Here are 98 books that Once Upon a Marigold fans have personally recommended if you like
Once Upon a Marigold.
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As a child, my imagination and love of art drew me to comic books, and later, to immersive, worldbuilding fantasy. My 26-year hiatus from devoted creative pursuits while serving in the Air Force rewarded me with amazing experiences around the globe. As an Airman, naturalist, and scuba diver, I have been immersed in worldly ‘extremes’: the best and worst of humankind; nature’s most remote places and incredible creatures; and troubled regions afflicted by climate change and conflict. I now distill my experiences and creativity into the genre of “eco-fantasy.” The books of my diverse selection also leverage and explore worldly and otherworldly ‘extremes’ to elevate their stories. Enjoy!
It would be the most extreme of criminal acts for this beloved book not to be my ‘list topper!’ Reading this book instilled an instant love of good fantasy storytelling in me early on. It defines the fantasy genre, exemplifying the absolute best extremes in great world-building, characters, and epic storytelling.
Tolkien set the high bar I strive for in all areas in my own writing with one of the most memorable stories in one of the most unforgettable worlds of all time … and he managed to pull it all off within the context of a single book! No matter how many times I go back and re-read this one, I find something new to cherish, and you will too!
Special collector's film tie-in hardback of the best-selling classic, featuring the complete story with a sumptuous cover design inspired by THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY and brand new reproductions of all the drawings and maps by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit who enjoys a comfortable, unambitious life, rarely travelling further than the pantry of his hobbit-hole in Bag End.
But his contentment is disturbed when the wizard, Gandalf, and a company of thirteen dwarves arrive on his doorstep one day to whisk him away on an unexpected journey 'there and back again'. They have a plot to raid…
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
A heartwarming young adventure story, winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal.
A deftly crafted fairy tale adventure story from a New York Times bestselling author, twice winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal. Here, reader, is the tale of a tiny, sickly mouse with unusually large ears; a mouse who takes his fate into his own hands. It is the tale of a beautiful, flaxen-haired princess who laughs often and makes everything around her seem brighter. It is the tale of a poor, deaf serving girl who entertains foolish dreams of splendour. It is a tale of impossible love, of bravery…
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
A school drama with a dash of Greek Mythology when Helen of Troy’s amulet gets into a young girl's hands.
Juliet is suddenly doused with attention and does her best to navigate it. The story is very funny and lighthearted, this was another one of my favorite school reads.
Juliet Dove is a girl who doesn't like to be noticed. But though she may be shy, she has a wickedly sharp wit. Whenever someone does take notice of her, she tears into the person with a savagery that's earned her the nickname Killer. Juliet ends up leaving Mr. Elives' magic shop with Helen of Troy's amulet--that is, a virtual man magnet. Juliet doesn't know what she's got, but the boys in her class do--they start to notice her. Soon every boy in town is swoony for her. Yet, much as she'd like to lose all the unwanted attention, she…
I’m pretty sure I’m about to die in space. And I just turned twelve and a half.
Blast off with the four winners of the StellarKid Project on a trip to the International Space Station and then to the Gateway outpost orbiting the Moon! It’s a dream come true until…
I struggled a lot with reading as a kid, I would not call myself a natural reader at all. When I was young, fantasy and magic stories were one of the few genres that could grip me enough to make me actually focus and attempt to read but I always hated the ones that took themselves too seriously (they always felt impossibly long to get through). Now, as a children’s author, myself, it’s my hope and passion to serve fellow young-readers-who-don’t-consider-themselves-readers with fun accessible stories. I hope you enjoy!
There is a special place in my heart for nature magic and nobody does it like Roald Dahl!
After reading this as a kid, I was fully convinced that, when the time was right, I, too, was going to crawl into a peach full of amazing cricket and spider friends.
I love these types of books, the best magic stories are always the ones that feel right at your fingertips!
From the World's No. 1 Storyteller, James and the Giant Peach is a children's classic that has captured young reader's imaginations for generations.
