Here are 19 books that Dragonlance: Heroes fans have personally recommended once you finish the Dragonlance: Heroes series.
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I’ve been reading/gaming and writing fantasy for over 40 years. My interest in the genre began with mythology, then spread into the now countless branches of the Tolkien tree. Along with the great quests and magic items, I was always enchanted by the non-human characters populating these magical worlds. Not just the elves, dwarves, and dragons, but the intelligent animals and mythological creatures like pegasi, minotaurs, treants, big cats, snakes, apes, eagles, gargoyles – the list is endless. Some were good, some misunderstood, and some were evil incarnate, but almost always, I found their stories the most intriguing. As a result, their stories will be a big part of my new series, The Tamm Chronicles.
Wonderful, fast-paced urban fantasy set in Dublin, Ireland. Gargoyles are former avenging angels who now watch over churches – that hook was simply irresistible to me. When some artifacts go missing from his cathedral, it’s up to the gargoyle Padraig and an elderly Knight of Malta (whose modern-day steed is a Rolls Royce) to find the sinister culprit and set things aright. The charming descriptions of Dublin, along with the witty banter of the heroes and the interesting nuggets of Celtic lore made me wish Kurtz had written a whole series of Gargoyle books. Sadly, she did not. Trigger assurance: the religious aspects are carefully handled so as to enhance the atmosphere of the story, not to insult or preach. St. Patrick’s Gargoyle is 200 of the fastest pages I have ever read.
When vandals break into St. Patrick's Cathedral, a gargoyle named Paddy takes to the streets of Dublin in search of revenge-but nothing could have prepared him for the evil that descends when he finds it.
"[Kurtz] wraps plenty of Dublin sights, fascinating bits of Catholic history, much ecumenical Christian goodwill, a cast of endearing characters, amusing dialogue and just enough thrills into a charming package of a tale." (Booklist, starred review)
I love mythological creatures! I grew up gravitating toward fantasy books but because I have a narcissistic parent, I got teased for reading them. To avoid the teasing, I ended up reading a lot of mythology because that was a “safe” fantasy option; reading mythology was “educational” rather than “silly.” When I got older, I discovered that there’s a whole category of fantasy books that retell myths from alternative points of view. This subgenre opened new doors of understanding and empathy for me. Reading old stories from new perspectives opens my eyes to a myriad of different types of people and broadens my view of the world. And I’ve been reading them ever since.
A unicorn believes she’s the last of her kind and undertakes a quest to find where the others have gone. This might be my favorite book!
It plays with the fantasy genre in a way that few books can. It seamlessly mixes the whimsical with the mundane and it gives us memorable characters who are unique twists on old tropes.
What I love most about this book is seeing life through the eyes of the unicorn protagonist. She’s a timeless creature—unaging, unchanging—who finds navigating a mortal world to be puzzling, inconvenient, and, at times, terrifying.
Can you imagine being immortal and suddenly being forced to confront your own impossible mortality? Read this book and you will.
Experience one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century and the book that The Atlantic has called “one of the best fantasy novels ever.”
The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone...
...so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a…
I’m a British author for children and young adults and have lost count of the number of books I’ve published. You learn how to write by reading, and I know that I learned to write from the books I loved and read under the blankets with a torch when I’d been told to go to sleep. I think the books I recommend could all teach children a lot about the art of writing—and they would think they were simply enjoying a story!
My dad gave me these books too. For the same reason—he had loved them.
What child wouldn’t?—A baby, lost in the jungle, is threatened by a tiger. A wolf pack rescues and raises him. His school-teacher is a bear and his mentor a black panther, Bagheera. (I loved Bagheera.)
Today, Kipling is often called "racist." I can’t totally defend him, but—he could easily have made Mowgli a white English lord, as Burroughs did Tarzan. Instead, Kipling made Mowgli the child of poor Indian villagers—and also handsome, athletic, courageous, strong, honourable, and fiercely intelligent. Racist?
