Here are 98 books that Iron and Magic fans have personally recommended if you like
Iron and Magic.
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Like the widows in The Widows’ Wine Club, I’m getting on. Unlike them, I’ve been a writer for forty years, often hunched over a keyboard, ignoring people. Amazingly, though, I managed to have a happy marriage and make some great friends. Phew! Because I’ve needed friends, especially since my husband died. Looking back, I’m interested to see that I didn’t instantly take to some of my closest buddies. Circumstances threw us together, and we got to know and like and love each other. I explore this in my book.
I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.
When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.
Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | A REESE WITHERSPOON X HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK
"A great narrative about personal strength and really captures how books bring communities together." -Reese Witherspoon
From the author of The Last Letter from Your Lover, now a major motion picture on Netflix, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond in Depression-era America
Alice Wright marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve, hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
Before I could walk, horses were my passion and every thought. At five, Blackie came into my life a black Shetland stud and from there, I've never stopped enjoying a life with horses. Having been born in the 1970's I witnessed some of the horse racing greats from the television, and ever since the Thoroughbred racehorse has been my favorite breed. I've been involved in a variety of ways with the rehabilitation and transition of the thoroughbred from the track to new careers. My most beloved OTTB, Blue Blue Sea, overcame so much, and naturally, I had to memorialize his amazing life as a book.
While learning letters youngsters can also learn about the most exciting two minutes in sports. Jaime Corum's illustrations are deeply moving and the action springs to life through them and the poetry that Helen Wilbur's words provide. Although a young reader wouldn't be able to read the book to themselves, that is actually a benefit. I love how the book demands that an adult sit down, slow time, and enjoy it with the youngster they are reading to. There is no more beautiful ride than that.
The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuous sporting event in the United States. But don't call it just a horse race. This annual May event, known as "the most exciting two minutes in sports," is steeped in tradition and pageantry far beyond what happens on the track. Following the alphabet, D is for Derby: A Kentucky Derby Alphabet uses poetry and expository text to explain this world-famous event. Topics include famous jockeys, legendary horses, fabled Bluegrass farms and owners, as well as offering a behind-the scenes view of thoroughbred breeding and racing. Readers young and old, along with horse enthusiasts…
As a lifelong Kentuckian with a lifelong fascination for history, true crime, biography, and the supernatural, once I started writing, I pursued these and related topics. The writer Charles Fort’s research methods interested me: he read old newspapers looking for forgotten stories. That seemed a good way to find little-known information. I am a lecturer in the English Department at Eastern Kentucky University and have spent two decades reading old newspapers issue by issue between classes and taking notes on possible stories. The books on my list also include much detail on entertaining obscurities, and I hope you enjoy them.
This is a lavishly illustrated collection of old and new oddities from around the state, including cryptids, ghosts, cave mummies, UFOs, roadside attractions, the Melungeons (what’s a Melungeon? Read it and see), and the famous Blue People.
I was attracted by the entertaining writing style, the inclusion of both documented fact and folklore, and biographies of historical characters.
That’s a question Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman have enjoyed asking for years—and their offbeat sense of curiosity led them to create the bestselling phenomenon, Weird N.J. Now the weirdness has spread throughout key locales in the U.S. Each fun and intriguing volume offers more than 250 illustrated pages of places where tourists usually don’t venture—it’s chock-full of oddball curiosities, ghostly places, local legends, crazy characters, cursed roads, and peculiar roadside attractions. What’s NOT shockingly odd here: that every previously published Weird book has become a bestseller in its…
Planetary blockades. Rampant viral outbreaks. Can two ex-lovers forge a path through the stars to save their world?
Independent trader Gavril Danilovich is slowly slipping into madness. Stuck in quarantine on a dying planet, his raw talent to feel everyone’s emotions has him wrestling with waves of terror and rage.…
I grew up during the Second World War and had many relatives serving in Canada’s Armed Forces. I developed a deep interest in the military, which my High School history teacher – a veteran himself – encouraged. I made a zillion models of soldiers, aircraft, vessels, and tanks; then, when I reached the proper age, I began collecting military firearms. Long story short, I eventually took up military reenacting, and because the American bicentennial was imminent, I chose to recreate a United Empire Loyalist regiment, which had fought from Canadian bases. Our enthusiastic, very competitive group of men and women grew to be one of the largest and best drilled in the hobby.
Lofaro portrays the other side of the coin, describing the amazing career of an American legend – the restless, fearless Daniel Boone, who took the settlers’ side during the relentless expansion westwards onto Native lands. After a personal exploration of Kentucky territory, Boone raised a large body of settlers, guided them to the territory, and created a community guarded by forts he helped to construct. Boone took the lead in fighting the Natives who objected to the intrusion.
