Here are 92 books that Rotters fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love to cheer for underdogs, and young women who are in this category have my special devotion. As a child of the 1960s, I remember a time when women didn’t have the same rights and opportunities as men, and we still seem to be fighting it today. Coming from a trauma-based childhood myself, I find myself comparing and contrasting coping mechanisms. Luckily, I haven’t found it necessary to kill anyone with dragon stone or jacked-up hornets so far. It delights me when these girls win, whether they game the system or fight their way with guns and knives.
I loved these books. The mystery of this society and its strict divisions fascinated me. I related to Tris immediately and her need for more excitement than her Abnegation family could provide. The detachment felt by so many of the characters in their daily roles resonated in my soul as something I have felt as well when confined by societal definition.
As I reflected in our own society, those at the top scheme to gain power for themselves, regardless of the effect on the rest of the people. I was proud of Tris and her colleagues, who joined together to create a better, more just society.
The explosive debut by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth.
DIVERGENT - a major motion picture series.
For sixteen-year-old Tris, the world changes in a heartbeat when she is forced to make a terrible choice. Turning her back on her family, Tris ventures out, alone, determined to find out where she truly belongs.
Shocked by the brutality of her new life, Tris can trust no one. And yet she is drawn to a boy who seems to both threaten and protect her. The hardest choices may yet lie ahead....
Ever since I penned my first romantic tale Will You Walk A Mile?, I've been enamored with the complexities of young love. For me, writing isn't just a profession; it's akin to breathing. I live to write and write for a living, with a special fondness for narratives that explore the highs and lows of teen romance and human emotion. I have been that ‘teen guy’ next door. That same teenage wonder for love stories that first sparked my passion for writing has stayed with me, maturing into a deeper understanding. to curate a list of teen novels that will tug at your heartstrings.
Honestly, this book crushed me, but in the most beautiful way possible.
It taught me that love can be found in the most unexpected places, even when faced with life's harshest realities. This narrative made me appreciate the small but significant moments in life, a lesson I try to convey in my own writing.
The beloved, #1 global bestseller by John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed and Turtles All the Way Down
"John Green is one of the best writers alive." -E. Lockhart, #1 bestselling author of We Were Liars
"The greatest romance story of this decade." -Entertainment Weekly
#1 New York Times Bestseller * #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller * #1 USA Today Bestseller * #1 International Bestseller
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters…
I know all too well that finding a diagnosis and treating a chronic health condition can be like unraveling a mystery—maybe that’s why characters dealing with these issues make natural detectives. As a mystery writer with chronic illness, I love reading about sleuths who embody the difficulties of living with health challenges yet show the tremendous capacity we still have to contribute. Many of the sleuths on this list are confined to their homes and unable to work, so solving a mystery not only adds suspense. It gives us the satisfaction of seeing these characters find their way back into the world and rediscover their sense of purpose.
One of my favorite characters in this middle-grade mystery has always been Chris Theodorakis, the teen boy with an unnamed neurological condition that confines him to a wheelchair and, for the most part, to his house.
Even if he can’t leave home—and even if people often look away from him when he does—Chris plays a key role in solving the mystery at the heart of the book by being a keen observer of everything that passes in front of his window. I love how this novel depicts Chris’s inner world to young readers, including his awareness of how his condition affects others’ perceptions.
More importantly, it shows how much people with disabilities and illnesses still have to offer.
"A supersharp mystery...confoundingly clever, and very funny." —Booklist, starred review
A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, on things for sure: Sam Westing may be dead…but that won’t stop him from playing one last game!
Winner of the Newbery Medal Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award An ALA Notable Book
"Great fun for those who enjoy illusion, word play, or sleight…
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
This book is brain candy. Rick’s writing style immediately pulled me into the story. First-person is hard to do right without going overboard, but Rick set the perfect balance of action and internal voice. It also helps that the relationship between Percy’s stepfather and mine was as close to identical as a fantasy novel can get.
And while I know it’s not the first to do it, this was the first middle-grade book I read where the main character was neurodivergent and dealing with a lot of the same issues that I did and that many of my students do as well.
The Lightning Thief: the First book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series.
