Books like Donate — picked by fans

This is book one of the Outliers Saga series. It is one of those books that you fly through for its entertainment value and thick action, but it leaves you thinking about its message long afterward.

At its core, it is a tale of classism—oppression, struggle, and ultimately, vindication at the end of the three-book series. Yet the main character, Indra, is relatable, yet also admirable. Her dedication to her family and her own sense of integrity resonated with me and made me ask if I’d do the same in her position. Her marriage to her tribal best friend warmed my heart, yet the sparks between Indra and the forbidden Fortis, Asa, quickened the pace of my reading.

Originally crafted as a Robin Hood retelling, Mary went far beyond that story and its familiar tropes with this book. This series is perfect for fans of Hunger Games or Red… show more.

While this started a little slowly, I was soon completely invested in the life of its unlikely hero. Fletcher Sinclair is a meme personified—he lives in his parent’s basement, plays video games all day, and consumes far too much of a particular sports drink. Then, a strange virus hits the world, eliminating all the men—except for Fletcher.

That the human race’s potential extinction should rest upon Fletcher’s shoulders both horrified and fascinated me. It was filled with twists and turns, which even I, as an author, didn’t see coming. No spoilers and no hyperbole, but Erik Dargitz invented the most brilliant post-apocalyptic cult I’ve ever read! Fans of Handmaiden’s Tale and Animal Farm will love this book.

Originally intended as a screenplay, this is rife with vivid imagery and fast-paced action. From the jump, I was hooked, staying up all night to finish the book. It is set in the aftermath of the apocalypse in Seattle, WA.

I loved the developing romance between Beth and Ryker and how Myhre threw us for a few loops along the way. It has heart-pounding action, vibrant interpersonal relationships, and a great atmosphere. If I were at the end of the world, I’d want Beth and Ryker on my team! Fans of other post-apocalyptic indie authors, Harley Tate, Kyla Stone, and Nate Johnson, will enjoy this fast-paced post-apocalyptic romantic thriller.

This is book one of the Lens series, a young adult dystopian thriller. I quickly abandoned the rest of my TBR to fly through the entire Lens series. Riley Taylor is a normal teenager forced into the military out of necessity. But this military isn’t like ours. It’s a death sentence for the impoverished class and criminals recruited under false pretenses.

I loved the good versus evil trope, with the good not being completely good and the evil having redeeming qualities. Life isn’t always black and white, and Cantwell portrays that tension beautifully. The entire Lens series is set in the backdrop of corruption, greed, and overconsumption, having ruined the planet and drowned vast swathes of the American coastline.

Cantwell turned this climate-apocalyptic setting into both a character and a talking point. I’ve read a few series over and over and this one will be joining that list. Fans of… show more.

This stunning coming-of-age story is set in the rural Midlands in the 1960s. Fern is apprenticed to Mammy, the village wise woman, but the influence of modernity—medicines, the National Health Service, the increased connectivity afforded by motor car—spells the end for their traditional way of life. In a novel without any other overt fantastical elements, one magnificent scene where Fern, torn between loyalty to the past and the pull of the future, opens herself to the latent wonders of the woods and fields and hedgerows around her, is the key to understanding what the world loses with the passing of old knowledge. 

This suspenseful novel centers on the life of Hannah Isaacson, a female obstetrician in the early 1900s, a time when women’s choices for birth control and abortion were more than limited. A devoted women's advocate and suffragist, Hannah is determined to make a difference for her patients, even if it means going to jail or challenging the governor of New York.

We women stand on the shoulders of those strong, determined women who fiercely fought for our rights, and Rubin’s well-researched novel brings that home.

This is the definitive account of what abortion looked like for the one hundred years during which it was almost completely illegal in the United States.

Reagan does an excellent job of showing us the different ways that women nevertheless accessed abortion care during that time, even as she points out how access was always shaped by race and class.

She is also great at demonstrating how and why police and lawmakers cracked down on abortion and made it less accessible at particular moments in this one-hundred-year period, ultimately showing why it was eventually decriminalized in 1973. 

As a former newspaper reporter, I identified with this book. Newspaper reporter Laura Malloy has walked into the Lakewood Family Planning Clinic in St. Paul to interview the director of the clinic when a bomb goes off in the hallway and the young man very near her dies as Laura is propelled backward through the door. Laura tries to find whoever made the bomb, meeting with the young man’s girlfriend, who was at the clinic to get an abortion, his mother and brother, the head of the “pro-life” group, his wife, and others. I found this murder mystery to be very engaging.

This book has a permanent place on my nightstand, where I reach for it whenever I need a pithy, brilliant reminder of how the US completed its late-nineteenth-century transformation from a country with no abortion laws to a place where abortion was banned everywhere at every stage.

I’m amazed that a book first published in 1978, long before the advent of the Internet, managed to marshal evidence from newspaper classified ads and forgotten trials to present a portrait of America where abortion was widespread but seldom dared to speak its name.

I’ve been fascinated by poetry ever since I picked up this book for seven dollars at the second-hand bookstore near my university at the age of nineteen. Anne Sexton’s Selected Poems taught me how to write confessional poetry. They taught me how to write narrative poetry. They taught me to not be afraid to speak my truth, no matter how ugly.

I love how Anne Sexton writes about marriage, affairs, love, loss, family, and relationships with depth into herself and her psyche. Her poems in this collection encompass all her most remarkable work from her array of poetry books. Here you have all the classic poems as well as some obscure ones. Her famous, "Black Art" and the classic lines, "A woman who writes feels too much." As well, "For My Lover, Returning to His Wife," and the last two lines, "As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash… show more.