Here are 62 books that Of Blades and Shadows fans have personally recommended if you like
Of Blades and Shadows.
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I’m an ADHD author who struggles finding books that grasp my attention and keep it so I’m often left in a reading slump. I seem to read samples of countless books before I find something that really draws me in and can engross me. I’ve done the footwork, now you can reap the benefits of all my late-night searching. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I did!
When I picked this book up I was between books and just couldn’t find something that would really grab me.
My friend recommended this one to me, and man did it grab me from the first chapter. I couldn’t put it down until I was 75% of the way through it and I realized it was 3 in the morning! If you’re looking for magical powers, political intrigue, and a main character on the run this is your book!
The first book in a breathtaking new fantasy series, A Legacy of Storms and Starlight is a captivating and addictive read, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Danielle L. Jensen.
Zylah Renfall is certain of two things: she will forever be on the run for the murder of a prince, and she somehow used magic to escape her own hanging.
Aided by a mysterious and infuriating Fae, Zylah dreams of a fresh start and a chance to explore her newly discovered Fae heritage. But her dreams are short-lived as the king’s men still hunt for her head. When…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
I’m an ADHD author who struggles finding books that grasp my attention and keep it so I’m often left in a reading slump. I seem to read samples of countless books before I find something that really draws me in and can engross me. I’ve done the footwork, now you can reap the benefits of all my late-night searching. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I did!
When I received this book I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. But after the first few pages I was hooked!
The book starts off with an attack on the main character's home and the action doesn’t stop there! I loved the interaction between the main male and female characters. I couldn’t get enough of them! If you love vampires, hidden royals, and sass for days this one’s for you!
Olivia knows everyone at the guild is on high alert, but no one will tell her why. She's certain the death of her boyfriend is behind it, but the truth is far worse. Darkness has come to the mortal kingdom. When the guild protecting them is attacked by vampires, Olivia is swept away from the safety of her home when her mom and best friend are taken.
Before she can get away, she's captured by a vampire, Sebastian, who insists he's protecting her. But when she's taken to the City of Nightmares, the most…
I’m an ADHD author who struggles finding books that grasp my attention and keep it so I’m often left in a reading slump. I seem to read samples of countless books before I find something that really draws me in and can engross me. I’ve done the footwork, now you can reap the benefits of all my late-night searching. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I did!
I’ve always loved Beauty and the Beast retellings and this one blew all the others that I’ve read out of the water. From the first page I was hooked.
This was one of the few books I’ve devoured in a day. It had everything I wanted and more, a healer main character with backbone for days, a cursed beastly prince with all the wonderful moodiness, and sexual tension for days!
A plague sweeps across the emerald hills of Uí Néill, leaving a young midwife’s father with months to live. To save her people, Sorcha makes a deal with a dangerous Fae. She must travel across the sea, through merrow and kelpie lands, to find a forgotten king on a crumbling throne.
Born king of the Seelie Fae, Eamonn fought battles unnumbered to uphold honor, duty, and freedom… until his twin brother sank a blade between his shoulders. Crystals grew from the wound, splitting open skin and bone. His people banished him to a cursed isle for…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
I’m an ADHD author who struggles finding books that grasp my attention and keep it so I’m often left in a reading slump. I seem to read samples of countless books before I find something that really draws me in and can engross me. I’ve done the footwork, now you can reap the benefits of all my late-night searching. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I did!
This book came to me when I needed it most. I was having a hard time finding something that called to me and drew me in.
The main character in this story made me want to be her. She was such an amazing badass and so confident in herself even when she had no clue who she was. Pick this us if you’re looking for gods, vampires, end of the world prophecies, and a HEA.
Aged twelve, I stood just a few feet from President John F. Kennedy as he passed slowly by in June 1963. Waving and smiling from an open-top car, he was going to meet Ireland’s president in Dublin. His visit was a triumph for Irish-America. I have long enjoyed the variety of Irish-America. As an Irish student, I was one of the first foreigners to benefit from the J-1 visa program. I went to New Hampshire for the summers of 1970 and ’72 to work in an old resort hotel. On a visit to Boston then, I met a distant relative who, for decades, had worked as a domestic servant there.