One of TIME MAGAZINE’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time
After James Henry Trotter's parents are tragically eaten by a rhinoceros, he goes to live with his two horrible aunts, Spiker and Sponge. Life there is no fun, until James accidentally drops some magic crystals by the old peach tree and strange things start to happen. The peach at the top of the tree begins to grow, and before long it's as big as a house.…
For me, the American story is about “mixedness”—about the ways in which people of various backgrounds and beliefs have come together, oftentimes despite themselves, to make up our modern racial stew. It has been true since the Founding and is all the more so now, even as we, as a society, continue to want to resist it. These novels achieve what I aspire to in my own writing: the white characters are as complex as the Black ones. And in their struggles to make sense of the world, they all reveal the complexity and contradictions of American identity.
Narrated by Manon Gaudet, the mistress of an 1830s plantation outside New Orleans, the novel forced me to adopt the perspective of a person who is both oppressed, as a woman in the 19th century, and oppressor, as a slave-owner, who is keenly observant and stunningly blind. Manon’s body-servant, Sarah, has given birth to a deaf wild-child who Manon cannot ignore, given his striking resemblance to her own husband. Manon, who is obsessed with Sarah too, is incapable of recognizing her as someone being victimized by her husband. She only sees a rival.
I teach Property in my classes. My students hate Manon. They also love the book!
Property is Valerie Martin's powerful, startling novel set in America's deep South in the early nineteenth century: a story of freedom, both political and personal. Manon Gaudet is unhappily married to the owner of a Louisiana sugar plantation. She misses her family and longs for the vibrant lifestyle of her native New Orleans. The tension revolves around Sarah, a slave girl given to Manon as a wedding present from her aunt, whose young son Walter is living proof of where Manon's husband's inclinations lie. This private drama is played out against a brooding atmosphere of slave unrest and bloody uprisings.
Since reading The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and The Crystal Caveas a kid and teen, I’ve been hooked on all things magical. I love the fantasy genre and characters who are driven to use their powers to protect their tribes. I am constantly reading books about witches, vampires, the fae, sirens, shifters, and any other supernatural character with a good storyline surrounding them. L.J. Smith, Cassandra Clare, P.C. and Kristin Cast, Stephenie Meyer, and so many other YA fantasy writers are absolutely my heroes. Fantasy books not only entertain but have helped me process life and our world in a safe environment.
I loved Netflix’s The Vampire Diaries series and dove into the books full force. And while some may categorize the books as a vampire series, Bonnie, a psychic who later learns she is a witch, is the second main female character in the books. She plays a big role in the plots to save their town from the evil that surrounds it. I love that Bonnie is true to her friends and grows into her powers and confidence as the story progresses.
The #1 New York Times bestselling series that inspired the hit TV show The Vampire Diaries!
A deadly love triangle.
Elena Gilbert is a high school golden girl, used to getting what she wants. And who she wants. But when the boy she’s set her sights on—the handsome and haunted Stefan—isn’t interested, she’s confused.
She could never know the real reason Stefan is struggling to resist her: Stefan is a vampire, and Elena’s in danger just by being around him. What’s more, Stefan’s dark, dangerous vampire brother Damon has just arrived in town.
For those who enjoy fantasy adventure, the Faerie Tales from the White Forest series offers a new twist on the traditional faerie tales so loved by young readers.
From devastating curses to death-defying quests, Brigitta and her growing collective of misfit friends face greater and greater challenges when destiny calls…
I am an engineer, scientist, turned technology manager who works in the field of Artificial Intelligence, and have gotten lost in Sci-Fi since I could first read. Now I want to share the stories that keep me awake at night.
Adam is a limited edition robot who can pass for human (something I can’t do on a bad day). It takes a while for Adam to learn to be part of that world, but as time passes, he moves from being the slave of his owner Charlie to being better than him in every way (just ask his girlfriend!). I kept thinking of what would it be like to have a better version of me hanging around the house. It took slaves a long time to be recognized as people, how long for the robots?
From the Booker Prize winner and bestselling author of Atonement—”a sharply intelligent novel of ideas” (The New York Times) that asks whether a machine can understand the human heart, or whether we are the ones who lack understanding.
