Here are 100 books that Across The Barricades fans have personally recommended if you like
Across The Barricades.
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I’ve always felt myself to be different, odd, and a bit of a loner. As a child, people said I was "too clever by half," and I both hated and loved being able to understand things that other kids did not. Being good at maths and science in a girls’ boarding school does not make you friends! Escaping all that, I became a psychologist and, after a dramatic out-of-body experience, began studying lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, psychic claims, and all sorts of weird and wonderful experiences. This is why I love all these books about exceptional children.
I had to include this first Harry Potter book because Harry is the epitome of a gifted child and I loved these books from the first.
When my own book, The Meme Machine, came out in 1999, someone rang me excitedly to tell me that my book was number 5 on Amazon!!! (There were not so many books listed on Amazon in those days!!).
I was so thrilled that, of course, I had to find out what the top four were. And guess what – they were the hardback and paperback versions of the first two Harry Potter books, which I’d never even heard of. I bought them immediately and never looked back, receiving each one in the post on its publication day.
Galloping gargoyles ... 2022 is the silver anniversary of J.K. Rowling's magical classic Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone!
The boy wizard Harry Potter has been casting a spell over young readers and their families ever since 1997. Now the first book in this unmissable series celebrates 25 years in print! The paperback edition of the tale that introduced us to Harry, Ron and Hermione has been updated and dressed in silver to mark the occasion. It's time to take the magical journey of a lifetime ...
Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I always look for an escape from reality, but it’s not always because the world gets exhausting and I need a change of scenery. Sometimes, I’m looking to learn. As an autistic person, people can be very confusing to me. I love a book that throws something new at me to try and figure out how a certain person functions, or why they think/feel the way they do, and if I can’t do it on my own, I can discuss the book with friends and family and create a discussion through the medium of storytelling and novel writing. Autism can be very debilitating at times, so an escape is always a handy thing to have!
If you want an escape to a mystery with a plot twist you’ll never see coming, then this one’s sure to be a treat! A well-kept family secret comes to light, and it’s nothing like you’d expect. This was maybe the first book to ever inspire me as a writer, particularly for my current series—a past that no one wants to come to light, but through perseverance and fresh curiosity, the main character of this book doesn’t stop until he has all the answers, all the while dealing with his own issues.
When Josh explores his grandmother's house he finds an attic up a closed-off staircase. In it is a collection of strange drawings by his uncle, Patrick, who died suddenly in his teens. But he has no grave, and his name is never spoken.
And Josh begins to uncover the dark truth his family has hidden for forty years.....
'Truth or Dare doesn't let up - and hits you with a final twist.' Daily Telegraph
I’m tired of heroes, and I’ve forgotten what the good guys were fighting for, and if a dark lord wants to ravage the land in the name of Cthulu then they can get in line. I’m more interested in deadbeat losers. What is it really like to walk amongst the living but feel dead inside? How hard is it when you’re beaten before you’ve even begun? And in a world of losers, can one of them really change the world and make it a better place?
Oh dear, I’m cheating again. Sort of. This isn’t really fantasy, either. It’s an adventure for young adults featuring teenage spy Alex Rider. But I love it too much to care, and besides, cheating is cool, kids! But there’s a specific reason why I’m finishing this list with Stormbreaker. Despite its exciting action, the book is written as a relatable and grounded affair. Alex Rider is an ordinary kid with ordinary problems. He’s ginger, often lonely, underestimated, and regularly cast aside. He’s relatable and that’s why I loved the books.
The film adaptation is a ridiculous charade of impossible stunts starring an incredibly handsome blonde-haired model and it feels like someone threw up confetti over a story that actually meant something to me. Fifteen-year-old me was justified in throwing his popcorn at the screen.
The first book in the number one bestselling Alex Rider series.
In the first book in the number one bestselling Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, fourteen-year-old Alex is forcibly recruited into MI6. Armed with secret gadgets, he is sent to investigate Herod Sayle, a man who is offering state-of-the-art Stormbreaker computers to every school in the country. But the teenage spy soon finds himself in mortal danger.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I always look for an escape from reality, but it’s not always because the world gets exhausting and I need a change of scenery. Sometimes, I’m looking to learn. As an autistic person, people can be very confusing to me. I love a book that throws something new at me to try and figure out how a certain person functions, or why they think/feel the way they do, and if I can’t do it on my own, I can discuss the book with friends and family and create a discussion through the medium of storytelling and novel writing. Autism can be very debilitating at times, so an escape is always a handy thing to have!
When a family man runs into problems with the law, he and his family must be moved into the witness protection program, only his eldest daughter chooses not to go with them. Their lives are turned upside down, their identities change, and they must navigate a completely new life whilst trying to forget their past—when they drop their identities, their family and friends, their entire lives, and live under a code name depending on their main skillset. This book intrigued me immensely, and was a huge reason I wrote the ‘no pasts allowed’ policy into my storyline.
