Here are 100 books that The Scarlet Thread fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love to cheer for underdogs, and young women who are in this category have my special devotion. As a child of the 1960s, I remember a time when women didn’t have the same rights and opportunities as men, and we still seem to be fighting it today. Coming from a trauma-based childhood myself, I find myself comparing and contrasting coping mechanisms. Luckily, I haven’t found it necessary to kill anyone with dragon stone or jacked-up hornets so far. It delights me when these girls win, whether they game the system or fight their way with guns and knives.
I loved these books. The mystery of this society and its strict divisions fascinated me. I related to Tris immediately and her need for more excitement than her Abnegation family could provide. The detachment felt by so many of the characters in their daily roles resonated in my soul as something I have felt as well when confined by societal definition.
As I reflected in our own society, those at the top scheme to gain power for themselves, regardless of the effect on the rest of the people. I was proud of Tris and her colleagues, who joined together to create a better, more just society.
The explosive debut by No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth.
DIVERGENT - a major motion picture series.
For sixteen-year-old Tris, the world changes in a heartbeat when she is forced to make a terrible choice. Turning her back on her family, Tris ventures out, alone, determined to find out where she truly belongs.
Shocked by the brutality of her new life, Tris can trust no one. And yet she is drawn to a boy who seems to both threaten and protect her. The hardest choices may yet lie ahead....
I write about aloneness and individuals, what it takes to connect to family and community, and how to hang on to the people we hold dear. This means I think a lot about points of view and personal perception. We often wonder: Have I got this right? Did they get my meaning? Does everybody feel this? And more often than not, everybody does. These interpretations are both personal and universal at the same time. We all fear loss; we all have to be brave to hold onto people we love and principles we value.
This book is about being brave. You know when a problem grows into a huge scary monster,right? It’s got you cornered and you don't think you'll ever get out alive, but with the rightattitude, you can. Our hero Phoenix is braver than his years, but in some ways he’s moregrown-up than his dad. In this retelling of the ancient Greek story of the minotaur, who crushesmortals and eats them for breakfast, we step into a monstrous virtual world created byPhoenix’s dad. I wanted to run, but most of all I wanted to stay and see what happened next.Will the minotaur eat Phoenix alive? I related to Phoenix trying to survive and trying to work outhis issues with his dad, because every one of us has to face the same difficult world and becourageous about it.
'Real life' or the death defying adventures of the Greek myths, with their heroes and monsters, daring deeds and narrow escapes - which would you choose?
For Phoenix it's easy. He hates his new home and the new school where he is bullied. He's embarrassed by his computer geek dad. But when he logs on to The Legendeer, the game his dad is working on, he can be a hero. He is Theseus fighting the terrifying Minotaur, or Perseus battling with snake-haired Medusa. It feels as though he's really there ? The Legendeer is more than just a game. Play…
I write about aloneness and individuals, what it takes to connect to family and community, and how to hang on to the people we hold dear. This means I think a lot about points of view and personal perception. We often wonder: Have I got this right? Did they get my meaning? Does everybody feel this? And more often than not, everybody does. These interpretations are both personal and universal at the same time. We all fear loss; we all have to be brave to hold onto people we love and principles we value.
I absolutely love this book. I read it years ago and it stays with me. I love it because the characters are completely batty and the story is so quirky, yet somehow it’s the truth and I wonder, are we Scots really like that? I fell for 13-year-old Justin quicker than falling off a slippery log over a stream when you're trying to fish out your soggy hat which you just dropped in the water. The world Justin inhabits is so crazy and yet he somehow manages to keep his head when his family and servants are losing theirs. It's another form of being brave, in this timeless world where time carries a curse, and of course, the story is really about saving people that we realize are precious to us.
Justin Thyme is a self-made billionaire living in a castle overlooking Loch Ness. The day he turns thirteen, he receives an anonymous gift: a fabulous watch with a puzzling message hidden on it. When he tells his father of his plans to build a time machine, the Laird of Thyme reveals tantalising fragments of past espionage and warns his son of a ruthless enemy keeping him under constant surveillance. At first, Justin fails to take Sir Willoughby seriously, but when a stranger arrives claiming to be his long-lost grandfather, Justin is wary - especially after his beloved Nanny insists the…
I write about aloneness and individuals, what it takes to connect to family and community, and how to hang on to the people we hold dear. This means I think a lot about points of view and personal perception. We often wonder: Have I got this right? Did they get my meaning? Does everybody feel this? And more often than not, everybody does. These interpretations are both personal and universal at the same time. We all fear loss; we all have to be brave to hold onto people we love and principles we value.