Set in an uncanny alternative 1982 London—where Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence—Machines Like Me powerfully portrays two lovers who will be tested beyond their understanding. Charlie, drifting through life and dodging full-time employment, is in love with Miranda, a bright student who lives with a…
Among other things, I'm an existentialist. A well-constructed mystery novel is an existential puzzle given to the reader to solve at his/her leisure, and the noir sub-genre has the further subtext that the protagonist—and the reader—are doomed in some way even if the solution is nailed. Romance novels are drivel and have no basis in reality, but noir and other types of mystery fiction reflect the way that the world works: you may solve this puzzle problem, but then you are left to a vast world that is rife with puzzles but without a coherent plot. The detective trudges on, achieves a kind of satisfaction, and then is thrust into the next crisis.
Watching
bad people self-destruct is hard work, but author Cain makes sure that the bad
people get what they deserve. A drifter takes a job at a roadside diner that is
run by an old man and his beautiful and unhappy wife; the two youngsters begin
a dangerous affair and then plot to kill the husband so that the girl inherits
the property. But matters do not turn out as they planned. The novel has been
adapted for film at least seven times, with the favorite being the 1946 movie
starring Lana Turner.
'Nobody has ever quite pulled it off the way Cain does, not Hemingway, and not even Raymond Chandler' Tom Wolfe
'It is no accident that movies based on three [of Cain's novels] helped to define the genre known as film noir' NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
'The most starkly elemental thing that has been written for years' EVENING STANDARD
The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and…
A lover of fiction since my teens, I only really took an interest in history in my 20s. I’m fascinated with WWII and the 1950s due to family histories and having visited key sites, like Bletchley Park and the Command Bunker in Uxbridge, near where I grew up. I’m not especially patriotic, but I am proud of what Britain had to do in 1940, as well as the toll the war took and the years of recovery. But it’s also the time, albeit decreasingly so, when people still alive today can look back at their youth, and we can all have a nostalgia for that time in our lives.
I remember reading this in my student bedsit and being transfixed. I was studying art but had just decided that I wanted to be a novelist. As such, I loved the opening lines: “A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.”
It is a simple yet beautiful book about love, belief, and betrayal. I’m not religious, but the testing of someone’s faith and how it may make them act stuck with me. Also, the facade of the ‘stiff upper lip,’ but underneath, the vulnerability.
The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
Floretta- the story of an old woman who discovers life beautifully anew thru the helping hands of a child. The chakra colors of dawn and twilight are woven through the pages as the cycle of life is magically composed. The subject of “heaven,” has the potential to open discussions with…
Wondering why I’m such a fan of chosen families? I have a family of origin, but when I think of true family, it’s not my siblings. It’s the people of my heart. My husband, my longtime editor, who I finally got smart enough to marry. A spiritual daughter in Boston; another in Kenya. A favorite ex-husband in Santa Fe. Another man who should've been my brother, and his beloved husband in Manhattan. For me, a real friend is someone who’d raze the State Department if I were stuck in a prison in Lima, Peru. Any one of these mentioned would. I always wanted a pseudonym so I write Boots & Boas under Vivienne Hartt Quinn.
Best for last. Sierra Simone is a kick-ass writer. Steamy like nobody else is steamy. Fanciful. Well-read—she used to be a librarian. Smart, smart, smart, and not a show-off about it. The threesome who make the chosen family in these novels of the New Camelot eventuate in startling public roles. The first three tell the stories of the ménage; the last two are novellas, adjunct to the main story. The parallels between the original Arthurian legend and these are break-taking. Her storytelling is exemplary. Timing. Pacing. Convincing dialogue, and the sex is off the page. Not for the faint of heart, Sierra Simone is for the hard-core sexy and worth every second of reading time. When enough time has gone by, I’ll reread these. I know it.
My name is Greer Galloway, and I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States.
When I was a girl, I received a warning: Keep your kisses to yourself.
Twice I ignored it, and twice my heart was utterly, miserably broken. I didn’t need to learn my lesson a third time. Instead, I swore off love forever.
But President Colchester hasn't sworn me off—not by a long shot.
I knew him as Ash, the soldier I once kissed in a circle of broken glass. I haven’t forgotten his broken promises and forbidden desires. But the country knows…
