Here are 100 books that History of Wolves fans have personally recommended if you like
History of Wolves.
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I’ve always been fascinated with the first-person voice, the way it magically pulls us into a story through the character’s/narrator’s perspective, and how when done well, can feel so natural and personal. I’ve tried to write in this perspective over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I hope I have done it adequately with this current novel. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to the first-person, but I am an interested participant. I am a creative writing professor, but I am also a student of writing and always will be. The more I investigate, the more I read, the more I learn. Focusing on this topic has been no exception.
Some first person voices are just so naturally nostalgic, like you’re sitting around a campfire listening to someone telling you a story.
“The year my mother started hearing voices from her dead brother Clyde,” or “But Gigi was the first to fly.” So many moments to hold onto in this novel, each an introduction to another tale, or a memory you can’t wait to listen to and run off down the street to share it for yourself.
The voice of August is so real and clear and poetic that one forgets there’s even a writer behind it. This close first-person voice lets us in, welcomes us into the secrets of the street. “Everywhere we looked we saw the people trying to dream themselves out.” And dream I did, along every glorious page, only I never wanted out.
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FROM A NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNING AUTHOR
A TIME MAGAZINE TOP 10 NOVEL OF 2016 | SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2016
FROM THE WINNER OF THE ASTRID LINDGREN MEMORIAL AWARD 2018
They used to be inseparable. They used to be young, brave and brilliant - amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone. August, Sylvia, Angela and Gigi shared everything: songs, secrets, fears and dreams. But 1970s Brooklyn was also a dangerous place, where grown men reached for innocent girls, where mothers disappeared and futures vanished at the turn of a…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I came out as a gay man later in life (at age 24) just as the AIDS crisis was beginning, and the deaths and societal backlash during that time almost pushed me back in the closet. The books I listed here were instrumental in helping me find my author’s “voice” while I struggled to fully accept my identity. I feel passionate about the list because the books contain elements essential for every decent fiction author: humour, pathos, grief, joy, empathy, love, and understanding of the human condition. In developing this list of books, I’m reminded of how crucial it is for writers to read and often study the work and style of other authors.
This book affected me profoundly as a teenager who was questioning his own sexual identity in the early 1970s.
The novel is a study of friendship between two teenage boys at a boarding school after World War II. They’re co-dependent, and the elements of suppression and the threat of violence between the two mirrored my own confusion with close male friends “in real life” at the same time.
This is a book that shaped my early understanding of sexuality, even though the author denied any homoerotic undertones in the story.
'A novel that made such a deep impression on me at sixteen that I can still conjure the atmosphere in my fifties: of yearning, infatuation mingled indistinguishably with envy, and remorse' Lionel Shriver
An American coming-of-age tale during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to the second world war.
Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual.…
I’ve always been fascinated with the first-person voice, the way it magically pulls us into a story through the character’s/narrator’s perspective, and how when done well, can feel so natural and personal. I’ve tried to write in this perspective over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I hope I have done it adequately with this current novel. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to the first-person, but I am an interested participant. I am a creative writing professor, but I am also a student of writing and always will be. The more I investigate, the more I read, the more I learn. Focusing on this topic has been no exception.
When it comes to “selling the voice” in the first-person narrative, so much depends on the language and the style by which the chosen character tells the story. How convinced is the reader of this voice that promises us everything?
Let us only pay attention to Jabari Asim and his slave narrative Yonder, to know how to do it well. From the first chapter we are thrown into William’s world, the harsh truth of living on a plantation in the American South.
Once he starts narrating in his believable and lyrical voice, we feel the danger, and the hopelessness: ”I had known death could come at any time. You could keel over in the fields. You could be crushed under a wagon wheel, kicked by a horse, or have your skull split open because a slice of ham…had gone missing.” The first-person magic takes over and we have no choice…
The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century.
They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own.
In a world that would be allegorical if it weren’t saturated in harsh truths, Cato and William meet at Placid Hall, a plantation in an unspecified part of the American South. Subject to the whims of their tyrannical and eccentric captor,…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
I’ve always been fascinated with the first-person voice, the way it magically pulls us into a story through the character’s/narrator’s perspective, and how when done well, can feel so natural and personal. I’ve tried to write in this perspective over the years, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I hope I have done it adequately with this current novel. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert when it comes to the first-person, but I am an interested participant. I am a creative writing professor, but I am also a student of writing and always will be. The more I investigate, the more I read, the more I learn. Focusing on this topic has been no exception.
Since my own book is marketed for young readers (and adults BTW) I thought I’d give a nod to one of the voices in that genre that got set in my brain years ago.