I've just discovered Fae Urban Fantasy and I'm absolutely hooked. I love this world and this writing partnership sparkles like endless glitter showers of fairy dust. I connected with student Noelle like a sister, and – you guessed it – by a quirk of fate, she finds herself in the land of the fae, and they are Bad People. Well, they're not all bad, but they can be every bit as mean and spiteful as mortals, even though they look pretty. I've read both books and I believe there's a third one coming out. Again, it's about being brave, confronting your problems, and holding on to people you love. I can't wait to see how the story turns out.
Abducted by a cruel Fae. Condemned to fight, or die. "My heart is still racing...an adrenaline filled gem." "Purchased this book on the off chance and so glad I did."
All college student Noelle Fidelis wants is a chance to be normal. To blend in at a party, without the crippling social anxieties that come from a history of abuse and insecurity. Instead, a chance encounter with a dark-alley creep turns into a terrifying prison sentence, after she's abducted by a royal Fae and condemned to fight against other supernatural inmates in a battle for survival. Her only allies are…
I had a lot of troubles as a kid, and my favorite escape was getting lost in fairy tales and mythology. For me, those stories were a window into ancient worlds full of strange rules and powers, where magic was real and nothing was outside the bounds of possibility. As an author, I get to build my own stories and worlds inspired by the tales I loved so much as a kid, and I’ve loved reading about new heroes and heroines whose tales are rooted in the powerful traditions of peoples from all over the globe. I’m happy to be sharing some of my recent favorite mythology-inspired books!
An absolutely unique story that takes the mythology of the Greek underworld and gives it a twist (or two). Clo only has her Dad. He’s always been a little different—as has she—but when he disappears and leaves her a ticket for half-passage across the sea, Clo finds herself stranded on a mysterious island with a weaver, a cat, and an odd little boy—Cary, who has secrets of his own.
I loved the stunning and strange machinations of Clo’s days on the island and working to unravel its hidden truths alongside her. She feels like a friend, and her dawning need to protect Cary is touching and relatable. The writing is beautiful, the imagery haunting, and Clo’s need to understand—and escape, is somehow both urgent and dream-like. Deep thinkers will love this book.
A spellbinding middle grade fantasy inspired by Greek mythology, for fans of The Girl Who Drank the Moon and The Book of Boy.
Clothilde has lived her whole life in the shadows with her (sometimes) thieving and (always) ailing father. But when he fails to meet her one morning, sending her instead a mysterious ticket of "half-paffage," Clo finds herself journeying across the sea to reunite with him. The ticket, however, leaves her on a sunless island populated only by creaking fishermen, a rumpled old woman, a piggish cat, and a moon-cheeked boy named Cary.
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
This book is brain candy. Rick’s writing style immediately pulled me into the story. First-person is hard to do right without going overboard, but Rick set the perfect balance of action and internal voice. It also helps that the relationship between Percy’s stepfather and mine was as close to identical as a fantasy novel can get.
And while I know it’s not the first to do it, this was the first middle-grade book I read where the main character was neurodivergent and dealing with a lot of the same issues that I did and that many of my students do as well.
The Lightning Thief: the First book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series.
The first bestselling book in Rick Riordan's phenomenally successful Percy Jackson series.
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. That's when things started really going wrong. Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends, and generally trying to stay alive.
Since I retired from lecturing in Classical Studies I’ve been writing more pieces on women in the ancient world, and also some plays. One of them, 189 Pieces, is about the Portland Vase, a beautiful example of Roman glass whose label in the British Museum tells us that it was owned by the Duke of Portland. This is true—he’d inherited it—but it was bought at great expense by his grandmother, the wonderful Duchessof Portland. Giving women their place in history has been my aim in much of my work. Nowadays I’m obsessed with female footwear, and Cinderella, Goody Two-Shoes, and Carrie Bradshaw take up a lot of my time.
Vernant was an influential scholar when I began writing about women in ancient Greece in the 1990s. His discussions of the social, political and religious institutions of the time, and their relationship with popular mythology, were informed by French structuralist theory. For me his analysis of the role of marriage in a society devoted to virgin goddesses was particularly stimulating.
In this groundbreaking study, Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece. Myth and Society in Ancient Greece takes us far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon to reveal a fundamentally other culture ― one of slavery, of masks and death, of scapegoats, of ritual hunting, and of ecstasies.
