The most recommended books about snakes

Animals! And a zoo! Kristy Farrell is a middle-aged mom, a true everywoman character.

I love stories with ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Kristy seeks a permanent position with a wildlife magazine and goes to the zoo to interview people for an article. There she finds a body – a human body.

When the zoo director dies from snake venom, her brother – in charge of the zoo’s reptiles – is the main suspect. Kristy must clear her brother, and along the way uncovers dangers for exotic animals. Picking a favorite novel among cozy mysteries is like asking me to pick a favorite grandchild.

Schmitt deserves to be brought to the attention of people who love the traditional cozy mystery, but might miss an excellent series from a smaller publisher.    

What makes I Married a Naga stand out is the hero. He’s a half-humanoid, half-snake alien. The heroine is human.

I had hesitated to read I Married a Naga because it involved snake people. Snakes?  No thanks! But I kept seeing the book and finally decided to give it a try. Thanks to author Regine Abel’s excellent storytelling, I got accustomed to the idea of a snake-man.

He’ll never be my favorite book boyfriend, but I warmed to him and thoroughly enjoyed the unforgettable characters and world-building.

Homeopath Sadhana Thakkar helps to dispel the negative image of snakes by revealing how profoundly snake remedies can help humans heal and awaken.

The author offers an introduction to the physiology, temperament, lifestyle, and survival strategies of many snakes, and reveals how homeopaths match these patterns to effective venom-based remedies.

Homeopathy itself is a fascinating study, and Thakkar does an excellent job of deepening our understanding of how and why it works through her many stories of humans successfully treated with snake remedies. I found this book super informative and fascinating to read!  

One of my daughter’s perennial favourites, I read this so often I had it memorized, and found it great to tell even without the hilarious pictures. In this story, Kate is facing her first day of school. So miserable is she at the very idea, she gets out on the wrong side of the bed. So of course, everything goes wrong! Her school is a dungeon, her teacher is a gorilla, and the dinner lady serves spiders, snails, and snakes for lunch. Brave Kate fights back, runs home, and saves her own day when she gets up all over again, on the right side of the bed. This is, underneath, a story about attitude, and reassures kids about the reality of school by comically exaggerating one child’s fears. But it’s also great fun to tell, with silly voices, unexpected developments, and a fine arc of tension till Kate decides to… show more.

Mary’s Oliver’s nature poems are like psalms: full of beauty, wisdom, and spirituality that touch my heart. I read her poems over and over again.

In particular, during a silent retreat I attended near Gloucester, Massachusetts where scripture is assigned for reflection, her poems became my meditations. Every morning in the dining room overlooking the sea, I watched the sun rise, glowing across the waves and rocks. “Hello, sun in my face…” Oliver writes and ends with, “Watch, now, how I start the day / in happiness, in kindness.”

With charming illustrations, this picture book biography tells the story of E.B. White with exquisite language.

I love how Barbara Herkert provides details about his interest in animals from a young age, such as how he collected pigeons, snakes, polliwogs, caterpillars, chameleons, and more.

In a fitting ending, the book shows how E.B. White gets the idea for one of my favorite books, Charlotte’s Web. I love these lines from A Boy, a Mouse, and a Spider: “One cold October evening, Andy watched a spider spin. He climbed a ladder for a closer look. He’d found the hero of his story…” 

These days, children’s lives are busier than ever! I love that this book helps all kids slow down and use their imaginations as they pretend their way through the pages.

The author’s joyful message is front and center: “You can be anything!” Are you the wind, “touching flowers with fingertips?” Are you the rain, “born of clouds, sister to thunder and lightning?” Or maybe today you are a river, slowly drifting to the sea.

Each page brought me closer to calmness with the peace of poetry and nature. Anna Emilia Laitinen’s soft watercolor illustrations are gorgeous! I first checked this book out of the library but had to buy a copy for our home library so we could turn to it again and again. 

When I was fifteen, I worked as a busboy in a restaurant. One of the waitresses there left a serious impression on me because she treated me with such care and kindness.

I really felt like she was my surrogate mother. If she had been taken, like what happens in this book, I would have scoured the earth to find her and save her. She had that much of an impact on my life. I was thinking of her when I re-read this book recently. 

This was the first book I read by Sharon Bolton and it got me hooked on this author.

The book draws you into the lives of the residents of a small village where beneath the idyllic setting lurks secrets and malice. We follow newcomer Clara, a local vet, who is called upon when poisonous snakes turn up in the residents’ homes. The book has a brooding atmosphere which will leave you checking under the bed before you sleep.

This wonderful Asian fantasy (the first of a duology) is about a young woman who has the rare ability to control flying wolf-like creatures. This ability plunges her into the middle of political intrigue as forces push her to weaponize this ability and use the beasts as battle mounts. The most unique thing about the book is how it questions the ethics of humans using animals for their purposes. Most fantasies unquestioningly use animal mounts as weapons/vehicles or at most use an animal’s death to trigger a cheap emotional response. This book puts the ethics of using magnificent creatures for human concerns at its very heart. It demonstrates a respect for the natural world that seems consistent with Shinto teaching and that I find too rare in fantasy.