Here are 78 books that Mindy's Mysterious Miniature fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a twelve-year-old, I read nothing but ghost books—not monsters, horror, or mystery, but ghosts. Though I debuted as an author in teen fantasy, a middle grade editor discovered my talent for spooky atmospheres, and I was once again drawn into the world of lost souls. In fact, when I was working on my first spooky novel, The Haunting, my editor requested the book to remind him of the works of Mary Downing Hahn—one of my favorite authors as a child. I’d found my calling. It just happened to be from beyond the grave…
Imagine finding a beautiful dollhouse where its occupants reenact the night of a murder from decades ago…creepy, right? Betty Ren Wright’s The Dollhouse Murders is a unique ghost story where the ghosts communicate their tragic tale through miniature doll versions of themselves.
Its mystery and old family secrets make this book one of my all-time favorites.
Dolls can't move by themselves. . . . Or can they?
This special anniversary edition of the hair-raising mystery that's kept readers up at night for thirty-five years features a foreword by Goosebumps creator R.L. Stine.
Amy is terrified. She hears scratching and scurrying noises coming from the dollhouse in the attic, and the dolls she was playing with are not where she left them. Dolls can't move by themselves, she tells herself. But every night when Amy goes up to check on the dollhouse, it's filled with an eerie light and the dolls have moved again! Are the dolls…
I’ve always loved dollhouses, from the one my mom built for me when I was ten, to the ones I refinished and decorated as an adult with my own kids. There’s something magical and mysterious about miniature rooms, tiny furnishings, and dolls who may have secret lives unknown to us. My first novel, Time Windows, features a dollhouse found in an attic that allows Miranda to see through its windows into different times in her real house’s past. In my second dollhouse novel, Sweet Miss Honeywell’s Revenge, Zibby’s antique dollhouse turns out to be teeming with ghosts. I am intrigued by other authors’ novels of dollhouses, and I hope you will enjoy those on this list as well as my own two creepy tales.
Alice and her mom move to a huge manor house where Alice's mom will take care of a rich old lady. Then Alice finds a dollhouse in the attic that's an exact replica of the house she's living in. (What is it about dollhouses hidden away in attics?) But the tale moves in a very different direction when Alice wakes up one morning to find a strange girl asleep next to her in her bed—a girl who looks just like a doll from the dollhouse. Where has she come from? What is her connection to the dollhouse, and to the unpleasant woman who owns it?
I love the way this novel merges mystery and ghost story. I was immediately hooked.
A creepy, mysterious dollhouse takes center stage in this atmospheric middle-grade mystery for fans of Doll Bones and Small Spaces.
Alice's world is falling apart. Her parents are getting a divorce, and they've cancelled their yearly cottage trip -- the one thing that gets Alice through the school year. Instead, Alice and her mom are heading to some small town where Alice's mom will be a live-in nurse to a rich elderly lady.
The house is huge, imposing and spooky, and everything inside is meticulously kept and perfect -- not a fun place to spend the summer. Things start to…
I’ve always loved dollhouses, from the one my mom built for me when I was ten, to the ones I refinished and decorated as an adult with my own kids. There’s something magical and mysterious about miniature rooms, tiny furnishings, and dolls who may have secret lives unknown to us. My first novel, Time Windows, features a dollhouse found in an attic that allows Miranda to see through its windows into different times in her real house’s past. In my second dollhouse novel, Sweet Miss Honeywell’s Revenge, Zibby’s antique dollhouse turns out to be teeming with ghosts. I am intrigued by other authors’ novels of dollhouses, and I hope you will enjoy those on this list as well as my own two creepy tales.
A little wooden doll named Tottie is excited when an antique dollhouse is given to the children in her human family. But while the dollhouse itself is lovely, a dreadful doll named Marchpane comes with it. She is a horror—and completely disrupts the harmonious life of the doll family. What to do? How can she be gotten rid of?
This is a tale with a race against time, and an effort to restore balance to a damaged world. I especially love that the story is told from the doll’s point of view. Tottie is a sweet little thing, always worrying about others, but very determined to set things to rights before Marchpane ruins everything forever.
From Rumer Godden, one of the foremost authors of the 20th century, and illustrated by two-time Caldecott Honor recipient Tasha Tudor, comes a heartwarming tale filled with imagination and creativity that is ideal for any girl who has ever loved a doll so much that it has become real to her.
