90 books like My Heart Will Find You

I took a bit of a side trip away from romance in selecting, One Italian Summer, though love threads through this story.

The bond between mother and daughter can never be truly severed. From that premise, One Italian Summer throws open the door for a reader to experience a time slip where it's possible to reconnect with someone who has passed.

The author adds a magical twist and manipulates time to where the character, Katy, meets her deceased mom, then a younger woman in Italy. The author gifts the reader with a beautifully told, heartfelt story. 

A dream-activated time travel story. Now that's one I couldn't resist and fortunately, I didn't.

The reader follows the character, Quinn, on a journey as her dreams bring a man that stirs her like no other. Problem? Nick enters her real world, too. They have a history. Complications? Oh, he's dreaming about her, too.

Can they figure out a way to stay connected and understand what's happening? Let’s hope.

Warning: it's a series, but after reading the first book, you'll be glad there's more from this talented author. 

Author Kate Ryder describes Into a Cornish Wind as a romance with a "twist of otherworldliness."

That phrase set the hook for me to snag this book. Toss in character, Kat’s uncommon gift of when her paintbrush connects with a canvas, she’s capable of visioning her subject’s past, and you’ve got a story that delivers intrigue, historical interest, and a hero to love.

I enjoyed this fresh take in a time-travel love story and hope you do. 

Trapped in Time is the quincentennial weekend escape.

Thanks to a bump on Emma’s head, the story takes you on a time-travel excursion back to the Victorian era, where modern-day Emma suddenly finds herself. With no way back to reality, she navigates and manipulates her way into the arms of the aristocratic John to serve a secret purpose.

But as Emma confronts the struggles of women in this era, she faces critical decisions of mind and heart. This story resonated on many levels to see the hard won progress as women we’ve made and that our path continues with batons held high.

Scott Thomas was nominated for a Bram Stoker award for his spine-chilling story about four famous horror writers who are invited to spend Halloween in a haunted house as a publicity stunt, only to find themselves tormented by the unholy entity that roams its silent halls. Clearly an expert on the horror genre himself, Thomas brings a much-needed new twist to the haunted house trope and elevates it to a fearsome new level. But this novel’s real strength lies in its character development. A horror story only works if you care enough about the characters to hope (and pray) for their survival, and by the end of this one, you’ll feel like you’re clinging to old, familiar friends as they fight for their lives.      

Lois Ruby is a YA veteran who has more than 20 books to her name, many of them historical fiction, including the beloved Steal Away Home, which appeared on basically every year-end best list back in 1994. She also happens to be my mom. And her latest book, which takes place during the “red scare” of the 1950s, is among her best. It’s a tense story about a baseball-crazy 13-year-old boy whose parents are accused of being communist sympathizers, turning his life upside down when he’s supposed to be studying for his bar mitzvah. The clock-ticking backdrop, leading up to the notorious execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for supposedly passing on nuclear secrets to the Soviets, gives the whole book terrifyingly high stakes.

The fact that the capitalist class organizations, with their use of capital strike and flight, lobbying, funding right-wing “grassroots” organizations, think tanks, media, and Chicago school intellectuals, wanted to drive economic policy in a certain direction does not inevitably lead to the conclusion that they would have succeeded in achieving these goals. Neoliberal policies could not have been implemented in even a nominal democracy without at least a modicum of support from its victims. Remarkably, large sections of the American electorate vote for and support policies that favor the very business class that has profited from their economic decline. This is the first book to describe the abandonment of the Democratic Party by less-educated Whites which had a significant effect on the American shift to the right from the 1970s onward. My co-authors and I explore this shift in up-to-date detail in our book.

This historical novel in verse brings the Kansas prairie alive in all its beauty and harshness. The story is tense with few light moments as young May B is stranded alone in a sod house as blizzards rage outside. She’s a realistic heroine, tempted to despair but ultimately finding hidden sources of strength. Oh, and she suffers from dyslexia. Sometimes I think novels in verse will be too artsy or literary, but they’re actually easy to read, right? Perfect for a struggling reader, perhaps one with dyslexia.

When an FBI agent came to Kerri Rawson's house to talk about the BTK killer, she made him show her his badge because her father Dennis Rader had always warned her to do that to be safe. 

When the agent mentioned the BTK killer, Rawson blurted out, "Has something happened to my Grandma? Has my Grandma been murdered?"

She never imagined he was there to tell her that her Dad, a church president and scout leader, was the BTK killer. 

She writes with humor about how her childhood home was sold at a public auction and her life was temporarily derailed due to her father's actions. With her faith and her family's love, she learned to live with it. 

Her humor is evident from the first page to the last. The first chapter title is "Whatever Doesn't Kill You..." At the end there's a handy list of "Eight Things Not… show more.

Win By Two is the true story about a Kansas City drug dealer and a private school teacher, bonded together through basketball. This is a powerful story about race, leadership, and what can happen when people get outside of their comfort zones and build bridges in their community. It also challenges our internal biases that we may not even know exist.