Here are 99 books that The Last Unicorn fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love mythological creatures! I grew up gravitating toward fantasy books but because I have a narcissistic parent, I got teased for reading them. To avoid the teasing, I ended up reading a lot of mythology because that was a “safe” fantasy option; reading mythology was “educational” rather than “silly.” When I got older, I discovered that there’s a whole category of fantasy books that retell myths from alternative points of view. This subgenre opened new doors of understanding and empathy for me. Reading old stories from new perspectives opens my eyes to a myriad of different types of people and broadens my view of the world. And I’ve been reading them ever since.
Grendel is the original monster from English literature who killed many warriors and did battle with Beowulf.
This poignant book tells the story from his point of view. It’s never completely clear what Grendel is, only that he seems to exist somewhere between humans and beasts. He is frustrated by how emotionally drawn he is to the singing he hears in the humans’ mead hall but is equally frustrated by the stupidity of the animals he encounters.
He knows from first-hand experience how cruel men can be but because he is so alone in the world, he can’t stop himself from seeking them out. Reading this book is a hard look at loneliness, a long walk at the side of a creature whose very existence is painful.
This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.
"An extraordinary achievement."—New York Times
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
I love mythological creatures! I grew up gravitating toward fantasy books but because I have a narcissistic parent, I got teased for reading them. To avoid the teasing, I ended up reading a lot of mythology because that was a “safe” fantasy option; reading mythology was “educational” rather than “silly.” When I got older, I discovered that there’s a whole category of fantasy books that retell myths from alternative points of view. This subgenre opened new doors of understanding and empathy for me. Reading old stories from new perspectives opens my eyes to a myriad of different types of people and broadens my view of the world. And I’ve been reading them ever since.
The story of two mystical creatures stuck in 1899 New York who have to make their own way in the world. Despite their different natures, they become unlikely friends and have to work together to survive.
While I enjoyed the perspective of both supernatural beings in this book, I found the golem especially engaging. Through her eyes, the reader gets an amazingly detailed view of turn-of-the-century New York as well as the intricacies of human behavior.
The jinni faces different challenges—he’s lost a chunk of his memory—but he also has to adapt to life among people. Wrapped in a rich tapestry of historical details, the story walks us through their processes of acclimating to human society and facing the dangers of their pasts.
'One of only two novels I've ever loved whose main characters are not human' BARBARA KINGSOLVER
For fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock.
'By far my favourite book of of the year' Guardian
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.
I’m one of those writers who’d identify themselves as readers first, and as an oft-bullied queer kid growing up in Singapore, I often found refuge and salvation in writers whose works were able to refashion and reimagine our lives, however intimately or grandly. I grew up devouring fantasy of all kinds; I went from Enid Blyton to Charmed, for instance, before discovering in my later adolescence the manifold possibilities of magical realism and the other expanses contained within the realm(s) of speculative fiction. Many of the books in this particular list were especially useful in crafting my second novel, Lovelier, Lonelier.
In my head, there’s a high I’m chasing, and it’s the high I got when I finally finished David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, the high of one synapse in my head connecting with one another in a bright feverish spark as I volley from one page to the next, one character to the next, one era to the next.
If I had to summarise what the book even is, I’d say it’s reincarnation and samsara in the hands of Mitchell’s trademark ventriloquism, arranged into this wonderfully nested set of Russian doll narratives. It sounds very smart and full of grand ideas about the nature of human suffering, and it is! But it is also deeply romantic and about the peculiar destiny that can tie one human soul to another all throughout eternity.
Six lives. One amazing adventure. The audio publication of one of the most highly acclaimed novels of 2004. 'Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies...' A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of CLOUD ATLAS hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great…
My love and passion for embracing a cozy and romantic view of life is so strong that I built my entire business around it! I am a recipe developer, cookbook author, and content creator. My unique take on cooking and baking is by adding touches of fantasy, cottagecore, and history into my recipes and other creative work. This has led me to write all about living a more cozy lifestyle for the last 10 years! Romanticizing my life with the cottagecore aesthetic is how I find joy and comfort in a chaotic world, and I hope that can inspire others to embrace living their own magical lives!
The world of Howl’s Moving Castle immediately invites you into a place that feels cozy and magical. This book is easily one of my favorites because of its low-stakes plot and wonderfully quirky characters.
Jones takes you on a leisurely stroll through the world of the book’s protagonist, Sophie, a rather awkward 18-year-old girl who believes she is doomed to fail at life because she was born the eldest of three.
This story is refreshingly original and has inspired me time and again to love living a life built around so many of the lovely cottagecore aesthetics featured inside its pages.
Now an animated movie from Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki, the oscar-winning director of Spirited Away
In this beloved modern classic, young Sophie Hatter from the land of Ingary catches the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a spell...
Deciding she has nothing more to lose, Sophie makes her way to the moving castle that hovers on the hills above her town, Market Chipping. But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl, whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the souls of young girls...
There Sophie meets Michael, Howl's apprentice, and Calcifer…
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…
I’m most drawn to stories of overcoming. My own childhood was about exactly that-overcoming a multi-generational inheritance of family separation and orphaned children. When I wrote my first book about that story, A Chance in the World, an unanticipated magic unfolded: I began to receive stories of strangers from all across the world who wrote to tell me their own story of overcoming. Each and every day I hear from someone and the steady stream of those stories of overcoming affirms something I have to come to learn: we all have a story and none of us look like that story.
At first glance, it appears to be a book about rabbits but it’s much more about humanity.
Watership Down was my childhood favorite story. Its themes of home, overcoming incredible obstacles, and finding a few good friends along the way are lessons I still carry with me. When I first read it as a young boy, I was lost in the gaps of the foster care system.
