Here are 100 books that One Last Stop fans have personally recommended if you like
One Last Stop.
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As a journalist, author and screenwriter, my work has always pondered loss and grief. I think this has something to do with the fact that of my mother’s religion; she was a convert to Hinduism and started conversations about the inevitability of death and how the soul and the body aren’t the same when us children were at a very young age. It probably also has something to do with the constant presence of death within my family and communities as a Black and queer person in a violently anti-Black and queerantagonistic world. I currently volunteer at a hospice, and provide community-building programming to death workers from diverse communities.
This list could be full of Toni Morrison novels and be no worse for it.
I’d argue that the late writer is the finest we’ve ever had on the topics of grief, loss, and ancestry—especially from the Black American perspective. One of my favorite examples is Song of Solomon, a mesmerizing journey through what it takes to craft an identity in the midst of racism and the ruptures it creates in our lives.
Morrison's singular prose is pure magic as it weaves a tale of the enduring power of love. A literary masterpiece.
'Song of Solomon...profoundly changed my life' Marlon James
Macon 'Milkman' Dead was born shortly after a neighbourhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly.
In 1930s America Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar, though he is more concerned with escaping the familial tyranny of his own father. So while Guitar joins a terrorist group Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried family treasure. But his odyssey back home and a deadly confrontation…
I’ve been a part of the LGBTQ+ community my whole life and have always been passionate about advocating for the people who identify as such. Furthermore, I have always had a fascination with emotional stories and the combination of a lack of many LGBTQ+ books with an abundance of romance and emotional thrillers out there makes it a ripe topic for stories. As a lesbian myself, it is very hard to write stories that don’t have those kinds of couples, so I tend to stick to that genre and I’m absolutely addicted to lesbian books.
By inserting the book into a time when the very essence of the story is dangerous, the people are made to be in a situation where I was turning one page after the next to find out what would happen to them.
Each question that arose in my mind made me urgently attempt to find answers and the smile that came to my face at each happy moment felt amazing. The emotions that echoed through the book found their way into me and made me feel as if I was along for the ride as well right beside the characters.
"That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other." And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: "Have you ever heard of such a thing?"
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall…
I write adult and young adult fantasy. I’ve always been fascinated with the concept of magic. While growing up in China, I often found myself immersed in fantasy literature based on Asian history, mythology, and legends. I enjoyed getting lost in the rich imaginary worlds where the characters came to life. These tales fed my imagination and inspired me to create my own magical adventures. Writing has allowed me to expand on the ancient legends and mythology that I’ve always loved. Moreover, I’ve enjoyed creating lifelike characters, especially strong women who inspire young girls.
This book has the most badass female protagonist of all young adult novels I’ve read!
Talking about a resolute heroine set on overhauling an entire misogynistic system. She’s not restrained by what society deems as appropriate or moral, and despite their constant attempts to oppress her, she grows even more determined to break free.
The book blends mecha-science and fantasy perfectly. It has Pacific Rim vibes, but they are based in a Chinese composite of history and culture, while also rooted in traditional Chinese Qi magic.
Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid's Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA readers.
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through…
I am a contemporary romance writer, mom, queer, dog-lover, and coffee enthusiast. I have a deep love of the genre, particularly sparkly and swoony, sapphic romcoms, with a borderline obsession with happily-ever-afters. Knowing I will always have a happy ending while smiling through pages gives me the comforting hug I sometimes need. My goal is to spread queer joy in my writing and provide a safe, celebratory, and affirming space for my readers to escape reality.
Crushed under writer’s block and a looming deadline, Mack escapes from New York to Seattle. She meets Charlie, a beautiful, generous, nearly bankrupt coffee shop owner recovering from heartbreak. For the first time, Mack has a muse. And then Mack starts using Charlie’s private stories in her novel…
When a storm traps Mack and Charlie in the coffee shop, they share a mind-bending, knee-shaking kiss. But Charlie is an eternal optimist who sleeps with fairy-lights on, while Mack is an ironing-at-5am worrier who sleeps with… everyone. They could never turn this chemistry into something real, right? And if Charlie finds out what Mack has been doing, turning Charlie’s most intimate secrets into a juicy page-turner, will they even have a chance to try?
Free-spirited coffee shop owner meets uptight coffee addict. Is an opposites-attract match brewing… or burning?
