Here are 76 books that Dustborn fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love books that take you to another world, stories that show you bits of our reality while exploring another. It’s thrilling to step into a world where anything can happen, where dragons exist, where our laws of nature may not apply. But also, I love seeing the familiar in fantastical places: love, friendship, and hope. Though the characters in books may inhabit worlds made mostly out of paper, ink, and imagination, their stories are universal.
A thoughtfully built world that includes people who ride into battle on the backs of phoenixes? Yes. Everyone needs this in their life. Sister queens, found family, and bonds with magical creatures -- Crown of Feathers is brimming with details that make this world feel real and lived in.
In a world ruled by fierce warrior queens, a grand empire was built upon the backs of Phoenix Riders - legendary heroes who soared through the sky on wings of fire - until a war between two sisters ripped it all apart.
Sixteen years later, Veronyka is a war orphan who dreams of becoming a Phoenix Rider from the stories of old. After a shocking betrayal from her controlling sister, Veronyka strikes out alone to find the Riders - even if that means disguising herself as a boy to join their ranks.
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I love books that take you to another world, stories that show you bits of our reality while exploring another. It’s thrilling to step into a world where anything can happen, where dragons exist, where our laws of nature may not apply. But also, I love seeing the familiar in fantastical places: love, friendship, and hope. Though the characters in books may inhabit worlds made mostly out of paper, ink, and imagination, their stories are universal.
Filled with magic, prophecy, and ancient goddesses, Hunted By the Sky transports you to a world where a girl with a star-shaped birthmark seeks revenge for the murder of her parents, and a boy who is willing to do anything to save his father will soon meet. In this beautiful novel, you will find thoughtful worldbuilding and fantastical mirrors to our own reality, exploring identity, class, and love.
Gul has a star-shaped birthmark on her arm, and in her kingdom, marked girls are disappearing. Gul's mark caused her parents murder at the hands of the king's army, and forced her into hiding. When a group of rebel women rescue her to train her in warrior magic, Gul only wants one thing: revenge.
Cavas is ready to sign his life over to the king's army in exchange for money and medicine for his sick father. But when he meets Gul in the capital's bazaar, their chemistry grows, and he becomes entangled in a mission of vengeance - and discovers…
I love books that take you to another world, stories that show you bits of our reality while exploring another. It’s thrilling to step into a world where anything can happen, where dragons exist, where our laws of nature may not apply. But also, I love seeing the familiar in fantastical places: love, friendship, and hope. Though the characters in books may inhabit worlds made mostly out of paper, ink, and imagination, their stories are universal.
While this novel is not set in another world, it does show a side of our world and history too often ignored. Travelers Along the Way is a heartfelt and humorous take on the Robin Hood tale, brimming with sisterhood, cunning disguises, and dangerous heists. It transports through clever details and unforgettable characters.
Winner of the 2022 Middle East Book Award in Youth Literature
A ragtag band of misfits gets swept up in Holy Land politics in Travelers Along the Way by Aminah Mae Safi, a thrilling YA remix of the classic legend of Robin Hood.
Jerusalem, 1192. The Third Crusade rages on. Rahma al-Hud loyally followed her elder sister Zeena into the war over the Holy Land, but now that the Faranji invaders have gotten reinforcements from Richard the Lionheart, all she wants to do is get herself and her sister home alive.
This book is an elegiac meditation on the will to survive. Tor, a beluga whaler, and his wife, Astrid, a botanist specializing in Arctic flora, are stranded during the dark season of 1937-38 at his remote whaling station in the Svalbard archipelago when they misjudge ice conditions and fail to…
As a life-long lover of fairy tales, I believe the reason these timeless stories resonate so deeply is because they speak to an unquenchable desire in the center of each of our souls: the hope for a grand romantic adventure that will change our lives from the inside out. As an author, I strive to create those kinds of soul-speaking stories, crafting characters my readers relate to as friends... and respect as heroes. When my readers adventure alongside these fictional friends, I hope they are encouraged to bravely face the real-life challenges of our modern world, while being emboldened toward acts of everyday and exceptional heroism.
If you’re a fan of reimagined classic fairy tales, you’ll love C. J. Redwine’s Robin Hood-esque take on Snow White (with dragons!)
Unlike the classic Princess Snow White of old, Princess Lorelai is no simpering miss. She’s a powerful magic-wielder with a cause. As Lorelai learns to control and develop her magic, friends (and dragon-shifters!) join the quest to rid her kingdom—and the young shifter king she loves—from its menace: her wicked aunt, who used magic to take over the land.
