Here are 76 books that Messages fans have personally recommended if you like
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As we watch the news–the increasing number of earthquakes, volcanoes, wars, inflation, the rapid progress of AI, unelected elites deciding they know best for the world, and more–we don’t know how to process it all, and it leaves us feeling anxious. My passion for helping my readers not just escape but actually live better fuels me. I created this retelling of the Book of Revelations from the POV of celestial warriors and fallen angels in the unseen realms of our world to allow my readers to “make more sense” of the world and be at peace.
Talk about crazy experiments! Maze Runner is an epic quest combined with a nod to those who love solving puzzles on steroids. This is truly an end-of-the-world scenario, or I surely hope it is. While I can see some mad scientists excited about such an experiment today, it is still frowned upon. Thank goodness. But Maze Runner explores “science” gone rogue.
Indifference again plays a central role in the plot as those outside the experiment use a variety of psychological warfare techniques to keep the participants engaged in the game. The reader feels sorry for them having to overcome everything that’s thrown at them or die. I loved how the group of teens had to work together to figure out what was going on and then face the difficulty of extracting themselves from the maze. Ultimately, I loved that friendship and working together triumphed at the end of the day.
The first book in the New York Times bestselling Maze Runner series - now a series of major movies starring Dylan O'Brien!
SEE THE FILMS. READ THE BOOKS. ENTER THE MAZE ...
When the doors of the lift crank open, the only thing Thomas remembers is his first name. But he's not alone.
He's surrounded by boys who welcome him to the Glade - a walled encampment at the centre of a bizarre and terrible stone maze. Like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they came to be there - or what's happened to the world outside.
I’m Lindsay, and I never stop falling in love with human creativity. From the moment I first cracked open a library-borrowed copy of The Wizard of Ozas a child, I’ve been asking “What if…?” and I’ve delighted in how other authors imaginatively tackle that question. My interests are eclectic, ranging from history and politics to baking and sparkly things. I read to be swept away and to take a peek inside the storyteller’s mind and heart.
The quintessential YA Christian fantasy story in my opinion! Jill hits every fantasy beat perfectly, and I particularly loved the obvious care she put into the details. The result is a world that feels ripped from the pages of history, yet it’s overlaid with spiritual themes, supernatural happenings (bloodvoicing, anyone?), and allusions to Christ that will resonate for followers of Jesus. When I want a story that has overt and uplifting Christian themes, I reach for this series.
Half of Er'Rets is locked beneath an impenetrable shroud. On the side that still sees the sun, two young people struggle to understand the mind-communication abilities thrust upon them.
It's called bloodvoicing. Some say it's a gift. One of the newly "gifted" wish it had never come.
Achan had been a slave all his life. Worse than a slave—a stray. He is consigned to the kitchens of a lord and forced to swallow a foul potion every day. When an enigmatic knight offers to train Achan for the Kingsguard, he readily accepts. But his new skills…
I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.
When I read this book, I felt our world was on the brink of such a scenario. The bravery and fortitude of the main character was inspiring, and I hoped I could be so brave in the moment when it really matters. Granted, if I had the money this character did, it may make some choices easier to pull off. But still, he had a lot at stake to consider when push came to shove. Hopefully, at such critical times I hope we all can have faith in what truly matters.
From Tim LaHaye, co-author of the renowned Left Behind series, and Craig Parshall comes an epic story ripped from the headlines of world events and filtered through Scriptural prophecy.
Joshua Jordan, former US spy-plane hero now turned weapons designer, has come up with a devastatingly effective new missile defense system-the Return to Sender laser weapon. But global forces are mounting against America, and corrupt White House and Capitol Hill leaders are willing to do anything to stop the nation's impending economic catastrophe-including selling-out Joshua and his weapon.
With help from a group of powerfully connected Christian leaders known as the…
I’ve always been fascinated by science fiction and by Biblical Scripture. That may seem dichotomous to some, but not to me. I have a passion for science and for Scripture because both bring understanding about our world from the microcosm to the macrocosm. My writings are a mixture of science and mystery with a science fiction feel and a Christian perspective. I like stories that show how truth arises even from the dark, confusing, and ambiguity of life to help one discover something about God they may not have considered before, and at the same time enjoy a fun, fast-paced, and exciting journey as they read.
I was intrigued by this storyline where the main character seems to live in the past and the present simultaneously. She loves ancient artifacts yet when she discovers them, she somehow seems to be tied to them supernaturally and finds herself living the historical moments of what she is investigating. A great storyline for sure! A book hard to put down.