Philbrick’s voice in Max the Mighty might be my favorite young reader first-person voice. Told in retrospect, Maxwell’s voice is both wise and self-effacing, and believable from the jump. “...even though I’m a big dude with a face like a moon and ears that stick out like radar scoops…I’m a real weenie. A yellow-bellied sapsucker. A gigantic wuss. A coward.”
The voice carries the banner of strength in the vulnerability of the human condition. A lesson we should hold dear to our heart. Different is cool. Different is good. This book and its voice are timeless.
A companion to Newbery Honor winning author Rodman Philbrick's Freak the Mighty. This is the dramatic, heart-wrenching tale of Max and Worm, two outsiders who turn to each other for survival.
Meet Max Kane, the brooding giant-of-a-boy who escaped from his basement hiding place and faced the real world in Freak the Mighty. Still grieving over the loss of his best friend, Kevin, Max finds himself defending a young, solitary girl cruelly nicknamed "Worm" because she loves to read. And when Max gets blamed for a horrific crime, he and Worm flee across America--hunted by the police and pursued by…
I’ve long been intrigued by what makes a woman a hero in her own life. My three novels feature characters who are not obvious heroes—they are trying to shed a difficult past, they may run towards risky second chances, and they eventually stand up to their history and heal it and themselves. A lot of my inspiration for my stories comes from my mother, who was a pilot in World War II. I grew up with the legacy of women as heroic; it fostered an intense curiosity about female ambition and morality, women who would risk personal freedom and safety to find something greater than they expected.
What makes a woman a hero? Irish writer John Boyne’s narrator was a last choice for me—the daughter of a top-ranking Nazi war criminal who carries the burden of her past at 90. But I came to love the voice of this narrator, her brutal honesty with herself and her circumstances, and her growing awareness of her culpability, even as a child, for what happened.
Boyne elegantly explores the question of whether terrible acts by fathers make their children responsible or if children are inherently innocent. The story’s ending was a complete surprise, bringing this character to hero status in my eyes, as she chooses honor above safety.
'Beautifully told and gripping from first page to last' Sunday Express 'An incredible feat of storytelling... and an old-fashioned page-turner' Donal Ryan 'Gripping and well-honed...consummately constructed, humming with tension' Guardian 'You can't prepare yourself for the magnitude and emotional impact of this powerful novel' John Irving ________________________________
From the author of the globally bestselling, multi-million-copy classic, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, comes its astonishing and powerful sequel.
Gretel Fernsby is a quiet woman leading a quiet life. She doesn't talk about her escape from Germany seventy years ago or the dark post-war years in France with her mother. Most…
I write romantic comedies for readers who want adventure in the great wide somewhere and can’t wait until the next time they hear the words bon voyage! Even as a young, midwestern farm girl, I always had a passion for languages and a strong desire to travel. As soon I flew the coop and went to college, I made friends with students from all over the world. Eventually, I followed my travel plans, learned to speak three languages, and now can’t decide whether to adopt London or Paris as my European hometown.
This charming parallel universe story is like two contemporary realistic novels in one. Fifteen-year-old Summer Everette makes a choice at the beginning of the book (no spoilers, here!) that will either take her to France or keep her in upstate New York for the summer. So why not see what would happen in both worlds?
This book has all the elements I love. A relatable protagonist, two adorable love interests, and tons of heart. Add the French countryside element and voila! Parfait!
This summer, Summer's saying goodbye to her best friend, her secret crush and her single mom and is off on a trip of a lifetime to visit her estranged artist father in France.
But right before she's about to board, her phone rings. Should she answer it?
Either way, it's going to be a summer Summer will never forget.
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
I'm a mom of two daughters who is fascinated with reading nonfiction parenting books and listening to parenting-related podcasts. My absolute favorite, though, is when fiction authors take a dense parenting topic and turn it into a relatable and engaging story so that readers can explore the same important issues and challenges in a more enjoyable way.
Somebody’s Daughter is a thought-provoking read for parents on how you might handle an inappropriate video of your child being shared over social media. One of the most intriguing parenting aspects of this book is how the mom and dad dealt with their daughter’s dilemma so differently. Especially since the mom almost viewed the dad’s way of handling it as detrimental. It offered an invaluable gut-check on what I would do if I were put in the same situation.
From USA Today bestselling author Rochelle B. Weinstein comes an emotional novel for mothers, daughters, and anyone who has ever felt imperfect.
Emma and Bobby Ross enjoy a charmed life on the shores of Miami Beach. They are a model family with a successful business, an uncomplicated marriage, and two blessedly typical twin daughters, Zoe and Lily. They are established members of a tight-knit community.
