24 books like Sterkarm

Like with my first recommendation, I feel that this book appeals to a desire for adventure that we all had as kids. Who didn’t dream of Time Travel adventures as a kid? And again, as an adult, I have of course come to realize that I’d not last a day if I were to fall into this sort of adventure – and although time travel is supposedly possible, albeit only as a one-way journey due to the nature of time-dilation, the undertaking of such a journey, and the physical aspects of what is involved, I’d never want to do it now. Of course, in Playing Beatie Bow, Abigail’s time travel method is very simple (and impossible), but the trouble she gets into in the past is complicated, complex, and dangerous. The book’s dual settings might not appeal to young readers of today, but its lessons about learning to live… show more.

I fell in love with this author’s exploration into the hypothesis of drug-induced time travel written by one of our great English authors, skillfully weaving psychology with science and historical fiction. In it, Dick Young is persuaded by a friend to try a new drug. Dick likes where it takes him, and each time takes more and more. A classic case of addition but the story awakened in me a passion for asking what if… that later turned into a greater passion for the unexplained and paranormal in all its forms, in turn leading me to question whether re-incarnation, deja-vu, ghostly visitations or time travel were possible, and if so, how.

Sent off to the old Derbyshire farm to convalesce, Penelope Taverner opens a door, steps into the world of the tragic stand-off between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth of England, and hardly notices she's time-travelling.

She's just there, among people who dress a little strangely: accepted as exactly what she is, the daughter of an old family connection, come to stay for a while. Nothing can be done. Mary of Scots can't be saved; nor can the courageous Babingtons. It's intense and a bit voyeurish in a way, because the time-traveller is always going to walk away unharmed from tragedy, if not untouched.

I loved this story when I was a child, but what I notice most as an adult writer is Alison Uttley's method with the time travel: a real innovation. No clunky explanation, no clever rationale. It's all about hints and glimpses, haunting fragments; drifting into each… show more.

As a six-year-old, I was enraptured by the 1974 BBC TV adaptation of this book, thrilled by the notion that I, too, might one day find a magical route into hidden worlds.

As my reading skills improved, I did just that, thanks to a library card and books like this one. Pearce’s tale is haunting and beautifully told, and there’s an ingenious little piece of time-travel plotting involving a pair of ice skates that blew my preteen mind.

When I was ten, I collided with the Greek myths and was left all of a heap.

For at least a year, I thought of little else but these wonderful stories. I wrote my own versions, I drew them, I was obsessed. Hermes was my favourite (and still is). Wings on his heels! Wings on his hat!

A deep love of myth and folklore has stayed with me through my life. Many years later, I wanted to introduce my younger brother to the myths and came across this book. It’s superb, especially with Charles Keeping’s powerful illustrations.

The Greek gods were the powers of the universe: fire, wind, sea, earth; love, hate, jealousy… This book, written by authors who also deeply loved the myths, makes you feel their power.

Because of this book, I crept out of bed and downstairs while my parents slept.

Why? I hoped to catch my mother’s ornaments coming to life as they do in Andersen’s tales. I reasoned that Andersen was an adult and would know about such things. Why did he put it in his book if it wasn’t true?

I never caught the china horse galloping along the shelf, but I still loved these stories. They are full of fantastical imaginings and, at the same time, thoroughly down to earth. I read the account of the mermaids’ gardens beneath the sea again and again. (And Andersen’s Little Mermaid is far better than any film of it.)

If there is a child in your life who reads, they need this book!

When I was seven, my dad bought me this book for Christmas. He’d loved it as a child and wanted me to have it too.

I loved the book as much as he did.

Dad gave the stories he loved to the daughter he loved—and, originally, Kipling wrote them for the daughter he adored. He read them to her at bedtime, and she insisted on them being told in exactly the same words—or "just-so"—each time. Which explains the book’s odd title.

The stories pretend to explain "how the leopard got his spots" and "how the camel got his hump." Like my dad before me, I read them over and over.

And just to break your heart, Kipling’s beloved daughter died at six and broke his heart.

The first in a trilogy from vastly underrated author Susan Price. This is on the surface a charming kids’ book, but moved me more and has haunted me for longer than most 'adult' novels (and is also remarkably dark.) Set in a fairy-tale some-when, somewhere in a blizzard-scoured kingdom, the young witch Chingis seeks to rescue a czarevitch from the tower in which he's imprisoned.
When I first read this book, I cried publicly on a train, it got to me so much. I'm envious of Price's skill at using simple language so exquisitely to conjure vivid, jewel-toned worlds and invoke both deep dread and soaring joy. It's a deceptively simple little tale of freedom, choice, destiny, privilege, responsibility, and love.

I like a writer of ghost stories to personally believe in ghosts, as Benson did.

I also appreciate that he brings to even his scariest and most horrible tales the same sharp social observation and wit that he brought to his Mapp and Lucia stories.

Note, however, that the great M. R. James thought Benson’s stories "went over the line of legitimate horridness." Well, I love James, but disagree with him here. I dislike gross horror myself, but think a touch of Benson-style horridness now and again is enlivening (if that’s the right term for a ghost story).

Who needs Bram Stoker and boring old Dracula, when Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu had a better name, and penned the original vampire tale, Carmilla, a whole quarter-century earlier?

Personally, I dislike obvious attempts to scare or horrify me. So I appreciate that Le Fanu is always subtle, concentrating on creating an atmosphere of threat and fear, as in Schalken the Painter. He is never obvious, but always eerie.