65 books like Spy School

I love books that mix fact and fiction, mystery and adventure, and include real-life settings and history. Kate Messner’s great Ranger in Time series, starting with Rescue on the Oregon Trail does all of this incredibly well. These books do a terrific job of making history both personal and present to today’s readers. Interested readers can delve deeper by locating landmarks mentioned in the book on a map, in person, or via the internet. Add on top of the fact that the main character is a time-traveling golden retriever, and young readers can’t lose anything but time otherwise spent in front of screens. Her later Ranger in Time book on 9/11 is especially terrific, making a very difficult subject very approachable to interested readers.   

Dragons in the Bag unleashes imaginative fantasy creatures—yes, dragons—in the middle of present-day, gentrifying Brooklyn. The heart (and there’s a strong heart here) of the story is Jax, a Black protagonist. The book combines a real sense of place with magic, family mysteries, and an adventure challenge of managing a bag of dragons. I loved the way that the author, Zetta Elliott, created believable and lovable characters, such as Ambrose, an apparent homeless man, that drive the story forward in unforgettable ways. A solid read even for people like me who don’t normally pick up fantasy stories.  

Jigsaw Jones books by James Preller are classic mysteries for developing readers. Totally grounded in real-life, Jigsaw and his friend Mila spend their time solving cases around their neighborhood. These books have great, natural illustrations that bring readers into the stories. I also love the humor sprinkled throughout and the way that Preller encourages his readers to step up and solve the mystery alongside Jigsaw. 

When I read the first line of this book, “It’s harder to drive a polar bear into somebody’s living room than you’d think,” I knew I had stumbled upon something good.

And I was right. How can you not love a book that starts with a polar bear being driven into a living room? How can you not want to keep reading to find out why exactly this polar bear is being driven into a living room? I rest my case.  

I love this book because Wilkinson takes politics, race, romance, along with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the intelligence community and wraps it up in a bow of deeply evocative writing that kept me twisted up.

Just a quick teaser to show my love of her writing: “I unlocked the safe beneath my desk, grabbed my old service automatic, and crept toward my bedroom doorway, stealthy until I was brought to grief by a Lego Duplo that stung the sole of my foot.” [Insert sobbing emoji here for how much I love this line] Her writing had me jabbing my husband every few minutes, going, “Read this. READ THIS!”

I loved that each answer solved in the book simply raised more questions, and I was left wondering if the answers were even answers in the first place. The abrupt ending is the satisfyingly frustrating icing on the… show more.

Dan Golden is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposes how enemies of the United States are using our universities and graduate schools as recruitment centers for a new generation of spies.

Russian, Chinese, and of course, Cuban intelligence services are having a field day exploiting our open system to identify and turn their newest recruits (yes, our government returns the favor abroad.)

Spy Schools has an excellent chapter on Ana Montes, the Cuban agent who is the subject of my book. There’s also juicy information on the American woman who recruited Ana as a spy when they both were attending SAIS, the Johns Hopkins graduate school in Washington. 

This delightful series is so much fun it rates a 'must have' on my list of girls' spy schools. The spy school is housed in a charming old mansion, complete with secret passages and hidden elevators. It is attended by carefully-selected, super-smart young women who train to become the Gallagher girls—spies extraordinaire. Naturally, there is a counterpart boys’ spy school. With a touch of romantic angst, this series does not disappoint. The girls are each distinct, memorable, and tons of fun.

What can I say? It’s the goated friendly freaks book.

This collection of super short connected stories stars one kid per tale. The kids are weird and wild, and something that has really stuck with me my whole life is that some of the kids are rotten and stay rotten. Not everyone needs to grow and change in 120 pages.

Let a character stink. Let a kid be a wet rat. Let a nasty teacher be eaten. Anyway, there’s this incredible way that the author employs a third-person limited POV that gets me every time, even on the hundredth read.

A few illustrators have graced the pages of this all-time favorite. I grew up reading an edition illustrated by the amazing Julie Brinkloe. I also have a copy illustrated by Adam McCauley, which I also really love.

John Van Dreal is a school psychologist with decades of experience developing the Salem-Keizer model of violence prevention in schools.

In addition to providing comprehensive threat assessment guidelines, the book also discusses other safety issues including dating violence, workplace violence, domestic violence, and stalking. Whereas some works related to school safety focus solely on students as potential perpetrators, this book also discusses dangers posed by adults. 

Sometimes the way you’re brought into the world is a burden you feel you’re meant to carry. This is something a teenager named Michie takes with her into the relationships she develops. It’s the bold and brave love of those around her, not always tied by blood, helping Michie to see the value she has, to not just herself, but the world at large.