Books like Horses of Heaven — picked by fans

I adored this book because it gives us a peek into the early life of Chinese Empress Wu. Weina Dai Randel did her homework, and her words absolutely blossomed in ancient China.

With an extremely sympathetic young protagonist who rises to be a force in the Emperor’s court, this book captivated me. I also remember it as being rather romantic in its way.

Fun fact: in college, my specialty was 16th-century Scotland, which meant I spent several months living in Edinburgh doing research for my senior thesis. In this book, Susanna Kearsley brings to life a Scotland we seldom see in novels but which brings back the Edinburgh I lived in and studied more vividly than anything else I’ve encountered.

There are so many books about the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, but this book tackles the precursor to all that, the tangled politics of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, from the fall-out of the Glorious Revolution and the exile of James II to the ferment around the 1707 Act of Union in all its glorious complexity, through the life of one woman who finds herself—as one does—a normal person buffeted by larger events. Every time I open this book, I feel like I’m back in Edinburgh again. 

The very name “Zanzibar” has a sort of magic to it—and I certainly fell under its spell when I read M.M. Kaye’s book for what would be the first of many, many times back in the 80s.

I had never heard of Zanzibar; I knew nothing of the ruling family, the Sayyids of Muscat and Oman, but by the time I was a hundred pages into M.M. Kaye’s epic story of an American woman who plunges into intrigues she thinks she understands but doesn’t, I felt I knew them all intimately. This book is a coming-of-age story, a brilliant evocation of place, and so much more.

England is hardly an unusual place for historical fiction, but 7th-century England is entirely different. Wolf takes you to an England where the Saxons are holding court at Winchester while the remnants of Romanized Britain are desperately trying to organize resistance from their decaying villas. It’s a view of an England in flux, broken into small, warring kingdoms—told from the viewpoint of a British princess, Nan, married off to a Saxon prince. But Nan is no wilting violet and her story is one I still re-read again and again.

Born of the Sun is a beautiful interweaving of place and character and a bold attempt to reconstruct lives that have left little mark on the historical record.

A year or so ago, I read a lot of factual books about India, so I was delighted to find this Golden Age cozy mystery set in a land I was falling in love with through books. This book took me back to a pre-partition India still under British rule, with a realistic glimpse of life under colonialism alongside a hefty–hopefully less realistic–dose of murder and mystery.

I adored how Harini Nagendra created a strong, independent female character who still feels genuine and believable in the time and place in which the book is set–a time when most women were stifled, submissive, and governed by their husbands–and how the observations of colonization feel true to life while remaining both sympathetic and observant to the Indian culture and ways of life.

The setting is vividly portrayed, and the sights and sounds of 1920s India are an absolute delight. The main characters… show more.

I love the Timber Creek K-9 Mystery series and Mizushima’s latest book was one of my favorites. As a retired K-9 handler, sometimes books with working dogs get facts wrong. I could tell that Mizushima put a lot of research time into each of her books. I love the fictional K-9, Robo, and Mizushima’s accurate portrayal of the bond between handler and dog. 

Mattie Cobb, the main character, is intriguing and makes the reader cheer for her. The dashing veterinarian, Cole Walker, adds a little romance to the storyline. I would recommend starting with the first book, Killing Trail. While each book stands on its own, reading about the mystery of Mattie’s family makes the conclusion of Standing Dead even more thrilling. 

I really love the characters in this book. It’s the fourth book in a series, but I read this out of order, which meant I didn’t have the benefit of some of the backstory for one or two people. This is a story of treachery and betrayal, and spies that stay in the game for years before getting out or getting caught. 

Almost every character in this book has something to hide, and I listened to this book quickly to find out their secrets. I don’t always opt for audiobooks, but the narrator differentiated the characters beautifully and added a layer of emotion.

I don’t want to spoil any of the characters’ secrets, but let’s just say the relationship between the living and the dead gets a little complicated. Eric’s love for his daughters and willingness to do anything for them resonated with me, especially when any one of them was in the house. 

I’ve spoken to people who really couldn’t get into this book, and I consider them somewhat deranged. It’s a rollicking good read, and maybe it helped that I enjoyed the author reading the story, which added to my enjoyment. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest very few authors make great audiobook performers. Mortimer absolutely does, getting the voice of the squirrel spot on.

There’s a strange and convoluted plot set in the not-terribly-underworld of London. A brilliant neighbor part for Kathy Burke should Mortimer ever be fielding Netflix offers. It’s a book you’ll read in days, not weeks. Fast-paced and has me on edge for part two–out in August.

I studied with Joe Heller at City College in New York, earned my MA in Creative Writing under his tutelage.

Catch-22 is his most well-known and celebrated work, of course; nevertheless, I consider his second novel, Something Happened, his deeply unsettling portrait of Bob Slocum, a mid-level executive in a disintegrating marriage and estranged from his children who is navigating the minefield of his corporate life, and the devastating anxiety, soul-numbing alienation and paralyzing dread his journey produces that bears fruit at last in the tragedy he has expected and feared and sought desperately to avoid for so long, to be his true masterpiece.

It provided me with an essential lesson in the use of narrative tension to engage readers on a deeper, more subliminal level and keep them engaged until the very last word.

Structurally, stylistically, even thematically, echoes of Something Happened permeate my own novel: the often… show more.