Here are 100 books that Blaze fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
This is a comfort read for me. While it was published a while ago, this series is all about love, family (blood and otherwise), comfort, and friendship.
Four lifelong friends form Vows, a wedding destination and planning business. Vows is like the small towns I love so much. In this book, Mackensie and Carter stumble around each other until they realize the differences don’t matter when hearts fall in love.
The found family vibe of the four friends and their extended families fills me up every time I read.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts presents her first trade original-a novel of love, friendship, and family-in this beautiful french flap edition of Book One in the Bride Quartet.
Wedding photographer Mackensie "Mac" Elliot is most at home behind the camera, but her focus is shattered moments before an important wedding rehearsal when she bumps into the bride-to-be's brother...an encounter that has them both seeing stars.
A stable, safe English teacher, Carter Maguire is definitely not Mac's type. But a casual fling might be just what she needs to take her mind off bridezillas. Of course, casual flings…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
I love Kait Nolan’s entire Misfit Inn series and the Men of Misfit Inn series, as well!
The main characters are foster children who spent time in the same foster home—talk about found family! The characters all have pasts that led them to being in foster care. Kait shows them dealing with the traumas in their backgrounds as they stretch themselves to become better for the person they love. Happy swoon!
In this series opener, I love how Kennedy and Xander both have lots of feelings for the other, along with very good reasons not to trust the other. Watching them work for it makes for a fabulous story!
She thought she could never go home again. Kennedy Reynolds has spent the past decade traveling the world as a free spirit. She never looks back at the past, the place, or the love she left behind--until her adopted mother's unexpected death forces her home to Eden's Ridge, Tennessee.
Deputy Xander Kincaid has never forgotten his first love. He's spent ten long years waiting for the chance to make up for one bone-headed mistake that sent her running. Now that she's finally home, he wants to give her so much more than just an apology.
I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
I love this small-town romance with its strong characters and emotional plot.
I enjoyed Thea’s unique backstory. To survive it, she needs to be tough and careful, meaning she has walls that Shep has to learn to scale. Thankfully, he’s up to the task.
The Colson family is full of found family and real family, a fabulous combination that proves love comes in all forms and for all people. I loved the emotional roller coaster and, of course, the happy ending!
Get ready for your next reading obsession, the spicy small-town romance filled with mystery and suspense from the bestselling author, perfect for fans of Elsie Silver and Colleen Hoover.
'Shep is everything you could possibly want in a book boyfriend' 5* Reader review 'The sense of found family is one of the best I've ever read' 5* Reader review 'Had me on the edge of my seat' 5* Reader review _________________________________________________________________
Trust doesn't come easily when you've been running for as long as I have, which is why moving in with a man I barely know is such a bad…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’ve always lived in a small city in Northern Ontario (Canada) that is surrounded by smaller towns and even smaller villages. I’m a first-generation Canadian who grew up without extended family any closer than Scotland. I’ve learned first-hand how wonderful found families can be. Once I started writing, I was drawn to happy endings and small-town settings where everyone knows your business but has your back too. I hope you enjoy these small-town recommendations as much as I do. Here’s to small towns, found families, and happy endings!
I love the strong found-family vibe in this one (like many of the books Jill Shalvis writes).
Harper arrives in the small town where she last felt happy. She has no idea what’s in store for her. She’s strong, independent, and most definitely not looking for a relationship. Oops.
Shalvis combines humor, love, found family, and a roller coaster of emotions in this wonderful found-family romance. A fabulous read!
New York Times bestselling author Jill Shalvis returns to Sunrise Cove with a beguiling, lighthearted story about fresh starts, second chances and true love.
When Harper Shaw's life falls apart, she knows it's time for a change. She removes everything that doesn't spark joy-from her soul-sucking job to eating kale to making lists-and sets off for the last place she was happy, Lake Tahoe (who wouldn't feel good there, right?) to fulfill her dream of opening her own bakery.
With her Sugar Pine Bakery in between a tavern, owned by sexy, grumpy Bodie Campbell, and a bookstore, run by her…
An avid reader from an early age, what has moved me most were the characters who faced adversity and fought to overcome it. In my 30s, I lost my way, followed a guru, and took almost a decade to realize I was in a cult. Psychotherapy helped me get out and led me to become a psychotherapist. The books I've recommended have encouraged and inspired me to heal and to grow, to build a good, strong, healthy life–even though I fell more than once and didn't know for sure if I could get back up. I hope these books will inspire you as they inspired me.
You don't have to be a cult survivor to have been abused by a traumatizing narcissist, but if you are a survivor, this book is essential and indispensable. I've recommended it countless times, not just to cult survivors for whom it is written, but to others who have broken free from abusive relationships.
When I left a cult in 1994, my shame and my feeling of isolation felt like a prison. This book put me on the road to freedom. It has everything you need to know about what to expect and how to navigate re-entry into your own life, a life that can be free from undue influence and control.
3rd Edition Updated and revised, including a new section on the Troubled Teen Industry
Cult victims and those who have experienced abusive relationships often suffer from fear, confusion, low self-esteem, and post-traumatic stress. Take Back Your Life explains the seductive draw that leads people into such situations, provides insightful information for assessing what happened, and hands-on tools for getting back on track.
Sometimes you need to search for the next roads to take in your life; other times these roads approach you. I was looking for new ways to use my long-term communication and mental health advocacy skills and then, sadly, the Sandy Hook shooting occurred. I immediately wanted to help community members ease their pain and assist cities nationwide to greatly improve their disaster mental health response. I never expected a pandemic would arrive only two months after I published, making my book all the more important. Now climate change is exacerbating our already stressful times, and we must act to stem mental health issues before they become out of hand.