For Tottie Plantaganet, a little wooden doll, belonging to Emily and Charlotte Dane is wonderful. The only thing missing is a dollhouse that Tottie and her family could call their very own. But when the dollhouse finally does arrive, Tottie's problems really begin. That dreadful doll Marchpane comes to…
I’ve always loved dollhouses, from the one my mom built for me when I was ten, to the ones I refinished and decorated as an adult with my own kids. There’s something magical and mysterious about miniature rooms, tiny furnishings, and dolls who may have secret lives unknown to us. My first novel, Time Windows, features a dollhouse found in an attic that allows Miranda to see through its windows into different times in her real house’s past. In my second dollhouse novel, Sweet Miss Honeywell’s Revenge, Zibby’s antique dollhouse turns out to be teeming with ghosts. I am intrigued by other authors’ novels of dollhouses, and I hope you will enjoy those on this list as well as my own two creepy tales.
The Dollhouse family in this novel comes to life every Christmas. This year feels different because the three boys in their human family are growing up and don’t seem interested in playing with them. Worse still, the Dollhouse family learns that burglars are planning to break into the house and steal the valuables—and possibly the dollhouse itself. How can they warn the human family when the humans don’t even believe they are real? They make plan after desperate plan, and as each plan fails, they must come up with a solution before it is too late.
This story made me chuckle even as the plot thickens and the danger intensifies. I love the blend of fantasy and invention, and the satisfying ending.
I’ve always been a daydreamer – I spent a lot of my childhood imagining the different places I could go if I just crawled through some magical crack in the universe or discovered a hidden tunnel under my bedroom floor. So fantasy has been at the top of my reading list forever. Fantasy does what all great books do, just more explicitly – they take you somewhere new, and by leaving this world behind, they give you a fresh perspective on everything that’s old and familiar. My favorite fantasies take big ideas and play them out in language rich enough to make me love that new and alien place with a passion.
“Slyvie had an amazing life, but she didn’t get to live it very often . . .” There are several fantasies about fictional characters breaking out of their books, but Roderick Townley’s is my favorite because it’s the most surprising. I loved this book because of the way it expresses the beauty and joy of reading and because of its exploration of what it means to break out of the outlines that other people draw for you and discover in yourself something completely new.
Open the book and let Princess Sylvie enter your world and dreams in this imaginative, intriguing and touching fantasy for children. Sylvie is eternally twelve years old and has been a princess for more than 80 years, ever since the novel she lives in was first published. But she longs to break free of the never-ending adventure. It's not that she doesn't like her story - she does - it's great - she's the heroine and it's full of excitement. But the trouble is that it's always exciting in the same way, and although Sylvie loves her storybook friends and…
I’ve been told I live under a rock. I don’t know much about popular media, I can’t name any actors, and when I catch onto a trend, it’s usually five to six years after said trend has died out. People alert me of my lack of knowledge like it’s a bad thing, but I think if they could see all the books they’re missing out on, they’d feel otherwise. There are hundreds of thousands of fantastic stories that are neither glamorous nor gritty enough to make it to the forefront of the internet, and every time I find one, it changes my life. Living under a rock: 10/10 would recommend.
The Keys to the Kingdomis another oft-overlooked series, which I recommend to anyone I can.
I’ve yet to meet anyone else who’s read it. This is the series that made me fall in love with magic systems and worldbuilding. I’ve always enjoyed fantasy more than other genres—something about magic existing in the grass and little monsters hiding behind the trees just made sense to me—but it wasn’t until reading this series that I realized a fantasy world can be more than just a setting.
Magic and the way the world functions can be characters in and of themselves. Whenever I need inspiration for building an intricate, interactive world, I reread this series.
This is a great time to reprint the spellbinding start to The Keys to the Kingdom!
Best-selling author Garth Nix creates a magical world and an intriguing mystery in this new blockbuster series.Seven days. Seven keys. Seven virtues. Seven sins. One mysterious house is the doorway to a very mysterious world -- where one boy is about to venture and unlock a number of fantastical secrets. This is another thrilling, triumphantly imaginative series from Garth Nix, the best-selling author of THE SEVENTH TOWER, SABRIEL, and LIRAEL.
I started reading young adult fantasy by the likes of Tamora Pierce and Garth Nix in my teens and was instantly hooked. I stuck with it into my adult years because YA fantasy has always been full of rich worlds, complex characters, and fast-paced plots. My younger sister also loved these stories, so when she passed away at a tragically young age, it spurred me on to write my own YA fantasy in memory of her. This list includes some of my favorites—ones I know she would have loved as well.
A kingdom cursed after the murder of the royal family is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the immersive world-building in this series. Even with all the details, the pacing of the story never falters. But it’s the dynamic and complex characters like Finnikin and Evanjalin that are so richly portrayed, I was willing to follow them on any adventure.
