Here are 22 books that Twelve Houses fans have personally recommended once you finish the Twelve Houses series.
Shepherd is a community of authors and super-readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
As a writer and independent game developer, I’ve always adored “families of choice:” motley crews of strangers drawn together by circumstance and whose bonds are strengthened to an indestructible degree by the trials they face together. This passion has manifested both in my favorite stories (The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect) as well as the ones I write myself! After teaching writing at Cornell University, where I also earned my MFA in Fiction, I turned my sights on my own creative projects, all of which invariably feature weird found families (a robot crew and the human misfits accompanying them; two assassins and an escaped mind-reading slave; et cetera).
I love zombie apocalypse stories, and I especially love zombie apocalypse stories that feature unlikely groups of survivors being forced to learn to work together to ensure their new family’s survival.
No one does this better than Lilith Saintcrow in her book, which follows Ginny, a failed medical student turned small-town librarian, and Lee, a close-mouthed, socially awkward, but scarily competent ex-soldier, as they learn to trust one another and lead a group of strangers out of their backwoods town during the onset of an undead pandemic.
Not only are the road-tripping found family dynamics here sublime, but Saintcrow has a special talent for describing each character’s viewpoint and unique voice in ways that elevate the chest-aching romantic tension and human psychology at play.
Cotton Crossing was a dead end, but not for Ginny Mills. She's just marking time, getting experience in the county library system, before moving back to a decent urban environment. Then the phones stop working.
Lee Quartine knows there's no way the pretty girl at the library will even look at him. Especially since he can't open his mouth. He knows he's a hick, but when the power starts going out and the woods are full of strange creatures, it's good to have someone around who can build a fire. And kill.
As a writer and independent game developer, I’ve always adored “families of choice:” motley crews of strangers drawn together by circumstance and whose bonds are strengthened to an indestructible degree by the trials they face together. This passion has manifested both in my favorite stories (The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect) as well as the ones I write myself! After teaching writing at Cornell University, where I also earned my MFA in Fiction, I turned my sights on my own creative projects, all of which invariably feature weird found families (a robot crew and the human misfits accompanying them; two assassins and an escaped mind-reading slave; et cetera).
If we want to talk about weird found families, this wildly original nautical fantasy knocks it out of the park.
Pazel signs up to serve as a tarboy on the Chathrand, a centuries-year-old ship bound to deliver a “treaty bride” to the prince of a foreign nation. The ship shortly falls off the known map, and Pazel is left to survive turbulent seas, strange new lands, and truly bizarre curses and mutinies along with the other passengers of the Chathrand: among these are an intelligent rat, a wizard from another world hiding in the body of a weasel, the treaty bride herself, and her secretive warrior bodyguard.
Along with this motley crew, the book features some of the most captivating, satisfying prose and dazzling twists of the imagination I’ve ever read.
The Chathrand - The Great Ship, The Wind-Palace, His Supremacy's First Fancy - is the last of her kind - built 600 years ago she dwarves all the ships around her. The secrets of her construction are long lost. She was the pride of the Empire. The natural choice for the great diplomatic voyage to seal the peace with the last of the Emperor's last enemies.
700 souls boarded her. Her sadistic Captain Nilus Rose, the Emperor's Ambassador and Thasha, the daughter he plans to marry off to seal the treaty, a spy master and six assassins, one hunderd imperial…
Hi, my name is CT Phipps, and I am a crazy nerd from Ashland, Ky. I'm married with two dogs and love superheroes. I mean love. I used to wallpaper my bedroom wall with Spider-Man comics in their polybags. I've been a lifelong superhero fan and just love all the melodrama, hilarity, and weird science as well as magic that are the undercurrents of the genre. I've never lost my love of the characters and their stories, so when the MCU first came out, I ended up writing this book as well as its sequels. I’ve also written a bunch of other humorous sci-fi/fantasy books but this is the series closest to my heart.
Forging Hephaestus is a fantastic book about a tenuous treaty between superheroes and villains in a four-color world.
Hephaestus AKA Tori Rivas is a new supervillain and is learning the ropes from the most powerful one of them all, Fornax. Fornax is a lot nicer guy than you'd expect from the most terrifying of all villains, which shows this world is a lot more complicated than it seems.
I love the complexity, deep characterization, and thickness of this book. It’s over six hundred pages and full of fantastic details about a complicated but believable superhero world. By the end, I wanted to read a dozen more giant-sized volumes.
From Drew Hayes, author of Super Powereds and Fred, the Vampire Accountant, comes a series set in a new world of capes, cowls, and superheroes.
Gifted with metahuman powers in a world full of capes and villains, Tori Rivas kept away from the limelight, preferring to work as a thief in the shadows. But when she’s captured trying to rob a vault that belongs to a secret guild of villains, she’s offered a hard choice: prove she has what it takes to join them or be eliminated.
