Here are 100 books that Whale Talk fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was a marathon runner, and then I became a cyclist and started racing bicycles, especially ultra events: 24-hour and 12-hour races. I love activities that require guts and perseverance. Characters who dig deep to accomplish what they want are the ones with whom I want to spend my reading and writing time.
Writing a book, doing good research, and being a good friend require the same characteristics. I know the healing power of activity and of pushing ourselves to excellence. I also know the huge benefit of finding friends who share our passions. When we’ve got those things, we can heal, we can strive, and we can thrive.
At first, I wasn’t sure about this book’s “voicy” urban slang. However, I fell more and more for “Ghost” (Castle, the main character, who has a cousin named “King”) as I learned about his painful history.
Castle is a lightning-fast runner, and I’m a sucker for characters that have passion for the athletic event they love, especially individual sports but on a team—cycling, swimming, running, boxing, fencing, etc. I couldn’t help but root for him, even when I winced at many of his decisions.
Although far from perfect, he’s kind, which allows him to fit into his new “tribe”: the track team. I was completely sucked in. It’s a fast read with a lot of depth and a cast of rich and varied characters. I loved it.
Running. That's all Ghost (real name Castle Cranshaw) has ever known. But Ghost has been running for the wrong reasons -until he meets Coach, an ex-Olympic Medallist who sees something in Ghost: crazy natural talent. If Ghost can stay on track, literally and figuratively, he could be the best sprinter in the city. Can Ghost harness his raw talent for speed, or will his past finally catch up to him?
READ THE RUN SERIES: Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for…
I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in western Sonoma County, California, surrounded by forests, rivers, and the Pacific Ocean. Yet this idyllic setting was shaken by the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the Vietnam War; civil rights riots; Nixon and Watergate; the Pentagon Papers; Weather Underground bombings; Patti Hearst with a machine gun; and four students killed at Kent State. These events led me to major in Politics at UC Santa Cruz and become an investigative journalist. I soon realized the U.S. is built not only on equal rights and freedom but also on systemic disparity, injustice, and violence.
Set within the greatest mass migration in American history, Steinbeck’s 1939 classic follows the Joad family as they join nearly three million others who escape the Dust Bowl of the American Midwest.
Usurious banks have foreclosed and crushed the bereft farmers. More than 200,000 refugees head for California, and the Joads join them in an ambling caravan of rattling jalopies. Young Rose of Sharon moves pregnant across the continent, emblematic of both the promise and the peril of the human condition. She’s surrounded by family and hangers-on who ford the wasted continent, only to face a glut of labor in the vast farms of California and the brutal exploitation of the owner classes. The Joads are slapped with the bitter understanding that the promise of California exists largely in myth. Yet always Steinbeck returns to the promises of human connection and even happiness that beckon from just over the next…
'I've done my damndest to rip a reader's nerves to rags, I don't want him satisfied.'
Shocking and controversial when it was first published, The Grapes of Wrath is Steinbeck's Pultizer Prize-winning epic of the Joad family, forced to travel west from Dust Bowl era Oklahoma in search of the promised land of California. Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and powerlessness, yet out of their struggle Steinbeck created a drama that is both intensely human and majestic in its scale and moral vision.
I’ve always been a voracious reader of the news and history, consuming everything from Johnny Tremain to Slaughterhouse-Five, from old-fashioned newspapers to online news feeds. I’ve also always loved writing fiction. I aligned my interests in history, the news, and writing in my first novel, The Blood Lie, based on a hate crime in my hometown in the 1920s. Since then, I’ve written two other novels based on true events: Ripped Away and my novel, listed below.
I love how this book portrays young people intelligently speaking truth to power…even when that power is the teacher grading you…even when that teacher is well-liked…even when some oppose your ideas.
This novel showed me what antisemitism (and bigotry in general) can look like in a contemporary high school, a place already brewing with emotions, factions, and hormones. The characters are so nuanced and realistic that I felt I was right there with them in the classroom and beyond.
This book inspired many productive conversations with my family and friends.
Inspired by a real-life incident, this riveting novel explores the dangerous impact discrimination and antisemitism have on one community when a school assignment goes terribly wrong.
Would you defend the indefensible?
That's what seniors Logan March and Cade Crawford are asked to do when a favorite teacher instructs a group of students to argue for the Final Solution--the Nazi plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.
Logan and Cade decide they must take a stand, and soon their actions draw the attention of the student body, the administration, and the community at large. But not everyone feels as Logan…
I was a marathon runner, and then I became a cyclist and started racing bicycles, especially ultra events: 24-hour and 12-hour races. I love activities that require guts and perseverance. Characters who dig deep to accomplish what they want are the ones with whom I want to spend my reading and writing time.
