Here are 100 books that Bluebird fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been fascinated by borders since I was a child. I would run my finger along lines on maps in the worn pages of a world atlas, wondering what strange stories the people in those places would tell. As a writer, I look for compelling stories and odd characters at borders. The latest is Bob Boulé, the larger-than-life figure that Greg Boos and I describe in Smuggler. The books on this list were important for me to learn about the reality of the US-Canada border, and I hope you—and Donald Trump—enjoy them as much as I did.
I loved the novel Border Songs because it captured what it’s like to live along the western US-Canada border between Washington and British Columbia.
The dairy farms. The berry fields. The rolling hills. The smell of the sea at the tidal mud flats of Semiahmoo Bay. The Canadian road, Zero Avenue, that runs directly on the line for dozens of miles, with only a ditch to mark the border with the United States.
The book has memorable characters and gets into smuggling and migration across the border, but it leaves the reader with the sense that the local population would be doing just fine without too much interference from the national governments.
Set in the previously sleepy hinterlands straddling Washington state and British Columbia, Border Songs is the story of Brandon Vanderkool, six foot eight, frequently tongue-tied, severely dyslexic, and romantically inept. Passionate about bird-watching, Brandon has a hard time mustering enthusiasm for his new job as a Border Patrol agent guarding thirty miles of largely invisible boundary. But to everyone’s surprise, he excels at catching illegal immigrants, and as drug runners, politicians, surveillance cameras, and a potential sweetheart flock to this scrap of land, Brandon is suddenly at the center of something much bigger than himself.
Two sisters. One opulent hotel. A chance to change everything.
For 17-year-old Clara Wilson, the glamour of the Roaring Twenties feels worlds away. With her family on the brink of eviction, Clara pins her hopes on a position at the grand Hotel Hamilton. But when her adventurous sister impulsively follows…
I’ve been fascinated by borders since I was a child. I would run my finger along lines on maps in the worn pages of a world atlas, wondering what strange stories the people in those places would tell. As a writer, I look for compelling stories and odd characters at borders. The latest is Bob Boulé, the larger-than-life figure that Greg Boos and I describe in Smuggler. The books on this list were important for me to learn about the reality of the US-Canada border, and I hope you—and Donald Trump—enjoy them as much as I did.
Donald Trump called the western US-Canada border along the 49th parallel “an artificially drawn line” that is “imaginary.”
I loved Hoy’s book because it shows that Trump is right, but for the wrong reasons. The colonists who drew the line on a map had zero knowledge of the land on the ground, which was inhabited by Indigenous and First Nations peoples.
The straight line of the border created odd geographical features like the Northwest Angle and Point Roberts, and split traditional lands in nonsensical ways. The border is artificial, but the implication of that is not that Canada should be part of the United States. Instead, both the US and Canadian claims are borne through violence and displacement of Indigenous peoples.
The untold history of the multiracial making of the border between Canada and the United States.
Often described as the longest undefended border in the world, the Canada-United States border was born in blood, conflict, and uncertainty. At the end of the American Revolution, Britain and the United States imagined a future for each of their nations that stretched across a continent. They signed treaties with one another dividing lands neither country could map, much less control. A century and a half later, they had largely fulfilled those earlier ambitions. Both countries had built nations that stretched from the Atlantic…
I’ve been fascinated by borders since I was a child. I would run my finger along lines on maps in the worn pages of a world atlas, wondering what strange stories the people in those places would tell. As a writer, I look for compelling stories and odd characters at borders. The latest is Bob Boulé, the larger-than-life figure that Greg Boos and I describe in Smuggler. The books on this list were important for me to learn about the reality of the US-Canada border, and I hope you—and Donald Trump—enjoy them as much as I did.
This is a gorgeously written biography and a sweeping description of the landscape of the upper latitudes of North America at the time of European occupation.
For me, the French navigator, Samuel de Champlain, stands out for his respectful relations with Indigenous and First Nations peoples, even as his mapping and exploring paved the way for their dispossession and displacement.
I was drawn to the vivid rendering of the region at the turn of the seventeenth century, and I learned a lot about the French history of Quebec that makes Canada what it is today.
Winner of the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing
In this sweeping, enthralling biography, acclaimed historian David Hackett Fischer brings to life the remarkable Samuel de Champlain—soldier, spy, master mariner, explorer, cartographer, artist, and Father of New France.
