100 books like Stolen

This book is an unusual, magical story about differences and how we often react to those who don’t conform to the norms in society.

The plot is tremendously intertwined with suspense, the type that unexpectedly creeps up on you and surprises you every time. You are instantly hooked from start to finish.

Unputdownable. I was totally immersed from the first page. It's an unforgettable book. If you believe in non-conformity, then this book is for you.

Kind of to the other extreme now, and a focus on where the hormones and desires of three teen boys will lead them. Funny, painful, and unashamed, this story of sexual desire and clumsily finding a path where things often seem out of control is excellent. I thought of it when I was watching the hilarious Netflix series Sex Education recently.

Yet underneath the whole nightmare of where your private parts might lead you (especially if you are a boy) the questions are still there. How to be ‘true.’ How to ignore the judgment of others. How to hear clearly what we really desire.

Without getting those things right, relationships are always going to be trouble!

I was lucky enough to meet Melvyn on a book tour years ago. His teen fiction is always beautifully ‘in your face.’

I have to be honest, K.M. Peyton is one of the best natural writers to draw breath IMHO and this beautiful and gripping story of a teen girl in Victorian England who seems destined to moulder away in a thwarted life, finding instead rebellion, wildness and love, is right up there with her best.

All books are for all people, of course, but this one (like many of her books) was marketed to teen girls in particular. Personally, I cried often, was moved and delighted by heroine Charlotte’s spirit and fight, and by the vital essence that runs through the story.

When true love comes, it comes, like an avalanche through our lives, beautiful and destructive, but who would not choose that?

At one point I was going to go for Romeo and Juliet as it is such a great study of young teens being in love with the idea of being in love, choosing the forbidden, and living in the moment/living without thinking (you decide!) no matter the cost. But then I decided to go for the Donne instead.

Donne would have started writing his love/sex poems when he was a teen himself and in an age when it was deemed normal that young people’s thoughts turned to these matters during puberty. Perhaps more than any other writer he can encapsulate in only a few lines everything from the most ‘out there’ and ridiculous persuasion used by a young man trying to get his would-be girlfriend to ‘do it’ with him (as in "The Flea") to a kind of ideal for love that seems as perfect as it can get, as… show more.

For a grounded take on superheroes in novel form, it’s hard to go wrong with Zeroes. This one isn’t about its bright costumes or cackling villains. It’s about a motley group of superpowered teens who can occasionally be called friends, and who do their best to become the superhero team that some of them feel they should be. The results are about as polished and stable as you’d expect. Not from a book, but from your actual high school clique given superpowers. What I love about this one is that it doesn’t re-hash the conflicts that go with the usual powers like strength and speed. These kids have some really original abilities, which get them into some accordingly interesting scrapes.

How can I not wrap up this list with my latest discovery, namely a novel about a devout Muslim female pirate who successfully retires, raises a family…and gets pulled back into her former life for one last adventure?

It’s got a swashbuckling middle-aged heroine, adventure, a fantasy heist, a chosen family, and splendid worldbuilding so really, what more could I ask for from a book that I didn’t write? I should note that unlike the other books I’ve included, this one is the first book in a trilogy, so if you like it, there’s more ahead!

I have just started reading this book (actually listening to it as an audiobook) and already it is one of my favourites. De Kretser is such an incredible writer. I found myself ‘rewinding’ the audiobook to hear sentences again and again. I lived with my young family in France in 2012 for the year, and De Kretser’s observations of French life are so (at times) cuttingly on point. I particularly loved the repetition of whether or not something was deemed interessant. "What is interesting about potatoes?" she asks. Her exposure of the historical French treatment of Algerians is woven into the Parisian narrative seamlessly, and at times shockingly. De Kretser is a very powerful, clever, and generous writer. 

The unnamed protagonist of this book is a pregnant woman who has recently moved to the isolated Australian outback with her (pretty useless) husband. The couple have fled the city in part because of our narrator’s fear of a novel pandemic that is sweeping the land. As her pregnancy develops, skin cells replicating inside her body, the narrator fears that her fetus may harbour the virus.

This virus really speaks to my interest in difficult, gory pregnancies and births: cutis is an illness that causes the skin cells to hyperactively replicate, sealing over the body’s orifices and suffocating or starving its victims.

 While this book has a Wicker Man-style horror of small-town life, I particularly appreciate the way that its dystopian setting reflects and distills the anxieties that many women really experience during pregnancy. 

I love stories crammed with internal strife and triumph in the end, especially ones about finding yourself.

In this YA contemporary, teen Ben faces the worst possible reaction from their parents when they come out to them as nonbinary. Fortunately, they round up some supportive family, but this marks the beginning of a long struggle to build up their confidence and come out to everyone, not just their family. Ben may know who they are, but being honest about it is hard, especially in certain places.

There are big differences in being nonbinary or trans in conservative states versus liberal states, and also between smaller towns and bigger cities. This book reminds readers that as long as you’re safe, being true to yourself is more rewarding than hiding yourself. 

Tin Man weaves the beauty and meaning of Van Gogh’s oeuvre into a background for a story that is written like poetry. Time is a main character who is sometimes kind, but mostly cruel. Separation, loss, and longing are themes that all people can relate to but when seen through the perspective of a character who identifies as LGBTQ+ it heightens and clarifies those human experiences in a way that draws a reader from any background deeper into an exploration of what the passing of time means and the consequences of ignoring the herald of each minute that ticks by.