Then, on the night of the girls' fifteenth birthday party, they learn of Zoe's heartbreaking mistake-a private and humiliating indiscretion that goes viral and thrusts her and her family into the center of a shocking…
I am a Canadian author/editor who both fears and loves being a stranger in a strange land. I fear the challenges, the feelings of dislocation and vulnerability. But I love the connections, the overcoming of the strangeness and the ultimate feeling of kinship. As a mom, I travelled with my kids to far away places, favouring adventure tours and staying well away from high priced hotels that separate tourists from locals. My novel, The World on Either Side, was inspired by a trek I took with my then fourteen-year-old daughter in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
The stranger in a strange land theme is unveiled slowly in The Darkhouse. The story follows Gemma, a teen abandoned by a “crazy” mother. She lives on an island and her only friends are either old or imaginary. Her very protective father is dutiful, though consumed with rodent experiments in his shed out back. Yes. It is creepy! Also poignant: both a goosebumpy thriller and and a heart-breaking coming of age story. And I must mention the lyrical writing, like this line: “The ache of wanting what I can’t have throbs like blood.”
Disclosure: I read this in manuscript form at The Rights Factory, a literary agency where I work. I devoured it in one sitting in a Toronto café, after which I had to go outside to ugly-cry.
Fifteen-year-old Gemma’s life on a small New Brunswick island with her father, Jonah, is not an exciting one. Her mother ran off when she was an infant, and Jonah, an amateur scientist, spends most of his time conducting experiments he thinks will one day bring him fame. But when a woman arrives on the island, Gemma tries to play matchmaker – only to discover Jonah’s secret journals, which hold terrifying secrets about both their lives.
Mystery, science, and dreams of a better life collide in this page-turning young adult novel from Barbara Radecki.
I’m a historian who recently started writing historical fiction. A few years ago, while writing my most recent academic book about 19th C Dublin, I became frustrated with the limitations of what I felt I could write about. I had a lot of sense of the atmosphere of the city that didn’t really fit into the way an academic book is constructed. So, I ended up trying my hand at historical fiction, wanting to give a real sense of place that I felt to be true but which was also a product of my imagination. One of my favorite things about reading novels has always been this sense of place.
I love this book because of the intricate links between a variety of very distinct characters. Setterfield tells wonderful individual stories and then brings them all together in a surprising and satisfying way. I enjoyed trying to piece the mystery together.
The river itself is a character who can alter lives for better or worse, providing life and livelihood or taking them away. Setterfield really leans into the river’s atmosphere (mists, floods, and miasmas), so this is a novel that you feel and smell as well as read.
From the instant #1 New York Times bestselling author of the “eerie and fascinating” (USA TODAY) The Thirteenth Tale comes a “swift and entrancing, profound and beautiful” (Madeline Miller, internationally bestselling author of Circe) novel about how we explain the world to ourselves, ourselves to others, and the meaning of our lives in a universe that remains impenetrably mysterious.
On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his…
Creativity, Teaching, and Natural Inspiration
by
Mark Doherty,
I have woven numerous delightful and descriptive true life stories, many from my adventures as an outdoorsman and singer songwriter, into my life as a high school English teacher. I think you'll find this work both entertaining as well as informative, and I hope you enjoy the often lighthearted repartee…
I love writing stories for young people in that “in-between” age: age 12, 13, and 14, when kids are figuring out who they are and who they want to become. For many young people, crushes are a huge part of this coming-of-age process—I know they were for me! When I was this age, there weren’t many books that explored crushes and the first romance for LGBTQ+ kids. I’m thrilled to be part of a wave of authors writing these stories now. And I’m so excited for a future where we have a wealth of books about the joy, heartbreak, and humor of all kinds of young love.
This book perfectly captures the atmosphere of a summer trip that both feels like it lasts forever and is also over way too fast. I loved the Oregon beach setting and the slow-building connection between Jeremy and Evan, first as friendship and then maybe something more.
This is such a tender, beautiful, and vivid story—when I finished it, I really felt like I had just come back from a wistful seaside vacation myself! And as a runner, I enjoyed the way Jeremy and Evan connected while jogging together. Evan was a very kind and empathetic “coach.”
A sweet, tender middle-grade story of two boys finding first love with each other over a seaside summer.
Jeremy is not excited about the prospect of spending the summer with his dad and his uncle in a seaside cabin in Oregon. It's the first summer after his parents' divorce, and he hasn't exactly been seeking alone time with his dad. He doesn't have a choice, though, so he goes ... and on his first day takes a walk on the beach and finds himself intrigued by a boy his age running by. Eventually, he and Runner Boy (Evan) meet --…