Kallie Andreas is a mystery, even to herself. Seven years ago Kallie woke up in a New York City museum, injured and traumatized. Alone and unclaimed. Despite her shattered memories, she's worked her way into a position as assistant curator in that very museum, and now she wants nothing more than to pursue funding for her project--assembling pieces from the ancient Minoans. But then the blackouts start. Lost time, stranded in terrifying danger, frantic visions that can't be real. A threatening phone call may be nothing more than paranoia and madness. Or perhaps not. It's time to start seeing her…
The first story I ever wrote was set among warehouse pickers and stockers; the second, a bridge maintenance crew; the third and fifth, office workers, and the sixth, cops on the beat. I’m fascinated by the drama of work. For most people the workplace is a highly structured environment—you can’t wear what you want, you can’t say what you want, you can’t avoid that guy who drives you nuts. Who-You-Really-Are and Who-You-Are-At-Work are not always in harmony, and the tension between those two identities is richly revelatory. I live and write in Moscow, Idaho, and have taught creative writing at the University of Idaho, Stanford University, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
This is the drama of a twenty-second escalator ride, during which the narrator, returning to the office from lunch, ponders his morning at work and his just-ended lunch hour, and reflects upon just about everything that he has observed or handled on this day (sunlight, shoelaces, staplers, doorknobs, carpet, rubber stamps, popcorn, and yes, escalators), and on every seemingly insignificant and fleeting human activity he has engaged in (tying his shoelace, signing a co-worker’s get-well card, replacing a wastepaper basket bag, avoiding another co-worker, ending a conversation). Though an office drone with a boring job, he remains undefeated, and engages the mundane and the routine around him with joy and renewal and wonder. A very funny and heartfelt book.
The Mezzanine is the story of one man's lunch hour. Pondering life's littlest questions - why does one shoelace always wear out before the other? Whatever happened to the paper drinking straw - our narrator interrogates the inner-workings of corporate living as he traipses his way down escalators to the first floor and through the mundaneness of office life.
Mixing humour with the existentialism that surrounds all our working lives, The Mezzanine is a classic work of modern American literature.
I like thinking about the people who misbehaved in the 1700s. As a teenager, I was initially drawn to journalism as a medium for telling stories, but in college, I was entranced by the stories I could tell with early American sources. Years ago, Jan Lewis noted that many readers want “bedtime stories” about how great the American Revolution was, but there’s much more to the Revolution’s history. Now, I’m a history professor at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City of New York. Having lived in the Boston area and New York City, it’s been a thrill to write books about the American Revolution in both places.
This book made me want to dedicate my life to studying the American Revolution.
Alfred F. Young tells the story of George Robert Twelves Hewes, a poor, diminutive shoemaker who was at the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. He also touched off a riot that led to a man being tarred and feathered. Hewes spent his whole life as a poor man, but he briefly became a celebrity in his old age. Young uses this fleeting moment of fame to explore how Americans sanitized and distorted the memory of the American Revolution.
This book inspired me to study the American Revolution in the cities, and the forgotten, sometimes violent ways that radicals pushed for greater equality.
George Robert Twelves Hewes, a Boston shoemaker who participated in such key events of the American Revolution as the Boston Massacre and the Tea Party, might have been lost to history if not for his longevity and the historical mood of the 1830's. When the Tea Party became a leading symbol of the Revolutionary ear fifty years after the actual event, this 'common man' in his nineties was 'discovered' and celebrated in Boston as a national hero. Young pieces together this extraordinary tale, adding new insights about the role that individual and collective memory play in shaping our understanding of…
I know a lot about “ripped from the headlines” news stories because I’ve been around a lot of news stories and headlines most of my life. I’m a longtime New York City journalist who has worked as a top editor at both the NY Post and the NY Daily News. Believe me, I’ve seen a lot of wild headlines in these places (e.g., Headless Body in Topless Bar!). So you can understand why I now like ripping from news headlines for fiction books as an author.
I love Hank Phillippi Ryan’s books, and I love big court trials, so it makes perfect sense that I loved this book.
Ryan–who is an award-winning TV journalist as well as a best-selling thriller author–started covering the murder trial of Casey Anthony, the mother who made headlines for allegedly killing her two-year-old daughter Caylee and hiding the body for months, with the idea of doing a non-fiction book about the case.
But, when Anthony was found not guilty by the jury, Ryan switched gears and came up with the idea of doing a mesmerizing fictional novel inspired by a case such as Casey Anthony. The result is a must-read!
