We've asked 12,143 authors to recommend five books they love around a topic, theme, or mood. Here are all the books they recommend and use the filters to search by genre, subgenre, topic, what age they are for, and more!
The first memoir I ever read—Road Songby Natalie Kusz—pierced me in ways I did not know were possible. Kusz had written, in this elegantly crafted book, of an Alaskan childhood, a life-changing accident, early motherhood, and family love. She had written, I mean to say, of transcending truths. I have spent much of my life ever since deconstructing the ways in which true stories get told, and writing them myself. I’ve taught memoir to five-year-olds, Ivy League students, master’s level writers, and retirees. I co-founded Juncture Workshops, write a monthly newsletter on the form, and today create blank books into which other writers might begin to tell their stories.
Yes, it’s the old chestnut, and forgive me, but we must read to write, we must wade into other worlds to understand what is at stake, and what is possible, when we begin to shape our story for the page. Noble’s anthology begins with a quote-worthy meditation on the lyric essay and its manifold forms. It carries readers forward with a range of essays and commentary by writers both well-known (Dinty W. Moore, Diane Seuss, and Lidia Yuknavitch) and up-and-coming. The flash, the braid, the collage, the mosaic, the hermit crab—all the forms are here, waiting to be admired and adapted.
What is a lyric essay? An essay that has a lyrical style? An essay that plays with form in a way that resembles poetry more than prose? Both of these? Or something else entirely? The works in this anthology show lyric essays rely more on intuition than exposition, use image more than narration, and question more than answer. But despite all this looseness, the lyric essay still has responsibilities-to try to reveal something, to play with ideas, or to show a shift in thinking, however subtle. The whole of a lyric essay adds…
I’ve been studying money since the early 1980s, when my dissertation advisor—the late and great Hyman Minsky—warned me not to do “Genesis”, origins stories of money. But I couldn't resist. I'm one of the founders of Modern Money Theory (MMT), an approach developed over the past three decades that has garnered tens of thousands of followers and earned the hatred of the elite. And, yet, those who know how money really works—or who embrace public policy pursuing the public interest (Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), and even central bankers—have admitted that government cannot run out of money. I’ve written hundreds of academic papers, more blogs, many books, and given hundreds of interviews presenting the MMT alternative.
If you find Keynes’s explanation of unemployment depressing, here’s the antidote: another from the home team—Pavlina is a former student and current colleague.
Her solution is a universal job guarantee provided and funded by the Federal government. This isn’t welfare; wages are paid for useful work that promotes the public interest. Unlike private firms, government doesn’t need profits and cannot run out of money (see Kelton’s The Deficit Myth).
Pavlina explains the details: how the government finances the program; why it stabilizes wages and prices so that it cannot be inflationary; how the program will be run; and what kinds of projects will be undertaken.
She provides a clear, concise, detailed examination of policy that will permanently end the scourge of unemployment.
One of the most enduring ideas in economics is that unemployment is both unavoidable and necessary for the smooth functioning of the economy. This assumption has provided cover for the devastating social and economic costs of job insecurity. It is also false.
In this book, leading expert Pavlina R. Tcherneva challenges us to imagine a world where the phantom of unemployment is banished and anyone who seeks decent, living-wage work can find it - guaranteed. This is the aim of the Job Guarantee proposal: to provide a voluntary employment opportunity in public service to anyone who needs it. Tcherneva enumerates…
Vivian Amberville® is a popular dark fantasy book series about a girl whose thoughts can reshape reality.
First in the series, The Weaver of Odds introduces 13-year-old Vivian to her power to alter luck, odds, and circumstances. She is a traveler between realities, whose imagination can twist reality into impossible…
My Father was a solicitor (lawyer) in the UK and a consummate professional. He inspired me in my formative years and guides my values and beliefs to this day. Professionalism has, therefore, been my guiding star. Since 2005, my focus and driver have been to give a framework of Professionalism to the unregulated field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, which I believe in passionately. The books I have chosen for this list echo this passion…for making NLP accessible and credible and expressed in such simple terms with powerful, inspirational, and research-backed concepts and teachings. They continue to help shape my world, and I hope they can inspire you, too!
