Books like Jackson Rule — picked by fans

I love stories where the heroes are facing great challenges. In One Perfect Rose, as the story begins, Stephen Kenyon, Duke of Ashburton, has just learned from his doctor that he has only a short time left to live. Shocked, he runs from his wealthy world and wanders the country as an ordinary man. When he rescues a young boy who had been swept away by a flood, he is embraced by the boy’s family and finds all that he had been missing in his life—the warmth of a family and our heroine, Rosalind. His hidden past and his knowledge of his impending death made this a page-turner for me.

The hero Mitchell Shaw is a Navy SEAL, but as the story begins, he wakes up in a homeless shelter with amnesia. He does have a gun in his boot and money, too, but no clue how he got there. He finds a note that says “Looking forward to meeting you.”—Rebecca Keyes, the Lazy Eight Ranch. He heads for the ranch, hoping it will help him figure out who he really is. What a great hero!

I got soooo hooked on Julie’s contemporary suspense books. In Heartbreaker, as the story opens, we learn our hero agent Nick Buchanan has just saved a young boy’s life by taking out a serial killer who held him captive. Nick then gets to take some time off for a vacation, and as he’s on the plane waiting to depart, he stops an armed man from trying to free a prisoner another lawman has on the plane. He is definitely the white knight showing up at just the right time. When he meets up with his best friend, he learns a serial killer is after his friend’s sister. I couldn’t wait to see how he was going to protect the heroine, Laurant, from the psychopath and bring him in. This is my kind of hero—courageous, up for anything, never afraid to put his life in danger to right a wrong.

In a list about zombie apocalypse references, this is definitely a quirky entry. But it is important for all writers to read outside of their genre, or they run the risk of becoming generic. 

Far more important than the story’s backdrop is the story’s focus. People predominantly care and read about people.

Whether that means writing about people resisting zombies, as is the case with most zombie stories, or writing about zombies doing their best to become human—as seen in Elantris and The Girl With All The Gifts—writers need to know how to tell stories about people.

I don’t write books about zombies, I write books about families. And there is probably no more famous family right now than the Bridgertons (though if I had one more recommendation, it would definitely be Swiss Family Robinson).

By reading books about strong families, I’m better able to translate my own… show more.

I love tasty writing as much as I do a juicy story. This book delivers on both counts.

It’s a murder mystery that reads like the best of literary fiction. I’ve been a fan of Kortya since devouring his earlier novel Those Who Wish Me Dead, which begins with a young boy witnessing a murder. This novel starts with a murder after the fact, on a rudderless boat adrift at sea: perpetrator unknown.

Its strong characters seem plucked from real life. Its twists and turns kept me guessing. Its humdinger of a climax kept me up past my bedtime. To work your way through the author’s oeuvre is to take a master class in writing, while being thoroughly entertained. More, please.

Reuben Jonathan Miller’s book Halfway Home illuminates the ways men get forced to carry prison with them after release, in everything from struggling to find work to being unable to drive a car.

Telling the stories of people he first met as a chaplain at Cook County Jail, Miller walks alongside men as we see the painful and lasting impacts of prison on them and their lives.

We all know the title. It’s become a record-breaking musical phenomenon. The book is a phenomenon in itself. It was a voyage I took for a few spellbound weeks, and I read it in a stone house in a small village in the South of France. It is a book of great sympathy and grace. 

Victor Hugo’s heart is large—at least measured by this story of an escaped prisoner who tries to do good with his life but is pursued relentlessly by a police officer, Javert. I found with this book, as the great writers always show me, that character is all. Hugo drew me into the struggles and losses of his people so ably and memorably that I still think of them years later. 

Fair warning: I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area so I’m not impartial here, but I love this book.

Pelecanos really just dropped me into the D.C. of my youth. The plotting here is great as is the characterization. Every character feels like a real person that you might meet in a bar or some seedy back room.

The suspense, the tension, the character’s individual motivations for stepping into the quagmire Pelecanos puts them in, is spot on. And it all leads up to an ending that is both shocking and, in hindsight, inevitable. 

Lesley has a beautiful way of engaging the reader, her characters are relatable, many of them will feel like people you already know, your friends, family, maybe even you. The story is captivating and imaginative, yet this book feels real. It could happen in your town; it could happen to you. This book has an intriguing, ‘girl next door’ feel to it.      

First of all, this book is hilarious. Second of all, it made me cry.

A trans woman leaving a men’s prison? After twenty years inside? With nowhere to go that will meet the requirements of her parole? Never mind meeting her requirements in the way of wardrobe. So this novel was quite a ride for me, right from page one. Although I have nothing in common with Carlotta, I somehow found myself identifying with her, and I was hooked. I can’t explain it.

I’m fussy about grammar and punctuation—until this book, which had my head spinning with mid-sentence switch-ups between first person and third person, between prison-speak and whatever I speak, between using and not using punctuation and sentence structure. I loved every minute, every sentence.