Fans pick 5 books like The Last Queen

By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni,

Here are 5 books that The Last Queen fans have personally recommended if you like The Last Queen. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of To Kill a Mockingbird

Sarah Cavallaro Author Of Dogs Have Angels too

From my list on human condition themes.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am on a self-discovery journey, and each day, I discover more of why I am here on earth. The books I mentioned all have themes related to the human condition. I write to express what I understand. I love writing about characters and their journeys. I love all animals, and dogs are a great comfort. I’d like to see animal abuse come to an end in my lifetime. I write about people who have fallen from great heights and how saving animals and others in need saves them. We need to love more.

Sarah's book list on human condition themes

Sarah Cavallaro Why did Sarah love this book?

This book is about defending justice, using a legal system to fight something you know is wrong, and sticking to what is right at all costs. It is about knowing what’s right and what’s wrong.

My main character, too—Miss Pink sticks to what is right at all costs. This touching, powerful story shows the worst of people and the best. 

By Harper Lee,

Why should I read it?

42 authors picked To Kill a Mockingbird as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped…


Book cover of Fireborne

Bridget Tyler Author Of The Pioneer

From my list on bold narrators.

Why am I passionate about this?

I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.

Bridget's book list on bold narrators

Bridget Tyler Why did Bridget love this book?

Fireborne is the first book of a YA crossover fantasy series called The Aurelian Cycle trilogy.

The primary narrators – dragon riders Annie and Lee – are best friends born on opposite sides of a class uprising and civil war that ripped their lives apart. Annie and Lee’s world is complicated. There are no easy choices or untarnished heroes – including Annie and Lee.

By telling this story through two very different points of view, Munda forces us to draw our own conclusions about right and wrong. She doesn’t make it easy. I can’t promise you won’t throw the book across the room in outrage at least once, but you will chase after it and keep reading until the (not that bitter, I promise) end. 

By Rosaria Munda,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Fireborne 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?

"Fireborne is everything I want in fantasy." -Rachel Hartman, New York Times bestselling author of Seraphina

Game of Thrones meets Red Rising in a debut young adult fantasy that's full of rivalry, romance . . . and dragons.

Annie and Lee were just children when a brutal revolution changed their world, giving everyone-even the lowborn-a chance to test into the governing class of dragonriders.

Now they are both rising stars in the new regime, despite backgrounds that couldn't be more different. Annie's lowborn family was executed by dragonfire, while Lee's aristocratic family was murdered by revolutionaries. Growing up in the…


Book cover of Illuminae

Bridget Tyler Author Of The Pioneer

From my list on bold narrators.

Why am I passionate about this?

I tell stories for the page and the screen (and sometimes to bribe my kid to brush her teeth). The stories I tell have one thing in common – they transport the reader to another world. For me, building a new world starts with building a new character a narrator with strong opinions and a complicated past that will shape how the reader experiences their world. We don't experience the real world objectively no matter how hard we try, our past, our feelings, and even our bodies affect how we experience the world. That's why the worlds I build and the stories I tell are all filtered through the particular truth of a bold narrator.

Bridget's book list on bold narrators

Bridget Tyler Why did Bridget love this book?

Illuminae is the first book in a YA science fiction series called the Illuminae Files Trilogy.

The story is told through intersecting first-person narratives constructed from journals, letters, texts, reports, and pictures. You want to absorb all that “found footage” goodness on paper. Trust.

There’s almost no exposition in Illuminae, especially in the first few chapters. That’s the beauty of these books – the narration is so visceral and urgent that you get invested in the story long before you really understand what’s happening. Putting the pieces of the world-building together is an addictive mystery in and of itself.

I don’t recommend cracking open this book the night before anything requiring a good night’s rest and lots of focus – your mind will be in 2575 until well after you’ve finished the last page. 

By Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Illuminae as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 14, 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

'Never have I read a book so wholly unique and utterly captivating.' Marie Lu

'It certainly filled the Battlestar Galactica-shaped hole in my heart.' Victoria Aveyard

The internationally bestselling first book in a high-octane trilogy

Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has…


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Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest By Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Book cover of Rosewater

Chikodili Emelumadu Author Of Dazzling

From my list on proving Nigerians are secret weirdos.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a child who was very dissatisfied with the idea that this world, with its rules and routines, is all there is. Sunday school filled me with a fear of hell, and heaven sounded boring, a lot of people wearing white and singing. This forced me into the world of fairy and folktales: spirits, tricksters, masquerades, elves, werecreatures, and merpeople. It was all so exciting and, more than that, comforting. The just were rewarded, and the wicked were punished within the timeframe of the story, not later when they died. 

Chikodili's book list on proving Nigerians are secret weirdos

Chikodili Emelumadu Why did Chikodili love this book?

My default stance in life is ‘Meh,’ which infuriates my children, but it's pretty hard to get a rise out of me because I've seen some shit.

Nigeria is such a dysfunctional country full of laughter, sunshine, secrets, and puppeteers; it made everything in this book seem feasible. Like, if you stretch my country out like taffy we'd get to a mad stage that everyone would still shrug off and accept.

It validated the heck out of me, let me tell you. 

By Tade Thompson,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Rosewater as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Rosewater is the start of an award-winning trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging voices.

*Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, winner
*Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel, winner

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless -- people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care…


Book cover of What the Body Remembers

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond Author Of My Parents' Marriage

From my list on complicated wives and mothers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm passionate about stories that portray women as full human beings managing their passions, challenges, and obligations with grit because I grew up surrounded by a phalanx of them. Those who add “wife” and “mother” to their plate fascinate me all the more, especially as I grow older and better understand the pressures heaped on women. I saw my mother, sister, grandmothers, and aunties in all their complexities, building themselves up as they built families and businesses, starting over when they had to, overcoming the seemingly insurmountable, challenging the status quo, and never giving up. I gravitate toward female characters who share that spirit or grapple with how to get it. 

Nana's book list on complicated wives and mothers

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond Why did Nana love this book?

The vulnerability of both wives at the heart of this immersive novel squeezed my throat as I read. Both of them at the mercy of their fertility, I felt so much outrage for Satya, and I so wished I could jump into the pages and liberate Roop from the impossible situation she was plunged into.

It’s been over 20 years since I read this book, but I still think about it.

By Shauna Singh Baldwin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked What the Body Remembers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

What the Body Remembers takes place in Rawalpindi, in the Indian state of the Punjab, in 1937 amid the mourning and mounting tension that precedes partition. Satya (whose name means Truth) has failed to give her well-born respected husband, Sardarji, a child. Sardarji, without hesitation or consultation, has found himself a youthful second wife, Roop (meaning body or form), a village girl whose mother died in childbirth, and whose father is deep in debt to him. Satya and Roop's enforced female partnership - by turns warring, sisterly, tender, rivalrous - forms a bitter axis around which the tragedy of this…


Book cover of To Kill a Mockingbird
Book cover of Fireborne
Book cover of Illuminae

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