Trust Me is the chilling novel of psychological suspense and manipulation that award-winning author and renowned investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan was born to write. "Ryan dazzles―a must read."―Mary Kubica "Mesmerizing!" ―Lisa Gardner
**Now an AGATHA AWARD nominee** Best Contemporary Novel
"A knockout."―Booklist (starred review)Now a Criminal Element Best Book of 2018! Now an >>AMAZON Editors' Pick BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER OF THE MONTH!BOOKLIST Starred review! "A knockout." Now a Criminal Element Best of 2018! Now a REAL SIMPLE Magazine Top Thriller of 2018!Now a Book Bub Top Summer Thriller of 2018!Now a POPSUGAR Top Summer Thriller!Now a CrimeReads Most Anticipated Thriller…
I am a writer of biographical historical fiction, with some of my novels set in medieval and Tudor England, others set in nineteenth-century America. In researching my books, I try to immerse myself in my characters’ world, and that means reading primary sources, such as newspapers, periodicals, letters, diaries, and memoirs. I especially like to read my characters’ own words. Fortunately, the nineteenth-century feminists featured in this list left a lot of words behind them!
Before I stumbled across this book, I had never heard of Caroline Healey Dall, a prickly but vulnerable and fiercely intelligent Bostonian who knew almost everyone in the various reform movements that swept across the United States in the mid-nineteenth century.
On one day, Dall is recording the details of a pregnancy that went horribly wrong; on another, passing along salacious gossip about a lady who propositioned Bronson Alcott (father of Louisa May). All the while, she champions the cause of women’s rights while clashing with some of the many strong personalities in the movement.
This Journal is my safety valve-and it is well, that I can thus rid myself of my superfluous steam . . . I trust posterity will remember this, should it ever be gratified by a glimpse at these pages.
In the nineteenth century, Boston was well known as a center for intellectual ferment. Amidst the popular lecturing of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the discussion groups led by Margaret Fuller sat a remarkable young woman, Caroline Healey Dall (1822-1912): Transcendentalist, early feminist, writer, reformer, and-perhaps most importantly-active diarist.
Dall kept a diary for seventy-five years.She captured in it all the fascinating…
I am a historian of education and twentieth-century U.S. history. Public schooling has been transformative for me, opening up a world of opportunities, but I know many others are not nearly so lucky. This has shaped my interest in the history of public schooling, including its promise of democracy and opportunity and the too-often reality of the way it replicates and deepens social and economic inequalities. I think history helps us understand our world, including to see the roots of inequality we live with today and to think about how we might build a more equitable system.
I love how this book asks big and fundamental questions about the relationship between work and education and grounds them in such careful and extensive historical research. It challenges some of the things we think we know about the relationship between the economy and education and makes a powerful case that we fall into a “trap” when we ask education to fix inequalities that are rooted in and best addressed in our economic system.
I love how this book looks broadly and deeply across sectors of the economy, public and private schools, higher education, and K-12 schools at a critical moment of transformation to ask important questions about the sources of inequality and the best ways to address it.
Why-contrary to much expert and popular opinion-more education may not be the answer to skyrocketing inequality.
For generations, Americans have looked to education as the solution to economic disadvantage. Yet, although more people are earning degrees, the gap between rich and poor is widening. Cristina Groeger delves into the history of this seeming contradiction, explaining how education came to be seen as a panacea even as it paved the way for deepening inequality.
The Education Trap returns to the first decades of the twentieth century, when Americans were grappling with the unprecedented inequities of the Gilded Age. Groeger's test case…
In 2011, when my all-girl garage band began gigging around Chicago, I couldn’t tell you how many times I heard people call us “riot grrrl.” We weren’t riot grrrls; we were far too late for the movement. But for so many people, riot grrrl was the only reference point they had for scary, brash female musicians. The truth is, women were involved in the movement’s origins in every part of the world. I believe we must understand that riot grrrls weren’t the first women of punk.My book Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 details the stories of lesser-known but highly influential women who helped create punk and its adjacent genres.
I’m a sucker for memoirs. And English teachers. Nancy is both. She teaches language arts at a public school in Massachusetts. But most importantly, she can tell a story. The book is a series of memories from the Philly and Boston hardcore scenes in the early ‘80s. It’s hard to put down, and it’s a really necessary account that tells of all the ways women were present and participating in what has always been referred to as a movement of exclusive, testosterone-induced navel-gazing.
From disenchanted Catholic schoolgirl and glam maniac to instigator on the 1980s hardcore punk scene, Nancy Barile discovered freedom at a time when punk music was new and dangerous. She made her place behind the boards and right in the front row as insurgents such as SSD, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys and Black Flag wrote new rules and made history. She survived punk riots and urban decay, ran the streets with outcasts, and ultimately found true love as she fought for fairness and found her purpose. "Thank God we had girls like Nancy back then to keep things…