This is an evolutionary strand of NLP for me. I am interested in how neuroscience applies to my field, and this book was a mind-opener. I had always used the term “gut feeling” or “my heart says…” and now the science backs me up, too!
This book and its concepts really speak to my own experience of the world around me and give me new ways to communicate and relate to people in most situations I encounter. Both authors have their roots in NLP, and both expand the field in which I live. They do it in such a way that makes the progression seamless, understandable… and really powerful!
The latest scientific research shows you have three brains! You have complex and fully functional brains in your heart, your gut and your head.In this groundbreaking book, you’ll discover the latest neuroscience findings about your multiple brains (head, heart and gut brains) and what they have to offer for increasing intuitive abilities and for immediately generating wiser decision-making in your daily life. Providing you with numerous practical and easy to learn methods, this book shows how to communicate with and tap into the innate intelligence of your multiple brains.mBraining coaches you in aligning your three brains to achieve greater wisdom,…
In this newest suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub, three friends’ lives terrifyingly unravel when they win a billion-dollar lottery jackpot—and one goes missing. Perfect for fans of novels like Taylor Adams’ No Exit and The Club by Ellery Lloyd.
It was the girls’ weekend they’d never forget.
J.J., Molly, and Leila had once been inseparable, but it’s been a long time since college, and life—not to mention distance—have disrupted the former roommates’ friendship. When the three reunite for a birthday weekend in Las Vegas, the lottery ticket they buy on a whim has the…
WINNER OF THE SAPIR PRIZE 2022
'A mesmerising, disquieting tale of family estrangement ... Unforgettable' OBSERVER
'A striking and memorable novel' MEG WOLITZER
'A stone-cold masterwork of psychological tension. Its final pages had me holding my breath' NEW YORK TIMES
'Hila Blum is my new favourite writer' LOUISE KENNEDY
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What damage do we do in the blindness of love?
Thousands of miles from her home, a woman stands on a dark street, peeking through well-lit windows at two little girls. They are the daughters of her only daughter, the grandchildren she's never met.
At the centre of this mesmerising…
I grew up in Edinburgh and, from an early age, I heard the tale of Deacon Brodie. However, it was not until I was older—when a city official was charged with corruption—that I realised Brodie might just be the first ‘white collar’ criminal in Edinburgh. The more I found out, the more fascinating he became. Here was a man who everyonein the city saw as a wealthy, respectable, Councillor, yet—at the same time—he was a gambler who became a criminal to feed his habit, and so, when I moved to America, I decided to write my first crime novel based on Brodie’s life.
Lehane, one of my favourite authors, introduces the crime writer’s device of the duo, in his firstKenzie and Gennaro novel. For me, as in my own DCI Steel novels, the duo in writing can work to inform, or mislead, the reader and, if handled well, the reader doesn’t notice, seeing the interaction between characters as normal. Clichés abound in crime fiction, especially in lead characters, but Lehane avoids this with P.I. Patrick Kenzie, and his lifelong friend, Angie Gennaro. Given the area they inhabit, with its racial and gang tensions, added to the clients they have, clichés would seem unavoidable, but—once again—the lesson here is to write multi-faceted characters, which Kenzie and Gennaro emphatically are. They are flawed, but in Lehane’s hands, triumphantly human, and verybelievable.
Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro are tough private investigators who know the blue-collar neighbourhoods and ghettos of Boston's Dorchester section as only natives can. Working out of an old church belfry, Kenzie and Gennaro take on a seemingly simple assignment for a prominent politician: to uncover the whereabouts of Jenna Angeline, a black cleaning woman who has allegedly stolen confidential Statehouse documents. But finding Jenna proves easy compared to staying alive. The investigation escalates, uncovering a web of corruption extending from bombed-out ghetto streets to the highest levels of state government.
