Fans pick 100 books like The Ruthless Lady's Guide to Wizardry

My editor wrote to me a few years ago (mostly all-caps and !!!s) about a book called The Goblin Emperor, and had I read it, and didn’t she think I’d adore it? She was so convincing that I ordered a copy from my favorite indie bookstore right away and read it in a sitting. I almost cried when I realized Addison had written only one other book at that point—until a friend told me she was also the author Sarah Monette. I spent the next month reading everything in her oeuvre. But none I adored with my whole body being like I did The Goblin Emperor: its deep kindness, its gentleness, its world-building and warmth, its high stakes and heightened language, its arc of grace and growth. 

I used to say there were certain characters I wanted to be when I grew up, but that isn’t exactly true. It’s more like I want to be the book as a whole: its wisdom, humor, intricacy, plot, its ability to transport me utterly, to inhabit my mind with new, lifelong friends (or enemies), and to teach me—not only a single lesson upon the first reading, but many different lessons through the years. Cordelia’s Honor (sometimes sold separately as Shards of Honor and Barrayar) is one of those books. It’s the first book of the mighty Vorkosigan Saga by Bujold, which I have read. But if I’d never read the rest, this book alone would still gleam in my mind as something necessary, generous, and strangely infinite. 

Here If You Need Me is a non-fiction memoir I read years ago on a whim. It still sticks with me. A woman with four children is happily married to a State trooper training to be a minister. When he dies suddenly, she goes on to become a minister herself, working with search and rescue missions in the Maine woods while raising her children. Her intimate knowledge of grief, her vulnerability, and compassion, coupled with a life of service and family, moved me so deeply that I often call upon the memory of this book in my life to metaphorically “get down on the floor with those who weep, and give them tea if they want it.”

Terry Pratchett’s character Tiffany Aching grows, over the series of books she stars in, into the sort of person I long to be (culminating, for me in I Shall Wear Midnight). It’s not so much that I want to be a teenaged witch in a made-up land. No, it’s Terry Pratchett’s best thoughts that I want to occupy and absorb, the grace and rage and clarity he gives his main character to “open her eyes, and then open them again.” All of Pratchett’s wise and wily witches contribute their gifts to Tiffany until she has the best of each of them: bawdy humor, strict necessity, duty, dancing, power, and humanity.

It doesn’t take much beyond the term “sapphic witches” to get me really excited about a book. Additionally, we’ve got elemental magic, blood rituals, and the store in Salem where the main character works is called the “Fly by Night Cauldron” and I was completely sold. This is a light, fun read that I thoroughly enjoyed. I was drawn in by the conflict, not only with the main villain, but a tense history with an ex, and a potential new romance. I really enjoy finding fantasy books where the queerness of the character is not an “issue” or questioned at all. It was something I badly needed as a teen, and it's a relief to be finally getting this kind of thing in literature. I wish I could send it to my younger self!

I found the magic system to be delightful as well, with the elemental powers reminding me… show more.

I absolutely love this fast-paced, adorable novel-in-verse, which is about two very different girls, Kate and Tam, who fall in “like,” learning a lot about themselves in the process. I really enjoyed watching Kate, who comes off as a stereotypical cheerleader, and Tam, a tall jock, learn to test their assumptions about each other and themselves.

It’s a heartwarming story with a lot of depth, and it’s told in quick poems that pack a real emotional punch. This verse novel holds a special place in my heart, and I recommend it to everyone who will listen!

She Drives Me Crazy does a fantastic job mashing up two of the greatest tropes—enemies-to-lovers and fake dating—and combining them with a spin on the classic sports romance genre by having both basketball player Scottie and cheerleader Irene be girls. It’s not all fun and games—Scottie is nursing a breakup in a painfully relatable fashion—but it is a lot of fun and games, and Quindlen definitely knows how to write romance, too. 

Jenna Miller’s books read like the best sort of secret between friends, except the friends are anyone who is at least a little bit nerdy—and as a fat nerdy person, I was instantly in.

The main character Jordan felt so relatable to me; everything from the Doctor Who references to being kind of in love with your ex-best friend to the realistic fears of a queer, fat teenager just trying to get by hit just right. As someone who also grew up queer and fat, I had to finish this one in a day!

After some challenges with reading the dialect, I became so intrigued by this heart-wrenching story of two teenage girls, one Trinidadian and one African-American, who come together unexpectedly in cold Minneapolis. I loved learning about their cultures, and I loved how they grew close despite their differences and supported each other through the crises of lost family and childhood cancer.

The language and pace beguiled me as a reader. The girls' viewpoints of their past and present worlds were engaging. I felt the heroism in each of them, one facing death, one trying to reunite with her family.

This historical novel also explores the lives of lesbians in the 1950s, but in a very different way: it is told in dual narratives, from the point of view of two teen girls growing up and coming out six decades apart. In 1955, eighteen-year-old Janet finds a series of books about women who love other women: lesbian pulp novels. Sixty-two years later, Abby is studying classic 1950s lesbian pulp fiction. It’s a cleverly constructed story and I love how the two stories are woven together.

From a queer history perspective, the book is well-researched and illuminates the danger and fear faced by so many queer people during the Lavender Scare, and the important role played by lesbian pulp novels in a time when young queer girls rarely saw others like themselves.