Here are 62 books that Off Leash fans have personally recommended if you like
Off Leash.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I am a Minnesota writer of cozy mysteries and contemporary fiction. I love the magical and care deeply about nature, the environment, and what is happening due to climate change. My novel was a chance to combine both interests. I wrote the first draft of Up There during the pandemic. While we were locked down, I spent time with a character who could fly. But while she was free, I discovered she was still lost. I spent so much of that year walking in the woods—thinking about how our world is changing, how confusing it is, and how we all are a little lost in these times.
I fell in love with this book from the very beginning.
When by-the-book case worker Linus Baker from the Department in Charge of Magical Youth comes to investigate a home for six dangerous magical children, he discovers an unlikely family in an unexpected place. As a mother, I was smitten by the insecure yet powerful children and was cheering for Linus to save them. I’ve been out of my element with kids too, Linus; I understand.
Best of all, I could feel the compassion and love on the pages of this amazing book.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he's given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not…
I grew up with Irish folklore, Lord of the Rings, and X-Men comics as my bedtime stories, but I am also a domestic violence survivor twice over with c-PTSD. I was never able to get justice for anyone who hurt me. I created my stories as a way to cope and understand my feelings and triggers by making them their own personalities. So, I made my trauma available for everyone in a fantasy setting with two love interests to adore the heroine who had to endure so much but never gave up on giving people someone to root for when they couldn’t for themselves anymore.
I can not recommend this series more. I absolutely love Kate Daniels's post-post-apocalyptic world of Sifters and Vampires. The magic system is so creative and not so blatant like some urban fantasies.
I personally loved the idea that this era of urban fantasies took off with the “The world ended, and now this is what became of society” trope; it became a huge influence on me and my own world-building.
Kate Daniels is about to enter a world of gritty magic and dangerous mystery! Vampires, necromancers and mages abound on the city streets, with one kickass heroine in the middle
Future Atlanta is an interesting place to live: one moment magic dominates, and cars stall and guns fail. The next, technology takes over and the defensive spells no longer protect your house from monsters.
Here skyscrapers topple under the onslaught of magic; the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, prowl through the ruined streets; and the Masters of the Dead, necromancers driven by their thirst for knowledge and wealth, pilot…
Have you ever pretended to be a superhero? What was your special ability? Mine was always the ability to talk to animals. What an amazing world that would be if I could chat with the squirrel nesting in my shed or the stray cat trotting through my yard! Animals of all kinds have always been part of my world, from my own pets to animals that came through rescue ranches where I volunteered. So it’s no wonder that I seek them out in fiction. For my own books, my love for cats and dogs was easy to translate into a love for dragons and hellhounds.
Veterinary student BJ Vaughn journeys through the Crossroads to treat amazing creatures such as griffons, centaurs, and unicorns, while dealing with a full course load and all the stresses of being a student. After readingThe Magic and the Healing (many, many years ago), I fell in love with supernatural creatures. It made me think, “I want to write something like that!” I’ve never forgotten it.
About to give up veterinary school because of a family crisis, BJ Vaughan is chosen to join a special group of healers who venture into the mystical world of Crossroads, where unicorns, centaurs, and other magical creatures live. Original.
Have you ever pretended to be a superhero? What was your special ability? Mine was always the ability to talk to animals. What an amazing world that would be if I could chat with the squirrel nesting in my shed or the stray cat trotting through my yard! Animals of all kinds have always been part of my world, from my own pets to animals that came through rescue ranches where I volunteered. So it’s no wonder that I seek them out in fiction. For my own books, my love for cats and dogs was easy to translate into a love for dragons and hellhounds.
Heather G. Harris reimagines fae creatures of all kinds in her Other Realm series. Unflappable Jinx finds herself plunged into a world she didn’t even know existed where political machinations between wizards, dragons, vampires, and werewolves cause deadly consequences. The background world building in Glimmer of the Other is subtle and yet robust. Jinx is a hero that I can truly root for, caught up in a slow-burn romance that was just right. And she has a hellhound for a pet. Who doesn’t love a wickedly cute hellhound?
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time.
I’m Jinx. As a private investigator, being a walking, talking lie detector is a useful skill – but let’s face it, it’s not normal. You’d think it would make my job way too easy, but even with my weird skills, I still haven’t been able to track down my parent’s killers.