With some imagery loosely borrowed—and creatively adjusted!—from the classic Snow White story, this new tale features a fresh heroine who doesn’t expect anyone to rescue her kingdom for her. The Shadow Queen is a romantic and epically-reimagined fairy tale with beautiful themes of sacrificial love.
PERFECT FOR FANS OF VICTORIA AVEYARD AND SARAH J. MAAS Lorelai, crown princess and fugitive-at-large, has one mission: kill the wicked queen who took both the Ravenspire throne and the life of her father. She'll have to be stronger, faster and master more magical power than Irina, the most dangerous sorceress Ravenspire has ever seen. When the queen's huntsman - a dragon-shifting king - tracks down Lorelai, sparks fly between them. Can the king overcome his predator side - and can Irina's dark magic be defeated?
When I was eight years old, I walked into a movie theater to see Spider-Man and walked out forever obsessed with superheroes. Specifically, I saw him kiss Mary-Jane with his mask on while hanging upside down and my tastes never changed in 20 years. Now, when not writing, I cosplay from my favorite comics, video games, and anime with my husband, who I met at a comic-con while dressed as Gwenpool (he was Symbiote Spider-Man—see, I told you my tastes never changed).
If you’re a fan of Marvel’s Black Widow, then this book is a must-read.
This dystopian science fiction novel features a tough and snarky (yet lovable) protagonist and enemies-to-lovers romance in a cyberpunk setting. When the protagonist turns 18, she finds out the mind-control processor in her brain implanted by the corporation she’s worked for over the last decade will kill her by the time she turns 20.
Mindwalker is fast-paced, full of action, and great for those looking for a book on the cusp of YA and NA that blends action and romance to keep you on the edge of your seat. This sci-fi is friendly to genre beginners, making it a great read for everyone.
'Mindwalker is a cinematic gut punch of action and espionage. Sharp-edged, tense and thrilling, you'll be holding your breath until the last page' Tasha Suri, author of The Jasmine Throne
Eighteen-year-old Sil Sarrah is determined to die a legend. But with only twelve months left before the supercomputer grafted to her brain kills her, Sil's time is quickly running out.
In the ten years she's been rescuing field agents for the Syntex corporation - by commandeering their minds from afar and leading them to safety - Sil hasn't lost a single life. And she's not about…
The major question I wanted to answer: why do people think that Jews are cowards and try to get out of the military? Where is the history of Jews and the military? I present these five books as proof that Jews do fight and have fought ever since the days of King Saul and David, Bar Kochba, the Maccabeus, and every war ever fought in history.
When people hear that I'm a child of Holocaust survivors, they ask what concentration camp or ghetto I or my parents were in. When I tell them that they were partisans, fighting the Nazis in the forest with guns, they don't believe me. They think Jews went to their deaths like sheep to slaughter passively. But Jews fought back like my parents did in the Kruk-Max otryad, Soviet fighting force.
Peter Duffy's book is an easy read, not an academic tome. I hope people will read about the heroism of Jews fighting back against fascism and evil.
In 1941, three brothers witnessed their parents and two other siblingsbeing led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would,of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. Instead of running orgiving in to despair, these brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- foughtback, waging a guerrilla war of wits against the Nazis.
By using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding theBelarusan towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis andestablished a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to jointheir ranks. As more and more Jews arrived each day,…
Tina Edwards loved her childhood and creating fairy houses, a passion shared with her father, a world-renowned architect. But at nine years old, she found him dead at his desk and is haunted by this memory. Tina's mother abruptly moved away, leaving Tina with feelings of abandonment and suspicion.
An avid reader my whole life, I jumped into epic fantasy at age eleven. Anne McCaffrey, David Eddings, and Robert Jordan were all high school favorites (and they are wonderful) but by the time I had reached the age that I was supposed to be reading their books, my palette was fairly jaded. The thrill of discovering new worlds and surprising magic was growing elusive, but wonder remains my favorite beat as a reader. I consider it the ultimate challenge in my own writing, and I greedily collect books that surprise me with their scope and imagination, leaving me awed and wonderstruck.
I encountered Grace Lin’s middle-grade fantasy series as an adult, and I can assure you that they are worth reading regardless of your age! When the Sea Turned Silver is littered with metaphors that will make you catch your breath and yet also become literal as her whimsical magic manifests. Chinese folklore that has been stretched and recreated by Lin’s imagination, the book begins with wild tales that are dismissed by the characters as impossible only to culminate with boundless magic that feels inevitable and is even more splendid than the stories they first heard. If you haven’t read these, you’re missing out!