Apprenticed to one of the world’s most powerful (and supposedly dead) villains, she…
I’m the author of an award-winning indie book series that focuses on a pretty unusual main character: a middle-aged mother actively parenting three kids in an insane situation. I love unexpected situations and fresh or unusual characters, and the books I recommend here reflect that.
Do you know what makes life-and-death drama better? Throwing it in a pot with a healthy dash of family drama and stirring vigorously. Rachel Aaron understands that, and I love that almost all of her series effortlessly blends the importance of apocalyptic disasters with the difficulty of dysfunctional familial relationships.
And sometimes–just sometimes–the characters get a little healing along the way.
As the smallest dragon in the Heartstriker clan, Julius survives by a simple code: keep quiet, don’t cause trouble, and stay out of the way of bigger dragons. But this meek behavior doesn't fly in a family of ambitious magical predators, and his mother, Bethesda the Heartstriker, has finally reached the end of her patience.
Now, sealed in human form and banished to the DFZ--a vertical metropolis built on the ruins of Old Detroit--Julius has one month to prove he can be a ruthless dragon or kiss his true shape goodbye forever. But in a city of modern mages and…
I've been a fan of Tamora Pierce for nearly as long as I've been writing—well over twenty years. She's been an enormous inspiration throughout my authorship. Her books have accompanied me through many travels, waited in my bag during classes and life events, and I've given them as gifts to other people. Finding books and authors for a more adult audience, which possess that same essence—strong characters, magic, found family, adventure, a touch of romance, and some historical or mythological influence—is a fantastic hunt. I hope you enjoy these. I'm going to look for some more!
The best stories are the ones that inspire us to read more, right? I love history and mythology—something instilled in me by Tamora Pierce's books—so the inspiration for this setting, India's Mughal Empire, appealed to me before I even cracked the book open. Mehr had a strength that didn't falter through the entire story. I wanted her to win, to succeed, no matter what that meant for the rest of her world. This book was not afraid to carry me to some dark places, which I needed to see to push the limits of my own work. Immediately after I finished this, I snapped up everything else Tasha Suri had on the market. I may also need to read some more books about the Mughal Empire.
*Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time
A nobleman's daughter with magic in her blood. An empire built on the dreams of enslaved gods. Empire of Sand is Tasha Suri's lush, dazzling, Mughal India-inspired debut fantasy.
The Amrithi are outcasts; nomads descended of desert spirits, they are coveted and persecuted throughout the Ambhan Empire for the power in their blood.
Mehr is the illegitimate daughter of an imperial governor and an exiled Amrithi mother she can barely remember, but whose face and magic she has inherited. When Mehr's power comes to the attention of the Emperor's…
Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated with various historical societies, but particularly that of medieval Europe. The ebb and flow of political strife as well as the gradual creeping advancement of technology in an era too-often deemed “the Dark Ages” sparked a passion in me that led me to pursue a degree in history. Prior to my studies, I had the opportunity to travel to Norway, where my love for the medieval era was ignited as my family toured the dipping green fjords and walked the burial mounds of kings long past. I aim now to tell their stories.
Kristen Britain’s Green Rider is an adventure that takes place in a carefully crafted medieval world.
What’s notable is the way Britain integrates medieval culture and tradition into the story. From the honor code of the Green Riders to the standard of loyalty and virtue, the novel is steeped in values commonly held in the medieval era. This adds authenticity to the story.
The series also introduces ‘fantasy flair’ in the Eletians, a group of people I could closely associate with the Elves in my own book.
It's a race against time to save her country, but it could cost her life . . .
Karigan G'ladheon always seemed to be getting into a fight, and today was no exception.
But as she trudged through the forest, using her long walk home to contemplate her depressing future - and the expulsion it was bound to hold - a horse burst through the woodland and charged straight for her. The rider was slumped over his mount's neck with two arrows embedded in his back. Wherever his horse was taking him, he would be dead before they got there.…
As a writer and independent game developer, I’ve always adored “families of choice:” motley crews of strangers drawn together by circumstance and whose bonds are strengthened to an indestructible degree by the trials they face together. This passion has manifested both in my favorite stories (The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead, Mass Effect) as well as the ones I write myself! After teaching writing at Cornell University, where I also earned my MFA in Fiction, I turned my sights on my own creative projects, all of which invariably feature weird found families (a robot crew and the human misfits accompanying them; two assassins and an escaped mind-reading slave; et cetera).
I first read this book when I was a teenager, and it became my gold standard on how to write engaging, imaginative worlds and the unique histories, languages, and cultures that populate them.
