Here are 100 books that The Circus Train fans have personally recommended if you like
The Circus Train.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I grew up in a small agricultural town in California’s Sacramento Valley, and my parents didn’t even consider worrying if I was bored or lonely when I wasn’t at school. Consequently, I spent hours in a nearby vacant lot riddled with anthills watching the ants hustle back and forth and, occasionally, inserting myself in their lives with handfuls of sugar or sticks to block their paths. Pretty sure this is where my interest in science and nature began—and maybe even my interest in cooperation.
I follow Renkl’s wonderful writing in the New York Times about the nature in her own neighborhood (and occasionally Southern politics), and Late Migrations is a collection of essays in which she ties together the loss of family with the losses of beloved wildlife.
She wrote such a gorgeous last paragraph about living with grief. “And that’s how I learned the world would go on. An irreplaceable life had winked out in an instant, but outside my window the world was flaring up in celebration. Someone was hearing, ‘It’s benign.’ Someone was saying, ‘It’s a boy.’ Someone was throwing out her arms and crying, ‘Thank you! Thank you! Oh, thank you!’ I tear up every time I read those lines.
Named a "Best Book of the Year" by New Statesman, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, and Washington Independent Review of Books
Southern Book Prize Finalist
From New York Times contributing opinion writer Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family-and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.
Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents-her exuberant, creative mother; her steady,…
The first memoir I ever read—Road Song by Natalie Kusz—pierced me in ways I did not know were possible. Kusz had written, in this elegantly crafted book, of an Alaskan childhood, a life-changing accident, early motherhood, and family love. She had written, I mean to say, of transcending truths. I have spent much of my life ever since deconstructing the ways in which true stories get told, and writing them myself. I’ve taught memoir to five-year-olds, Ivy League students, master’s level writers, and retirees. I co-founded Juncture Workshops, write a monthly newsletter on the form, and today create blank books into which other writers might begin to tell their stories.
Abigail Thomas likes to say that she didn’t know what she was doing when she set out to write Safekeeping. Memories returned and she wrote them down. Sometimes she wrote of herself in first person. Sometimes in second. Sometimes in third. Sometimes she wrote of apple cake, and of people she loved, and of unsustainable loss. No one remembers their entire life in systematic order. Few lives conform to outlines. That is why Thomas needed to invent the shape of her memoir in essays—to arrange all of its idiosyncratic pieces into an utterly compelling idiosyncratic whole.
A beautifully crafted and inviting account of one woman’s life, Safekeeping offers a sublimely different kind of autobiography. Setting aside a straightforward narrative in favor of brief passages of vivid prose, Abigail Thomas revisits the pivotal moments and the tiny incidents that have shaped her life: pregnancy at 18; single motherhood (of three!) by the age of 26; the joys and frustrations of three marriages; and the death of her second husband, who was her best friend. The stories made of these incidents are startling in their clarity and reassuring in their wisdom.
The first memoir I ever read—Road Song by Natalie Kusz—pierced me in ways I did not know were possible. Kusz had written, in this elegantly crafted book, of an Alaskan childhood, a life-changing accident, early motherhood, and family love. She had written, I mean to say, of transcending truths. I have spent much of my life ever since deconstructing the ways in which true stories get told, and writing them myself. I’ve taught memoir to five-year-olds, Ivy League students, master’s level writers, and retirees. I co-founded Juncture Workshops, write a monthly newsletter on the form, and today create blank books into which other writers might begin to tell their stories.
Arisa White grew up with the looming absence of her biological father—a man whose genes and behaviors haunt her. Finally White, an award-winning poet and teacher who was “born into a bracket of boys,” decides to visit this man in his far-away country to learn more about where she came from and who she may or may not be. The book moves chronologically. It swirls with poetry. It doesn’t always make for easy reading, but every line is well designed and, often, shattering. As a memoir-in-essays, it reaffirms the power of the crystalized scene and the intentional white space.
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Fiction. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. LGBTQIA Studies. A lyrical, genre-bending coming-of-age tale featuring a queer, Black, Guyanese American woman who, while seeking to define her own place in the world, negotiates a difficult relationship with her father.
The first memoir I ever read—Road Song by Natalie Kusz—pierced me in ways I did not know were possible. Kusz had written, in this elegantly crafted book, of an Alaskan childhood, a life-changing accident, early motherhood, and family love. She had written, I mean to say, of transcending truths. I have spent much of my life ever since deconstructing the ways in which true stories get told, and writing them myself. I’ve taught memoir to five-year-olds, Ivy League students, master’s level writers, and retirees. I co-founded Juncture Workshops, write a monthly newsletter on the form, and today create blank books into which other writers might begin to tell their stories.
