Books like Olivia Flies High — picked by fans

I’m a sucker for anything about chimps!

Set in post-war England, this charming story focuses on the relationship between 10-year-old Henry and Ocky, a mischievous chimpanzee he ‘accidentally’ steals from Mr Nobody at Blondini’s Circus.

After trouble at school and at home, and with the threat of having his secret friend discovered, Harry runs away with Ocky. Following a series of adventures, ending with a perilous situation at the seaside, Harry realises that not only is Ocky precious to Mr Nobody, but he is precious to his family too.

Who doesn’t enjoy a fast-paced caper?

This story is full of quirky illustrations, colourful characters, and funny footnotes. Often conversational, Sutcliffe frequently addresses the reader as he relays the shenanigans leading up to circus legend and aerialist supreme, Quennie Bombazine’s cunning plan to catch her nemesis, Armitage Shanks, while at the same time reuniting Hannah and Billy with their circus father.

I would say that for reluctant readers who enjoy visual prompts and more of a comic-style format, this would be perfect.

I read that Noel Streatfeild actually spent time with a travelling circus to achieve authenticity in this story. Well, you can almost smell the greasepaint and sawdust.

Rather than being sent to separate orphanages, sheltered siblings Santa and Peter run away to Cob’s Circus where their Uncle Gus performs on the trapeze. Peter learns to ride and to understand animals, and Santa learns to tumble, but they need to persuade their uncle to like them and decide to keep them. Though old-fashioned, this tale is vivid with colour and spectacle, and the atmosphere so well-captured.

This book is part of the Hetty Feather collection, perfect for fans of this feisty Victorian heroine.

Recounted by ‘Diamond’ (formerly Ellen-Jane), the child acrobatic wonder, this is a story about running away FROM the circus. Bought for five guineas by cruel clown Beppo, Diamond is forced to become part of the Silver Brothers’ tumbling act at Tanglefield’s Travelling Circus. Although competent, she is mistreated and unhappy, but when Hetty Feather joins the circus as ringmaster ‘Emerald’, things begin to change…

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.

This book is horror for adrenaline fiends, but it has emotional depths and a rich cast of well-developed characters to balance out its fast-paced thrills.

My favorite character in this book, and one of my favorites in the whole horror canon, is Nell Talbot, one half of the brother-sister duo of protagonists. Nell is a 100-proof disaster bisexual, surfing a wave of her own bad choices all the way to shore.

You know how a story is supposed to have an inciting incident? Nell Talbot is the inciting incident.

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 love this humorous coming-of-age story narrated by a naïve yet academically smart girl who is juggling the various conflicting truths of her life—what she is taught in school, what she learns at home, what she learns from her friends and her siblings, what she is told about how life is and what she observes for herself. How is a person to reconcile all these truths?

By becoming the Queen of England, which is what Monei, the narrator, says she wants to become when she grows up since the Queen is the only woman, as far as Monei can tell, who can make decisions. This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Dow brilliantly captures the perplexed voice of a growing girl and the idiom of Botswana life around Independence.

I really enjoyed this novel by Sofía Segovia. She takes us to a mystical world. Exceptionally well described, the main character, Simonopio, sees things nobody else can see, visions of what is to come. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, Simonopio is welcomed by Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt and care for him as if they were their own. His swarm of bees always helps Simonopio, and his mission is to protect his adoptive family from threats, both human and those of nature. For me, this is a fascinating book that shows the beauty of this little boy.

Set in the past and based on real people, this is a gripping story about an unofficial relationship that crosses class divides.

The closeness between poet Elizabeth Barret and her maid, known by her surname, Wilson, is never properly acknowledged as a friendship. But that’s what it is, as Wilson gradually gets to know everything about her mistress, particularly her forbidden love for fellow poet Robert Browning, and Barret comes to increasingly rely on the dependable Wilson.

This book is a fabulous and creative imagining of these real lives, and of a deep friendship that is horribly betrayed when things go wrong.