Pinmei's gentle, loving grandmother always has the most exciting tales for her granddaughter and the other villagers. However, the peace is shattered one night when soldiers of the Emperor arrive and kidnap the storyteller.
Everyone knows that the Emperor wants something called the Luminous Stone That Lights the Night. Determined to have her grandmother returned, Pinmei embarks on a journey to find the Luminous Stone alongside her friend Yishan, a mysterious boy who seems to have his own secrets to hide. Together, the two must face obstacles usually found only in legends to find the Luminous Stone and save Pinmei's…
I’ve always loved to be scared! When I was young I turned off the lights to watch movies like Alien and It. When I got older, I played Resident Evil and Silent Hill. And when I got even older, I started writing things that would make me jump if the dog came in too suddenly mid-chapter. I think we are drawn to scary books and movies because they give us a safe way to explore the unknown – and, less philosophically, because sometimes it’s just fun to get sucked into a dark and creepy universe!
Pre-Covid, I loved to read about dangerous viruses taking over the world. The genre has lost a liiiiitle bit of its charm since then, but Contagion is too good a story to pass up. It reminds me powerfully of the Dead Space video games, with its mysteriously uninhabited space stations. Like the very best scary sci-fi, it blurs the line between the terrifying things close to home – like an unexplained illness – and the deep, dark, scary depths of space we have yet to understand!
Perfect for fans of Madeleine Roux, Jonathan Maberry, and horror films like 28 Days Later and Resident Evil, this pulse-pounding, hair-raising, utterly terrifying novel is the first in a duology from the critically acclaimed author of the Taken trilogy.
After receiving a distress call from a drill team on a distant planet, a skeleton crew is sent into deep space to perform a standard search-and-rescue mission.
When they arrive, they find the planet littered with the remains of the project—including its members’ dead bodies. As they try to piece together what could…
I have always known that my parents survived the Holocaust. I often listened in when they, my aunt, uncle, and their survivor friends would sit and talk of their lives during the Holocaust. I am the past president for the Phoenix Holocaust Survivor’s Association (now called the Phoenix Holocaust Association) and am on its Board and the Chair of its Education Committee. During this year of Covid, I have been instrumental in hosting numerous writers from around the world who have spoken, in Zoom, about their Holocaust writings and research.
Mr. Wyman details the ways in which FDR’s government and the State Department purposely ignored the plight of the Jews during WWII. Wyman meticulously researched work tells the sad but true story of how the anti-semitism of high-level decision-makers in the United States government allowed the genocide of European Jewry to continue unabated.
New paperback edition of a landmark work that remains the definitive book on America's response to the Holocaust. In addition to a new cover design and Elie Wiesel's original foreword to the 1984 edition - and his 1998 afterword - this edition includes a new preface by the author discussing recent scholarship on the American response to the Holocaust.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
When I was pitching my then novel-in-progress, Me, Myself, and Him to editors and agents, I usually got one of two responses: either “That sounds like a tough sell” or “That sounds great, and not like anything I’ve seen before.” Of course, I preferred to hear the latter, but I also enjoyed winning over skeptics by giving them something much more accessible than they might have expected, based on my pitch. It all speaks to the special place I have in my heart for the books you never expect to love…and then love anyway.
I posted about this book on social media last year and called it one of my favorite reads, ever. A large handful of friends said it was one of theirs as well. There’s something about this book—deeply absorbing, compulsively readable, and edge-of-my-seat emotional—that just clicks. There’s even a kind of genius in the title itself, letting us know ahead of time that every one of the Thai boys’ soccer team stranded in that underground cave (a story you might remember from the news) were safely rescued at the end of the ordeal. From that vantage point, you can really just sink in and absorb this amazing story from every one of the many angles Christina Sonntornvat tells it. Bonus points for being something that kids and adults will love.
Winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Young People's Literature A 2021 Newbery Honor Book A 2021 Robert F. Sibert Honor Book A 2021 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Finalist A 2021 Orbis Pictus Honor Book
A unique account of the amazing Thai cave rescue told in a heart-racing, you-are-there style that blends suspense, science, and cultural insight.
On June 23, 2018, twelve young players of the Wild Boars soccer team and their coach enter a cave in northern Thailand seeking an afternoon’s adventure. But when they turn to leave, rising floodwaters block their path out.…
