Here are 100 books that Thar She Blows fans have personally recommended if you like
Thar She Blows.
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As a queer reader and writer of horror, I have little interest in anything that could be deemed “positive representation.” Horror is most compelling when it gets honest and ugly about the bad, selfish, cruel, or simply unwise choices people make when they’re truly scared–and that includes queer people. I love queer stories that aren’t primarily romantic or neatly resolved. I like messy groups of friends, toxic emotional entanglements, and family dynamics that don’t fit in a Hallmark card. These days there are lots of stories in other genres about queer people becoming their best selves, but horror also has space for us at our worst.
It’s rare to find a book that combines my two favorite horror subgenres–queer horror and parenting horror–but this book does that and more. With four different protagonists who are all, in one way or another, queer, this bizarre family saga delves into the surreality of grief and the questionable choices people make to protect themselves and the ones they love.
The true queerness of this novel goes beyond its characters’ various same-sex attractions and relationships; at its heart, it’s a queer story because it shows how we build families out of the rubble that’s left when the lives we expected to lead fall apart.
A "genuinely scary" horror debut written in "prose so beautiful you won't want to rush" about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes (Ana Reyes)
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio…
Aside from my brief stint as a bossy know-it-all when I was little, I have always been that quiet girl no one notices. In high school, it took me at least ten minutes and five tries to get myself to wish my desk partner a happy birthday. I spent a lot of my adolescence trying to find myself, so I understand what it’s like to feel lost. My greatest wish is for my book to help at least one person feel how these books helped me.
Before Bo Burnham made us all Google derealization in 2021, Helena Fox helped me understand the concept of dissociation and how it ties to grief and its aftereffects. I had never seen struggles with mental health portrayed in such a raw, haunting way.
Though the book is unquestionably dark, and interested readers should check for content warnings before starting, I appreciated the honest portrayal of mental illness and loss. I read this book years ago, but it resurfaces in my mind every so often and lingers there.
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A Chicago Public Library Best of the Best of the Year
"Profoundly moving . . . Will take your breath away." -Kathleen Glasgow, author of Girl in Pieces
A stunningly gorgeous and deeply hopeful portrayal of living with mental illness and grief, from an exceptional new voice.
Biz knows how to float. She has her people, her posse, her mom and the twins. She has Grace. And she has her dad, who tells her about the little kid she was, and who shouldn't be here but is. So Biz doesn't tell anyone…
I'm a women's fiction novelist with a love for drama without trauma. As an avid reader myself, I write what I know—moving stories written for women and about women. In my books, I sweep you off your feet, lead your heart to a place it's never been before, make you think, make you fall in love, make you yearn for justice, make you aspire and hope and dream. And I promise a happy ending every time, or at least a realistic, thought-provoking tote of warm feelings you can take with you. I hope you enjoy my reading recommendations below!
I came across this novel after I started following the author on Instagram. It was my first time dabbling in magical realism, and I found myself instantly hooked. Angie is an overweight, fifty-year-old housecleaner with a special skill—she can see the dead. Despite her best efforts to ignore her intuition, the spirits follow her, seek her out, and try to absorb and siphon her human powers. I love the arc of this novel, following the most unlikely of heroines into a death-defying struggle, where she learns that she is stronger than she ever thought possible and more importantly, she doesn’t need anyone else to save her. I rooted for her the entire way through, and now I’m excited to hear the author is making this into a trilogy.
Meet Angie and Frieda, two unforgettable characters who will live in your memory long after you turn the last page.
Nothing ever changes in the village of Witchford until the day a hundred year old, bad-tempered witch falls and breaks her hip, and a fifty year old cleaner decides her life is over.
Both are haunted by ghosts, but can Frieda help Angie find out what her long dead father is trying to tell her? And can Angie help Frieda fight off the wolf who circles ever closer?
A story of empowerment and friendship, 'The Woman and the Witch' explores…
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.
I love this book because it really erases the line between the real and the fantastic. I’ve been a Neil Gaiman fan since Sandman. This is a middle-grade book written for me. The path I took through this book led me back to my childhood and reminded me of Where the Wild Things Are, with its nearly seamless transition between the “real” world and the imagined.
Neil’s done this before with Caroline and the Graveyard. But Ocean is different. Here, I never lose touch with the real world. The turn to fantasy just makes the real world more dangerous. I think that’s an important change. When I was a child, when I daydreamed or pondered the things and people and dark corners that I didn’t understand, when I added the additional layer of the fantastic, it wasn’t really an escape.
