Here are 65 books that Sanctuary fans have personally recommended if you like
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Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
One of the sexiest Darcys I’ve ever read: the change from dour judge in California to hot lord of the manor in England nearly gave me whiplash, but I loved the ride! Sorry (not sorry) for all the broken crystal and china in Darcy’s suite at the London Ritz. ;) They go through some real angsty times back in California, but all’s well that ends well.
A sexy, bold adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice that re-paints favorite characters in twenty-first century colors Judge Fitzwilliam Darcy, a legal expert on both sides of the Atlantic, is ready to hang up his black robe and return to the life of a country gentleman-until he meets Elizabeth Bennet, a fresh-faced attorney with a hectic schedule and no time for the sexy but haughty judge. Tempers and sparks fly in Judge Darcy's courtroom- and outside, in a series of chance encounters that give each of them pause-as the two match wits and try to fight their overwhelming attraction.…
Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
Whereas Darcy caught more of my attention in the last book pick, a modern, resilient Elizabeth drew me into this story. This is the first of three volumes in a trilogy about ex-Marine, terrorism survivor, and cybersecurity expert Elizabeth and businessman Darcy. Not as much angst between the two principal characters, but plenty of action to be had in this one.
Elizabeth Bennet never wanted to be a hero. She'll just have to deal with it.
A few months after teaming up with Major Richard Fitzwilliam to thwart a terrorist attack in Europe, USMC Staff Sergeant Elizabeth Bennet is back in the States as a civilian. Her training in cyber-security makes finding work easy, and she’s learning to fit into her new life. But there is lingering fallout both from the attack and her life before it that she's not yet prepared to face.
Complicating matters is the major’s handsome cousin.
Co-owner of Darcy Acquisitions, CEO of FORGE, and guardian to…
Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
I always preferred the title Heather chose for the original, unpublished story (Slurry) but I’m sure the publisher had a hand in that change. FD, Rock Star is chock full of sexy musicians with artistic temperaments. The Darcy and Elizabeth story leads the way; it’s great on its own, but the Richard/Charlotte B-story is fabulous as well.
Fast music, powerful beats, and wild reputations—on and off stage—have made virtuoso guitarist Fitzwilliam Darcy's band into rock's newest bad boys. But they've lost their latest opening act, and their red-hot summer tour is on the fast track to disaster. Now Darcy and bandmates Charles Bingley and Richard Fitzwilliam are about to meet their match...
But she's about to rock his world...
Enter Elizabeth Bennet, fiercely independent star of girl-band Long Borne Suffering. Elizabeth, her sister Jane, and friend Charlotte Lucas have talent to spare and jump at the opening band slot. Elizabeth…
Austen-inspired works are nothing new (think the movie Clueless or "The Lizzie Bennet Diaries" vlog) but unless you’re walking around the Austen fan world, you might not realize just how many books are out there. I became immersed in that world around 2006, and since then, I’ve written four Austen retellings, one Austen-inspired original novel, and several short stories. I’ve read countless other works (both published and on the internet,) and now run a little website called Austen Through the Ages. Below I list 5 Pride & Prejudice-inspired novels that ring true for me—they bring Austen’s themes and characters into modern settings, each putting a unique spin on the classic tale.
Audrey Ryan’s debut novel joyfully leaps off the page, shouting, “I wanna tell you a story about some Millennials!”—in all the best ways. I’m always up for a well-written coming-of-age story, and this one made me, a jaded GenXer, once again feel the bittersweet hope (and fear) of figuring out your life on your own terms.