Born on France's Atlantic coast, Champlain grew to manhood in a country riven by religious warfare. The historical record is unclear on whether Champlain was baptized Protestant or Catholic, but he fought in France's religious wars for the man who would become Henri IV, one of France's greatest kings, and like Henri, he was religiously tolerant in an…
Two sisters. One opulent hotel. A chance to change everything.
For 17-year-old Clara Wilson, the glamour of the Roaring Twenties feels worlds away. With her family on the brink of eviction, Clara pins her hopes on a position at the grand Hotel Hamilton. But when her adventurous sister impulsively follows…
I’ve been fascinated by borders since I was a child. I would run my finger along lines on maps in the worn pages of a world atlas, wondering what strange stories the people in those places would tell. As a writer, I look for compelling stories and odd characters at borders. The latest is Bob Boulé, the larger-than-life figure that Greg Boos and I describe in Smuggler. The books on this list were important for me to learn about the reality of the US-Canada border, and I hope you—and Donald Trump—enjoy them as much as I did.
I think a lot of people just assume that the majority of irregular migration at the US-Canada border consists of people entering the United States. That’s wrong historically and today.
British Loyalists during the US Revolution, people fleeing slavery on the Underground Railroad, and conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War have all sought protection north of the border. The same holds true today with thousands of people leaving the United States every year in search of asylum in Canada.
However, as Clark-Kazar’s book shows, they do not always receive a generous welcome, and Canada has tightened rules and put in place new restrictions for decades. I loved this book because it paints a complete picture of Canada’s partial and uneven embrace of refugees from around the world.
Forced migration shaped the creation of Canada as a settler state and is a defining feature of our contemporary national and global contexts. Many people in Canada have direct or indirect experiences of refugee resettlement and protection, trafficking, and environmental displacement.
Offering a comprehensive resource in the growing field of migration studies, Forced Migration in/to Canada is a critical primer from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Researchers, practitioners, and knowledge keepers draw on documentary evidence and analysis to foreground lived experiences of displacement and migration policies at the municipal, provincial, territorial, and federal levels. From the earliest instances of Indigenous displacement and…
Although I’m neither a healthcare professional nor a historian, my passions are reading great fiction and continually striving to write it. Degrees in literature led to college teaching and then full-time writing. And that, to the publication of six works of fiction, including four historical novels. So, add to the mix, then, the years spent studying and teaching literature as well as those spent writing and rewriting—and, too, being an inveterate reader—and you have, in brief, the sum of my expertise. Each of the works listed below, I feel, has super qualities. I certainly enjoyed reading such masterful work and hope you will as well.
As a writer, I found so much to admire in The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally. Simply put, it’s epic. I was blown away by Kenneally’s Tolstoian precision of narrative and by the drama of two sisters who leave their confined lives in Australia and serve as nurses in WWI, first on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean and then on the Western Front. Keneally recreates a full sense of the times, showing how individuals can become enmeshed and shaped by huge historical events. The sisters confront not only the terrible effects of war but also a secret that haunts them. This is a stunning, multi-layered novel by a master, The Daughters of Mars has earned numerous accolades—and no wonder. It’s beautifully written and deeply affecting.
In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive.
At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate,…
During my MFA, I learned to write family dramas and character-driven fiction, but I wanted more comfort, joy, and… romance! I knew the swoony and funny aspects of rom-coms could lift heavier emotional subjects like grief and loss, allowing readers to explore these resonant aspects of life safely, with a guaranteed Happily Ever After. All the books on this list explore a full emotional range of the human experience through extraordinary, utterly magical love stories about otherwise ordinary, flawed people. I hope they make you laugh, swoon, maybe shed a few cathartic tears, and come out the other side feeling better than when you turned the first page.
Noelle is grieving the recent loss of her grandmother and finds herself recreating a honeymoon trip her grandmother once planned with a former love, Paul. It’s the trip of a lifetime… except along for the ride is Paul’s grandson, Theo, who happens to be Noelle’s former high school rival.
Over the course of the trip, Noelle achieves real emotional healing, both in working through her grief and in finding herself again. She also comes to see that the guy she thought was always competing with her just might have been driving her to be better and vice versa.
Noelle and Theo’s romance is so tender and sexy, with snappy dialogue, intense chemistry, and heart-rending emotional moments. I laughed and cried and loved every page.