With slick, hip dialogue and a lyrical narrative pocked…
Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.
Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for…
From the age of 11, and an encounter with an illustrated anthology entitled The World of Zen, I have been drawn to and fascinated by the spiritual, philosophical, and folkloric aspects of East Asian Culture. I studied the subject at Cambridge University and subsequently trained in Zen Shiatsu therapy. Most of my books draw from my passion for East Asian culture, and Japan in particular. I have travelled widely in Japan over the last two decades, and for Tsunami Girl spent four years researching, interviewing survivors, and visiting Fukushima. I am now working on a new book on Japanese yōkai and ghosts…
Away from the 2011 disaster itself, Fumio Obata’s Just So Happens is a wonderful graphic novel again exploring that borderland between konoyo (this world) and anoyo (that world). And it just happens to be another story that bridges Japan and the West, this time Japan and the UK. Central character Yumiko travels back to Japan for a family funeral, and is immersed in a world of ritual, Shinto temples, Noh theatre – at once both familiar and strange to her. Word and image combine beautifully to draw on themes that have obsessed me for years.
Yumiko was born in Japan but has made a life in London, losing herself in its cosmopolitan bustle. She has a gallery show of her art, a good job, and a good guy she plans to marry. The culture she grew up in seems very far away-until her brother phones with the news that their father has died. Yumiko returns to Tokyo and finds herself immersed in the rituals of death while also plunged into the rituals of life-fish bars, bullet trains, pagodas-as she confronts the question of where her future really lies. Just So Happens deals both gently and…
I am a writer who has written an assortment of over a hundred and seventy different articles, poems, and books. I love cricket and have spent a lot of my life unsuccessfully learning how to play it. It still has a fascination for me. I am also a psychologist, and cricket has given me an even deeper understanding of human life.
It’s full of little stories and you think at the beginning of each one that that it’s going to describe an interesting situation from a serious point of view. So you wait for the ending. But it suddenly turns at the last and gives you a totally unexpected comical twist.
I have heard a lot of cricket stories but I hadn’t heard the one about WG Grace before. This book is a diamond mine.
A brilliant queer dystopian novel from the author of Yours for the Taking, following a cast of characters on the margins of a strange and exclusive new society.
The year is 2041, and it's a dangerous time to be a woman driving across the United States alone. Deadly storms and uncontrollable wildfires are pummeling the country while political tensions are rising. But Kelly's on the road anyway; she desperately needs to get back to her daughter, who she left seven years ago for a cause that she's no longer sure she believes in.
A wild land too mountainous to be tamed by plows. A duke of the empire, his cunning overshadowed only by his ambitions. A young priestess of the Old Religion, together with a charismatic outlaw, sparking a rebellion from deep within the forests.…
As an art school drop-out who'd been majoring in sculpture, I'm fascinated by material culture—artifacts created by early peoples that reveal their cultural values. Often, the relics and sites that engage both archaeologists and readers suggest unexpected depths of knowledge that show human ingenuity through the ages. I strive to incorporate the details of an artifact or monument's creation into the clues and descriptions in my work, hopefully illuminating a little-known historical realm, if only by torchlight as the adventure unfolds. The fact that I get to explore so many exotic locations, in research if not in person, is a definite plus!
Clawson's protagonist, Harry Fox, is a criminal, working for criminals—which makes him a bit unusual in a field dominated by historians and law enforcement. And yet…Harry is highly sympathetic.
I love how Clawson uses Harry's interactions with secondary characters and random strangers to develop that side of his character. This book delivers on medieval clues and ciphers without ever losing that focus on character.
As a history geek myself, I get excited when I recognize the characters from my research, emerging from a thriller plot, in this case, the historian Geoffrey of Monmouth. (Don't worry if you haven't heard of him, he's a little obscure, but that only makes it more fun to see his work incorporated into fiction!)