I am related by ancestry to Fr John O’Sullivan, the parish priest of Kenmare, Co. Kerry, who worked hard during the Great Irish Famine to save the lives of his parishioners. Many of his flock died or felt obliged to flee to America on flimsy vessels, so-called “coffin-ships”. That is why I find this book so interesting.
Its gripping factual account of the multicultural nature of immigration in nineteenth-century New York makes it clearer to me what happened to those who fled famine in Ireland. Anbinder points out that Five Points in Manhattan was a principal destination for migrants from around Kenmare.
All but forgotten today, the Five Points neighborhood in Lower Manhattan was once renowned the world over. From Jacob Riis to Abraham Lincoln, Davy Crockett to Charles Dickens, Five Points both horrified and inspired everyone who saw it. While it comprised only a handful of streets, many of America’s most impoverished African Americans and Irish, Jewish, German, and Italian immigrants sweated out their existence there. Located in today’s Chinatown, Five Points witnessed more riots, scams, prostitution, and drunkenness than any other neighborhood in America. But at the same time it was a font of creative energy, crammed full of cheap…
Growing up, I found my escape in fantasy worlds. I’ve always had an interest in writing, and when I was a young child, when someone asked what I wanted to be when I grow up, I always responded “a novelist.” It wasn’t until I rediscovered my love and passion for reading in my late teens, and early twenties, that the idea of The Reign Belowblossomed in my head. Through my writing, I have discovered a community of fantasy readers and lovers. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that I listened to my inner child and that I wrote a story of my own, full of magic. But I’m glad my ambitious, childhood dream came true.
Petra’s journey is riddled in tragedy, yet with each devastating blow, Petra refuses to break. The Sins of Saintsis another refreshing, powerful new adult fantasy with a strong female main character that you can’t help to root for. Not only that, but Lauren M. Leasure doesn’t shy away from the harsh brutal truth of Petra’s life. The Eserene slums that Petra lives in is so detailed that I can picture myself there. The story unfolds in a clever duality, with portions highlighting her troubled past while meshing with Petra’s troubling present. I find that because Petra isn’t portrayed as perfect, and that she has flaws makes her that much more relatable. Prepare for this story to sink its claws into you as you read Petra’s story!
For fans of Sarah J. Maas, Jennifer L. Armentrout, and Raven Kennedy...
Growing up in Eserene's slums, Petra's life is marred by unimaginable tragedy. Things finally begin to look up when she meets Calomyr, member of the Royal Guard and keeper of just as much heartache as Petra.
Once again, though, her life is upended when her mother remarries a Lord, forcing Petra to undergo a brutal initiation ceremony in order to ascend to the Royal Court.
As Petra prepares for initiation, news of a drug-fueled fanatical rebel regime reaches the high walls of Eserene. No one seems to panic,…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
The natural world is where I feel at home, and it is also the focus of my work as a writer. In Virginia, where I grew up, I always felt calmest walking footpaths in the mountains. Now I live on a windswept island in Scotland, my little aging caravan a couple of dozen feet from crashing waves. I have always felt curious about how we shape our surroundings and how our surroundings shape us. As a writer and a reader, I probe these questions every day.
The books I love the most are the ones that break patterns and speak disruptively, that take on deeply specific perspectives, and that challenge me to pay attention to individual words.
The voice of the narrator in Sinha’s novel is totally arresting: raw and brutal. The result is an immersion into the human costs of environmental degradation.
Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone on all fours, the catastrophic result of what happened on That Night when, thanks to an American chemical company, the Apocalypse visited his slum. Now not quite twenty, he leads a hand-to-mouth existence with his dog Jara and a crazy old nun called Ma Franci, and spends his nights fantasising about Nisha, the daughter of a local musician, and wondering what it must be like to get laid.
When a young American doctor, Elli Barber, comes to town to open a free clinic for the still suffering townsfolk - only to find…
When I was twelve, my family moved to Brazil for a year because of my father’s work. I’ve been fascinated by the country and it has been always been the focal point of my research. Initially, my focus was how neighborhood associations in Rio’s favelas took advantage of new political opportunities during the transition to democracy in the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, however, the neighborhoods had all been occupied by heavily armed and occasionally violent drug gangs. Since then, I've tried to figure out the dynamics of this process, from the involved actors’ points of view. Including the voices of participants in drug gang life and those, like Bruno, who bring drugs to market.