2008 Printz Award Winner Melina Marchetta crafts an epic fantasy of ancient magic, exile, feudal intrigue, and romance that rivets from the first page. (Age 14 and up)
Finnikin was only a child during the five days of the unspeakable, when the royal family of Lumatere were brutally murdered, and an imposter seized the throne. Now a curse binds all who remain inside Lumatere’s walls, and those who escaped roam the surrounding lands as exiles, persecuted and despairing, dying by the thousands in fever camps. In a narrative crackling with the tension of an imminent storm, Finnikin, now on the…
I grew up reading and re-reading Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ringstrilogy. But it always bothered me that there weren’t many girls or women in those books—and most of those that did appear were pretty, perfect, and—well—kind of boring. In college, I studied literature, myths, and fairytales and found that most of the female characters in those stories didn’t reflect women I wanted to be or know, either. So, I wrote my own high fantasy novel and continue to seek out great fantasy, sci-fi, and fairytale-inspired literature featuring strong female characters that are dragons on the inside—and sometimes on the outside, too.
This is a beautifully written YA fantasy that has the flavor of a traditional epic—like the Lord of the Rings—but also brings us intimately close to its characters, their individual cares, and their unique world. The story centers on Aerin, the king’s daughter, and her journey from being an outcast at her father’s court to becoming a hero in her own right—at the expense of a dragon, unfortunately.
The Hero and the Crown is often praised as an example of classic feminist fantasy. It was one of the first stories I encountered where the goal of the female main character wasn’t to be rescued or married. But in my opinion, it’s McKinley’s lyrical and compelling prose and fantastic world-building that truly makes this a not-to-be-missed read.
Although she is the daughter of Damar's king, Aerin has never been accepted as full royalty. Both in and out of the royal court, people whisper the story of her mother, the witchwoman, who was said to have enspelled the king into marrying her to get an heir to rule Damar-then died of despair when she found she had borne a daughter instead of a son. But none of them, not even Aerin herself, can predict her future-for she is to be the true hero who will wield the power of the Blue Sword...
I have been a reader of fantasy, folklore, and fairy tales through childhood into adolescence and even studying these genres as a college student and adult. To this background, I also bring a complicated family—adopted children, step-siblings, divorce, career—and lifestyle changes. As the youngest of a sprawling clan, I was often left to reconcile my vision of family members with the vision of others. Understanding our family of origin is central to who we are, as my main character in Watersmeet discovers as she goes on a quest to find her father, and then must dig deep to understand what he means to her.
I reread Fire regularly because I love the heroine, Fire, and her conundrum: how can she love herself when her beauty is so destructive, when it inspires such terrible behavior in the people around her? We think of beauty as an asset, sure that we would be happier, more confident, more liked if we were more beautiful, and Cashore explores the limits of beauty in this novel. She also digs deep into a very problematic father/daughter relationship as Fire deals with the lessons her father, Cansrel, taught her about how to use her beauty for power, and decides to forge her own path. Like so many of these hard family relationships, Fire must reconcile her love for her father and her hatred of what he’s become.
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A must-read title for all fans of Patrick Rothfuss and Trudi Canavan, Fire will have you hooked on its gripping action, political intrigue, and beautiful central relationship.
'The book is REALLY good. Reading it made me very, very happy!' Tamora Pierce
Set in a world of stunningly beautiful, exceptionally dangerous monsters, Fire is one of the most dangerous monsters of all - a human one. Marked out by her vivid red hair, she's more than attractive. Fire is mesmerising.
But with this extraordinary beauty comes influence and power. People who are susceptible to her appeal will do anything for her…
I am an author, physician, mother of three, and an advocate for social justice in education. I came to Canada as a refugee from the Vietnam war when I was a young child. I love to write children's stories that convey the humanity in our lives. My books have been shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Award, Red Maple Award, and Blue Spruce Award.
As a person who loves words, loves stories, loves books, my eyes filled with tears reading and re-reading The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore to my children. The story was in part inspired by the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is scattered to the winds, but when he discovers a library filled “with the faint chatters of a thousand different stories as if each book was whispering an invitation to adventure,” his life is forever changed.
In a time of eBooks and apps, this story speaks to the power and allure of stories and the printed page that generations of us grew up with. As with the young girl who, like generations before her, opens the book pages at the end of this story, the story ends as it begins...
The book that inspired the Academy Award–winning short film, from New York Times bestselling author and beloved visionary William Joyce.
Morris Lessmore loved words. He loved stories. He loved books. But every story has its upsets. Everything in Morris Lessmore’s life, including his own story, is scattered to the winds. But the power of story will save the day. Stunningly brought to life by William Joyce, one of the preeminent creators in children’s literature, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a modern masterpiece, showing that in today’s world of traditional books, eBooks, and apps, it’s story that…
