Here are 83 books that North of Highway Eight fans have personally recommended if you like
North of Highway Eight.
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I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.
Cas Peace is an extremely talented author. Her Artesans of Albia series is a well-realized work of fantasy and magic. Her world-building is exceptional, and the whole series has a tremendous sense of history. This is a series that you can truly sink your teeth into.
Taran Elijah's quest for knowledge uncovers a plot that threatens the world...In Albia, the fourth realm, the precious Artesan gift is dying. Although born to the craft, Taran is struggling to achieve his potential. Against his friends' advice, he embarks on a foolhardy plan to acquire the teaching he craves. Alone, he crosses into Andaryon, the fifth realm, but instead of finding a mentor, he stumbles upon a treacherous plot.In the wake of Taran's actions, Albia suffers a series of vicious raids. Major Sullyan of the High King's forces is sent to oppose them. But a dark and treacherous force…
I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.
Barczak’s work belongs to that realm of poetic fiction that is occupied by Robert E. Howard and Janet Morris. Veil of the Dragon plays out like a vivid nightmare. This is the kind of fantasy novel that makes you want to pause in the middle of the paragraph you’re reading, go back to the beginning, and read out loud just to see how the words sound. Poetic fantasy takes you to another level.
Chaelus, Roan Lord of the House of Malius is raised from the dead by the hand of a child. His kingdom stolen by the evil dragon, Gorond, Chaelus’ only hope to reclaim his throne rests with the child knight who saved him, the heretical order to which the child belongs, and the truth about Chaelus which they alone protect.
I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.
This is the first book in the Forgemaster Cycle. The audiobook features a fantastic vocal performance. Again, this is a well-realized fantasy world with a palpable history. You follow the adventures of a young blacksmith who aspires to perfect his craft in service of the fallen god of the forge. It’s an exciting adventure with high stakes and believable characters.
Blood of a Fallen God is the award winning start of an incredible epic fantasy series that has readers hooked.
The Reach has been a major mining town for as long as anyone in Alos can remember. Once, it was a grand and powerful city. But when the god of craft and creation fell, so too did the Reach. Now the Reach is surrounded by the Mistlands, dangerous territory populated by corrupted humans who live for blood.
The Reis family has always lived in the Reach. And Duncan Reis is happy to stay there, searching ruins for artifacts and jewelry…
I’ve been working professionally as a writer for twenty-five years. I’m nothing close to a household name, but a number of my articles have gone viral throughout the years. I’ve had educators reach out to mention they’ve taught my work at both the high school and college levels. Writing is an occupation of passion, and the authors I’ve mentioned are all talented and passionate about their craft. It’s rare to find people who speak the truth anywhere in our society. These writers don’t just speak the truth, they make it sing.
This book is a heartbreaking work that is a comfort to anyone who is dealing with loss. Alison details the events of her life as she nursed her husband through his struggle with ALS. This is a very open and vulnerable piece of writing that will help provide readers with a blueprint for how to survive dark times.
"A mesmerizing memoir by a talented writer on coming to terms with the unexpected." ―Library Journal
Marty, age 57, was given a preliminary diagnosis of ALS by his family doctor. Seven weeks later, the diagnosis was confirmed by a neurologist. Ten months and ten days later, Marty passed away.
From day one, Alison, Marty’s spouse of over twenty-five years, kept a journal as a way to navigate the overwhelming state of her mind and soul. Soon the rawness of her words harmonized to tell the story of Marty’s diagnosis, illness, and decline. Her journal became a chronicle of caregiving as…
Twenty-one years ago, I moved off the grid. As a city-dweller who didn't even go camping, I'd never considered myself a country woman, but I felt called to the woods. I wanted to learn practical skills like how to split wood and bake bread, and I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. Now, because of our lifestyle, we don't run microwaves, toasters, or dishwashers, and it’s been 20 years since I’ve had a clothes dryer. Living this way has changed me. My relationship with the environment has evolved over the years, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning about the different ways experiences in nature can help us humans to grow.
I love how this book starts—a young mother escaping her seemingly perfect life in the middle of the night, wearing a nightgown with infant in tow. Rachel Clayborne drives through the night to her grandmother’s lake house in northern Wisconsin, where we learn all the ways that being reasonable has led her to a miserable life.
Hassinger is particularly skilled at describing those intimate moments between a nursing mother and her young, and her protagonist, Rachael, is achingly aware of what she gave up to gain this wonderful experience of motherhood. One of my favorite scenes between Rachel and her first love, Joe, culminates with him telling her, “Did it ever occur to you that you can’t always get what you want? Even if you know what that is?” I love a story that grapples with that.
Undone by motherhood, judged by her husband, thirty-two-year-old Rachel Clayborne flees with her baby in the middle of the night for the one place on earth that's been her refuge: her grandmother's lakehouse in northern Wisconsin. Hoping to reconnect with a former, healthier self, she instead faces a confused and dying grandmother, her ever-present nurse who seems bent on thwarting each of Rachel's desires, and a changed ex-boyfriend-her first and most passionate love. As a constant rain threatens the nearby dam, Rachel struggles to discern what's happened to the past, who she's become, and what kind of a life she…
I am the mother of six and a voracious journaler. I am also a novelist. Though I’ve found that the facts of family adventures are often more fascinating than fiction. I bring in-the-moment observations as well as decade-seasoned insights to the world of family life. I also love reading about other families with all their quirks and joys.
Caddie Woodlawn is a kindred spirit with her love of adventure, boisterous friendship with her brothers, and her dislike of the constraints of “lady-like” expectations. Her parents give her freedom and responsibilities, both of which help her grow into a young woman—not of fashion, but of character. I love the interactions between the siblings and between the parents and children. They are real, with frustrations and forgiveness, love and laughter.
