles and pours tea in the Vicar's lap. It's a ghost - honestly. Thomas…
In 1998, I met H.P. Lovecraft's corpse-reanimating doctor, Herbert West. I found him intriguing, but HPL's story didn't tell me enough about what lay behind his bizarre interests. Why did his friend help and support him? To answer those questions, I wrote four genre-blending novels, of whichThe Friendship of Mortals is the first. Through West's librarian friend, Charles Milburn, I explore their friendship, the choices they make, and how they deal with the consequences of those choices. The setting is a college town in early 20th century New England, but with a supernatural twist.
At first, I thought this was a historical mystery similar to the Sherlock Holmes stories. Nineteenth-century city, maybe in Russia? But what about the weird Bone Forest and the house on stilts? The detective, Konrad Savast, carries out his investigations in distinctly unorthodox ways. Then there are his spirit-serpent helpers, Eetapi and Ootapi. Sherlock never had anything like them! And in addition to the four mysteries to be solved in this book, there's the question of Konrad's relationship with apothecary Irinanda Falenia. Will it ever develop into something more than friendship?
There's a realm. Wreathed in ice and snow, drowning in the dark, Assevan needs a different kind of hero.
There's a god. Merciless and cold, and quick to anger, the Lord of the Dead insists upon one thing only: vengeance for a murdered soul.
And there's a man. A ruthless killer, Konrad is detective, judge and executioner in one. Dauntless, relentless, monstrous, he stands alone against the dark.
Meet the Malykant. Justice will be served.
Four cases. Four killers. Four executions. Dark fantasy and murder mystery collide in this first collection of the…
As a great reader from birth, I love books. I am a retired teacher of English literature and love history, particularly the medieval period, inspired by my love of Chaucer. I found my chosen authors entertaining, informative, and able to lead me into my happy place, unaware of my surroundings whilst reading. I read very fast, however, and none of them write fast enough for me so I started to write my own books. Words have the power to move, to excite, to console, to entertain. I hope anyone reading my chosen list will enjoy and may feel like exploring my own books.
Set in Medieval York I loved the detail of life in this book. The passion of Lucie Wilton, the apothecary’s wife is apparent and very real. Her anguish at his death and her guilt over her love for Owen Archer, her assistant incite pity and hunger in the reader. It taught me to try and include small details in my own writing and to make my characters come alive as Candace Robb does. I was truly hungry for the next book...and the next...and the next!
This mystery in medieval England is “suspenseful, historically accurate, and blessed with a wonderful cast of characters . . . An absolute delight” (Charles de Lint, author of the Newford Series).
It is Christmastide, 1363, and two suspicious deaths in the infirmary of St. Mary’s Abbey catch the attention of the powerful John Thoresby, Lord Chancellor of England and Archbishop of York. One victim is a pilgrim, while the second is Thoresby’s ne’er-do-well ward, both apparently poisoned by a physic supplied by Master Apothecary Nicholas Wilton.
In the wake of these deaths, the archbishop dispatches one-eyed spy Owen Archer to…
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