From the number one New York Times bestselling coauthor of Judge & Jury and Lifeguard comes this electrifying solo debut, The Blue Zone.
Kate Raab's life seems almost perfect: her boyfriend, her job, her family . . . until her father runs into trouble with the law. His only recourse is to testify against his former accomplices in exchange for his family's placement in the Witness Protection Program. But one of them gets cold feet. In a flash, everything Kate can count on is gone.
Now, a year later, her worst fears have happened: Her father has disappeared-into what the…
I was born within sight of Pembroke Castle, birthplace of Henry Tudor, who later became King Henry VII and began the Tudor Dynasty, so I’ve always had an interest in his story. I found several biographies, but no novels which brought the truth of his story to life. The idea for the Tudor Trilogy occurred to me when I realised Henry Tudor could be born in book one, ‘come of age’ in book two, and rule England as king in book three. Since then, I’ve continued to follow the Tudor ‘thread’ all the way from Owen Tudor’s first meeting with Catherine of Valois, and culminating with the Elizabethan Series.
The third book of The Elizabeth of England Chronicles has Elizabeth finally becoming Queen of England and trying to unite a divided country. A Protestant queen surrounded by Catholic kings, all she has to do is marry well and secure the succession. Gemma Lawrence has a talent for developing convincing characters and evoking a compelling sense of time and place.
The witty, wily princess, Elizabeth Tudor has survived the turmoil of her formative years, and finally, is now Queen of England. Rising to the throne on a wave of popularity, Elizabeth is keen to avoid the mistakes of her siblings, and bring England to a new sense of unity and hope. But in the first two years of her reign, Elizabeth will be tested as in no other. She is seen as scandalous for her faith and sex in the courts of Europe. Untested in power and authority, Elizabeth must use all the weapons at her disposal to survive as…
Like anyone else who takes an interest in Ireland, I’ve been fascinated by the long and often very difficult history of the island’s experience of religion. Where I live, in county Antrim, religious imagery appears everywhere – in churches and schools, obviously, but also on signboards posted onto trees, and in the colourful rags that are still hung up to decorate holy wells. This book is the fruit of twenty years of thinking about Christian Ireland - its long and difficult history, and its sudden and difficult collapse.
Why, from the 1990s, did the Irish Catholic consensus so suddenly disappear? And what might be the effect of this sudden-onset secularisation? This brilliant account of the recent revolution in Irish religion describes the effects of the clerical scandals that brought down a government, demoralised a denomination, and drove social change on a massive and structural scale. Ganiel shows how the older religious monopolies that did so much to shape the institutions and culture of Ireland, north and south, have given way to a much more fluid religious market, in which individuals can believe without belonging just as much as they might formerly have belonged without believing.
Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland is the first major book to explore the dynamic religious landscape of contemporary Ireland, north and south, and to analyse the island's religious transition. It confirms that the Catholic Church's long-standing 'monopoly' has well and truly disintegrated, replaced by a mixed, post-Catholic religious 'market' featuring new and growing expressions of Protestantism, as well as other religions. It describes how people of faith are developing 'extra-institutional' expressions of religion, keeping their faith alive outside or in addition to the institutional Catholic Church.
Drawing on island-wide surveys of clergy and laypeople, as well as more than 100 interviews, Gladys…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Give me a castle ruin or guide me through ancient Roman mosaics and you make my day. Accordingly, my preferred reading is historical fiction. I read (and review) lots of it, like 100 books/year. I am also ridiculously romantic. I want there to be some heart with the blood and war, I want characters I can root for despite the horrifying odds facing them. I want protagonists that step out of the past to drag me back with them. When I read, these are the books I choose. When I write, these are the books I aspire to create—Romantic Historical Fiction, if you will.
Rebel Knot is set in 17th-century Ireland, torn apart by religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This is a war-ravaged Ireland, a land where hope is in short supply and peace is more of a dream than a possibility. And yet, in the midst of all that violence fragile love can flourish—even between people who belong on opposite sides of the religious fence. Ms. Bazos does a fantastic job of transporting the reader back in time, and her two main characters, Niall and Ainé, are wonderfully complex and relatable. The harshness of the times is vividly depicted—as is the growing attraction between the innocent and traumatised Ainé and her new protector, Niall.
Ireland 1652: In the desperate, final days of the English invasion . . .
A fey young woman, Áine Callaghan, is the sole survivor of an attack by English marauders. When Irish soldier Niall O'Coneill discovers his own kin slaughtered in the same massacre, he vows to hunt down the men responsible. He takes Áine under his protection and together they reach the safety of an encampment held by the Irish forces in Tipperary.