Vernant’s provocative discussions of various institutions and practices (including war, marriage, and sacrifice) detail the complex intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. The book concludes with Vernant’s authoritative genealogy of the study of myth from Antiquity to structuralism and…
There is more than one history of the human world and more than one high culture–but all those histories and cultures may contribute to a unified sense of being and human potential. We need to step outside our immediate world, history, culture, and sensibility to learn–as G.K. Chesterton remarked–that humanity can be great and even glorious under conditions and with beliefs and fancies far different from ours. Knowing this, we may also gain new insight into our familiar local world. We may end, in Kipling’s words, by realizing that in the endless opposition of We and They, We ourselves are only a sort of They!
I first encountered Otto’s book just before going to Oxford University in 1964, and there, I discovered a way of understanding ancient Greek devotion to their gods.
By Otto’s account, those gods were whole worlds of meaning, from sexual joy (Aphrodite) and homicidal fury (Ares) to more subtle visions of the world (Hermes, the traveler in Twilight) and (finally) Zeus as the guarantor of promises, and of hospitality.
He also introduced me to the idea that the Greeks saw “gods” in moments of sudden joy or inspiration: the lucky moment when–in the poet Pindar’s words–a god sheds a shining light on our usual dreamy life.
Appassionante e insuperata ricostruzione dell’universo religioso greco, questo libro avvicina sapientemente il lettore alle figure della religione olimpica – e al loro peculiare modo di manifestarsi – seguendo una duplice da un lato Otto esamina il culto dei dodici dèi olimpici (soffermandosi anzitutto su Atena, Apollo, Artemide, Afrodite, Ermete), dall’altro ce li presenta come esseri che, grazie alle loro divine epifanie – tanto diverse eppure così sottilmente collegate le une alle altre –, vivono una vita inesauribile, compiuta in sé. E ammirevole è la sua prosa allorché si confronta con le più enigmatiche fra le divinità, come nel famoso ritratto…
Since I retired from lecturing in Classical Studies I’ve been writing more pieces on women in the ancient world, and also some plays. One of them, 189 Pieces, is about the Portland Vase, a beautiful example of Roman glass whose label in the British Museum tells us that it was owned by the Duke of Portland. This is true—he’d inherited it—but it was bought at great expense by his grandmother, the wonderful Duchessof Portland. Giving women their place in history has been my aim in much of my work. Nowadays I’m obsessed with female footwear, and Cinderella, Goody Two-Shoes, and Carrie Bradshaw take up a lot of my time.
In this witty and intelligent book, broadcaster and novelist Natalie Haynes applies a woman’s mind to stories that in the past have been told to us mostly by men. She presents us with ten female characters who not only feature in ancient myths, but also have starring roles in later paintings, plays, novels, films, operas, and musicals. They include Pandora, Helen, Medusa, Eurydice, and Penelope: whether traditionally seen as victims or villains, all these women are explored in their ‘difficult, messy, murderous’ complexity.
'Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to!' - Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale
The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories.
Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories…
I have three lifelong passions, the first was reading, then writing, and then archaeology/history. To this end I studied and trained as an archaeologist before I sat down and decided to write stories set in the past as a way of bringing it to life. Of course, there had to be an adventure, a bit of a mystery, and a dash of magic to bring it all together. The books on my list are just a few of those that I have enjoyed reading during my hunt to get to know the past in intimate detail – on my own time travelling journey.
My love of ancient Greek heroes began with the old stop footage films of the 70s and early 80s.
The bravery, the adventure, and the mystery had me hooked at a young age. So, it was a delight to find a book that dealt with the heroes of the ancient Greeks in such an easy-to-read way. This book is not just a rehash of those much-loved tales such as Jason and the Argonauts or Odysseus, Stephen Fry has brought a more modern language to the stories making them relatable and relevant for today.
Mortals and Monsters. Quests and Adventures . . . ___________
There are Heroes - and then there are Greek Heroes.
Few mere mortals have ever embarked on such bold and heart-stirring adventures, overcome myriad monstrous perils, or outwitted scheming vengeful gods, quite as stylishly and triumphantly as Greek heroes.
In this companion to his bestselling Mythos, Stephen Fry brilliantly retells these dramatic, funny, tragic and timeless tales. Join Jason aboard the Argo as he quests for the Golden Fleece. See Atalanta - who was raised by bears - outrun any man before being tricked with golden apples. Witness wily Oedipus…