Writing a book, doing good research, and being a good friend require the same characteristics. I know the healing power of activity and of pushing ourselves to excellence. I also know the huge benefit of finding friends who share our passions. When we’ve got those things, we can heal, we can strive, and we can thrive.
I love Pippa, the main character, and just want to hang out with her non-stop. Like in my book, the main character is searching desperately for another young woman who has disappeared. Along the way, Pippa gets more and more drawn to the guy she’s searching with—just like Sadie does, which, for me, added to the excitement and the non-stop page-turning element.
But the search is full of heart-stopping moments of danger. I couldn’t put this down. It’s a thriller, a mystery, and full of friendship and love. The best possible combination!
THE MUST-READ MULTIMILLION BESTSELLING MYSTERY SERIES• Everyone is talking about A Good Girl's Guide to Murder! With shades of Serial and Making a Murderer this is the story about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect.
Everyone in Fairview knows the story.
Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.
But she can't shake the feeling that there was more…
I was a marathon runner, and then I became a cyclist and started racing bicycles, especially ultra events: 24-hour and 12-hour races. I love activities that require guts and perseverance. Characters who dig deep to accomplish what they want are the ones with whom I want to spend my reading and writing time.
Writing a book, doing good research, and being a good friend require the same characteristics. I know the healing power of activity and of pushing ourselves to excellence. I also know the huge benefit of finding friends who share our passions. When we’ve got those things, we can heal, we can strive, and we can thrive.
I have read this book umpteen times. Every time, I am hooked by the second page. Eric “Moby” Calhoune is the best kind of friend every one of us needs—and he proves that in absolute devotion to Sarah Byrnes, whose childhood was the stuff of nightmares.
Eric is also a stellar swimmer, but he’s got no self-delusions. He says, “I’m not a great swimmer, but I’m good—a lot better than you’d think, looking at me…I also like the wake I create for the guy in the next lane.”
Who can’t love that guy? This is one of the saddest books I’ve ever read, and also the funniest—I cry; I laugh on almost every page. This is a powerful, horrible, beautiful story.
Called a "masterpiece" in a starred review from School Library Journal, award-winning author Chris Crutcher's acclaimed Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes is an enduring classic.
This bestselling novel is about love, loyalty, and friendship in the face of adversity. "Superb plotting, extraordinary characters, and cracking narrative make this novel unforgettable."-Publishers Weekly
Sarah Byrnes and Eric Calhoune have been friends for years. When they were children, his weight and her scars made them both outcasts. Now Sarah Byrnes-the smartest, toughest person Eric has ever known-sits silent in a hospital. Eric must uncover the terrible secret she's hiding before its dark current…
I was a marathon runner, and then I became a cyclist and started racing bicycles, especially ultra events: 24-hour and 12-hour races. I love activities that require guts and perseverance. Characters who dig deep to accomplish what they want are the ones with whom I want to spend my reading and writing time.
Writing a book, doing good research, and being a good friend require the same characteristics. I know the healing power of activity and of pushing ourselves to excellence. I also know the huge benefit of finding friends who share our passions. When we’ve got those things, we can heal, we can strive, and we can thrive.
This is one of my favorite books ever. I’ve read it many times, and it’s 500 pages long. The voice of the first-person narrator is so delightful I get hooked on the first page. Set in South Africa, Peekay is the ultimate underdog.
Emotionally deserted by his mom at boarding school, he doesn’t even know his own name and calls himself P.K. He’s a white English kid bullied by the dominant Dutch-descendant Boers as Apartheid (Governmental violent, oppressive racism) becomes law.
Peekay grows to become a champion boxer and champions the oppressed. I became obsessed with South Africa and could not look away from this story. It’s a wonderful example of a novel about an athlete, and even when I don’t like the sport, I adore the character and story.
“The Power of One has everything: suspense, the exotic, violence; mysticism, psychology and magic; schoolboy adventures, drama.” –The New York Times
“Unabashedly uplifting . . . asserts forcefully what all of us would like to believe: that the individual, armed with the spirit of independence–‘the power of one’–can prevail.” –Cleveland Plain Dealer
In 1939, as Hitler casts his enormous, cruel shadow across the world, the seeds of apartheid take root in South Africa. There, a boy called Peekay is born. His childhood is marked by humiliation and abandonment, yet he vows to survive and conceives heroic dreams–which are nothing compared…
I spent 16 years teaching in NYC public schools, six of them on Rikers Island the world's biggest jail where I helped incarcerated teens improve their reading and writing skills. That experience helped to launch me on my own writing career. The job of the author? To hold up a mirror to society and reflect upon the page what the reader may not have experienced yet or missed seeing in the world outside the borders of a book.