Crushed under the weight of writer’s block and a looming deadline, Mack escapes from New York to Seattle. She meets Charlie, a beautiful, generous, nearly bankrupt coffee shop owner recovering from heartbreak. For the first time, Mack has a muse. And then Mack starts using Charlie’s private stories in her novel…
When a storm traps Mack and Charlie in the coffee shop, they share a mind-bending, knee-shaking kiss. But Charlie is an eternal optimist who sleeps with fairy-lights on, while Mack is an ironing-at-5am worrier…
I studied forty years of the political misuses of the memory of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as a sociologist at USC and the daughter of Iranian immigrants who has always been interested in questions of identity and belonging. My interest in civil rights struggles started early, growing up in Virginia, a state that celebrated the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I wanted to understand how revisionist histories could become the mainstream account of the past and how they mattered for the future of democracy.
I am, to put it lightly, obsessed with the way Octavia Butler revolutionizes the timescape and invites us to speculate about worlds that could be. In this and so many of her books, her vision of Afrofuturism is one that reminds us that our ancestral pasts and our imagined futures are always connected.
I thought a lot about the future when I wrote my book, and I share Butler’s conviction that there is collective healing and liberation in revisiting and reimagining the past.
I also love that my neighborhood library in Pasadena is the one Octavia Butler used to frequent!
From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner
The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.
“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”
Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon…
As a Dominican-American writer, I grew up constantly looking for representation and characters I could relate to. I could never really find whatever I was looking for until I got to college and discovered the long history of infusing realistic storytelling with surreal elements that finds roots in Indigenous and Black communities in Latin America. Once I found it, I was obsessed. I was so bored of western storytelling and basic, straightforward books, and here was this well of creativity that belonged to my ancestors. That’s when I noticed that the books I loved in my childhood all had this same quality – just a touch of magic.
One of my all-time favorite books. I recommend the whole trilogy. This YA book focuses on a young girl named Janie who has grown up with the annoying (sometimes dangerous) power of constantly getting sucked into people’s dreams when they sleep near her. It’s dark and realistic. There’s a mystery and it turns into a Veronica Mars-esque detective story, especially as the books progress. The romance is also amazingly developed. Chef’s kiss.
For seventeen-year-old Janie, getting sucked into other people's dreams at any given moment is getting tired. Especially the falling dreams, and the standing-in-front-of-the-class-naked ones. But then there are the nightmares, the ones that chill her to the bone... like the one where she is in a strange house...in a dirty kitchen...and a sinister monster that edges ever closer. This is the nightmare that she keeps falling into, the one where, for the first time, Janie is more than a witness to someone else's twisted psyche. She is a participant...
As a Dominican-American writer, I grew up constantly looking for representation and characters I could relate to. I could never really find whatever I was looking for until I got to college and discovered the long history of infusing realistic storytelling with surreal elements that finds roots in Indigenous and Black communities in Latin America. Once I found it, I was obsessed. I was so bored of western storytelling and basic, straightforward books, and here was this well of creativity that belonged to my ancestors. That’s when I noticed that the books I loved in my childhood all had this same quality – just a touch of magic.
I love a historical fiction novel. Give me every iteration of Pride and Prejudice, give me old time-y things, give me Great Gatsby flapper dancers. I love it. Distant Waves is a really fun YA novel focused on five sisters who meet as they find their way onto the Titanic and befriend famous inventor, Nicola Tesla. The sisters come from a mother who is in the spiritualist community and they have a feeling the ship will sink, but they hop aboard anyways with a very sweet boy named Thad. There’s paranormal stuff and kooky inventions. Gotta love a sprinkle of magic.
Science, spiritualism, history and romance intertwine in Suzanne Weyn's newest novel. Four sisters and their mother make their way from a spiritualist town in New York to London, becoming acquainted with journalist W. T. Stead, scientist Nikola Tesla, and industrialist John Jacob Astor. When they all find themselves on the Titanic, one of Tesla's inventions dooms them . . . and one could save them.
I loved books as a kid, especially fantasy books, but could never find anyone like me within their pages. I’m a lesbian Chinese writer who adores stories about messed-up, complicated queer people. I’m thrilled by the range of books available now that feature queer and Asian characters. We all deserve representation, and to me that means representation that’s complex, that encompasses the ugly and the beautiful. One of my goals as an author is to make you fall in love with monsters—brutal, flawed women who may not deserve love, but who demand it all the same.