Lizzie Venetidis is confident in her decisions. Moving to Seattle with her sister Jane after she graduated from Stanford, for instance, was a no‑brainer. Adult life, however, turns out to be more difficult to navigate than she expected. What career should she pursue with a bachelor’s degree in art history and no marketable experience amongst a tech-heavy job market? How responsible is it to drink that fourth cocktail while out with friends? And what should she do about Darcy — the aloof yet captivating guy she met her first night in town? "All the Things I Know" is a one-mistake-at-a-time…
As a born and bred Mainer, there are dozens of great books I could recommend set in the Pine Tree State. But the five I’ve curated capture, for me, the diversity of the Maine culture, from the long-gone loggers who made their living from the woods to the often-overlooked Indigenous communities to the mill towns struggling to survive. When a non-Mainer thinks of our state, what usually comes to mind are quaint coastal villages, lighthouses, lobster… And while those things are part of what makes Maine the place it is, there exists, both on and off the page, plenty of other experiences and histories to discover here.
Even though Jewett wrote the stories in this book in the late 1800s, there is a timeless feeling to her prose that reverberates today.
I love Jewett’s attention to and reverence for the natural beauty that surrounds the fictional town of Dunnet Landing. Her descriptions of the Maine coastline—a blend of craggy rocks, forest, meadows, and sea—are visceral, sensory, and alluring. Jewett also nicely captures the hardworking, humorous, quietly resilient spirit of the year-round residents of Dunnet Landing, with a particularly keen and kind eye toward her female characters.
Her care for the everyday rituals of life, the small moments that make up an existence, are lovingly rendered and evocative. There’s a reason this is a Maine classic.
A rich collection of classic American literature potraying the beauty of a 19th-century New England town.
A female writer comes one summer to Dunnet Landing, a Maine seacoast town, where she follows the lonely inhabitants of once-prosperous coastal communities. Here, lives are molded by the long Maine winters, rock-filled fields and strong resourceful women.
Throughout Sarah Orne Jewett’s novel and stories, these quiet tales of a simpler American life capture the inspirational in the everyday: the importance of honest friendships, the value of family, and the gift of community.
“Their counterparts are in every village in the world, thank heaven,…
As a child, I received an electronic typewriter as a gift and immediately got to work on a story about a family living on an island. Even at ten, I recognized the power of islands, with their built-in problems of isolation and rich possibilities for metaphors. So it only made sense I’d one day publish a book set on one. If you’re like me and can’t resist books with island settings, you’ll love these book recommendations. Each island in this collection has its own personality that becomes a character of its own, and none of these books could exist in the same way without their unique settings.
This was my first delightful introduction to Susan Elizabeth Phillips's romantic comedies. I adore genre-benders, and this romance also has suspense and mystery.
I was curious by the unconventional set-up: a female ventriloquist who talks to her puppets has to live on a remote island off the coast of Maine in winter. There, she encounters an unlikable boy from her childhood—now a man who’s become a huge horror author and may or may not be a killer. The rugged island setting and its quirky cast of characters let Phillips have some fun with gothic tropes, a favorite of mine.
New York Times Bestselling Author Susan Elizabeth Phillips is back with a delightful novel filled with her sassy wit, dazzling charm, and a threat of danger-a modern Jane Eyre It's going to be a long, hot winter. He is a reclusive writer whose imagination creates chilling horror novels. She is a down-on-her-luck actress who's given up far too much. He knows a dozen ways to kill his characters with his bare hands. She knows a dozen ways to kill an audience with laughs. But she's not laughing now. Annie Hewitt has been forced to return to an isolated island off…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
Olive is not a likable character, yet so many readers related to her in the first book, as I did. Strout took a completely different approach in this sequel, which appealed to me even more. We see the larger community in Olive’s life, looking at her through her interactions with friends, neighbors, and a lover who becomes her second husband.
Strout weaves present and past using these different perspectives, showing the rare kindnesses that Olive allows herself. By the end, she was a hero to me because of her changes as a person—the increased compassion tempered her frankness. A brilliant and realistic exploration of aging, illness, and death.
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Number One New York Times bestselling author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel
'A novel to treasure' Sunday Times
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her.
Like most people, the carefree days of childhood are brought to a halt with the passage of time and the death of loved ones. As a wistful, dreamy, and introspective person, I wished to revisit the past, if only for a moment, to see what my grandparents experienced in their earlier lives. Currently, I’m under the spell of the 1930s and 1940s, and historical fiction books are an engaging way to learn about these marvelous decades.