The first bestselling book in Rick Riordan's phenomenally successful Percy Jackson series.
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. That's when things started really going wrong. Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends, and generally trying to stay alive.
I love being by the water. Most of my vacations are spent at tropical destinations. There’s something pretty amazing about reading a book at the water’s edge, near a palm tree, with the breeze and the salty smell of the wonderful warm air as pelicans swoop across the surface.
I love being in Key West with the main character. There are palm trees swaying and boats on the water as the character dives in, searching for treasure. I also liked the dark, seedy graveyard scenes and urban legends the island people tell.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Wrecker needs to deal with smugglers, grave robbers, and pooping iguanas—just as soon as he finishes Zoom school. Welcome to another wild adventure in Carl Hiaasen's Florida!
Valdez Jones VIII calls himself Wrecker because his great-great-great-great-great-grandfather salvaged shipwrecks for a living.
So is it destiny, irony, or just bad luck when Wrecker comes across a speedboat that has run hard aground on a sand flat? The men in the boat don't want Wrecker to call for help—in fact, they'll pay him to forget he ever saw them.
Having previously worked in the Urban Affairs side of academia and drawing heavily on my own experience living in the city of Portland, OR while writing my book, Moonshine, I’ve become very interested in how fantasy authors find creative ways to incorporate the supernatural elements of the genre with the extremely mundane aspects of urban planning and civics. I find that the most immersive fantasy worlds are the ones that concern themselves with the gritty details of how their societies operate on a basic logistical level, and I think a well-written fantasy city can very much shine as a character in its own right.
Tapping into Edinburgh’s grim history of graverobbers (which, if you haven’t had the chance to play tourist in Scotland before, is absolutely fascinating), The Resurrectionist of Caligo uses the dark fantasy staples of blood magic and necromancy to explore the death industry, its role in urban environments, and its storied connection to academia and medicine. Following the trials of Caligo’s local “resurrectionist”, Roger, this book examines what happens to the dead in fantasy worlds, tracing the journeys of their cadavers from death to autopsy to burial to exhuming, taking a closer look at the ceremony and taboo surrounding death and how cities manage the nitty-gritty logistics of storing (or utilizing) their dead once the funerals are over.
"Man of Science" Roger Weathersby scrapes out a risky living digging up corpses for medical schools. When he's framed for the murder of one of his cadavers, he's forced to trust in the superstitions he's always rejected: his former friend, princess Sibylla, offers to commute Roger's execution in a blood magic ritual which will bind him to her forever. With little choice, he finds himself indentured to Sibylla and propelled into an investigation. There's a murderer loose in the city of Caligo, and the duo must navigate science and sorcery, palace intrigue and dank boneyards to catch the butcher before…
I am an anatomy educator and doctoral researcher looking at the use of human material in anatomy education. My historical research into the antics of body suppliers has caused me to explore many publications on what we do with the remains of our relatives. This is a subject that can be fascinating but also requires compassionate handling and sometimes asks us questions that we often do not want to ponder.
An exploration of the suspected murder of an Italian child in London that along with the murders of Burke and Hare, changed how bodies are supplied for medical teaching. Set in London in the 1830s it is a factual look at the way cadavers were supplied for medical teaching at that point in history.
Towards the end of 1831, the authorities unearthed a series of crimes at Number 3, Nova Scotia Gardens in East London that appeared to echo the notorious Burke and Hare killings in Edinburgh three years earlier. After a long investigation, it became known that a group of body snatchers - two men in particular, John Bishop and Thomas Williams, called the 'London Burkers' - were supplying the anatomy schools with fresh 'examples' for dissection. The case became known as 'The Italian Boy' and caused a furore which led directly to the passing of controversial legislation which marked the beginning of…
I am a true-crime author. Most recently, I have released a pair of related books: The Making of a Serial Killer: 2d Ed, by Danny Rolling as told to myself; and Danny Rolling Serial Killer: Interviews. Before that, I published Good Little Soldiers: A Memoir of True Horror. Coauthored with Dianne Fitzpatrick, it relates her tale of murder & mind control under the US Army MK Ultra program. Earlier, I wrote True Vampires, an encyclopedic compendium of bloody crimes, and Knockin' on Joe: Voices from Death Row. I also collaborated with serial killer GJ Schaefer on Killer Fiction, a volume of psychopathic musings he wrote for me.
