Books like Lost Dog — picked by fans

I can probably find a way to put this novel into every book category there is – I love it that much!

Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant chemist in the 1960s, a time when society accepted that only men could be brilliant or chemists. But through a series of opportunities and her defiance in the face of attempts to marginalize her, Elizabeth becomes a de facto leader of a small but mighty group of women who change their circumstances and thereby begin to change the world. 

This was and still remains one of my favourite books of all time.

From the age of about 8, I used to read it every year, and it remained as thrilling every time.

The pink cover and black and white illustrations are perfect. The story is funny, sad, clever, implausible, very exciting, and has some of the best characters in fiction, Cruella de Vil of course being one.

The ingenuity of Pongo and Perdita in saving their, and many many more, puppies is quite brilliant. 

Dodie Smith, who wrote it, was a genius. As well as this timeless classic, she also wrote the wonderful I Capture the Castle.

This is a children’s picture book, by the brilliant writer and illustrator John Burningham.

It’s the story of a mongrel Courtney, who is brought home by two children to their snobbish parents, who don’t like him because he’s a mutt.

Courtney is brilliant, can cook, play the violin, juggle, is the perfect dog, and they’re still not satisfied.

It’s sad and sweet and has the most beautiful, deceptively simple drawings that break your heart.

This is a briliant and unusual book by the writer of the highly successful Captain Correlli’s Mandolin.

It’s the true story of a wonderfully independent Red Kelpie, who hitches rides all over Western Australia, moving in with people for a while then moving on. He becomes a legend in the area, and there is a statue of him in his hometown.

It’s a timeless piece of modern folklore and a hymn to the wandering spirit of this extraordinary little dog, captured beautifully by de Bernieres.

Rescue Dogs is one part true crime, one part instructions on bringing home a rescue dog, and one part get-your-butt-off-the-couch-and-help. While the book focused on purebred dogs from puppy mills and commercial breeders, many of the same issues arise when you bring home any shelter pet. It wasn't always easy to listen to the stories of animal abuse that occur all too often in purebred breeding operations, but Pete’s devotion and his ability to put the big-picture before his emotions were admirable. If we intend to move the needle on stopping the killing of adoptable dogs in this country, we need more of that attitude.

What I loved most about this book, though, was Pete's attitude toward the individual animal. He urges the reader to look beyond breed to the dog as an individual. To love the dog not because of the way he looks or his pedigree, which he… show more.

Technically, this isn’t a cozy because Harlow Zane is part of law enforcement, but I love Elizabeth Goddard’s suspenseful romances, and this one centers around a cadaver dog—a beagle named Nell.

The dog plays a vital role in the discovery of the killer and in rescuing Harlow and her second-chance love interest. Nell makes a Goddard book even better!

This story has a great combination of romance and suspense and action. You gotta love Sam, who's just trying to keep his family's rescue organization going and has such strong loyalty toward his family. And Nora's courageous and feisty, just trying to survive from a dangerous situation. Carmen’s books are low on the explicit and violence/gore scale, which is perfect when you want to go on a ride without all of the extraneous cursing and whatnot. 

One of the cliches of historical fiction is that it can bring the past to life in a way that factual historical books can’t. If you read the superb City of Beasts you’ll think again! The book studies the many ways in which animals contributed to and shaped eighteenth-century London. History has largely overlooked their presence – but Almeroth-Williams puts them back in all their noisy, smelly, messy, toiling existence. Here, too, are the men and women who worked with them - the drovers, milkmaids, grooms, and pig keepers whose lives don’t often find a place in the history books. If you want sights, sounds, and smells, here they are in plenty. Few books I’ve read, fact or fiction, have given me such a vivid impression of the every day, working life of Georgian London.

I have two pets cats, and my relationship with them is pretty straightforward—I care for them to the point of being obsessive about meeting their every need. Unlike me, the communities described in this book have a range of relationships with the non-human species they share space with. Care of course, and kinship, but also relationships of conflict and violence. Complex themes such as animal ethics, Hindu nationalism, the politics of exclusion, conservation, and even inter-species love are written about against the backdrop of the everyday lives of the villagers. The binary of domestic cow and the wild bear and the pigs that fall in between are all a part of this narrative of the tangled relationship between humans and animals. For those of us who balk at reading anthropological works, this book is a pleasure and easy read for the relatable style of writing.

This is one of several excellent books that explores how nonhuman animals shaped cities (see also Andrew Robichaud’s Animal City, Frederick L. Brown’s The City is More Than Human, Dawn Day Biehler’s Pests in the City, and Hannah Velten’s Beastly London, for example). Cities are multispecies spaces and they have always been so, even as the history of a given city shifts and changes. When we walk through a city like Dublin today we may not immediately think about the many, many nonhuman animals who used to roam the same streets and pathways we walk on today. And yet, as Juliana Adelman explores in this book, there are hints and traces of this animal history if we know where to look.