This bookis a fantastical retelling of the Hongwu Emperor’s rise to power, with the emperor re-imagined as a non-binary afab person. It’s billed as Mulanmeets The Song of Achilles, but I vastly preferred it to both those narratives; the nascent emperor, Zhu Chongba, becomes gloriously ruthless in a way that defies their gender. There’s also a gay eunuch point-of-view character with an incredibly tragic backstory, who almost steals the show.
It’s very character-driven, which helps temper its epic scope. I don’t usually love stories with this much military/political scheming, but I absolutely loved this book. It’s a duology, with the second book expected in 2023.
I'm a poet and fiction writer who enjoys popular feminist retellings of Greco-Roman mythology. But I want to draw attention to the rich and powerful myths beyond that canon, myths used by contemporary writers to make sense of our world, our brief mortal lives, and what lies beyond. Scholar Karen Armstrong writes in A Short History of Myth, "Myth is about the unknown; it is about that for which we initially have no words. Myth therefore looks into the heart of a great silence." My poetry bookA Terrible Thingreinterprets goddess myths and Siren does the same with myths of hybrid women, half-fish and half-bird and more.
I adored Cho’sBlack Water Sisterfor the wit, verve, and humour with which its protagonist, Jess, newly returned to Penang from the USA, faces down being possessed by the spirit of her dead grandma, a former medium. Jess, despite her Harvard degree, hasn’t found a job and is unable to tell her conservative family about her Singapore-based girlfriend. How Jess manages to negotiate the contradictory demands of pushy aunties, powerful businessmen, and a furious goddess known as the Black Water Sister, whose temple is threatened by property developers, makes an immersive and absorbing tale.
'A sharp and bittersweet story of past and future, ghosts and gods and family, that kept me turning pages into the dark hours of the night' - Naomi Novik, author of Uprooted
This mischievous Malaysian-set novel is an adventure featuring family, ghosts and local gods - from Hugo Award winning novelist Zen Cho.
Her grandmother may be dead, but she's not done with life . . . yet.
As Jessamyn packs for Malaysia, it's not a good time to start hearing a bossy voice in her head. Broke, jobless and just graduated, she's abandoning America to return 'home'. But she…
I am a contemporary romance writer, mom, queer, dog-lover, and coffee enthusiast. I have a deep love of the genre, particularly sparkly and swoony, sapphic romcoms, with a borderline obsession with happily-ever-afters. Knowing I will always have a happy ending while smiling through pages gives me the comforting hug I sometimes need. My goal is to spread queer joy in my writing and provide a safe, celebratory, and affirming space for my readers to escape reality.
Salty, spicy, funny, and totally relatable, the main character, Delilah, became the most memorable character of the year for me. The story was funny, touching, and very, very (did I mention very) sexy. It dove into family dynamic complexities and explored what being an outsider is like.
I laughed out loud multiple times, rooted for the MC even when she was making terrible decisions, and wanted to read it again the moment it ended. Super fun read and so hard to put down.
A clever and steamy queer romantic comedy about taking chances and accepting love—with all its complications—from the author of Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail.
Delilah Green swore she would never go back to Bright Falls—nothing is there for her but memories of a lonely childhood where she was little more than a burden to her cold and distant stepfamily. Her life is in New York, with her photography career finally gaining steam and her bed never empty. Sure, it’s a different woman every night, but that’s just fine with her.
When Delilah’s estranged stepsister, Astrid, pressures her into photographing her wedding…
I am a contemporary romance writer, mom, queer, dog-lover, and coffee enthusiast. I have a deep love of the genre, particularly sparkly and swoony, sapphic romcoms, with a borderline obsession with happily-ever-afters. Knowing I will always have a happy ending while smiling through pages gives me the comforting hug I sometimes need. My goal is to spread queer joy in my writing and provide a safe, celebratory, and affirming space for my readers to escape reality.
Food and pining, what’s not to love? This book was such a fun read!
I loved the behind-the-scenes details of the restaurant scene, the food descriptions, the fierceness of the women, and the exploration of identity. The character descriptions were brilliant, and I could picture each scene like I was watching a movie.
"The feelings in this one are dialed up so high you almost can’t look at them directly: It would be like staring into the sun... Like Rosie Danan or Kate Clayborn, Barrett has a way of making palpable the full journey of a relationship" –New York Times
“Simply put, The Romance Recipe is a treat.” –USA TODAY
Amy Chambers: restaurant owner, micromanager, control freak.
Amy will do anything to revive her ailing restaurant, including hiring a former reality-show finalist with good connections and a lot to prove. But her hopes that Sophie’s skills and celebrity…
