100 Books Like Ensnared

I am an author and avid reader of romance, especially those full of conflict in a world heavy with magic, shifters, vampires, and others. My dad was a great storyteller and sparked my interest in the paranormal. When I was a kid, he’d tell me stories about growing up in the mountains of Puerto Rico. The evil that lived there. My imagination took it from there. I wish I would’ve written down those stories. I can’t get him to talk about them anymore. It might be the reason why The Nine: Zane had started out as a contemporary romance story until Zane took over with all his paranormal drama. 

As a former school psychologist and author of over 45 books, I love reading about characters that are likable, plots that are believable, and settings that I want to visit. My years as a psychologist make it easy to spot poorly written characters that don’t ring true. It is also my years as a psychologist that makes me enjoy a light, humorous read with a guaranteed happy ending.

I’m a children’s book author-illustrator who loves picture books that can tackle difficult topics in a unique way. Along with Where Is Poppy?, I’ve also illustrated The Remember Balloons, written by Jessie Oliveros, which helps to gently explain Alzheimer’s and memory loss to kids without sugarcoating the realities of the illness. I think books can be a great tool for helping kids understand and process ideas that can be a little heavy or overwhelming, even for adults.

Writing is a big part of my life. One of the great joys of writing my first books was interviewing many of the inspiring scientists who were involved in the discoveries, some of whom are no longer with us. Writing helps me take stock of the big picture of this vast human endeavor. I want to explain to everyone what we know and what we don’t know about immune health. I am the Head of Life Sciences and Professor of Immunology at Imperial College London. 

I am an author and illustrator of children's picturebooks, having completed my MA at the Cambridge School of Art. I am endlessly fascinated with the picture book as a rich medium for children to safely and slowly approach topics that might be challenging for them. Picture books can be such a versatile, interesting place for curiosity and confidence to thrive, while also creating a lovely time for closeness between parent/carer and child. As we grapple with the long-term effects of the pandemic, I feel that children will need stories more than ever, to help them make sense of their experiences.

I saved many lives as a doctor working in the hospital, the ER, and the ICU. But the people whose lives I couldn’t save fascinated me the most. Many of them found a place of peace, healing, and profound knowledge before they died. This made me question what I learned in medical training. I loved science but knew there was something beyond what we could see and measure. I wasn’t religious, but I could sense some kind of ultimate and eternal love just beyond our grasp, creating and maintaining everything. I adore books that capture this sense of radical love and show us who we really are—so we can discover it today.

I am passionate about the Vietnam War because my male relatives served and came back changed by the experience. I spent ten years as the editor of The Patton Saber, writing articles about the experience of World War II soldiers, but when I came across an idea for a novel about past life memories, I decided to focus on memories of the Vietnam War. What I love about this list is that it reflects many facets of the war, including soldiers, nurses, veterans, and the family members touched by those affected by war.

My mother’s death from an E. coli outbreak over a decade ago was my wake-up call to an awareness of my own mortality and was the emotional foundation of both my first novel and my latest. I’ve reached a point in my own life where advancing age is a lived experience, and I’ve read broadly about this phase of life that goes largely unexamined despite the fact that we’re all destined for it. My essays have appeared in the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. I’m a graduate of Denison University and Columbia Law School.

I love middle-grade books (for eight to twelve-year-olds), which is why I write in that genre. My Summer of L.U.C.K. trilogy is sprinkled with magical adventures, but each one has real-life kids struggling with real-life problems and finding real-world solutions. I believe that books whose characters experience magical elements along with themes of friendship, perseverance, and self-acceptance will help them learn, as I did when I was a young reader, that whatever troubles they're experiencing, other kids have those troubles too, that they're not alone, and that help is possible.

I first turned to the ‘dark side’ of travel when a student of mine introduced me to ‘dark tourism’. Sadly the world is littered with places of tragedy where our misfortunes are exposed by dark tourism. As a social scientist, I have been writing about visiting our significant dead for over 20 years. I am fascinated as to why particular deaths are remembered, by whom, and how our dead are (re)presented within visitor economies. I have lectured and published extensively within academia, as well as being a media consultant. I continue to tell tales of our dead and how we attach cultural importance to certain kinds of death.