80 books like All Souls

Seldom do battered women get true justice. In this book, justice is served on a very cold plate.

Two sisters, Sally and Gillian, are witches by heritage. After their parent’s deaths, they grew up with their two aunts, also witches.  

Sally was a happily married woman until her husband suddenly died. Gillian has lived a life of independence or what some might consider a wild life style. When Gillian’s boyfriend becomes a mortal threat, she gives him a potion, accidentally killing him. He comes back to haunt her from the grave. That’s when everyone in their family comes together to banish his evil spirit.

I loved this book because it is another time-slip novel, but mostly because of the characters that Gabaldon has created. Claire is a strong woman both in the present time zone–post-war Britain–and the Scottish Highland time zone of the seventeenth century and the uprising. You sense immediately that she is in danger as the story is told from her point of view. 

I loved learning about the lives of the Scottish highlanders, how the story moves from one-time zone to another, and how the characters overlap.

This was a Plot Twist book club pick, and it turned out to be one of my favorites of the last year. Based on three different women from the same lineage, one from the 1600s, one from the 40s, and the third in our current time, it follows their unique struggles with who they are against what society and the people around them expect.

Altha, in the 1600s, has been shunned from society for being different and is then accused and tried for witchcraft. She's thrown in jail and starved to the brink of death, but she perseveres through the trial, doing what she needs to do to survive. Violet, in the 40s, has her life torn apart at just sixteen, the fall out of those events leaving her cast out, pregnant, and terrified. But somehow, she gets up, carries on, and forges a new path for herself. Kate, in… show more.

Anne Rice is a wonderful poet disguised as a novelist who creates dreamy and eerie landscapes in this book. She paints backdrops of multiple settings and weaves those landscapes with the mood of her characters: modern and bustling San Francisco to mysterious and moody New Orleans.

The plot involves an analytical science girl who is suddenly immersed in a mysterious past that includes witches and other supernatural beings. It explores the roots of societal misogyny by recapping the history of the Mayfair clan and an unleashed demon spirit that haunts the family, all with a romance lurking in the subplot.

It is written like a dark fairy tale that weaves a contemporary world with supernatural elements. Don’t miss this!

Chronicles of the One starts with this book, and it is a wild ride. It’s postapocalyptic but with a supernatural edge to it. There’s a plague that sweeps the world, but most of the ones left standing after it have some supernatural abilities. It becomes a war to save the world, waged between the supernaturals and the normal humans.

There’s romance—because Nora Roberts is the queen of romance—battles, and a nice HEA (happily ever after) at the end. This whole series is a do-not-miss page-turner.

Quite simply, Erin Morgenstern’s book is the finest example of urban fantasy I have ever read. Besides a plot rich in sorcery and romance, with a circus (think Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) that appears mysteriously, vanishing just as suddenly and the shadowy game of two great sorcerers playing out their competitiveness through the lives of their young apprentices, this is a beautifully written book. The writing is elegant, rounded, and rich. What a writer! The imagery is transporting without clobbering the reader over the head. The characters are each fully drawn, but in slow increments as the story steams inexorably ahead like the mysterious train that carries the circus from locale to locale. 

This book showed me that you do not need blazing dragons or drooling werewolves to create menace, sinister characters, and mystery. Morgenstern places this world of circus magic just out of reach but so… show more.

A Gothic mansion with sinister forces creates a compelling plot. I thought Zo Gray (love that name!) made a perfect 24-year-old victim to the secrets of Watch Hill and the family history. Zo has deep feelings of being lost (identity crisis) and the death of her mom (spouts a mystery in itself), so the underbelly of the story is strong and I am drawn to underbellies.

With the Southern occult flavors, magick, and witchcraft, the page-turning kept me up at night. I loved the romantic, steamy edge—two men desiring Zo—which grew the suspense and set the stage for the series to come. I am a sucker for a good mix of Gothic, mystery, and romance, with a healthy dollop of fantasy and magickal spells. The author Moning plays this well with a strong cast of characters and an atmospheric richness that is like diving into a dark and decadent dessert.

This is a modern-day second-chance romance novel that uses mystery elements in a supernatural setting. Loved the banter between characters. Elly and Cooper are solidly formed and very likable.

All the elements, sci-fi, paranormal, romance, and mystery, are accessible and written in a fun way that moves the plot quickly along. I was definitely rooting for the HEA and romance readers will not be disappointed. Overall, just a fun, entertaining read.

I knew little about North Woods when I started reading it, except that it chronicled the lives of different inhabitants of a farmhouse in western New England—a region I love—and featured an intriguing image of what I assumed was a bobcat on the cover.

North Woods brings its setting vividly to life; while there are fascinating characters—including a colonial-era English soldier who abandons the war to cultivate an apple orchard on the farmhouse property—the flora and fauna of the farm and its surrounding woodlands play equally important roles.

I’m grateful to my daughter, the same sensitive reader who cried when she finished Homegoing, for posting a photo of her copy of North Woods along with her lunch one day and piquing my curiosity.

This story subverted many of my usual expectations, like the dark view of a few historical characters and the idea of a demon lover.

I like when a story is grounded in reality and then challenges me to see things differently in a persuasive way. Her skillful mash ups of the fantastic, gothic, historical, horror, and social commentary kept surprising me.

True, this is a harsh story, but I feel reading something like that clears the palate. My favorite bit: the demon’s bog kingdom, twisted in the Oates way.