Bob Schmidt is a licensed professional counselor in Sandy Hook, Connecticut who has worked diligently to help shooting survivors and their families as well as others in the community with their emotional needs. He is known for utilizing state-of-the-art trauma therapy such as “Tapping,” (Emotional Freedom Technique), which has proven successful in treating PTSD. This book includes a wealth of examples of wellness techniques and trauma-response activities that have proven helpful in relieving high levels of stress and PTSD. These activities make individuals more resilient, so they are better prepared to face life’s challenges and learn to accept the ones they cannot change. Resiliency is one of the keys to happiness, and is increasingly found as a productive way to prepare for any possible disturbing event in the future.
Life is, and has always been, a series of challenges. Some challenges can be resolved easily, some are more difficult, and a few cannot be fixed at all. Resilient individuals are better prepared to deal with life’s challenges and learn to accept the ones they cannot change. Resiliency is one of the keys to happiness, and is found by learning a variety of coping skills and wellness techniques, as well as philosophy from experts in the counseling field. These are the same skills and approaches that I have successfully used with my clients in my private practice in Sandy Hook,…
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’ve always been fascinated by the “what if” of how humanity would survive a worldwide disaster. While many post-apocalyptic tales depict a bleak world where the apocalypse brings out the worst in everyone, my favorite stories—both to read and to write—have always been ones where people hold on to their humanity and band together against the darkness. That’s why I like the ones on this list.
With its mix of family drama, disaster survival, and medicine, this hit all the right notes for me. Seeing things fall apart in a hospital without power was like a nightmarish version of ER.
I loved the characters, who were all just trying to protect their loved ones amidst an unimaginable disaster. Each member of the Peterson family got their chance to shine in perfectly intertwining arcs. This is a top-notch disaster story that kicks off an amazing six-book series.
No power. No law & order. No safety net. The world as everyone knows it is over.Laurel is stabilizing a patient in the ER when the power goes out. As she struggles to keep her patients alive, she faces an ugly truth—the world as everyone knew it is over. The smart thing to do is run and try to survive, but Laurel refuses to leave her patients behind—least of all her sick mother. There’s only one choice to make. She’ll have to stay and fight.Bear is done fighting. War and PTSD have cost him everything—his job, his self-respect, and his…
I am a psychologist who has worked with sex and violent offenders for 40 years and testified over 200 times in court. I started working with sex offenders by accident, as the courts in the county where I lived started sending them for treatment despite the fact that none of the people in the clinic I worked at had had any training on treating sex offenders. Certainly, how anyone could deliberately harm anyone–particularly children–was a mystery to me. I got a small grant and visited sex offender clinics around the country to learn treatment methods. I wrote up my findings and it turned into my first book.
First published in 1992, this book tied hidden individual trauma to other, more recognized, and accepted forms of trauma, such as combat and terrorism. Beautifully written and insightful, it broadened our understanding of trauma and made the case for taking domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse more seriously than the culture at large had heretofore taken it.
As someone who lived through the era where women were advised if they were raped to “lie back and enjoy it,” the book brought a dose of reality to the surreal assumptions of people who minimized and excused domestic battery, rape, and sexual assault.
The book also addressed why efforts are so often made to silence survivors. Perhaps the most famous quote from the book is, "It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire…
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman's volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast…
When I was four and a half years old, I found my mother passed out on her bedroom floor. She had overdosed—shortly after giving birth to my baby brother, and she went on to spend six months in a psychiatric hospital. While she was away, I remember sitting in the backseat of our car with my brother as my father drove us to the store when our car collided head-on with another vehicle. In the months that followed, I became parentless for a period that seemed like years. That experience set the stage for my lifelong interest in the impacts of childhood trauma. As a therapist, it also sparked my passion for healing others.
I love this workbook because it is straightforward in defining childhood developmental trauma. It explains the Autonomic Nervous System and how trauma stays stuck in the body today. I use diagrams and simple worksheets to explain why my clients feel the way they do.
I like that it explains that trauma is not just working out through the brain but includes the body, most importantly. I also believe that true healing from trauma has to include somatic body-based work, which this workbook explains.
Traumatic experiences leave a “living legacy” of effects that often persist for years and decades after the events are over. Historically, it has always been assumed that re-telling the story of what happened would resolve these effects.
However, survivors report a different experience: Telling and re-telling the story of what happened to them often reactivates their trauma responses, overwhelming them rather than resolving the trauma. To transform traumatic experiences, survivors need to understand their symptoms and reactions as normal responses to abnormal events. They need ways to work with the symptoms that intrude on their daily activities, preventing a life…
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…
As the co-author of Broken But Healing, I know firsthand what it means to survive emotional, physical, and psychological trauma—and to slowly piece yourself back together. Books were a lifeline during my healing journey. They offered comfort, clarity, and the reminder that I wasn’t alone. These five books helped shape my own recovery and inspired me to share my story so others could find the strength to rebuild, too.
This book reveals how the body stores emotional and traumatic memories long after the mind tries to forget them.
Van der Kolk explains why symptoms like anxiety, emotional numbness, anger, or disconnection can surface years later.
Many men who “push through” or never talk about their trauma find clarity in this book’s explanation of how stress affects the brain and nervous system. It helps readers understand themselves physically and emotionally, while giving hope that healing is possible through therapy, mindfulness, and self-awareness.
"Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding and treating traumatic stress and the scope of its impact on society." -Alexander McFarlane, Director of the Centre for Traumatic Stress Studies
A pioneering researcher transforms our understanding of trauma and offers a bold new paradigm for healing in this New York Times bestseller
Trauma is a fact of life. Veterans and their families deal with the painful aftermath of combat; one in five Americans has been molested; one in four grew up with alcoholics; one in three couples have engaged in physical violence. Dr. Bessel van der…