To the American mind, this man is the epitome of the American frontiersman and Lofaro’s book reveals all sides of his complex personality while describing the Revolutionary War conflict in the mid-west. Notably, Boone was not without sympathy for the Natives’ plight. Of course, he crossed paths with many British partisans and their Native allies who vigorously attacked the Kentucky settlements. (Appropriately, this book was published in Kentucky.)
The embodiment of the American hero, the man of action, the pathfinder, Daniel Boone represents the great adventure of his age -- the westward movement of the American people. Daniel Boone: An American Life brings together over thirty years of research in an extraordinary biography of the quintessential pioneer. Based on primary sources, the book depicts Boone through the eyes of those who knew him and within the historical contexts of his eighty-six years. The story of Daniel Boone offers new insights into the turbulent birth and growth of the nation and demonstrates why the frontier forms such a significant…
I grew up in a house filled with books as a son of educated, well-read parents. My mother was an English/French/Spanish teacher, and my father was an encyclopedia editor. Among all the books in our downstairs, there was a custom-built coffin bookcase my father kept stocked with his favorite horror novels. He died when I was eleven and in an effort to get to know him better, I started reading the books in that coffin. I was very quickly turned into a horror fan, and a few years later started writing horror stories myself. Every time I start writing another horror story, I know I’m my father’s son.
Not a dread-inducing house this time but a lighthouse—in the middle of the woods. This book is so original in its elements—a haunted lighthouse, a sheriff in love with the woman who shot him, and a big-cat sanctuary—that it is completely awe-inspiring how Koryta is able to weave together a complex, creepy ghost narrative. Koryta (and his pseudonym, Scott Carson) is always a guaranteed purchase when a new book publishes.
Discover a brilliant thriller set in a remote big-cat sanctuary: "one of the scariest and most touching horror tales in years" (James Patterson).
In an isolated stretch of eastern Kentucky, on a hilltop known as Blade Ridge, stands a lighthouse that illuminates nothing but the surrounding woods. For years the lighthouse has been considered no more than an eccentric local landmark -- until its builder is found dead at the top of the light, and his belongings reveal a troubling local history.
For deputy sheriff Kevin Kimble, the lighthouse-keeper's death is disturbing and personal. Years ago, Kimble was shot while…
I have always had an interest in the American frontier and the Native peoples. But while researching the novelBrave Enemies and Boone: A BiographyI spent years studying and visiting places where the stories occur, and using archives and libraries. However, the most important consideration is storytelling, rewarding the reader with a good story.
In this study Belue creates a sense of the world of Kentucky before settlement, as Long Hunters began to explore the Bluegrass and send reports back east of the streams and savannas, the game, and beauty of the land. While writing Boone, I found this volume especially useful for visualizing the places where Boone hunted in his first and second forays into Kanta-kee.
The Hunters of Kentucky covers a wide range of frontier existence, from daily life and survival to wars, exploits, and even flora and fauna.
The pioneers and their lives are profiled in biographical sketches, giving a rich sampling of the personalities involved in the United States' westward expansion. Author Ted Franklin Belue's colourful and vivid prose brings these long-forgotten frontiersmen to life.
Using the Draper manuscripts and a variety of other primary sources Belue has woven together a fine narrative of life on the frontier.
Betty Lennox is an elemental witch desperate to leave her desert hometown of Smokethorn, California, and sell the paranormal seniors' trailer park she inherited from her mother.
Running low on cash to maintain the park's protection spell, she accepts a dangerous job: procuring a cursed grimoire so deadly even the…
I identify as agender and grew up in Oklahoma, one of the worst places to be trans or LGBTQ because of the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation that’s flying through the Oklahoma state legislature. Writing Ugliest, a book about teen activists fighting these laws, reminded me how important standing up for what’s right is and what powerful activists teens can be when they get together. This list has other books celebrating the strength of teens protesting and pushing against societal wrongs. Although some terrible things happen in these books—just like in the real world—reading them reminds us that fighting back is worth it.
I loved this great story about trying to do the right thing when everything is stacked against you. Ecological disasters rarely make the news anymore, but in this book, a teen discovers that a mining operation in her grandma’s town is making people sick. She can’t abide the corruption of local authorities and how everyone is held hostage by the jobs the mining industry brings.
I cheered Liberty along as she fought and fought, gathering help along the way from unlikely corners. She draws on her sense of justice to find a way that works around the corruption and right the wrongs in a real way, and I was reminded that even if you can’t help everyone, helping as many as you can is worth it.