“In an earlier life,” Miller writes, “I was a baker, in a bakery on a cobblestoned street.” It takes Miller just one single paragraph to tell this whole tale—how she proofed yeast, how she scraped her spoon, how she made loaves for children: “It was my only kindness.” In every successive chapter—most all of them short, many of them formally inventive—Miller deconstructs her life and soul—the roots of her unease, the startling incidents of loss, her learning to sleep, and her learning to live with the person she becomes. Miller is a stellar choreographer, knowing just where to place which expertly fashioned scene and knowing, always, what to leave out.
How many lives do we create in one lifetime? In her latest collection of innovative, shape-shifting essays, Brenda Miller evolves through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood to enter the wry maturity of middle age. Whether traveling from synagogue to sweat lodge, from the Arizona desert to a communal hot springs in California, she navigates the expectations placed on young girls and women at every turn. She finds guidance in her four major creeds (Judaism, Home Improvement, the Grateful Dead, and Rescue Dogs), while charting a course toward an authentic life. Each stage demands its own form, its own story, sometimes…
Not only am I the author of seven women’s fiction novels, I’m a voracious reader who believes she was raised by Judy Blume and Sidney Sheldon. In our broken home, reading was an escape, a salve for the wound, a place where I felt heard and understood. My novels touch on deep emotions—real and relatable. If I don’t capture thatfeeling when I’m reading through my drafts, I dig deeper. And that’s the thing about a great book, that gut punch, that slide under my skin, I get you. There’s no better read than the one that pulls the heartstrings and gives you all the feels.
The Pact was one of those books that made me want to become a writer. Picoult captured a controversial topic amongst young lovers and friends, and she did it with compassion and heart. I felt in my bones…I need to write a book like that. And that’s what I strive to do: to make readers feel. To make them think. To leave them wondering: what would I do in a similar situation? And mostly, opening their eyes to all the different sides to a single story, and seeing themselves…and the growth that’s possible. The Pact tells a great story, but the complexities of our lives are the real takeaway.
THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'Picoult is a master manipulator, weaving gripping, dramatic plotlines. We defy you not to be gripped.' Glamour
For eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from takeaways to school drop-offs. So it's no surprise when teenagers Chris and Emily, soul mates since they were born, start dating.
When the late-night call comes in from hospital, no one is prepared for the appalling truth: Emily has died from a gunshot wound to the head as part of an apparent suicide pact. The gun holds a single unspent bullet…
I have read books of various genres but the dominating theme has always been stories that haunted me and remained in my memory like a movie song lyric. These books are ones that made me feel the story as if the characters lived next door and were well known to me. The nostalgic feel and unexpressed emotions of women, when brought out in the form of stories keep my mind occupied and impacted my life changes too. As a teacher, meeting students of various ages, I am able to subtly identify the feelings that cross children and understand the emotions that dominate their parents and their lives in a family.
I was captivated by this collection of twenty two short stories, written to bring a wave of nostalgia into the sea of the mind of the reader. I loved the secret in "The Secret" and the expression of nativity in "Kavala – A Junction". Many of the stories brought out the boldness in meek women and I loved that.
There is something about a 'happily ever after' that, no matter how hard it is to get there, it is so satisfying when you do. If there is a little humor mixed in with mystery that can take your emotions on a rollercoaster, that’s all the better. I decided to write romance because I do believe in fairy tales. I believe love is a choice. You make it what you want. I am a romantic suspense author because I love the thrill of solving the crime. In many cases, truth is stranger than fiction. Many times I use real-life issues and moments in time in my writing to pique the readers' curiosity.
For me, a strong character that tugs at my emotions will keep me reading every time. Brittney Sahin is a master of character development and one of my favorite books of all time is The Real Deal. Sebastian is a bad guy…or is he. There are so many layers to this huge character that I was torn about falling in love with him. He was a bad guy, but he had a good reason and though he tried to steer Holly away from his life, she saw through his rough exterior.
A mysterious Irish billionaire is about to make the deal of his life.
Holly McGregor shouldn't be attracted to someone on the board of directors at her company. But she can't avoid his unforgiving stare, deny their electric chemistry, or resist his touch, his mouth, the dangerous invitation she sees in his eyes.
