53 books like Till the Stars Fall

I recommend this because it’s hard.

Achieving happily-ever-after after betrayal isn’t for the faint of heart and this book addresses that. You get the feels and, frankly, you suffer a little bit.

The hero isn’t likable and the reader has to learn to see what she saw. His point of view gives a special “yes, this” quality to the story. 

I love this story, although my heart was breaking the whole time I read it.

Sam and Rachel’s dream of a houseful of kids is going to come true, at least for 12 days, although it’s already too late to salvage their marriage. Too much has happened…or hasn’t.

Rachel and Sam have already faced more loss and disappointment than they can bear, but it’s amazing what the heart can handle when it needs to, albeit with lots of cracks and scar tissue.

And it’s Christmas, after all… 

This is written by one of my favorite authors of Amish stories.

There is much heartache in this story, but that goes along with the marriage resurrected theme; regardless of what happens, the story of a marriage disintegrating is painful.

While there is never doubt that Judith and Isaac’s relationship will survive, the story of how is captivating. 

I love reading about long marriages gone awry, and Mrs. Matlock definitely has a way of telling the story.

Molly and Tommy Lee are both mad, and it’s the story not just of them but of their family, too, and of the town of Valentine.

It’s easy reading, and the best part is that it’s only one novel placed in Valentine—there are others!

I remember as a boy weeping at the end of Where the Red Fern Grows, not because the dogs died, but because Billy Colman returned decades later to find the rusted axe from that fateful night still stuck in the tree. Great books show us time isn’t linear; it’s like an accordion folding over on itself, so a pivotal moment from our past can, in some mysterious way, always feel present. Here. Somehow on the tip of time’s tongue. It makes you ache with the fullness of your story, your life. The ending of Ordinary Grace did that to me. As I turned the final pages, I wept, my kids pounding on the locked door of the bedroom, and my own childhood pounding on the door of my heart. 

One of the biggest worries as the Civil War wrapped up was that Confederate troops might disappear into the Appalachian Mountains, where they could conduct guerrilla raids with relative impunity. As a result, the war could have been extended for years, maybe even decades, as the insurgents crept out of their strongholds to conduct hit and run raids. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee and Pete Longstreet reminded Southerners they lost the war. It was time to get on with their lives.

Most southern veterans accepted the situation. However, a few, like Jesse and Frank James and the Younger brothers, couldn’t accept defeat. So they holed up in the backwoods of Missouri and fought a new kind of war using tactics they’d learned under William Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson.

Sound familiar? It’s the same situation that has allowed terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda to… show more.

I admit it. I read the Hannah Swensen books by Joanna Fluke all out of order.

Key Lime Pie Murder is the ninth book in the series, but the first one I read. I picked it up because I love Key Lime Pie! Joanna Fluke delivers in this murder mystery full of laughs, twisty turns, and delicious desserts. If you’re looking for a good place to start reading this series and you’re not committed to starting at the beginning, try a little Key Lime Pie.

Unspeakable Things is based on a true crime from Jess Lourey’s own small, Minnesota hometown.

Set in the 1980s, Cassie McDowell’s life on a farm with her sister and parents looks like a perfect childhood. She loves school, has a crush on the nicest boy… But when local boys start to go missing and the haunting crimes become a pall over this idyllic childhood and the more Cassie learns about what is happening, the more she realizes that the monster she feared under the bed may be real.

The point of view of 13-year-old Cassie draws you back to the age when we make that subtle but permanent shift from childhood into the brutal reality of the adult world. Fraught and tense, this is the kind of story that stayed with me long after I read the final page. 

Jim Northrup, Fond du lac Ojibwe author, was my writing mentor from the time I met him in 1991 until he passed away in 2015. He would always ask, “What are you writing today?” That was his way of encouraging me to keep writing. His crime novel, Dirty Copper is the story of Luke Warmwater, who returns to the Reservation after serving in Vietnam. Luke becomes a deputy sheriff on the Rez and sees firsthand the war raging below the appearance of peace.

I would listen to Jim talk about his writing and the progress he was making on his story as he wrote it. Listening to him encouraged me to keep going with my writing. Jim’s way of storytelling through the written word is something I have tried to emulate.

A master of nonfiction crime writing, William Swanson uses his W.A. Winter pen name for fictional works, including this 2022 book that clung to my thoughts weeks after the last page. Based loosely on a Minnesota crime spree in the 1950s, Winter takes readers into the mind of Joe Lavoie—the wheelchair-bound lone survivor of three brothers who engaged in a shootout with police in 1953. Set in 1991, 38 years after the crippling police gunshot, the taut writing takes you into Joe’s mind and explores his dysfunctional family on what turns out to be his last stand.