Fans pick 87 books like The Governess of Highland Hall

My sister recommended this book to me, and I’ve recommended it multiple times since. More than once, I’ve read the prologue out loud to another person and couldn’t keep from crying. Just from the prologue, people. I’m tellin’ ya. Anyway, Kate accompanies her grandmother to renovate her childhood home with the assistance of a bunch of geriatric busybodies and one hunky hockey player. Matt quit playing hockey to take care of his wife when she was diagnosed with cancer, then when she died, he gave up on everything he loved. Kate is a social worker who wants to help him find healing, but she never expects it to break her heart in the process. 

This retelling of the Book of Hosea reminded me that love is meant to be unconditional. Patient, healing, hopeful. No matter what Angel does, Michael loves her. I read this entire book in less than two days. I laughed, I cried, and while I couldn’t put the book down, I dreaded closing the cover for the final time. I had a book hangover for days.

If I could choose one book to reread for the first time, it would be this one. I haven’t experienced things that these characters have, but this story still inspired healing and sparked hope. It broke me and put my back together. I walked away with a clearer view of how much God loves me and the lengths He will go to prove it.

This is the second book in the Christiansen family series, but in my opinion, is one of the best. Why? It’s about a hockey player (hello!), and the over-committed sister of one of his teammates. This book explores things such as family obligations and unspoken expectations, discovering God’s purpose for your life, and learning to accept God’s grace. The use of Scripture is powerful and inspiring yet used so naturally that I’m sure readers will be encouraged as I was, and as for the romance – prepare for some swoon-worthy kisses!

As a longtime fan of Jane Austen, this modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility is the epitome of romance for me, containing all the feels. There is a beautiful sense of longing, as Elaina attempts to be the voice of reason in her highly emotion-driven family while struggling between her natural caution and a yearning attraction for Ted Farris. It’s the sense of emotional constraint that makes this romance so powerful to me, as Elaina’s qualities of reticence seem rare these days. If you want an inspiring, sweet romance with a hint of Jane Austen, then this is a great book to check out.

While walking through a Barnes and Noble some thirty years ago, I stumbled upon Anthony Trollope—probably because he took up about three whole shelves. Curious, I chose one of his fifty novels and then another and another until I concluded that he is undoubtedly one of the most underrated authors in the English language. Both of his series—The Chronicles of Barsetshire and The Pallisers—make Downton Abbey look like upstairs/downstairs-lite. Highly recommended! 

This is a page-turner of a novel about a shooting at a women’s reproductive health services clinic in Mississippi, where the 15-year-old daughter of the hostage negotiator is caught inside the clinic. A variety of people are trapped inside the clinic for hours that day. The shooter, the daughter, the hostage negotiator, the abortion doctor, a pro-life protestor who was spying inside the clinic, and a woman who just had an abortion in the clinic–their characters and motivations are all very understandable to me, which makes the tension about this horrible situation that much more riveting. 

Growing up in Philadelphia, I remember hearing stories of the fear settlers had on fires breaking out and of course learning about some historic fires always stuck with me for the sheer terror those residence must have felt. 

This book perfectly encapsulates that for me with a slightly more modern time setting. With so much focus of 1940s literature on WWII books, I was swept up by the story of a devastating fire in Maine and a mother navigating it with small children.

As a mother myself, I can’t imagine the fear Grace must have felt not only on having to literally wade into the ocean to protect her children, but then not knowing what happened to her husband. Grace’s transformation from the ashes is one that has burned years after I’ve finished reading her story. 

The University of Michigan professor-emeritus William Ian Miller is, of course, essential reading on violence and revenge, particularly his Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga, Iceland.

But Miller has been so deservedly lauded elsewhere – and his books so widely recommended – that I'm using this space to suggest that readers also open his sources. Among the sagas, Njal's Saga is much more complex than this one, and probably more revealing of the Saga tradition. But I'm a fan of the shorter, more readable Hrafnkel's, not least because I have a weakness for spooky horses.

Hrafnkel is a bully who would not pay compensation, and the arc of his distinctly pre-modern biography is not what you might expect. In fact, it will make you realize exactly how much what we call "modern" is really a product of legal development, including our ideas about satisfying narratives.

Also, dark… show more.

The closest thing to a "novel" from medieval Scandinavia, The Saga of the Volsungs was written down in the 1200s in Iceland by an author who knew the poems about the Volsungs in the Poetic Edda, but also knew a vast wealth of additional poems about them that are otherwise lost to us. Rather than transmit the poems directly, this unknown author chose to attempt to put together a cohesive story of the sprawling generations of this family, beginning with the fathering of their first ancestor by the god Odin and continuing through all the events that lead Odin himself to engineer the death of its last generations. Here we have dwarves forging magic swords, dragon-slayers, Valkyries laboring under the weight of ill-considered oaths, and star-crossed lovers seeking bloody revenge. This volume also includes the medieval "fanfic" sequel, The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrók, written shortly after The Saga of the… show more.

As weird as Portugal is, and has been, it may become weirder yet as it absorbs masses of migrants from unexpected places. Unsheltered is fiction that I found accurately portrays the shock and terror of American life for hundreds of millions of families, driving many to migrate. The family portrayed in the book are solidly middle-class, educated professionals. They “did everything right” in the “richest country on the planet,” yet find themselves on a downward slide with no way back to security. Vineland, New Jersey in its present state, and in its 19th-century aspirational origin is the compelling setting. One great thing Kingsolver does is to give hope, creating “new normals” of happiness in frugality.

The Portuguese figured this out ages ago. It's called “soup.”