Books like Bloodline — picked by fans

This is my all-time favorite of the Twilight series. The fantasy in this book was mystical, and I did not put the book down. I wanted to know more about Edward and how he eventually expressed his love for Isabella.

The descriptions in the book really allowed your imagination to flow. The love expressed between two people was to die for. 

Rose and Lissa are dragged back to a school for vampires; though it’s a fair bit more complicated than that, with vampires of different sorts and being able to wield magic.

Rose is Lissa’s bodyguard and the school trains their powers, so that Rose will be able to protect Lissa (who is a princess) when the time comes. Their lessons don’t stop them from getting into a whole swath of familiar teenage drama.

I have always been more interested in vampires than werewolves. But when I saw this book, I knew I had to give it a chance. Once I started reading it, I couldn’t put it down. The story follows Kayla, a young girl who takes a summer job as a wilderness guide. Kayla has no way of knowing how this job will change her life forever. She meets Lucas, a young man who she is drawn to. Little does she know that Lucas is indeed a werewolf or that her destiny is linked to his.

As I read this book, I was anxious to see what would happen next. It was definitely a page-turner! While it’s a young adult novel, I highly recommend it to anyone who likes stories about werewolves.

I’ve read several books by this author. They are fairly short reads. The other books that I’ve read by this author are ghost stories. This one stood out because it wasn’t just a story about a ghost. It was also a story about a vampire. A young girl named Cynda goes to stay with her father and his new family in Maine. While there, she meets Vincent, an older man who turns out to be a vampire.

This book stayed true to the traditional image of evil vampires who prey on young women. There were times when I wanted to shout warnings to Cynda. The book was suspenseful. I was anxious to see how it would turn out. The ghost definitely added to the mystery of the story.

When I was working on the fundraising campaign to raise money for the statue of Virginia Woolf for Richmond, I was constantly being quoted the line, “I’d rather die than live in Richmond.” This line, uttered by Nicole Kidman as Woolf in The Hours, was completely made up by the screenwriter. 

Woolf’s decade (1914–1924) in Richmond was actually one of her most prolific. She launched the Hogarth Press, wrote major works, and hosted literary gatherings whilst also navigating the upheaval of World War I. This book, drawing from her letters and diaries, paints a richer picture of her time in Richmond. I think this bio-pic would challenge the Bloomsbury-dominated narrative and put pay to that rogue quote.

History is just “one damned thing after another” is a common phrase. For me this is the book which has led me to my next project. Cahill traces the story of the women who went to Russia in 1916 with the voluntary outfit the Scottish Women’s Hospitals. Set up by a Scottish surgeon, Elsie Inglis, the SWH became the biggest women’s medical organisation serving abroad in the war. The SWH women ran hospitals in France, Serbia and Russia. Here Cahill tells the story of their astonishing adventures in Russia – driving ambulances close to the firing line, retreating with the Serbian and Russian armies, surviving the cold, food shortages and the Russian Revolution – through the women’s own words. It’s staggering stuff – and great material for my next book about one of those incredible women pioneers.

Of all the epistolary horror stories I've yet encountered, this is the most bizarre and puzzling, thanks to a disturbed, unreliable, maddening, yet pitiable narrator.

Is the young diarist insane, or is she the only person who can see the truth of what’s happening in her sheltered boarding school? Is the new girl, Ernessa, a vampire? Is Ernessa even real at all? I couldn't tell, but I kept wondering.

I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery and the experience of trying to determine what was actually going on.

I don’t set much store by orderly chronology, in life or writing—as might be clear from my book, where old memories live vividly alongside the present moment!

More interesting to me is how memory accumulates and morphs over time, and how stories live in our minds. Needless to say I adore Julavits’s non-chronological diary The Folded Clock (and what a title)! In gorgeously detailed individual sections, she immerses us in her life without regard for the precise sequence of events. We’re left with a beautiful jumble, which is surely truer than how life is anyway. 

I wrote my first book and started submitting it to publishers when I was eleven years old. I dreamed of publishing a book before I graduated from high school.

Ultimately, that didn’t happen—I was 25 by the time I sold my first book. So you can see why I loved a story about a character who lived my dream; a 14-year-old girl who becomes a bestselling author. Most people didn’t believe that kids can be authors, but seeing another kid do it—even if her story is fictional—makes it feel possible.

I choose my fifth recommendation, Dairy of a Worm for its creative parody of both diary writing and insect life.

The main character of a worm, describing his parents, home life, and school life from a ground-level perspective is hilarious and cute.

The illustrations by Harry Bliss masterfully show the world through the tiny perspective of insects. Giant girls playing jump rope are a terror. And Worm's best friend Spider, is wonderful as an off-shoot side-kick.

In my library I would often follow up the story with a discussion on how life can be viewed from many different perspectives. And I can think of no better spring-board for just such discussion, than Diary of a Worm.