Hardly a safe haven, the camp is rife with danger and intrigue. Áine is a stranger with the old stories stirring on her tongue and rumours…
Peter Marshall is Professor of History at the University of Warwick, co-editor of the English Historical Review, and the author of nine books and over sixty articles on the religious and cultural history of early modern Europe. His authoritative account of the Reformation in England, Heretics and Believers, was awarded the Wolfson History Prize in 2018. Peter is a native of the Orkney Islands, and currently writing a book on the islanders’ experiences in the Reformation era.
Thirty years after its first publication, Patrick Collinson’s elegantly written account of how Protestantism transformed English society remains fresh, challenging and surprising. Focusing on art and culture, urban life, the family and ideas of nationhood, it persuasively argued that it makes more sense to see the Reformation as a drawn-out process rather than a dramatic ‘event’, and as one that was coming to fruition only in the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. It is also a triumphant demonstration of how short books can punch above their weight.
'...a masterly study.' Alister McGrath, Theological Book Review '...a splendid read.' J.J.Scarisbrick, TLS '...profound, witty...of immense value.' David Loades, History Today Historians have always known that the English Reformation was more than a simple change of religious belief and practice. It altered the political constitution and, according to Max Weber, the attitudes and motives which governed the getting and investment of wealth, facilitating the rise of capitalism and industrialisation. This book investigates further implications of the transformative religious changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for the nation, the town, the family, and for their culture.
As a teenager, I “discovered” the poetry of Emily Dickinson and put her verse to music. Later, at Yale University I delved deeper into the power of rhythms, the beauty of images, the clarity of insights—how they combine to create a genuine poetic voice that reveals an interior world. Politics, of course, define our interactions in the exterior world, and great novels meld these two elements—poetry and politics—into a seamless union. I’ve been inspired to write novels about two poets—Emily Dickinson and John Keats—to bring the reader into the intense, poetic world of their blazing interiors and their unique outward politics.
In contrast to my first pick, My Wars are Laid Away in Books is a calm, scholarly, relentless search for the literal facts of the life of a great but enigmatic poet—Emily Dickinson. Habegger also shows considerable literary acumen in analyzing the context and vigor, and passions of Dickinson’s poetry. Though other biographies of Dickinson are better known, this is the one that gave me the best factual basis for my book, my intensely poetic novel about Dickinson’s personal politics and astonishing genius.
Emily Dickinson, probably the most loved and certainly the greatest of American poets, continues to be seen as the most elusive. One reason she has become a timeless icon of mystery for many readers is that her developmental phases have not been clarified. In this exhaustively researched biography, Alfred Habegger presents the first thorough account of Dickinson’s growth–a richly contextualized story of genius in the process of formation and then in the act of overwhelming production.
Building on the work of former and contemporary scholars, My Wars Are Laid Away in Books brings to light a wide range of new…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am an associate professor of history at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, where I teach courses on modern United States history, U.S. foreign relations, and public history, direct our minor in museum studies, and direct the Mellon Initiative for Undergraduate Research in the Arts and Humanities. I am particularly interested in how domestic culture, ideology, and values have informed how the United States has engaged with the world around it. My recent work has explored the influence of conservative religious groups in foreign affairs, and I’m at work on a new book about national security and the congressional debates that unfolded over foreign aid after World War II.
Although there is no shortage of books on the 28th president and his foreign policy—we even use “Wilsonian” as a shorthand for the embrace of idealism, liberal internationalism, and democratic capitalism in U.S. foreign relations—Burnidge’s work offers an exceptional exploration of how religion and religious ideas informed Wilson’s approach to world affairs. She sets her chronicle of Wilson’s life and spiritual development within the context of the broader religious history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and weaves in expert analysis of the relationship between Wilson’s Christianity, race, and racism in that era. This provides a compelling foundation for her discussion of the Protestant beliefs that shaped Wilsonian internationalism during World War I and beyond. Engrossing, revealing, and extraordinarily smart, this is a key book for those interested in Wilson, World War I, and the global Progressive Era, not to mention the underpinnings of liberal…
A century after his presidency, Woodrow Wilson remains one of the most compelling and complicated figures ever to occupy the Oval Office. A political outsider, Wilson brought to the presidency a distinctive, strongly held worldview, built on powerful religious traditions that informed his idea of America and its place in the world. With A Peaceful Conquest, Cara Lea Burnidge presents the most detailed analysis yet of how Wilson's religious beliefs affected his vision of American foreign policy, with repercussions that lasted into the Cold War and beyond. Framing Wilson's intellectual development in relationship to the national religious landscape, and paying…