Her family hates him, and the city fears him, but she knows there's another side to Sebastian Renaud because he slipped--he let her witness the light beneath the dark. And now that she's had a taste, she only wants to discover more.
When I was about ten, my mother brought home our one and only outdoor Christmas decoration, a plastic choir boy. One blustery night, we saw something streak by the living room windows. Rushing outside, we were shocked to see our choirboy lying amongst the shrubbery, his plastic neck broken. My father made several valiant attempts at surgery with various kinds of glue and tape, but the poor little choir boy was never really the same and eventually he was thrown into the trash. This childhood memory inspired me to write Candy Cane Lane and fortunately I was about to give it a much happier ending.
Gramatky had been a Disney artist in the 1930s. Legend has it Walt had passed on his story about a little tugboat that saves the day, but after Gramatky left the studio and the book became popular, Disney then had second thoughts and adapted it into one of the shorts compromising the wartime animated feature Melody Time. The theme is familiar but potent: being small does not mean you are insignificant, a lesson of encouragement for any child. The illustrations are loose yet beautifully expressive. Gramatky wrote another book about an inanimate object – Homer the Circus Train.Although the story is not as iconic, the illustrations are equally fine. As for Disney, they carried this theme through to other shorts like Susie the Little Blue Coupe, written and boarded by Bill Peet, who wrote many books of his own. It served as one of the inspirations…
"I am delighted to know that this classic piece of Americana, Little Toot, will be enjoyed by readers of all ages for years go come." --Eric Carle
Celebrate Little Toot's 80th anniversary!
First published in 1939, this classic story of the energetic tugboat who didn't let his size or doubters stop him is brought to new life in this restored edition. With the help and support of Hardie Gramatky's estate, to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, we have used archived first editions and Hardie's original paintings to restore Little Toot to its full glory, bringing back a richness…
I have read books of various genres but the dominating theme has always been stories that haunted me and remained in my memory like a movie song lyric. These books are ones that made me feel the story as if the characters lived next door and were well known to me. The nostalgic feel and unexpressed emotions of women, when brought out in the form of stories keep my mind occupied and impacted my life changes too. As a teacher, meeting students of various ages, I am able to subtly identify the feelings that cross children and understand the emotions that dominate their parents and their lives in a family.
This collection of short stories about simple yet distinct events that can occur in the life of any person impressed me as I was able to relate to the stories. Archer has beautifully expressed the feelings of many characters. In particular, the stories "Old Love" and "The Luncheon" still fascinate me.
Quiver Full of Arrows is a collection of twelve exciting short stories from bestselling author, Jeffrey Archer.
Two friends fall under the spell of a New York beauty - with an unexpected outcome. A casual remark is taken seriously by a Chinese sculptor, and the British Ambassador becomes the owner of a priceless work of art . An insurance claims adviser has a most surprising encounter on the train home to Sevenoaks.
This marvellous collection of twelve stories ends with a hauntingly written, atmospheric account of two undergraduates at Oxford in the 1930s, a tale of bitter rivalry that ends…
Ever since I was a young girl, I always turned to writing to work through anything that was happening in my life, ranging from the first time I experienced loss to my parents’ divorce. I have since published three children’s books on tough topics as I have aimed to provide parents, children, and teachers with tools to discuss loss and change. My most recent book, Goodbye, Gus is specifically about the loss of a pet. My dad died when I was 21, and that was the first death (other than my dogs) that I ever experienced. I was able to experience first-hand the fact that the loss of my pets helped prepare me to cope with grief, and I also learned that we can all focus on what we did have and hang on to those memories forever.
I am recommending Dog Songs as a dog lover and as a poet. Two of my favorite things are dogs and poetry, and Mary Oliver combines the two in her beautiful celebration of the love between humans and dogs. I think this is a great choice when people are grieving, as the magic of the canine/human connection is conveyed in these poems, providing a source of beauty and comfort for the reader. All of her selections emphasize that unique love that we have with our pets, reminding us to enjoy life’s precious moments.
'The popularity of [Dog Songs] feels as inevitable and welcome as a wagging tail upon homecoming' Boston Globe
In Dog Songs, Mary Oliver celebrates the special bond between human and dog, as understood through her connection to the dogs who across the years accompanied her on her daily walks, warmed her home and inspired her work. The poems in Dog Songs begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers and become, through her extraordinary vision, meditations on the world and our place in it.
Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's most beloved dog Percy,…