'Neil Gaiman's entire body of work is a feat of elegant sorcery. He writes with such assurance and originality that the reader has no choice but to surrender to a waking dream' ARMISTEAD MAUPIN
'Some books just swallow you up, heart and soul' JOANNE HARRIS
'Summons both the powerlessness and wonder of childhood, and the complicated landscape of memory and forgetting' GUARDIAN
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'My favourite response to this book is when people say, 'My childhood was nothing like that - and it was as if…
I’ve been writing stories and poems with erotic themes since I first entered the spoken word scene in 1980s San Francisco. As a young queer boy, raised in the highly eroticized Catholic Church, I was actually comfortable talking about and writing about sex and eros as I’d been stigmatized by it, and it got me fascinated with what the big deal was and why writers were afraid to approach it or why they did so in a corny/predictable/idealized and/or often dishonest and clumsy way. Soon I was teaching erotic writing and have been integrating it into my writing in honest, fresh, and enlivening ways—and helping others do so—ever since.
In my opinion, one of the finest living writers in the English language, Winterson masterfully spins a tale of historical, poetic, eccentric, dreamy and highly sensual, and gender-bending eroticism involving an androgynous hero during the Napoleonic era, and taking place in the kitchens of the emperor, on the battlefield and along the freezing march into Russia, as well as amid the canals of Venice. Always thought-provoking and rife with magical realism and plain heart-stopping imagery, tension, and poetry, Winterson tells her story in a manner that will—if not change your ideas about everything—certainly challenge them. I always feel inspired to stretch my understanding wider—and I actually fall deeply in love with the world all over again—each time I finish a novel by Winterson.
From the frozen Russia of Napoleon's campaign, to the canals of Venice, this novel journeys through curious waterways of war and chance, where destiny and the heart cannot be forgotten - nor passion which is to be found somewhere between fear and sex passion, somewhere between God and the Devil. Jeanette Winterson is author of "Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" which was winner of the 1985 Whitbread First Novel Award.
There is nothing more gratifying when you are reading your own books to a group of children to see that they are eager to know what is going to happen next. My top priority is to create a story that is a page-turner. My second wish is to include social topics that provoke ideas and questions. After I read to a group of schoolchildren, I like to encourage them to discuss the themes in the story; the children are always keen to give their views. Nonetheless, adding social topics to my children’s books needs to evolve naturally; ultimately, for me, the story is king!
I really admire Raymond Briggs’ work; he’s a wonderful storyteller and a fantastic artist with a great eye for colour. Ethel & Ernest is a beautiful book. The strip-cartoon format works well and makes for an intense reading experience. Whilst this book has lots of humour and light, it also features some dark topics such as the Second World War, mental illness, and bereavement. It is generally considered unsuitable for children under the age of twelve. It’s a charming love story and a vivid social record. I find it heartbreaking at times. It becomes even more touching when you remember that it is based on Briggs’ own family.
A marvellous, life-enhancing book for all ages, now a major animated film starring Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn and Luke Treadaway
Utterly original, deeply moving and very funny, Ethel & Ernest tells the story of Raymond Briggs' parents' marriage, lady's maid Ethel and milkman Ernest, from their first chance encounter in 1928, through the birth of their son Raymond in 1934, to their deaths, within months of each other, in 1971.
Told in Brigg`s unique strip-cartoon format, Ethel and Ernest live through the defining moments of the twentieth century: the darkness of the Great Depression, the build up to World War…
I am a Minnesota writer of cozy mysteries and contemporary fiction. I love the magical and care deeply about nature, the environment, and what is happening due to climate change. My novel was a chance to combine both interests. I wrote the first draft of Up There during the pandemic. While we were locked down, I spent time with a character who could fly. But while she was free, I discovered she was still lost. I spent so much of that year walking in the woods—thinking about how our world is changing, how confusing it is, and how we all are a little lost in these times.
I have read all of Sarah Addison Allen’s books and have never been disappointed. She gives me quirky characters (which I love) and wondrous things, from wallpaper that changes to suit your mood to unexplained lights skipping across the yard to a woman who bakes hope into her cakes.
Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? I like to think so. I love that the extraordinary in her books are taken with a shrug and that the bizarre is not to be feared but to learn from. Although I have found my personal love and do feed and protect the hummingbirds, I wouldn’t mind tasting a slice of hummingbird cake.
The charming New York Times bestseller. Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother's life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren't solved in Mullaby, they're a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town's sweet tooth but…
I am a Minnesota writer of cozy mysteries and contemporary fiction. I love the magical and care deeply about nature, the environment, and what is happening due to climate change. My novel was a chance to combine both interests. I wrote the first draft of Up There during the pandemic. While we were locked down, I spent time with a character who could fly. But while she was free, I discovered she was still lost. I spent so much of that year walking in the woods—thinking about how our world is changing, how confusing it is, and how we all are a little lost in these times.
On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found… Who could resist that?
I was glad I found this book and its author Evie Woods. She seduced me with her lovely writing and compelling characters. I loved the magical moments when a tree takes over a bedroom just to supply the occupant with books the tree thinks will help her.
I like the idea that no matter what baggage we carry—betrayal, abuse, lost love—we can grow, face our personal truth, and step into a wondrous world.
The Echo of Old Books meets The Lost Apothecary in this evocative and charming novel full of mystery and secrets.
'The thing about books,' she said 'is that they help you to imagine a life bigger and better than you could ever dream of.'
On a quiet street in Dublin, a lost bookshop is waiting to be found...
For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.
But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones…
For me, games have always been a way of playing mathematics. Every game has a hidden piece of mathematics behind it, and if you can understand that mathematics, I’ve found that it gives you a real edge in playing the game. I travel a lot for my work as a mathematician, and I love to ask about the games they play when I visit a new country. Games tell me a lot about the culture and people I am visiting. My book is my way of sharing my passion for games and mathematics with my readers.
This book is Hogwarts meets The Glass Bead Game meets The Handmaid's Tale. I was recommended it when I talked about my games book at a local bookshop. I must admit that I was initially very nervous about a book riffing on one of my favorite books of all time (The Glass Bead Game), but I really enjoyed it.
It is set in a school that trains students to play the game against a political backdrop that Margaret Atwood could easily have conjured up. It helped to give another perspective on Hesse’s fictional game that, as I said in my first recommendation, I’ve been obsessed with ever since reading about it as a student.
'BEAUTIFUL' JOANNA CANNON
'MESMERISING' ERIN KELLY
'TOTALLY ADDICTIVE' JOANNA GLEN
'SUMPTUOUS' OBSERVER
'DIZZYINGLY WONDERFUL' THE TIMES
WINNING WAS EVERYTHING...
UNTIL IT DESTROYED THEM
Two young men, Leo and Carfax, close friends and fierce rivals. A family ripped apart by madness and tragedy. One woman, her life built upon a lie, with a mysterious connection to them all...
'INGENIOUS' GUARDIAN
'A STORYTELLER OF RARE IMAGINATION' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'BRILLIANT' WOMAN & HOME
'A RICH DELIGHT' SANDRA NEWMAN
'CAPTIVATING' DAILY MIRROR
'AN IMMERSIVE, IMAGINATIVE SLICE OF STORYTELLING' DAILY EXPRESS
'MAGICAL' IRISH INDEPENDENT
The world is an amazing, diverse place that needs stories that represent everyone. I identify as gender fluid and am part of my city’s LGBTQIA+ community. For kids, there aren’t enough stories that feature non-straight cis protagonists where that identity isn’t the focus. LGBTQIA+ kids exist. They are normal. Let a gay kid go into space. Let a teenage lesbian solve a mystery. Let a trans girl defeat a dragon. Let an ace teen be a witch. Everybody deserves their adventure.
The City of Lucille has gotten rid of all its monsters.
That’s what Jam, a teenage trans girl, believed until the demonic-looking Pet emerged from one of her mother’s paintings. But despite their monstrous appearance, Pet isn’t the monster, but came forth to hunt a monster already living among the people of Lucille undetected.
Pet contains vivid imagery, powerful themes, and a sensitive and brave protagonist. Be bold. Be vigilant. Monsters never entirely go away because we are the monsters.
4
authors picked
Pet
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
12,
13,
14, and
15.
What is this book about?
How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?
She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide, as the figure started coming out of the canvas ... She tried to be brave. Well, she said, her hands only a little shaky, at least tell me what I should call you. ... Well, little girl, it replied, I suppose you can call me Pet.
There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson…
