Here are 92 books that Wundersmith fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up in a quiet corner of Welsh suburbia where nothing ever seemed to happen, so I quickly fell in love with stories that transported me to other places–worlds full of magic, mystery, and excitement. Now, I write my own stories, and those ingredients are still my favorites. I love exploring them in my writing and in the stories of others.
I thought Hogwarts was special until I discovered the magical city of Nevermoor–a whole society filled with intrigue, surprises, and whimsical twists. (Giant talking cats, anyone?)
The central mystery is also gripping stuff, as cursed child Morrigan grapples with her powers and the dark presence of a powerful evil lurking just out of sight.
A breathtaking, enchanting new series by debut author Jessica Townsend, about a cursed girl who escapes death and finds herself in a magical world--but is then tested beyond her wildest imagination.
Morrigan Crow is cursed. Having been born on Eventide, the unluckiest day for any child to be born, she's blamed for all local misfortunes, from hailstorms to heart attacks--and, worst of all, the curse means that Morrigan is doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday.
But as Morrigan awaits her fate, a strange and remarkable man named Jupiter North appears. Chased by black-smoke hounds and shadowy hunters…
As the saying goes, I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you. Ahem. Not actually. Breaking cover doesn't typically demand killing people. But I might lose my security clearance and my diplomatic immunity in Fairy. Which I don't want to do, so shall we say I have a lively imagination and no personal knowledge about spy craft or espionage either in this world or in Fairy? Promise. I know nothing. And anyway, you can't prove it!
This one is a great example of a middle-grade fantasy that deserves more attention. It pulled me right in and wouldn’t let go with its authentic Irish folklore and vivid narrative. Author Pat O’Shea is from Ireland and the sense of place is rich with history and atmosphere.
Brigit’s spunk is a perfect counterpoint to Pidge’s sober personality, and they were my friends. We were on an adventure together.
Set in the world of Irish mythology, The Hounds of the Morrigan tells of the coming of the great queen, the Morrigan, from out of the west to free the snake Olc Glas, and to bring destruction to the world. Two children, Pidge and Brigit, are chosen to thwart the Morrigan.
The theme of this list is so important to me as an independently published author. Ever since I was about 14 years old I knew I wanted to tell stories, and my way, so even then I was looking into indie publishing. The idea of offering my books up to the traditional publishing chopping block, to be edited and mulled into what’s most marketable, scared me so much! I didn’t want to tell my stories another person’s way. So here we are, and I’m giving you guys a list of indie recommendations whose authors feel very much the same way. We just want to tell our stories. And have control over how that’s done. ;)
Jesikah Sundin is one of my absolute favorite indie authors. Not only are her pages rich with easter eggs and factual knowledge, she weaves them together in a magical way that makes her stories utterly impossible to put down. Of Heart and Stone is technically the second book in the Ealdspell Cycle, but as they’re standalones, you can read them out of order just fine. And this Snow White retelling is so worth the read. Not only does she intermingle a world of technology and magic, she does it so seamlessly it feels completely natural. Add in that she writes delightful slow-burn romance, and add in the feminist vibes that make her stories deeper still, and truly, you’ll inhale the whole series.
She has a heart of stone. A heart he is fated by the faeries to break.
Eirwen Blackvein grew up in a dwarven mining camp at the edge of the map. A perfect place to hide an elven princess destined to destroy a queen and save a kingdom at war, as foretold in a seer’s magic mirror. Except, Eirwen doesn’t know she is the lost princess. Only that she was found as a newborn with her heart carved out. And why she now possesses a heart of stone in her chest.
Eleven-year-old Sierra just wants a normal life. After her military mother returns from the war overseas, the two hop from home to homelessness while Sierra tries to help her mom through the throes of PTSD.
In my everyday world of responsibilities, I’m a writer, retired veterinarian, and freelance English editor for academic writing. But in my inner world of curiosity and obsessions, I’m forever a child with a profound longing to understand what the world is and how it works. Always searching on behalf of this forever child, I’ve read many a dull book about science, history, and writing. Despite having fascinating content, authors often flatten these subjects into featureless recitations. Happily, I’ve also found authors who express enthusiasm, expertise, or concern for their topic in prose that is as interesting in voice as it is in content.
Each chapter is a deep exploration of a single poem, highlighting sounds and words in ways the poems’ authors may or may not have intended. When I met this book, I had been writing poetry for years—unfocused drafts distilled from raw experience and emotion that I later revised into purposeful communication.
