Books like Deadly Trespass — picked by fans

I love this book because of Enzo, the canine narrator. In fact, he may be my favorite narrator of all time. He is one of those narrators I would love to be friends with or who I would love to have as a professor or a spiritual guide. 

The first time I tried reading it I put it down because I ugly-cried in the first chapter when Enzo recounted the story of how he planned to simplify his beloved human’s life. Thankfully, a trusted friend convinced me to give it another try because it’s now one of my all-time favorite books. Coming from an English teacher of twenty plus years, who reads a lot of good books, I think that's pretty high praise.

Yes, I cried a lot in this one, too, but I also laughed and did not want to leave Enzo or the humans he loved so dearly… show more.

The animal is a spunky blind cat. The human is his adoptive mother who can’t resist adding the three-week-old kitten to her household of two other cats while trying to heal from a recent breakup. A memoir with a cool twist. You never know when you adopt a pet, how its personality will unfold; it was fun to read how memoirist Cooper struck paydirt with Homer.

The animal is a number of racehorses. The human is a collection of owners, trainers, jockeys, and more, yielding a comprehensive look at human and animal behavior in the horse racing industry. A strong, intimate novel. I used to ride but never very well, and I’ve always wondered what a horse’s “thoughts” involved. Author Smiley gave me a feel for that as she applied her own assumptions to one horse in particular.  

The animal is a parrot who shows up suddenly, has been around, and won’t leave. The human is a thirty-year-old male who works alone in a night job with the Texas highway department and thinks he likes being a loner. A quirky, touching novel. It’s one of those books I look forward to reading again; it left me feeling so satisfied.

I have loved this book for decades since my parents read it to me out loud when I was a child, because the extraordinary story about the unbreakable bond formed between a man and a formidable wolf in the Canadian wilds has stayed in my heart and mind. Their anecdotes of vulnerability, trust, and love defy all odds.

I hoped that one day, I, too, would find my own soulmate wolf, and I think of their story often.

Again, who doesn’t love an animal sidekick? Especially if that companion is a wolf who has a special gift in which she can judge people’s character and is dedicated to protecting those in her “pack!”

Lady Jewel is a large white wolf who is an important companion to our primary protagonists, Lord Adamo and Sephone Winters. Pair this loyal wolf with a post-apocalyptic fantasy world in which memory trading is a lucrative business, and you have an intriguing narrative for adult readers (and, like all titles in this list, it’s clean, too)!

Lyrical and personal, this breathtaking book leads you on a journey to discover sides of the wolf you might never have expected would exist. The way a deer signals to the wolf that it will give in to the chase, to become the wolf’s prey, and the wolf’s ‘reply.’ Lopez gets into the head of wolves and the social systems of wolf packs. Years ago, travelling through rural Washington State, USA, I met the endangered buffalo timberwolves close-up. I carried Lopez’s thoughts in my head to calm my nerves. After reading this book, I longed to learn as much about killer whales such that we could have this same intimate relationship with them, learning about their ways, understanding their signs. It took time but eventually, we did just that.

Let me start with a confession: I don’t care about wolves—or at least, I thought I didn’t until I read this book. Now, I’m mildly obsessed. I see a wolf on screen or mentioned in the news, and my adrenaline spikes; I feel excited. I now know about OR-7, the wolf that migrated from the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon to the southern Cascade Range.

I discovered that wolves are family animals, despite what we may have thought, and that they average a speed of 5 miles per hour. And somehow, learning all this was fun because this book wasn’t actually about wolves at all; it was about the idea of wolves—in history, in culture—and therefore, actually about so much more, including the author herself. I couldn’t put it down.

This book, well in fact this whole series is about family and what it means to create a new one.

Three guys are hiking in the woods and discover a broken wolf pack. This story is about the fight to save and heal this family. Yes, it centers around shifters, but that is not the focus of the book. The focus is on each of the characters and how they grow as a person.

You feel like you are living beside them, and that they are your friends. Each book focuses on a different pack member and what life changes they are going through with the change of leadership within the pack. Be prepared to want to binge-read them all as everyone asks themselves can this pack be saved?

In my opinion, Louise Penny is one of today’s foremost writers in the mystery and political thriller genres.

The Grey Wolf integrates many of her memorable characters from her series of Armand Gamache books and takes the reader on a fascinating tale of duplicity and intrigue. In the townships of Quebec, the complexity and horror of the potential terrorism threat grow as Armand and associates investigate. As usual in her novels, Penny squeezes every drop of tension from the action.

One of the reasons I include this book in my list is that wrote a novel in 2006 with a very similar plot, only it was set in the Santa Barbara party town of Isla Vista. No Gamache in my book, but plenty of action and perhaps also likable characters.