Booth is an extraordinary writer and Tyrell is her signature story. Tyrell is a young man living under incredible pressure with a family that needs him to have both feet on the ground. But he's always on the verge of going the wrong way. Will the need for fast money put him in prison like his father? Booth is in complete command of her characters, story and pacing here. A marvelous book that will make you grateful for your own choices in life.
An astonishing new voice in teen literature, writing what is sure to be one of the most talked-about debuts of the year.
Tyrell is a young African-American teen who can't get a break. He's living (for now) with his spaced-out mother and little brother in a homeless shelter. His father's in jail. His girlfriend supports him, but he doesn't feel good enough for her -- and seems to be always on the verge of doing the wrong thing around her. There's another girl at the homeless shelter who is also after him, although the desires there are complicated. Tyrell feels…
I spent 16 years teaching in NYC public schools, six of them on Rikers Island the world's biggest jail where I helped incarcerated teens improve their reading and writing skills. That experience helped to launch me on my own writing career. The job of the author? To hold up a mirror to society and reflect upon the page what the reader may not have experienced yet or missed seeing in the world outside the borders of a book.
Griffin is an incredibly sensitive and revealing writer who touches raw emotions. This is my favorite title of his. It's an urban romance between two teens who seemingly don't belong together, bolstered by an incredible bond with a dog. Read it. Love it. Then find yourself wondering what other gems Griffin has penned.
A heartbreaking urban romance from award-winning author Paul Griffin
Fifteen-year-olds Cece and Mack didn't expect to fall in love. She's a sensitive A student; he's a high school dropout. But soon they're spending every moment together, bonding over a rescued dog, telling their secrets, making plans for the future. Everything is perfect. Until Mack makes a horrible mistake, and suddenly the future they'd planned becomes impossible. In this stark new reality, both of them must find hope in the memories of what they had, to survive when the person they love can't stay.
As a Korean transracial adoptee, it seems like I’ve always been thinking about family, or even if I didn’t want to, other people’s intrusive questions about my family makeup forced me to. More than solely thinking about my own family–whether my Korean biological family or my white adoptive family–it led me to be curious about the broader systems, policies, and practices behind something that seems so personal and private. It’s no surprise that I formalized my inquiry into the social world by becoming a sociologist and professor. As a sociologist, my primary research interests are race, identity, and belonging, and yes, Korean transnational transracial adoption is part of that focus.
I love exploring the idea of how life might be completely different if… if I had made different choices, if my parents had made different choices, if something seemingly inconsequential had or hadn’t happened.
Shannon’s book took me on a fantastical journey into her own imaginings of the alternate lives she could have had as an adoptee, and by extension, it made me think about the possibilities for my own life differently. As adoptees, sometimes we don’t allow ourselves the luxury of even imagining these possibilities; Shannon’s book offered a safe space to do just that.
Dream Country author Shannon Gibney returns with The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, a book woven from her true story of growing up as a mixed-Black transracial adoptee and fictional story of Erin Powers, the name Shannon was given at birth, a child raised by a white, closeted lesbian.
At its core, the novel is a tale of two girls on two different timelines occasionally bridged by a mysterious portal and their shared search for a complete picture of their origins. Gibney surrounds that story with reproductions of her own adoption documents, letters, family photographs, interviews, medical…
I’m a Chinese Vietnamese American author who writes about the Asian girls I never saw in books as a kid. Growing up in Southern California, I was part of an Asian community that was extremely diverse—a reality that was rarely reflected in American pop culture. For years, I longed to see messy, flawed, fully humanized Asian characters in all different kinds of stories, not just the typical child-of-immigrant narratives. As a result, I now spend a lot of time thinking about representation (whether I want to or not!), and I’m always looking for writers who pull it off with nuance and realism. I hope you’ll find these books are great examples of that.
The Other Side of Perfectis about a young ballet dancer, Alina, who suffers a life-changing injury and must learn to deal with her multilayered, sometimes unsympathetic, anger.
Even though its themes are heavy, I somehow couldn’t put this one down. The characters are so real (and often funny), and every conflict unfurls with realistic nuance, sometimes devastatingly so.
Mariko Turk’s refusal to simplify emotions—even when exploring painful topics like racism—earns this book a standing ovation from me.
For fans of Sarah Dessen and Mary H.K. Choi, this lyrical and emotionally driven novel follows Alina, a young aspiring dancer who suffers a devastating injury and must face a world without ballet—as well as the darker side of her former dream.
Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but then a terrifying fall shatters her leg—and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it.
After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly…