When I’m hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar – yet my gut tells me there’s more to this case than a party girl gone wild. Firstly, she’s a bookish…
I’m fascinated by the mountain wilderness and national parks of my home state, Colorado. In my younger days, I hiked to the mountain lakes of the Sangre de Cristo range near my hometown and then later the high-country trails of northern Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. When I began writing the Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, I combined my experience as a veterinarian’s wife with my love of the great outdoors and dogs to create Killing Trail, book one of eight in my series that features Deputy Mattie Cobb, her K-9 partner Robo, and veterinarian Cole Walker. Together they solve mysteries in the fictional mountain community of Timber Creek, Colorado.
I love mysteries that are set in the great outdoors, and Pamela Beason’s books definitely fill that bill.
Endangered was the first book of hers that I’ve read and I immediately fell in love with Summer “Sam” Westin, the protagonist of the Sam Westin Mystery series. Sam’s eclectic background combining experience with animals and wilderness environments has landed her an assignment to report on cougars at a Utah park.
When a young child goes missing, the cougars she’s been observing are blamed and Sam embarks on a quest to save both the child and the big cats she’s come to admire. This book taught me about cougars and their habitat and provided a tense whodunit to enjoy.
Summer "Sam" Westin's assignment to report on cougars in a Utah park goes horribly awry when a child vanishes from a campground and the TV news focuses on the local mountain lions as the likely culprits.
As days tick by with no sign of the missing boy and media coverage continues to inflame the public, pressure grows for the park administration to kill the cougars. But Sam was one of the last people to see the child, and she has good reason to suspect a man she spotted in the shadows as little Zachary Fischer ran away from her.
I am an award-winning author of picture books and early readers. I have set my stories in many kinds of locations, including a haunted house, an Eastern European shtetl, an English Renaissance village, and a working cattle ranch. ForWake Up, City, I turned to the setting I know best, the city. I drew on memories of walking to kindergarten in early morning Brooklyn. This book is my love song to cities everywhere. As a lifelong city dweller, I worry about the impact of urban spread on the planet, but I feel hopeful, too, because many cities are becoming more nature and wildlife-friendly. The books I'm excited to share celebrate city wildlife.
A true story about my favorite cougar. P-22, (Puma 22) became famous when he miraculously managed to cross four freeways and make his home in a big city park near downtown Los Angeles. His fame inspired a campaign to build a wildlife crossing between two mountain ranges, over one of the world’s busiest highways. This book tells of P-22 and the scientists who are creating a better future for wild creatures and the humans who love them. I’ve been a fan of P-22 for many years and was thrilled to read this wonderful book about him.
Discover the amazing true story of P-22, the wild cougar living in Los Angeles, in this inspiring picture book.
P-22, the famed “Hollywood Cougar,” was born in a national park near Los Angeles, California. When it was time for him to leave home and stake a claim to his own territory, he embarked on a perilous journey—somehow crossing sixteen lanes of the world’s worst traffic—to make his home in LA’s Griffith Park, overlooking the famed Hollywood sign. But Griffith Park is a tiny territory for a mountain lion, and P-22’s life has been filled with struggles.
As a child, let loose to wander the woods around my home, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t fascinated by animals, not only the dogs and cats we kept at home, but the wild critters I encountered. As I grew, so did my admiration and respect for the creatures that live in the wild. When I volunteered at Oregon’s Washington Park Zoo, and met Senior Elephant Keeper Roger Henneous, a new level of interest opened up as I observed the relationships between the animals and those who care for them. It bothered me that I often read nasty things about keepers, when I knew that most are devoted to those in their care.
I’m captivated by this book every time I read it (and I’ve read it a lot). It brings to light the uneasy relationship we have with wild creatures, especially when we unwittingly invite them into our own backyards. A thought-provoking (and often nerve-wracking) narrative about the clash between the citizens of Boulder, CO and the local population of mountain lions, and the distressing expansion of human beings into the few wild areas remaining to them (and, in fact, to all animals). When those pockets of wilderness are gone, where are they supposed to go? How can we alleviate human/animal conflict over resources?
When residents of Boulder, Colorado, suddenly began to see mountain lions in their backyards, it became clear that the cats had returned after decades of bounty hunting had driven them far from human settlement. In a riveting environmental tale that has received huge national attention, journalist David Baron traces the history of the mountain lion and chronicles one town's tragic effort to coexist with its new neighbors. As thought-provoking as it is harrowing, The Beast in the Garden is a tale of nature corrupted, the clash between civilization and wildness, and the artificiality of the modern American landscape. It is,…
As a woman, I am passionate about valuing the voices of women equally with those of men. When we listen to each other, we will be able to come into a better balance that will help us restore ourselves and our Earth. We need the visions of women to help guide us through these challenging times! I’m also passionate about the wild beauty of nature, especially trees, and spend lots of time hiking and meditating in the ancient redwood forests near my home. This has helped me heal and expanded my perception. In a way, being in the forest has brought me home to myself.