The Orphan Train is a novel about forgotten and neglected children left to fend for themselves in an antiquated welfare program. The story weaves memories of an old woman with the naiveté of a present-day teenager teaching the reader that everything is not as it appears.
Christina Baker Kline breathes life into a horrible moment of American history making us rip the bandage off, look at our past and see the unexpected silver lining.
“A lovely novel about the search for family that also happens to illuminate a fascinating and forgotten chapter of America’s history. Beautiful.”—Ann Packer
Moving between contemporary Maine and Depression-era Minnesota, Orphan Train is a powerful novel of upheaval and resilience, of second chances, and unexpected friendship.
Between 1854 and 1929, so-called orphan trains ran regularly from the cities of the East Coast to the farmlands of the Midwest, carrying thousands of abandoned children whose fates would be determined by pure luck. Would they be adopted by a kind and loving family, or would they…
As a sailor and 2004 Olympian I am happiest on salt water, so that’s where most of my characters live their best lives. I write coastal fiction; stories with a happy ending that could only take place on or near the water. Boat rides are a bonus! As both a reader and an author, my tastes span across several traditional genres: from young adult time travel to literary fiction, with stops along the way for a light touch of romance. This list reflects that range. If you want to learn more about all the books (and boats) I enjoy, please subscribe to my Thursday blog, Where Books Meet Boats. Meanwhile, enjoy these five fantastic examples of coastal fiction!
Personalities collide during a Block Island summer. While I enjoyed all three point-of-view characters, I laughed out loud at Anthony the author’s “head-writing;” he described a scene in front of him as if he were writing a novel. Tongue just slightly in cheek, I felt like Moore was poking fun at the novelist’s eye—while simultaneously using it as shorthand to show us Anthony’s view.
The Islanders came out only a few months before my book. Though both novels can be considered “beach reads,” they are each much more than just a fluffy happily-ever-after throwaway. An island makes a very convenient metaphor; for our lucky characters, it is actually their whole world—even if it’s not forever, or as long as it lasts, but “just for the summer.”
"One of my own favorite writers." -Elin Hilderbrand
Named a Best Beach Read of Summer by Vulture, PureWow, She Reads and Women.com
J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine meets the works of Elin Hilderbrand in this delicious summer read involving three strangers, one island, and a season packed with unexpected romance, well-meaning lies, and damaging secrets.
Anthony Puckett was a rising literary star. The son of an uber-famous thriller writer, Anthony's debut novel spent two years on the bestseller list and won the adoration of critics. But something went very wrong with his second work. Now Anthony's borrowing an old college's friend's…
Who am I to be an expert? I'm not. I know what I like and why, and I also know what I dislike. I have no idea what you like or dislike, and I don't presume to know more than anyone else. I do not have a passion for sci-fi; I have a predilection for it. I've been writing creatively all my life. Sci fi is not all I read or write either. At the end of the day, I only need to know that I've given life my best shot.
Like the last book, I read this one after seeing the movie. I've never been a big King fan, but this one is a winner. Spoiler alert: it's about a time-traveling fungus. (That never made it into the movie.) For that reason alone, I think this is a sci-fi worth reading. Plus, there's the element of horror present in most of King's work.
The characters are very cool, distinct, and real. However, there isn't much character growth throughout the book. In this case, that's perfectly fine. I didn't need Henry to go through some psycho-social metamorphosis. Seems like today, everyone looks for a protagonist that has to change over time. Just give this one a read.
From master storyteller Stephen King comes his classic #1 New York Times bestseller about four friends who encounter evil in the Maine woods.
Twenty-five years ago, in their haunted hometown of Derry, Maine, four boys bravely stood together and saved a mentally challenged child from vicious local bullies. It was something that fundamentally changed them, in ways they could never begin to understand. These lifelong friends—now with separate lives and separate problems—make it a point to reunite every year for a hunting trip deep in the snowy Maine woods. This time, though, chaos erupts when a stranger suddenly stumbles into…