If you want to get a taste of what life is like in a Rio favela, then this is the book for you. Based on years of meticulous fieldwork, Goldstein documents the hardships endured by a woman she befriended who works as a maid for a wealthy family in the city. More importantly, however, Goldstein’s book describes in detail how life in a Rio favela changed as violence associated with the drug trade overwhelms the community. When she began her fieldwork, in the early 1990s, Rio was enjoying a period of relative calm. By the end of the 90s, however, Goldstein could no longer risk visiting her friends for fear of her own personal safety.
Donna M. Goldstein presents a hard-hitting critique of urban poverty and violence and challenges much of what we think we know about the "culture of poverty" in this compelling read. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns in Rio de Janeiro, who cope with unbearable suffering, violence and social abandonment. The book offers a clear-eyed view of socially conditioned misery while focusing on the creative responses - absurdist and black humor - that people generate amid daily conditions of humiliation,…
When I was twelve, my family moved to Brazil for a year because of my father’s work. I’ve been fascinated by the country and it has been always been the focal point of my research. Initially, my focus was how neighborhood associations in Rio’s favelas took advantage of new political opportunities during the transition to democracy in the mid-1980s. By the mid-1990s, however, the neighborhoods had all been occupied by heavily armed and occasionally violent drug gangs. Since then, I've tried to figure out the dynamics of this process, from the involved actors’ points of view. Including the voices of participants in drug gang life and those, like Bruno, who bring drugs to market.
Arias’ book is the product of nine years of intensive ethnographic research in three favelas (shanty towns) of Rio de Janeiro. This enables him to assess how local community leaders deal with the parallel power of drug gangs that become entrenched in their neighborhoods. Unable to rely on the police, who are violent and corrupt, community leaders are forced to find ways to coexist with actors who represent a substantial financial and military threat to their authority. In terms of methodology, this is a really impressive piece of research!
Taking an ethnographic approach to understanding urban violence, Enrique Desmond Arias examines the ongoing problems of crime and police corruption that have led to widespread misery and human rights violations in many of Latin America's new democracies. Employing participant observation and interview research in three favelas (shantytowns) in ""Rio de Janeiro"" over a nine-year period, Arias closely considers the social interactions and criminal networks that are at the heart of the challenges to democratic governance in urban Brazil. Much of the violence is the result of highly organized, politically connected drug dealers feeding off of the global cocaine market. Rising…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I’m a Korean, Japanese, Scottish American writer born and raised in Hawaii who likes to create badass sci-fi characters of mixed backgrounds while blending cultures and genres as well. I also lean on tropes like sniper, detective, scientist, and genetically modified or cybernetically enhanced individuals, but I try to build symbolism or meaning into each archetype—for example, a sniper who is myopic in general, or a scientist whose life work is creating a new religion. I suppose I enjoy characters full of contradictions. When it comes to the badasses I like, it’s practically a requirement.
On Earth, Hari Michaelson is the most famous actor in the world stuck under the ceiling of a rigid caste system. When he teleports to Overworld, he’s Caine, a notorious assassin who the people of Earth watch remotely and cheer on. What I love most about Caine and Heroes Die is the pure audacity. From the cheesy cover art to the excessively violent narrative, author Matthew Stover holds nothing back. Even in audiobook format, the deep, gruff, masculine voice of Stefan Rudnicki is comically spot on. This book, and Caine, is ridiculous in the best way.
A man shouldn’t die with no understanding of why he’s been murdered
Renowned throughout the land of Ankhana as the Blade of Tyshalle, Caine has killed his share of monarchs and commoners, villains and heroes. He is relentless, unstoppable, simply the best there is at what he does.
At home on Earth, Caine is Hari Michaelson, a superstar whose adventures in Ankhana command an audience of billions. Yet he is shackled by a rigid caste society, bound to ignore the grim fact that he kills men on a far-off world for the entertainment of his own planet—and bound to keep…