Not all the stories are about Mowgli. "Rikki-tikki-tavi," a favourite, is about a mongoose. Another is "Quiquern," set in the Arctic. Classics.
Puffin Classics - the world's favourite stories - relaunched with exciting new covers.
The Jungle Book is a classic story of friendship between man and beast. Saved from the jaws of the evil tiger Shere Khan, young Mowgli is adopted by a wolf pack and taught the law of the jungle by lovable old Baloo the bear and Bhageera the panther. The adventures of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi the snake-fighting mongoose, little Toomai and the elephant's secret dance, and Kotick the white seal are all part of Mowgli's extraordinary journey with his animal friends.
I’ve loved both history and fantasy since I was a child. The first book I can remember reading at all was The Hobbit. The first historical novel I fell in love with was The Killer Angels. I visited the battlefield of Gettysburg with my family, and currently teach the movie every year to my high school film class. (I’ve never visited Middle Earth, but plan to visit New Zealand as soon as possible). I’ve been reading both genres ever since—and quite by accident my first novel contains a mix of both genres.
Brave mice defend a monastery from marauding pirate rats! An evil snake haunts the forest, eating gentle beasts!
Redwall is a medieval Viking tale populated by animals. But what animals! Speedy hares with bottomless appetites evoke British Army captains. Quarreling shrews must pass around an object to speak at the council, reminding us of The Lord of the Flies. We meet tiny sparrows who follow a Spartan warrior ethos, and Friar Tuck-like fieldmice who cook great feasts that will make you salivate.
Yes, it’s a young adult book, but it’s also one of the reasons I became a writer in the first place. Let me throw down a glove here: the vitality of Redwall’s characters equals anything found in Dickens, Dumas, or Stevenson.
Sidenote: the first piece of fiction I produced was an imitation of this very title, fulfilling an elementary school assignment. I folded ten pages of…
9
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This book is for kids age
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
The first book in the beloved, bestselling Redwall saga - soon to be a major Netflix movie!
Redwall Abbey, tranquil home to a community of peace-loving mice, is threatened by the evil, one-eyed rat warlord Cluny the Scourge and his battle-hardened horde of predators.
Cluny is certain that Redwall will fall easily to his fearsome army but he hasn't bargained for the courage and strength of the Redwall mice and their loyal woodland friends . . .
One of TIME magazine's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time
'Not since Roald Dahl have children filled their shelves so compulsively' -…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
Michael Williams’ nearly 600-page tome is a classic must-read for anyone seriously wanting to learn about American forest history. It's richly illustrated with 159 figures and plates, plus numerous tables.
I love how he uses historic photos and illustrations in addition to quantitative data to build a grounded understanding of Americans’ shifting relations with trees. The book spans roughly 400 years, with an emphasis on the 1800s and early 1900s.
I enjoyed learning about a wide variety of trees that have played important roles in U.S. history. I also appreciated how Williams explores the cultural influences on people’s attitudes and behaviors towards forests, including religion.
When Europeans first reached the land that would become the United States they were staggered by the breadth and density of the forest they found. The existence of that forest, and the effort either to use or subdue it, have been constant themes in American history, literature, economics, and geography up to the meaning of the forest in American history and culture, he describes and analyzes the clearing and use of the forest from pre-European times to the present, and he traces the subsequent regrowth of the forest since the middle of the twentieth century. Dr Williams begins by exploring…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
Jonathan E. Robins illustrates how a tree that provides vegetable oil aided colonialism and the rise of a global food system built on the exploitation of people and places. To weave an engaging narrative, he draws evidence from multiple disciplines, including agricultural science, economic botany, environmental history, and gender studies.
Backed by the evidence, his conclusion is compelling that trying to catalyze sustainable and socially just practices through responsible consumerism is a flawed strategy by itself. I appreciate how he tackles a complex history from a global perspective and addresses environmental justice concerns in a historically grounded way.