At long last the Vampire of Paris crawls from his crypt, a living legend emblazoned with magical sigils and muttering dire imprecations for 666 searing pages. A world-renowned artist and bold aesthete of the macabre, Nico Claux holds a Japanese cannibal as his role model and calls Satan his homeboy. This reclusive genius goes beyond the pale only to reveal himself as a regular bloke, albeit one with a taste for torture and blasphemy. Meant to be read in the darkest night!
The Gospel of Blood is the autobiography of Nico Claux, a French morgue attendant whose morbid obsessions led him to grave robbery, cannibalism and murder in the early 1990s. It is a bone-chilling chronicle of a real-life vampire who prowled the Gothic cemeteries of Paris, unearthing coffins and mutilating the bodies inside. A practicing Satanist, Claux escalated to murder after working for a year in several morgues, receiving orders to kill from the corpses he had autopsied.The Gospel of Blood provides a rare insight into a killer’s tortured mind, as he relates the graphic details of his crimes, including never-before…
I have a PhD in history and used to be a college professor. I decided to write historical fiction novels so that I could reach a larger audience than college students and share incredible stories from history with more people. The reason I created this list of books about women is because the farther back in history we look, the more invisible women seem to become. That’s why I wanted to tell Theodora’s story—it’s an amazing tale, first, but it also allowed me to share how different conditions were for women in the past. The other books I’ve recommended do the same.
I loved the originality of The Impossible Girl. Cora Lee is a resurrectionist—she steals bodies from cemeteries for medical dissection in 1850s New York City. This isn’t really a sympathetic activity, however. Would you love a grave robber? So, to add flavor, bodies with unusual physical traits bring in extra money, and Cora specializes in stealing these.
But she’s got a unique malady of her own—she has two hearts. And people want to kill her to cash in on herbody. Nowwe have a reason to cheer for her.
The story has many twists as Cora learns who she can (and can’t) trust. Add to that some romance, the vibrant setting of 1850s New York City, and some twisted characters, and this is a fun book.
Manhattan, 1850. Born out of wedlock to a wealthy socialite and a nameless immigrant, Cora Lee can mingle with the rich just as easily as she can slip unnoticed into the slums and graveyards of the city. As the only female resurrectionist in New York, she's carved out a niche procuring bodies afflicted with the strangest of anomalies. Anatomists will pay exorbitant sums for such specimens-dissecting and displaying them for the eager public.
Cora's specialty is not only profitable, it's a means to keep a finger on the pulse of those searching for her. She's…
Navigating life with grief has been a lifelong journey for me ever since I was a young child. At 8 years old, I was in a car accident which took the lives of my parents and four of my siblings. Since then, I’ve faced a huge mountain in front of me – How do you move forward in life when you have lost everything? This journey led me to now share my story of childhood loss and healing in hopes of helping others. As a counselor, I’m a huge mental health advocate and love books which tackle hard emotions that help readers of all ages feel more understood and equipped for their journey ahead.
Griffin does a wonderful job in this beautiful children’s book.
She guides the reader through a heartfelt tale of a little girl moving to live with her grandmother. On the car ride, they both search for 10 beautiful things. This book will pull at the heartstrings as, together, they find beauty in little things around them on their car ride, and it ends with the pair naming the sweetest, most beautiful thing of all.
As someone who has experienced childhood loss (loss as a child), I highly recommend this beautiful story for any child going through a loss or big change in their life that might have them feeling overwhelmed, anxious, or closed off.
A heartfelt story of changing perspectives, set in the Midwest. Ten Beautiful Things gently explores loss, a new home, and finding beauty wherever you are.
Lily and her grandmother search for ten beautiful things as they take a long car ride to Iowa and Lily's new home with Gran. At first, Lily sees nothing beautiful in the April slush and cloudy sky. Soon though, Lily can see beauty in unexpected places, from the smell of spring mud to a cloud shaped like a swan to a dilapidated barn. A furious rainstorm mirrors Lily's anxiety, but as it clears Lily discovers…