Then I read The End of the Poem. Suddenly, I wanted my poems filled with riddles and echoes, delicate Easter eggs for my readers. This book taught me there is an uncontrollable synergy between writers, words, and readers. Each reader will encounter a writer’s intentional (and unintentional) choices in a unique framework built on their own unique experiences in this world.
The End of the Poem contains the fifteen lectures delivered by Paul Muldoon as Oxford Professor of Poetry, from 1999 to 2004. Rather than individual and discrete performances, these lectures form a dazzling set of variations around the sustained theme of 'the end of the poem'. Each lecture explores a different sense of an ending: whether a poem can ever be a free-standing structure, read and written in isolation from other poems; whether a poem's line-endings are forms of closure (and where this might leave the poem in prose); whether the poem is completed only with the reader's act of…
I’ve always been fascinated by time travel as a framing device in stories. Having spent my childhood hoovering up anything I could get my hands on in both the science fiction and straight-up fiction genres, an unexpected byproduct was that I found myself becoming increasingly fascinated with merging the two, eventually wrapping my head around what it would mean if time itself became more than just a construct of our own creation. Asking myself regularly the question; what if it was terrain? It took me thirty-four years to translate all of those ideas into a solid hook for a book. And a further four years to turn that hook into a fully-fledged series.
Whilst technically a short story rather than a full novel, this thing was written all the way back in 1952, but set in the year 2055. Yet somehow…it reads as if it could have been written in the 80s. It involves an agency that allows the rich to travel back in time and hunt prehistoric animals for kicks. Horrid, right? Well, yes. But the hook here is the caveat: Don’t deviate from the path laid out by the event organisers.
This story blew my mind as a kid and my own series wouldn't exist without it. It’ll teach you everything you need to know in order to understand the history of the butterfly effect.
It had such an impact on my imagination that I just had to include an easter egg in my own series entitled The Flutterby Effect. This story has influenced so much more than you realise too,…
In "A Sound of Thunder", Time Safari, Inc. offers the greatest hunting trips ever--any year, any animal. But they don't guarantee you'll come back, or what you'll find if you do. And in "Night Call, Collect", who is harassing Emil Barton, the last man in the universe? After decades of waiting on Mars, these twisted phone calls could kill him! Winner of a Peabody Award.
I’ve always been a huge believer of love and romance and happily ever after. I also know that real life and happily ever after aren’t always easy. It took me 45 years to find my Prince Charming (after kissing a lot of frogs). I love reading stories of hope, courage, and promise and strong women who pursue their dreams. They inspire me to keep going and to keep writing. Whether I’m creating women’s fiction, historical novels, fantasy, or romance, my books explore relationships and why people do what they do, and every story focuses on love (what we always strive for) and forgiveness (what we always need).
A Promise of Fireflies is about everything women hold dear about falling in love. You won’t find perfect characters in this book. Ryleigh (the heroine) deals with deep emotional scars, lies, and the difficult challenge of finding a new perspective on life. The rich cast of characters confronts her—dare her—to put her fears to rest and be willing to face a new future.
The author shows how what we fear the most can trap and keep us from the life and love we desire. The letters will make your heart swell, the poetry will make you cry, and the love will make you long to recapture that first feeling of falling for someone. This enchanting story gives you romance with a capital “R.”
Questions never asked don't always remain unanswered...
Ryleigh Collins discovers a decades-old journal among her deceased mother's belongings. Though her mother never mentioned the journal, Ryleigh can't suppress the feeling she's somehow connected. When a reclusive old man on the other side of the country reveals the journal's secrets, Ryleigh is forced to face forty-three years of lies, and sets in motion a future she never envisioned.
Bearing a deeply scarred heart, Ryleigh returns home to her ex-husband's plea to take him back. Overwhelmed, she escapes to a Rocky Mountain resort to sort through her messy life. When a paralyzing…
Worcester Glendenis is a 12-year-old wannabe private detective. He models himself on his hero, the fictional private eye Philip Marlowe, of course without the booze, cigarettes, and violence. After all, he is only twelve.
He's a likable and smart kid with two pesky 7-year-old twin sisters, and a Mum and…
My degree in archaeology taught me life is a giant puzzle. People leave behind fragments, giving hints but never definitive answers. My deductive skills when piecing together broken pottery or looking at renderings of hominid skulls to determine how they lived, evolved my desire to write mysteries. One of the many things I love about cozy mysteries is that everything looks peaceful on the outside, but like real life, you barely need to scratch the surface before you discover dark deeds and secrets. And who doesn’t enjoy that?