Because sometimes I think they go further than the formulas set by traditional publishing. I love fantasy and similar genres because there are no limits for the imagination. The books I’ve chosen fulfill what I think is important – world-building, imagination, thought-provoking, intelligent, and wonderful characters on a mission of some kind.
I’ve read all of this author’s work and the Rushed series is my favourite because although it’s a sinister paranormal fantasy, it is filled with humour. The world-building for each book is amazing – certainly daunting and nasty in parts, yet believable.
There are remarks in reviews that it’s confusing and weird, so maybe you have to be odd to understand and appreciate it. I did, so I must be.
Eric can't remember the recurring dream that keeps waking him in the middle of the night with an overwhelming urge to leave, yet he spends each day feeling as if he desperately needs to be somewhere. With no idea how to cure himself of this odd compulsion, he decides to let it take its course and go for a drive, hoping that once he proves to himself that there is nowhere to go, he can return to his normal life. Instead, he finds himself hurled headlong into a nightmare adventure across a fractured Wisconsin as the dream reveals itself one…
Twenty-one years ago, I moved off the grid. As a city-dweller who didn't even go camping, I'd never considered myself a country woman, but I felt called to the woods. I wanted to learn practical skills like how to split wood and bake bread, and I wanted to reduce my carbon footprint. Now, because of our lifestyle, we don't run microwaves, toasters, or dishwashers, and it’s been 20 years since I’ve had a clothes dryer. Living this way has changed me. My relationship with the environment has evolved over the years, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop learning about the different ways experiences in nature can help us humans to grow.
This story emphasizes the inner wilderness—those places in ourselves where we are sometimes afraid to go.
We first meet the main character, Lib Hart, as she runs barefoot in a street, her silver hair trailing out, trying to outpace her shameful past. I love how Lib is so fiercely independent—she’s living in her own house despite being married for nearly three decades. I related to Claire Taylor’s struggle, a young mother trying to balance the love she has for her son with the love she once had for a journalism career. The plot deftly leads Claire to reckon with the drinking problem that she hasn’t yet admitted to herself.
Most of all, I love how this small town takes care of these women in a book with a setting where my heart wanted to live.
One summer evening, Lib Hanson is confronted by her painful past when Matt Marlow, the forty-year-old son she abandoned as an infant, shows up on her porch. Fiercely independent, Lib has never revealed her son's existence-or her previous marriage-to her husband, Jack. Married nearly three decades but living in separate houses (to the confusion but acceptance of their neighbors), they enjoy an ease and comfort together in small-town Anthem, Wisconsin. But Jack is a stickler for honesty, and Lib's long-dormant secret threatens to unravel their lives.
When ten-year-old Charlie Taylor arrives at Jack's workshop shortly thereafter, he's not the first…
I retired from a district attorney’s office as a victim witness specialist and a paralegal, where I saw a disturbing side of humanity with too many female victims. There were rarely any winners on either side. Reading mysteries with strong female leads gave me hope. A dash of humor didn’t hurt, either. After a long day of vicarious trauma, it was a treat to hide behind my computer in the evenings and write cozy mysteries, where I tied up the end of the story with a pretty pink bow and where there was a winner. I’m hooked!
This mystery had all the elements I enjoy—a strong female lead who becomes the village sheriff, a mix of interesting and well-developed characters, a quaint but unusual village— Whispering Pines—that made me long to be there, a good mystery, and a dog as a sidekick.
It’s a paranormal cozy with lots of “witchy” activity that I typically won’t read, but I loved this one! It captivated me from beginning to end.
If you love small-towns with quirky characters, slow-burn romances, and witchy mysteries this is the series for you.
Welcome to Whispering Pines, Wisconsin. A place for those who don't belong.
Sixteen years after a family feud drove her from the cozy Northwoods village of Whispering Pines, Wisconsin, former detective Jayne O'Shea returns to prepare her grandparents' lake house for sale. Once there, not only does she find that the house has been trashed, her dog discovers a dead body in the backyard. Jayne intends to stay out of it, but when it becomes obvious the sheriff isn't interested in investigating…
Author Greil Marcus’ phrase “the old, weird America” gave me exactly the right words for something I’ve always felt: that there is a specific weirdness to the American landscape, an uncontrollable current of strange that runs beneath the carefully cultivated surface of heroes and neighbors and shared, stable dreams. Of course, as William Faulkner observed, the past isn’t past, and America is as weird as it’s ever been. Maybe weirder. Look at the news. Look out your window. No surprise, then, that I’m drawn to such a perspective when I read other people’s stories, and seldom get completely away from it when I write my own.
A stunning assembly of archival photographs and newspaper clippings from Jackson County, Wisconsin, in the last decade and a half of the 19th century, and the definitive explanation of why nobody in old-time photographs is ever smiling—and, I choose to believe, the real reason the parts of The Wizard of Oz set in Kansas were filmed in black and white. Economic privation, unceasing bereavement, disease both physical and mental—in other words, Tuesday. Was there any joy in Jackson County? Somewhere, I’m sure. What’s documented here is a stark, powerful beauty. The most real book I’ve ever encountered, and one of two on face-out display on my bookshelves.
This book is about life in a small turn-of-the-century Wisconsin town. Lesy has collected and arranged photographs taken between 1890 and 1910. Against these are juxtaposed excerpts from the Badger State Banner, from the Mendota State (asylum) Record Book, and occasionally quotations from the writings of Hamlin Garland and Glenway Wescott.
