97 books like Look Where You Are Going Not Where You Have Been

It’s been said by smarter people than me how writing horror for kids isn’t about scaring them, it’s about showing them how brave they are.

A Monster Calls is the perfect illustration of that. The scariness and the spookiness are a stand-in for the real-life horrors that this kid is facing. Kids deal with a lot, and this book is the perfect example of how to survive when the worst happens.

The artwork too—wow! I wish I could get some of this artwork to hang on my walls. Absolutely gorgeous book.

I came to this one after watching and loving the television version and found the book even more fulfilling (although very different). It focuses on what happens when millions of people suddenly disappear from the world’s population and it looks not only at how people deal with this massive loss but also how they deal with the mystery of it, the not knowing why. People don’t only lose loved ones in this book but also their own sense of how the world should work, leaving them with a lot to deal with. I loved the characters, the tight focus on one community (and mostly one family within that community), and I loved how Perrotta made such a wild possibility seem entirely plausible.

The ship in this book (a submarine, in this case) features in unsettling flashbacks.

Miri’s wife, Leah, is a marine biologist, and on a routine trip to the bottom of the ocean, a malfunction on the sub means she and the crew remain down there much longer than anticipated. When she returns, she’s not the same. Armfield’s writing is stunning, perfectly encapsulating the strangeness of life at the bottom of the ocean.

This is an eerie but incredibly moving book about relationships and grief.

There’s so much to love about this book. Every story here is brilliant, and while sadness is the thread running through all of them, I’d say they also deal with issues of loss or the pain of losing, and the things we do to cope. I’ve loved Mauro’s writing from day one, and this collection gathers her best into a powerful volume that does indeed sing. It filled and then broke my heart. The book is worth buying for the award-winning story "Looking for Laika" alone, but there really isn’t a single story here that isn’t a masterclass in writing, and not a single one that doesn’t move the reader to feel the sadness and feel it deeply. I can’t wait for whatever Laura Mauro does next.

Sheila, a playwright, is trying to figure out how to be in the world, and she’s using her best friend Margaux, a visual artist, to help get her there. This book is filled with trenchant observations, sharp dialogue, and the twists and turns of a female friendship with all the emotional intimacy, creative cross-pollination and cannibalization, rupture and reconciliation that happen during the formative years of young women in their mid-twenties trying to be somebodies. But that doesn’t begin to describe the pleasure of reading this astute and hilarious story that begins with the idea of an ugly painting contest. It will make you examine your own world anew.

Gone Girl started the domestic suspense trend and showed us that suspense can be driven by family/household dynamics. Louise Candlish takes this to another level in Our House when the main character comes home to find another family moving into her house. She soon discovers that her husband has sold the house from under her feet and disappeared. This is a fantastic, slow-burn literary thriller with a great ending.

Woolford describes his book as a prenatal guide for musicals and it is indeed just that. He breaks down the process from idea to opening night for a thorough examination of what goes into each part of writing a musical. From the tickle of inspiration—and everything that went into its construction after that point, including the steps back and sideways, trying to find the right formula for success—there isn’t much left out. Warning: You might be inspired to try your hand at writing once you finish this book! 

I felt as if I’d taken a college-level theatre course at the end of How Musicals Work, with an instructor who revels in the complicated chaos that is musicals! It opens up a whole extra level to watching/experiencing a musical.

One night, decades after I first read James’s suspenseful gem of a novel, the book suddenly came to mind.

For years, I’d been struggling with how to fit together two women whose voices had been haunting my head. Now, in a flash, I saw the parallels they offered to the characters in Aspern. A determined, none-too-scrupulous scholar (male, in James’s book), an elderly woman who’d had a secret affair with a celebrated man, the two living together in the ruins of a once-elegant home, and a cache of hoarded papers the scholar desperately wants…

I dissected Aspern chapter by chapter, then gently fitted my characters onto its skeleton. Voilà: Must Read Well. “We stand on the shoulders of giants,” writers sometimes say. Also, “Steal from the best.”

The Girls Are All So Nice Here uses one of my favorite literary devices: dual timelines.

We bounce back and forth between Ambrosia (Amb) Wellington’s freshman year of college and her ten-year college reunion, where she is confronted by the secrets she has been keeping for the last decade. I’m a sucker for dark academia, and this book’s setting felt so real, it could have been my own alma mater.

I love this cookbook because it is a collectible and a treasure. Kasey Rogers was Louise Tate, the boss's wife from the television show, Bewitched. I was fortunate to have coordinated a book signing at Barnes and Noble in 2005 with Kasey. I got to hear firsthand knowledge of her memories of being on the set of Bewitched. She actually was able to participate in a lot of cast parties and be invited to the star of the show’s home, so the recipes are authentic. Everyone knows that "Samantha Stephens" didn't have to lift a finger in the kitchen... Now, "Bewitched" fans everywhere can share the kitchen with "Louise Tate" (the boss's wife) as she conjures up the magic that turned "Samantha Stephens" into a household name. In The Bewitched Cookbook, you'll discover "Cousin Serena's" "I-don't-cook" quick-fixes, "Dr. Bombay's" exotic banquets, "Maurice's" special drinks and delicacies, "Endora's" wickedly tasty tricks… show more.