My first experience with historical fiction was reading The Witch from the Sea by that iconic author, Victoria Holt. This sparked a 40-year-long love affair with that genre that’s still burning intensely. I’ve been immersed in such fiction for a lifetime and have read the works of virtually every great author in this genre. I started my own series in 2020 because I feared this type of no-fluff fiction was becoming obsolete. There were 17th Century English characters making noise in my head so I used my creative writing background to bring them to life on the pages of my books, under the pen name Jessica Russell.
This intricately written story sparked my interest from the very first page. Every time the author introduced a clue to the plot, I immediately wanted to know what it meant and what was coming. I was “chomping at the bit” as they say, and there was never one moment where the story lagged. Every single sentence needed to be there and the mystery had layer after layer with no way to ever predict what would happen. This is a historical fiction writer who definitely understands how to weave a top-notch suspenseful tale, and that’s what this is.
From a New York Times-bestselling author: An island off the Georgia coast holds the memory of a broken heart and the secrets of a woman's past.
It's been years since Lacey Ames last saw Hampton Island, where she grew up amid the sandy marshes with her childhood sweetheart, Giles Severn, and her cousin Elise-and where Elise had stolen the man Lacey loved. Lacey never forgot the hurt and betrayal she once suffered at Giles's grand family home of Sea Oaks, but a curious and compelling summons from Elise prompts her return.
As an immigrant in the United States, I have been fascinated by the dynamics between races and cultures—both in the country and globally. As I travel extensively (63 countries so far), I experience some of the biases firsthand—sometimes in the unlikeliest places. I have come to realize that despite the difference in the color of our skin—and the clothes we wear—we are more alike than different.
I loved the book because of my deep interest in its theme: the radicalization of Muslim youth in Europe. It’s a convincing account of a young Londoner getting drawn to ISIS, which upends a family already mired in tragedy.
The key characters shine in their own narrative, and their respective truths speak to me. I also loved that the writer gives us a snapshot of the lives of the ISIS recruits living in Syria.
_______________ WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDAND AND NEW YORK TIMES _______________ 'The book for our times' - Judges of the Women's Prize 'Elegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world' - Guardian 'Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century' - New York Times _______________ Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of…
I read and write to better understand people. Why do we do what we do, feel what we feel, hide what we hide? Any book that illuminates these questions and their answers draws me in. Reading and writing are ways that I can attempt to walk in someone else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes, expanding my own understanding of the world. Perhaps the books on this list will offer you the same opportunity.
This is one of my favorite books that I’ve read in the past few years. Lucy Foley presents a family mystery that the young protagonist must unravel if she’s to understand where she comes from.
The author weaves together her story with that of her grandparents in the present and past, keeping the reader always engaged and wanting to know what will happen next. Each story is developed with depth and emotion to the very end.
In many ways, my life has been rather like a record of the lost and found. Perhaps all lives are like that.
It's when life started in earnest HERTFORDSHIRE, 1928
The paths of Tom and Alice collide against a haze of youthful, carefree exuberance. And so begins a love story that finds its feet by a lake one silvery moonlit evening . . .
It's when there were no happy endings PARIS, 1939
Alice is living in the City of Light, but the pain of the last decade has already left its mark. There's a shadow…
My mom handed me one of those little girl diaries with a lock and key when I was in third grade. I wrote my heart into those diaries until I needed more space and shifted to regular-sized notebooks. Writing is my way to know myself and make sense of my life. The journal I kept in the last months of my husband’s life helped me reassemble the trauma-blurred memories of his dying, and then, it supported my emotional rebirth during the year of intense grieving. It is with surprise and delight that I hear from readers who say I articulate their innermost emotions related to love and loss.
Even though the marriage in Oh William!ends in divorce while my marriage ended (without my consent) in my husband’s untimely death, the book brought me back to the unconventional nature of my marriage. Elizabeth Strout’s uncanny ability to say much in a single sentence had me traveling back in time and heart to the many moments that made our marriage. The tendernesses and fears, the deep trust and insecurities that quietly but forcefully bound us together made up the subtle mysteries of our uncommon relationship. What makes people move apart yet remain forever close, as in Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, or what holds two people together when there are many factors that might drive them apart, as in my marriage? These questions made reading this book a thought-provoking and enriching experience.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life
Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of…