This book gave me a vision – and a plan – for how to overcome it. Those lessons apply to all of us and are desperately needed in a world that too often bends towards cynicism and chaos.
One of the best-loved children's classics of all time, this is the complete, original story of Watership Down.
Something terrible is about to happen to the warren - Fiver feels sure of it. And Fiver's sixth sense is never wrong, according to his brother Hazel. They had to leave immediately, and they had to persuade the other rabbits to join them.
And so begins a long and perilous journey of a small band of rabbits in search of a safe home. Fiver's vision finally leads them to Watership Down, but here they face their most difficult challenge of all .…
As a debut novelist at the age of fifty-seven, I’ve spent most of my life as a reader, not an author. My love of reading began with The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder and flourished when I discovered the genre of fantasy with The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin. Is it any wonder I giggle with delight when I stumble upon a book that makes me believe in magic again? When an author weaves the supernatural into their story in a natural way, my expectations shift, and my heart opens to the power of the unknown to teach me something new and take me somewhere extraordinary.
This book is always on my list of favorite reads. Morgenstern invites us to inhabit a world where magic not only seems possible but wholly believable. I’ve read this book numerous times, and it always casts a spell over me so completely that the rest of my troubles disappear as quickly and mysteriously as the circus moves to another town.
The competition-turned-love story between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, moves the plot forward at a driving pace while enchanting subplots abound. Whenever I feel like I need to rekindle the magic in my own life, I pull this novel off the shelf.
Rediscover the million-copy bestselling fantasy read with a different kind of magic, now in a stunning anniversary edition to mark 10 years since it's paperback debut.
The circus arrives without warning. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Against the grey sky the towering tents are striped black and white. A sign hanging upon an iron gates reads:
Opens at Nightfall Closes at Dawn
Full of breath-taking amazements and open only at night, Le Cirque des Reves seems to cast a spell over all who wander its circular paths. But behind the glittering acrobats, fortune-tellers…
I’ve always loved portal fantasy. The idea that you could go on this great adventure and be transported into another world, really speaks to my inner child. That’s why I write portal fantasy. I wanted to create a series of worlds that could give readers a place to escape to. My therapist tells me to “speak” to the child version of myself. My books are my way of doing that. I get to give my child self a place to escape to, a grand adventure to go on, and a large cast of characters to call family. I hope the books on this list help you escape into a great adventure too!
The Neverending Story was always one of my favorites growing up. The idea that a kid could get pulled into this amazing world full of adventure really spoke to me as a kid (I’m sure you’re starting to see the theme here). I loved that I could follow along and it felt like I was also going on these grand adventures.
Read the book that inspired the classic coming-of-age film! From award-winning German author Michael Ende, The Neverending Story is a classic tale of one boy and the book that magically comes to life.
When Bastian happens upon an old book called The Neverending Story, he's swept into the magical world of Fantastica--so much that he finds he has actually become a character in the story! And when he realizes that this mysteriously enchanted world is in great danger, he also discovers that he is the one chosen to save it. Can Bastian overcome the barrier between reality and his imagination…
I have been an ardent fantasy reader since I was very young, and have been a writer for nearly as long. The idea of being able to weave together an original narrative that can be entertaining, educational, and instructive at the same time is a concept that has fascinated me well into adulthood, and one that I continue to explore in my reading and writing to this day, whether short form or long; fiction or non.
This is one book that truly qualifies as a “modern classic” of YA literature.
This is the book that launched what would go on to be a 22-book series spanning some 25 years. But really, this book is a perfectly good story all by itself. You need not read any other in the series to enjoy this tale of heroism and courage set in a richly adorned world of woodland creatures and villainous monsters.
The vivid imagery Jacques uses in his writing makes the whole world of Redwall really come to life. You might say, as Jacques himself said, that he was trying to “paint pictures with words.”
5
authors picked
Redwall
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why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
The first book in the beloved, bestselling Redwall saga - soon to be a major Netflix movie!
Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by the evil, one-eyed rat warlord Cluny the Scourge and his battle-hardened horde of predators.
Cluny is certain that Redwall will fall easily to his fearsome army but he hasn't bargained for the courage and strength of the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends . . .
One of TIME magazine's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time
'Not since Roald Dahl have children filled their shelves so compulsively' -…
I was a wandering son. I learned that the trajectory of life is not ordained like the flight of an arrow once released from the bow. Rather it is a voyage on a broad sea encountering tempests, doldrums, and unexpected beasts including ourselves; sometimes we sail with or against the wind, but we always need to stay true to our compass, committed to a worthy destination. We learn about life by setting challenging goals, trying difficult things, by getting dirty, and by failing. The story lies at the interface between dark & light, good & evil. We value tales that stretch the antipodes of the human experience and characters who reach beyond themselves.
This collection of short stories remains an elegant and much-loved classic. Although Kipling was the product of an imperial era, he had a profound understanding of India and he was able to capture the wonder of the land and its people in these memorable tales. The wonderful allegorical array of characters in the stories includes the brave & kind-hearted Mowgli (the man-cub), Akela the wolf and Gray Brother, Kaa the python, Bagheera the black panther, Baloo the bear, the Bandar-log monkeys, and, of course, Mowglis nemesis, the malevolent tiger, Shere Khan. These lovely tales remain timely & heartwarming to those of us, young and old.
Puffin Classics - the world's favourite stories - relaunched with exciting new covers.
The Jungle Book is a classic story of friendship between man and beast. Saved from the jaws of the evil tiger Shere Khan, young Mowgli is adopted by a wolf pack and taught the law of the jungle by lovable old Baloo the bear and Bhageera the panther. The adventures of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the snake-fighting mongoose, little Toomai and the elephant's secret dance, and Kotick the white seal are all part of Mowgli's extraordinary journey with his animal friends.
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