Cupcakes are nothing without the perfect drink, which is why this book is an ideal accompaniment to the cake cozies – and it’s set in the 1980s, so is chocked full of nostalgia for people of a certain age.
The setting may be festive but the mystery will leave you pondering whodunit until the end. And there are lots of lovely easter eggs (or should that be festive treats) hinting at more puzzles in future books.
If you've got a problem, Charlie Kingsley probably has a tea that’ll help make it right.
EXCEPT when it comes to love. She does NOT do love potions.
Not even for Courtney, her pregnant new client who showed up three weeks before Christmas seeking a love potion because her husband was cheating on her.
So, Courtney asked about poison, instead.
She said she was joking. That's what happens between wives and husbands. They get angry and talk about killing each other. They don't really mean it.
It seems to make sense ... until Courtney’s husband turns up dead on Christmas…
I am a Graphic Illustrator, Muralist, and Educator, serving as an adjunct professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art and I love birds! I was born and raised in the Chautauqua Lake Region of Western, NY and I find myself very much at home with our feathered friends. My passion for color, shape, and nature enables me to draw the viewer's eye to things that otherwise might go unnoticed. Letter Birds was created when my children were 5 and 7 and I would draw while they slept. When they awoke they would find a colorful drawing of a feathered friend along with a new letter to learn. My children continue to be my creative muses - even as teenagers!
This book touches the soul and imagination of all artists. Following a young (bunny) Artist as they make their mark within an adventurous creative family that travels the world. Each spread transports you to a world of chance where art brings together not only communities but families. An absolute joy for creative minds!
As an adrenaline junky—years of kitesurfing, skydiving, bungee jumping, Zero Gravity training—I have a passion for thrills and adventure, coupled with the love for my soulmate, Virginia, since we were kids, I live what I write and write what I live. Of course, I filter it all through my vivid imagination to raise the stakes and pull you in.When I look for a great book, it’s tough to get my blood flowing, to get me excited, but these books are the nearest thing to the thrill of freefalling and having your first chute fail to open (been there, done that. Thank, God for the reserve chute!). These books are truly unique, putting you on the edge of your seat and leaving you wanting more.
A true original. Arthur Conan Doyle working -to solve a series of grisly murders. Released in 1993, it sucked me in with the first paragraph.
It mixes genres and the historical with the fictional. There are Sherlock Holmes easter eggs everywhere, the idea being this thriller informed his writing. The characters, both good and evil, flesh out the great detective in a thriller-paced adventure.
You may not have heard of the author, but you definitely heard of one of his TV shows: Twin Peaks, which he created and wrote with David Lynch. While the TV show’s known for its quirkiness, it has a fantastic underlying mystery that drove the story. Much like Frost drives the story in The List of Seven.
Christmas day, 1884 - a letter is slid under the door of a struggling young doctor and aspiring novelist, begging him to come to the aid of a mysterious woman, a victim of the black spiritual arts. From the foggy streets of London to the windswept moors of Yorkshire, a demonic conspiracy unfolds.
Twelve-year-old supernatural sleuth Dotty Morgan becomes embroiled in an ancient conflict between rival Japanese factions, and the timing couldn't be worse. A new girl in town creates jealousy between Dotty and her girlfriend, and her mother invites a nightmare houseguest to stay with them. She must put the drama aside…
I have wanted to live on a spaceship since I was eight years old, watching reruns of Star Trek on the local UHF channel. At eight, I couldn’t have told you why. The Enterprise, by the twin miracles of sci-fi tech and TV budget, has the same gravity, air, and people (mostly) we have right here on Earth. Later, I came to understand the appeal: on the Enterprise, the only true enemy is space itself, unfeeling and impersonal in its hostility. The only hate in space is what we bring with us, and the silent, empty gulfs between worlds remind us that we can choose to leave it behind.
AI has been coming for my day job for a while now, so I was honestly conflicted when I heard that the talented Megan E. O'Keefe wrote a book about a rogue machine intelligence controlling a deserted spaceship. However, the first few chapters of this spooky, thoughtful, riveting novel made me think again. After finishing… well, I don’t want to spoil it, but let’s just say the themes rang very, very true to someone on the sharp end of the AI revolution.
Storytelling like this embodies the best of science fiction: using a futuristic setting to explore the issues most relevant to the present. That’s why I’m a science fiction fan, and it’s why I adore this book.
NOMINATED FOR THE PHILIP K. DICK AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL * Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy by award-winning author Megan O'Keefe. Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction. However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding…
