88 books like The Innocents

This first-in-series book is set in Regency London, a place I would love to see via time machine (but only to visit—not to live there—because I like my creature comforts way too much).  

The two main characters, Charlotte Sloane and the Earl of Wrexford, are from different sides of the tracks, so to speak, but there is some evidence that Charlotte may have experienced affluence at one time. Charlotte and Wrexford team up to solve a murder for which Wrexford stands accused. Their witty dialogue, disparate strengths, and willingness to overlook the other’s shortcomings make this a great read. 

And the cover is gorgeous, isn’t it? 

I know I keep beating the same drum, but just try to take a look at that cover and tell me the story doesn’t look intriguing (and yes, I do see the similarities between this cover and that of The Murder on Black Swan Lane). 

Like any self-respecting English mystery, this one begins with a main character discovering he’s received a bequest of an English estate and its accompanying title. This particular main character is Jason Redmond, a Captain and doctor in the Union Army during the American Civil War. At the end of the war, he returns home to find his sweetheart has married his best friend during his absence. When he receives news of the bequest, having no one to marry and still experiencing haunting memories of the tragedies he witnessed during the war, he heads to England to dispose of the estate (at least, that’s his… show more.

I tell anyone who will listen that I am not a fan of anything paranormal, but this series has me hooked. I think Summoning the Winds is the first book I ever read about witches (Hamlet doesn't count), and I loved it. In a nutshell, the series takes the notion of witch trials and turns it on its head with tales of real witches in colonial Connecticut of the 1660s (where, in my time machine, I would view the events in this story from a safe distance).  

Yarrow Pickering, the main character and an eighteen-year-old orphan, is spunky and smart. She’s also a witch. She uses her abilities for good and, like her mother, is skilled at creating herbal remedies for illnesses and injuries suffered by the people in the village of Milthorpe. When she attempts to help a young girl who has become ill, the girl’s father becomes… show more.

I picked up this book because I loved the cover (who says we don’t choose books by their covers?) and shortly thereafter found myself completely immersed in a 17th-century English Restoration mystery. I would visit that era in my time machine provided it’s fully stocked with soap and hand sanitizer (this time period being the one during which the Great Plague took place). 

Main character Lucy Campion is a chambermaid in the home of a London magistrate. Her days are filled with the drudgery of servant duties—that is, until a murder claims the life of a servant in the household and someone Lucy holds dear is accused of the crime. Knowing that person can’t possibly be the killer, Lucy sets out to find out whodunit. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, so I’ll stop there. 

I learned more about 1660s England reading this book than I ever did… show more.

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.   

This is cheating a little bit because it’s about a modern-day American boy who gets whisked back to Shakespeare’s time and befriends the playwright as a young man.

Our young actor has to figure out why he’s been sent back to this time and escape before a terrible plague wipes out much of London. I bought this book at the Globe Theatre gift shop (!) on an overseas trip on the basis of Susan Cooper’s name alone.

She wrote The Dark Is Rising Series and this is a thrilling modern classic by her. 

It may be obvious by now that I’m drawn to stories about complex characters, stories that aren’t afraid to be both humorous and gut wrenching.

Fourteen-year-old Nephele is another protagonist whose voice is immediately endearing, refreshing, and compelling. She’s an outsider, a brilliant math and science nerd who struggles to adjust socially to high school.

She invents a time travel app in order to relive her freshman year and do it right—but instead she becomes stuck in a time loop for ten years, encountering characters and surprises that help her to overcome her loneliness and find herself.

I love it that this book celebrates a smart, quirky character as she learns to look more deeply into her life and navigate her world. 

This clever novel takes the old premise, “What would happen if you went into the past and met yourself?” and magnifies it by multiple degrees.

Returning to the time of the great Chicago fire, the hero ends up meeting several past and/or future versions of himself, each time making his situation more complicated. A quick, enjoyable read.

This book is a literary novel set in part on the Moon. That’s not a sentence you’ll read often, which is a big part of why I love this novel—it’s not what I expected, even though there’s a big hint in the title.

Like many readers, my introduction to Emily St. John Mandel was her post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven. In that story, the most interesting characters aren’t concerned with simple survival…if they are going to fight to live, they want a culture worth fighting for. When I picked this book up, I deliberately chose not to read the story summary and was completely caught off guard by how the novel unfolded. Typically, stories questioning time and our perception of reality do so by sending the protagonist on a dangerous quest looking for answers.

Like all my favorite novels, the scope is intimate and vast in this one. The story… show more.

This book proved what I already knew: that the world of books is real, and there’s an organization keeping the characters and props in good shape. Small details fascinated me. Like, there is only one piano in all of literature, and a team moves it around to whatever piano scene is currently being read.

I never would have known had I not read this book. I identified best with the mad scientist uncle, but that’s me.