After running into 5 mountain lions while hiking alone in the ancient redwood forests near my home, I was really blown away reading The Puma Years about Laura Coleman's relationships with the big cats. I cannot imagine getting as close to one of them as she does in her memoir about spending time in the middle of the jungle in Bolivia taking care of wild pumas. Set against a background of logging destruction of habitat and illegal wild animal poaching, the author valiantly tries to rehabilitate damaged pumas. The relationships she and her volunteer colleagues have with the big cats are astonishing. They take them out for walks! The author is so candid about how broken she feels in our environmentally and often socially broken world, and yet in the end still manages to leave me with hope and belief in the human spirit.
In this rapturous memoir, writer and activist Laura Coleman shares the story of her liberating journey in the Amazon jungle, where she fell in love with a magnificent cat who changed her life.
Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.
I have been blessed (or cursed) with a vivid imagination since childhood. Add to that the fact that my first three years were spent on a farm in Maine with nobody around but my mother and my sister, and I grew into a person who is happy alone and making up stories. After my family moved to California, I went to school with all colors, races, and religions and my sense of inclusiveness is abundant. Most of my stories deal with unfairness imposed upon humans by other humans. Nearly all of my books are funny, too, even when I don’t mean them to be. Absurdity is my pal.
This book made me fall in love with the mystery genre.
It’s set on an unnamed Canadian island after WWII, and features two children, Barnaby and Christie, who at first hate each other, and then become pals and schemers in the murder of Barnaby’s uncle before the uncle can kill Barnaby in order to gain Barnaby’s inheritance.
Enhanced by wonderful characters, including an RCMP sergeant (the only survivor of all the islanders’ sons who fought in WWII and feels guilty about it), a one-eared cougar, a vicious bull, and a village idiot, I fell in love with everything about this book.
It was published in 1963, and still holds up today in all its eccentricity, wit, and a little (or a lot of) darkness.
When recently-orphaned Barnaby Gaunt is sent to stay with his uncle on a beautiful remote island off the coast of Canada, he is all set to have the perfect summer holiday. Except for one small problem: his uncle is trying to kill him. Heir to a ten-million-dollar fortune, Barnaby tries to tell everyone and anyone that his uncle is after his inheritance, but no one will believe him. That is, until he tells the only other child on the island, Christie, who concludes that there is only one way to stop his demonic uncle: Barnaby will just have to kill…
I grew up in a family of journalists. My great-grandfather, grand-aunt, and father were newspaper editors and master raconteurs. I followed in their footsteps, spending 50 years as a small-town newspaper editor. Among family, friends, and neighbors, I was expected to know the stories behind the headlines, and in so doing, I became a raconteur. In a good story, there is a fine line between fact and fiction. The novels I chose for a long road trip are as believable as the true stories I was told and ended up telling when it was my turn. It only takes asking “What if?” to cross the line from fact to fiction.
This book, like most of Keith McCafferty’s mystery novels, makes a long, tedious drive, something I look forward to. I’m immediately drawn into the tale, as though I’m looking over the shoulder of Sean Stranahan, the story’s protagonist/private detective/fly-fisherman.
McCafferty makes it possible to be in two places at once, one where I’m in my car with my eyes on the road while the rest of me is solving a murder alongside Sean and a Montana trout stream where we occasionally stop to cast flies to rising trout.
And there are plenty of engaging characters along the way, including Sean’s fiancé Sheriff Martha Ettinger, with whom he eventually brings the killer to justice. I want to keep driving until the case is solved.
In Montana's Gravelly Range, paw prints and a single whisker discovered at a scene of horrific violence suggest a woman has been attacked and carried away by a mountain lion. Sheriff Martha Ettinger employs her fiancé, sometimes-detective Sean Stranahan, to put a name to the gnawed bones comprising all that is left of the body. The woman's is the first of several deaths that Sean suspects are not as easily explained as they appear.
As a reign of terror grips the Madison Valley, blood in the tracks will lead him from the river below to the snow-covered ridge tops, as…
Interested in
cougars,
werewolves,
and
werewolf romance?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
cougars,
werewolves,
and
werewolf romance.