2017 Green Earth Book Award, Young Adult Fiction 2017 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award (SONWA), Young Adult Notable Book
With her mother facing prison time for a violent political protest, seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe has no choice but to leave her Washington, DC, apartment and take a bus to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her granny. There she can at least finish high school and put some distance between herself and her mother―or her former mother, as she calls her. But Ebbottsville isn't the same as Liberty remembers, and it's not just because the top of Tanner's Peak has been…
As a child, I fell in love with horses. As a teen, I fell in love with a cowboy. That’s how I became the wife and mother of professional rodeo bullfighters and wrote for rodeo magazines. Today I write historical cowboy romances. The Western way of life is down-to-earth, honest, and God-fearing—even in our contemporary world, and I’ve written several of those stories as well. But my favorite challenge takes me back to the 1800s when life was simpler. Not easier, just simpler even though people faced the same emotional challenges we face today. I love writing about their journeys and encouraging readers that there is hope.
I was put off by the title of this book because of the name, Morrow Little. I mean, who has a name like that? Plus, I wasn’t a fan of stories set in the 1700s American frontier. But a friend insisted I read it, and yeah, my friend knew me well. I wanted to run away with this hero, but no spoilers here. Morrow Little embodies every woman looking for honest love and she has the courage to pursue it. Or follow it. You be the judge. Because of this story, I’ve read every other Laura Frantz book I could find. She has a way of capturing the setting and atmosphere and dropping you right in the middle of it.
Morrow Little is haunted by the memory of the day her family was torn apart by raiding Shawnee warriors. Now that she is nearly a grown woman and her father is ailing, she must make difficult choices about the future. Several men-ranging from the undesired to the unthinkable-vie for her attentions, but she finds herself inexplicably drawn to a forbidden love that both terrifies and intrigues her. Can she betray the memory of her lost loved ones-and garner suspicion from her friends-by pursuing a life with him? Or should she seal her own misery by marrying a man she doesn't…
When students ask me if I am from Kentucky, I say “no, but I got here as quickly as I could.” I chose to make the state my home and raise my family here, and I have studied its history for nearly three decades. I am drawn to Kentucky’s story and the paradox it represents: on one hand, you have the Derby, rolling hills and pastures, and fine bourbon, but set against that polished, sophisticated image are the stereotypes of a lawless, illiterate, poor state. As a borderland, not quite north or south, east or west, Kentucky offers a fascinating lens through which to view the nation’s history.
Following in the footsteps of scholars, such as Kristen Hoganson, who have put a new gender spin on well-chronicled events, Sachs takes a familiar story—the story of America’s first frontier—and tells it in a fresh and compelling way by emphasizing how manliness and mastery shaped public policy and household relationships. Life in the west was risky and chaotic. Settlers coped by celebrating domestic order and by demanding the right for men to rule their own households. This patriarchal ideal, however, often led to violence, both outside the home and within. The individuals Sachs spotlights like, widow and powerful businesswomen Annie Christian, and outcast criminal and murderer Bartholomew Fenton, provide a totally new perspective on frontier life.
On America's western frontier, myths of prosperity concealed the brutal conditions endured by women, slaves, orphans, and the poor. As poverty and unrest took root in eighteenth-century Kentucky, western lawmakers championed ideas about whiteness, manhood, and patriarchal authority to help stabilize a politically fractious frontier. Honor Sachs combines rigorous scholarship with an engaging narrative to examine how conditions in Kentucky facilitated the expansion of rights for white men in ways that would become a model for citizenship in the country as a whole. Endorsed by many prominent western historians, this groundbreaking work is a major contribution to frontier scholarship.
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
When students ask me if I am from Kentucky, I say “no, but I got here as quickly as I could.” I chose to make the state my home and raise my family here, and I have studied its history for nearly three decades. I am drawn to Kentucky’s story and the paradox it represents: on one hand, you have the Derby, rolling hills and pastures, and fine bourbon, but set against that polished, sophisticated image are the stereotypes of a lawless, illiterate, poor state. As a borderland, not quite north or south, east or west, Kentucky offers a fascinating lens through which to view the nation’s history.
As a journalist, Wall reported on horse racing in Kentucky for many years before becoming a serious student of history, which makes her writing really readable. Today, most people classify Kentucky as a southern state, but before and immediately following the Civil War it was considered the west. This book explains the switch, giving horsemen credit for rehabbing the Bluegrass State’s tarnished image, albeit to serve their own financial interests. Besides introducing readers to the post-war history of Kentucky, it provides a useful introduction to horse culture. After reading it, you will understand why the Kentucky Derby is so steeped in tradition and why black jockeys, once so plentiful in the sport, are rare.
The conflicts of the Civil War continued long after the conclusion of the war: jockeys and Thoroughbreds took up the fight on the racetrack. A border state with a shifting identity, Kentucky was scorned for its violence and lawlessness and struggled to keep up with competition from horse breeders and businessmen from New York and New Jersey. As part of this struggle, from 1865 to 1910, the social and physical landscape of Kentucky underwent a remarkable metamorphosis, resulting in the gentile, beautiful, and quintessentially southern Bluegrass region of today. In her debut book, How Kentucky Became Southern: A Tale of…