Oil palms are ubiquitous--grown in nearly every tropical country, they supply the world with more edible fat than any other plant and play a role in scores of packaged products, from lipstick and soap to margarine and cookies. And as Jonathan E. Robins shows, sweeping social transformations carried the plant around the planet. First brought to the global stage in the holds of slave ships, palm oil became a quintessential commodity in the Industrial Revolution. Imperialists hungry for cheap fat subjugated Africa's oil palm landscapes and the people who worked them. In the twentieth century, the World Bank promulgated oil…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
In this book, I love how Douglas Cazaux Sackman uses image analysis to develop his arguments about gender, race, and class in this historical account of California's iconic citrus tree.
He favors factual history inclusive of multiple perspectives and experiences including those of people often marginalized or disappeared entirely in master narratives. I value authors who challenge simplistic accounts of the past.
This innovative history of California opens up new vistas on the interrelationship among culture, nature, and society by focusing on the state's signature export - the orange. From the 1870s onward, California oranges were packaged in crates bearing colorful images of an Edenic landscape. This book demystifies those lush images, revealing the orange as a manufactured product of the state's orange industry. "Orange Empire" brings together for the first time the full story of the orange industry - how growers, scientists, and workers transformed the natural and social landscape of California, turning it into a factory for the production of…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
Jennifer L. Anderson provides a good reminder in this bookthat consumers often enjoy goods without a full picture of the environmental and social costs of bringing them to the marketplace. Early American consumption of mahogany furnishings contributed to Indigenous dispossession of land, the enslavement of Africans, and tropical deforestation.
Early Americans, with the means, sought out beautiful furniture made from old-growth mahogany trees to assert their class privilege. Anderson uses material culture to illuminate the effects of consumer culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. Her global perspective provides valuable insights into the impacts overseas of chasing after luxuries at any cost.
In the mid-eighteenth century, colonial Americans became enamored with the rich colors and silky surface of mahogany. This exotic wood, imported from the West Indies and Central America, quickly displaced local furniture woods as the height of fashion. Over the next century, consumer demand for mahogany set in motion elaborate schemes to secure the trees and transform their rough-hewn logs into exquisite objects. But beneath the polished gleam of this furniture lies a darker, hidden story of human and environmental exploitation.
Mahogany traces the path of this wood through many hands, from source to sale: from the enslaved African woodcutters,…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
Langston tells a complex story about how the U.S. Forest Service, early in its history, demonized fire and developed a national policy of fire suppression, which has had profoundly negative ecological consequences, particularly in the West.
This case study centered on yellow pine forests illustrates how a poor understanding of forest history and ecology can result in management approaches that squander valuable timber resources.
Across the inland West, forests that once seemed like paradise have turned into an ecological nightmare. Fires, insect epidemics, and disease now threaten millions of acres of once-bountiful forests. Yet no one can agree what went wrong. Was it too much management-or not enough-that forced the forests of the inland West to the verge of collapse? Is the solution more logging, or no logging at all? In this gripping work of scientific and historical detection, Nancy Langston unravels the disturbing history of what went wrong with the western forests, despite the best intentions of those involved.
I received the Dungeons and Dragons Basic Red Box as a kid, and I have been hooked on all things fantasy fiction since. It has become a part of my life so much that each character takes on a special importance for me. Some characters exist in worlds full of swords and magic, while others live in realms that are dirty, bleak, and on the brink of utter ruin. As a writer, I enjoy seeing the different perspectives these characters bring to fantasy settings. It makes them unique, each in their own way. Some want to right the wrongs of the worlds they reside in, while others don’t care if it all burns down around them.
I picked up The Last Wish after playing the Witcher games and listening to the soundtrack, but what surprised me is how funny it is.
Yes, it is epic fantasy in every sense of the word, but Geralt’s dry humor cuts through the blood and curses, and his conversations with Dandelion had me laughing out loud. What makes it great, though, is how Sapkowski flips fairy tales upside-down, twisting familiar stories into something darker and sharper.
I enjoyed the way morality blurs—there are monsters, sure, but the humans are often MUCH worse. It’s a book that asks hard questions about society under the guise of swords and spells.