More than the intricate space politics and incredibly innovative anthropology present in this massive series, however, I was most drawn to how the main character, Bren (a human diplomat trying to navigate his way through the court intrigue of an alien government) eventually finds a family unlike any other in his atevi bodyguards, Banichi and Jago.
Bren also gathers a wide collection of allies and companions on the strange world his space-faring ancestors crash-landed on 150 years ago…all while trying to avoid being assassinated or starting an interplanetary war.
Two hundred years ago, there was war. The humans lost and were exiled to the island of Mospheira, trading titbits of advanced technology for continued peace and a secluded refuge. Only one single human - the paidhi - is allowed off the island and into the dangerous society of their conquerors.
I’ve been fascinated with high fantasy since the moment my grandmother first presented me with Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Then, add in a Nora Roberts book when I turned sixteen, and voila, my love for all things fantasy romance was born. I crave tension, romance, sizzle, and some epic fight-to-love scenes that make my blood run hot. When I started writing, I knew the exact genre I wanted to focus on–romance. All. Things. Romance. Fantasy, paranormal, contemporary–I enjoy writing them all but in every single one of my stories there lies a thread of fight–of sizzle–because what’s a happily ever after if you don’t have to work for it?
I binge-read the first three books in this series in a matter of days. It is seriously incredibly to watch these two characters be thrown together. Both with dark pasts of their own, seeing them fight together toward a common goal is absolutely heartwarming even as it gets frustrating at times.
Heart-pounding romance and thrilling action meet deep world-building in Blade & Rose, a sexy and addictive romantic epic fantasy perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass and Danielle L. Jensen’s The Bridge Kingdom.
She’s bound to a monster. He’s bound to his oaths. Their bonds will break. And so will they…
An elemental mage who just wants her freedom, twenty-two-year-old Rielle is driven by one inevitability: she will destroy the impending arranged marriage to her cruel werewolf fiancé. Then she can happily spend her life independently, working as a mage on missions.
To me, a good story is where things happen. I like fast-paced action, grand adventures, snarky banter, and happy endings. I especially like books that don’t take themselves too seriously. Being an author of non-stop action adventure, offbeat science fiction and fantasy books, I write easy-to-read, compelling stories with just as much conflict and danger while maintaining an overarching atmosphere of levity and hope. Suburban mom by day and author by night, I love to live vicariously through my characters. They don’t have to vacuum all day long and are almost always guaranteed to survive any fantastical or thrilling incidents, no matter how treacherous I write them.
I love when stories start right where the action is! Very effective narrative, very vivid worlds–I felt like I was actually there. I was so blown away by the research that must have gone into the settings and locations in this book. The action is fast-paced, the conflict is compelling, and the dash of forbidden love was the cherry on top. I’m a total sucker for romance spanning across parallel worlds and alternate selves. I find the concept of portals and multiverses so incredibly fascinating that this element is in most of my books too.
Cloud Atlas meets Orphan Black in this epic dimension-bending trilogy by New York Times bestselling author Claudia Gray about a girl who must chase her father's killer through multiple dimensions. Marguerite Caine's physicist parents are known for their groundbreaking achievements. Their most astonishing invention, called the Firebird, allows users to jump into multiple universes-and promises to revolutionize science forever. But then Marguerite's father is murdered, and the killer-her parent's handsome, enigmatic assistant Paul-escapes into another dimension before the law can touch him. Marguerite refuses to let the man who destroyed her family go free. So she races after Paul through…
As a hardcore introvert, I often find it difficult to open up to others, especially new people. But somehow, it’s easier to do so when traveling or at least out of my normal routine. So it’s no surprise that I gravitate to stories that feature characters traveling and forming bonds of friendship and romance while on the road. Add some magic to the mix, and I’m almost definitely hooked!
Although this book does feature some heavy themes (CW for mentions of rape), it’s a powerful story about dealing with trauma – and moving on from it, to the life one wants to live. Draven’s characters simply breathe. They feel fleshed-out and real, with all the contradictions of real people. Although the book is part of a series, the story feels complete on its own; the worldbuilding is lush and interesting. I love books that feature travel because being on the road is a great way for characters to connect with each other, as they must rely on one another for safety and survival. Phoenix Unbound features two very different characters who come together in a way that feels real – and beautiful.
In this USA Today bestselling novel, a woman with power over fire and illusion and the enslaved son of a chieftain battle a corrupt empire in this powerful and deeply emotional romantic fantasy.
Every year, each village is required to send a young woman to the Empire's capital--her fate to be burned alive for the entertainment of the masses. For the last five years, one small village's tithe has been the same woman. Gilene's sacrifice protects all the other young women of her village, and her secret to staying alive lies with the magic only she possesses.
