100 books like Showdown

I love a good dystopian novel, and this hit all the right notes for me. At first, everything seems perfect in Jonas’s tightly-ordered world—only everyone is hiding something. Jonas is different, but he doesn’t know how.

I loved how thought-provoking The Giver was. It got me asking questions about what it means to be a part of a community, a friend, and a member of a family. What risks are we willing to take for the ultimate good, and what crosses the line?

I found Jonas’s story fascinating and felt genuinely concerned for him throughout the book.

A classic adventure story full of hobbits, trolls, and so much more.

It surprised me how much I enjoyed The Hobbit!

It’s underrated how funny this book is and it’s not as challenging a read as you’d think.

(I also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Andy Serkis).

I think this book is a great read for all ages and the setting, Camp Green Lake, is not a lake, but a dusty dry desert.

This location informs the plot. It is a punishing environment as the boys sent there are being “reformed” by making them dig huge holes in the sun all day long. Digging holes is a metaphor for digging up the secrets of the camp and the threat of snake bites and dehydration and infighting enhance the tension.

One of the most popular children’s book series of the twentieth century, all of the books in the series feature the author speaking directly to the reader, detailing past events, reminding the reader of personality traits of the characters, and providing the reader with background details about the world the reader finds themselves in.

More so than the other books on the list, it’s clear the voice is that of C.S. Lewis though, rather than a seemingly separate narrator.

The North Shore is surfing’s mecca. I’ve been making the annual pilgrimage since my early teens. It’s a heavy place — the waves, the people, the vibes.

Author Chas Smith throws himself into the task of writing unflinchingly about people, places, and things that most people are afraid to go near. There’s tremendous humor. There’s a sexy, ‘cinematic’ car. I fell in love with Chas as much as I did with the North Shore and its hairball beefiness.

Whoa, this book is a fun, chaotic dip into burnout. I had to just let go when I was reading, let the words crash over me like a wave, and get bashed around by the crazy stream-of-consciousness. The narrator's memories, fantasies, thoughts, delusions, worries, and everything else are all mixed up with crazy secondary characters and set in a realistically gritty and raw New York City. As a former resident of NYC, who has heard horror stories from lifelong residents, I could hear the desperate truth in every line. The narrator wants to quit—quit the trauma, the stress eating away at his nerves, but he keeps drinking, shooting up, and speeding to the next overdose, shooting, and heart attack. The narrator’s struggle between giving up on everything and trying one more time to find redemption in a broken city full of violence, sickness, and death took me one step closer… show more.

Ron Berger is a global treasure in the field of education. He is the guiding spirit behind the remarkable EL Education schools – they used to be called Expeditionary Learning schools – in the USA. An Ethic of Excellence was the first book of Ron’s I encountered, and it blew me away. With years of hard-won experience, he has learned that all students, give the right kind of support, are capable of producing genuinely high-quality work, and he knows how to teach in a way that makes that possibility a reality. Ron says, “when we are grown up, we won’t be judged by our test scores, but by the quality of both our character and our work”, and he gets students ready for that world. His schools get all their students to good colleges, and they get good degrees. The quality of Ron’s work is truly inspiring.

Adapted by the author from her bestselling Wonder, this book is more of a wish for kindness than an actual portrayal of kindness. Auggie looks different from anyone else, but inside he wants the same things: to have friends, to go on adventures, to be loved for himself. Besides, isn’t everyone different in one way or another? It’s a lovely book to read with young children, leading them to the realization that acceptance is not only the best choice, but also the choice that opens up an enormous world of possibilities. As the author concludes, Look with kindness and you will always find wonder.

Twelve-year-old Emma Graham she lives with her chef mother, older brother, Will, in the once-grand resort, Hotel Paradise. Emma works as a waitress in the hotel restaurant. Often left to her own devices, Emma learns about a forty-year-old mystery involving another twelve-year-old girl, Mary-Evelyn, who drowned in Spirit Lake. Emma is convinced the girl was murdered and sets out to prove it. Hotel Paradise is the first in a series. I love the plot thread that is woven through all four books as Emma uncovers one secret after another in her quest for the truth. But the book is about more than solving a mystery, it’s about Emma discovering who she is and her purpose in life. 

An editor of my book, Brian Neve has written extensively on the Hollywood Left, with many books, articles, and chapters devoted to filmmakers such as Cy Endfield, Elia Kazan, Robert Rossen, and Joseph Losey, or more broadly to politics and American cinema. A useful complement to the Ceplair & Englund volume, this astute, engaging, and empirically-grounded study explores how a generational cohort of radical and liberal creative practitioners—including Kazan, Losey, Rossen, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, John Huston, and Orson Welles—were energized by the political culture of the Depression era and sought, in different ways, to navigate the industrial and commercial constraints of Hollywood to produce socially-engaged films. This project was brutally stifled by the blacklist, with many filmmakers forced to choose between exile or collaboration.