100 Books Like Orkney

Nobody does characters like Jess Kidd. Every person in this story is bizarre—a monster, misfit, or malefactor—yet not one feels contrived. I adored Bridie Devine, a small, rotund, pipe-smoking detective who begins to see the same ghost everywhere she goes.

Bridie’s quarry is a strange girl who’s been kidnapped and might (depending on who you ask) have supernatural powers or be a “lovely grotesque” who’s caught the eye of collectors. I fell in love with Kidd’s imaginative Victorian London, where nothing is as it seems, and evil lurks around every bend.

I love this book for many reasons. The Sealwoman is a passenger on the slave ship that takes our protagonist form her beloved homeland, and the ‘gift’ of the title is the story she tells of her shapeshifting roots. The voyage is hellish, and contains a terrifying birth scene among other unspeakable, unimaginable, only just survivable events. It’s based on a true story, which makes it all the more powerful, and it makes me wonder about the hidden truths in the folklore contained within it, especially the sealwoman’s story. 

The Mermaid of Black Conch takes a mythological creature and gives her extraordinary life, as a very real, young woman, called Aycayia.

She is caught – hooked like a prize fish - by greedy anglers, and hauled from the sea, bringing with her an already fascinating and tragic history of injustice and misunderstanding. But, she is also an object of love.

Not all fishermen are commercial opportunists… Not all men are eager to exploit beautiful and unusual women, and so begins an extraordinary rescue, and a life-affirming relationship, with many unpredictable, literally magical, and truly remarkable twists.

This enchanting book, written with breath-taking originality, is likely to spell-bind you – permanently. You’ll never again think of mermaids in the same way.

In this prize-winning novel for older teenagers, Hersey recreates a story of Selkie lore which, in terms of the magical element, remains largely faithful to the original folklore. Teenager Danni’s mother has disappeared, so her daughter sets out to find her. Danni finds herself in her mother’s small Cornish hometown, and soon discovers secrets about her family that are so surprising and hard to believe, they threaten to blow her world apart. What follows is an adventure that enthralls deeply, incorporating fantasy elements into a satisfyingly emotional, realistic story. Stylistically, the sea, selkies, the coastline, and the landscape play important parts, providing an atmospheric backdrop to this fast-moving thrill ride. 

I love the gorgeous prose in this retelling of the Selkie Bride story set along the coast of Nova Scotia in the mid-1830s.

The book is dedicated to “anyone who has ever been lonely,” and I enjoy the way the lonely characters learn to connect with those around them. The main character Jean, a midwife who lives on the edge of the village, finds a naked woman on the shore and helps her give birth, unraveling complex emotional feelings.

The book is steeped in selkie legends, fairy lore, and tales of haunted ships, but it deftly explores the human desire for choice in love and the struggles women face as they become mothers. The descriptions of the stormy coastline set the stage for a fast-paced and engaging plot! Love it!

This book is an achingly beautiful love story that had me enraptured from the first page!

The book moves from pain to passion as a young woman known as a “sea witch,” risks her life to rescue an enslaved selkie man. This is a quick read with a slow burn, and I was held captive by the growing romance between two people who come from separate worlds.

I am a hopeless romantic, and I love the way the selkie and the sea-witch care for each other, sacrificing their own safety to heal the sins of the past. The words pulse with the beauty of ocean tides. I didn’t want the story to end!

I love Jane Yolen’s work with fantasy and folklore, and this collection of poetry does not disappoint! It is a lyrical look at the power of stories and storytelling.

This charming collection of fairy tale and folklore-inspired poems made me think about the messages at the heart of the stories we tell one another. It also made me contemplate the way writers, poets, and artists use different methods to tell similar tales.

This small volume has a lasting impact, and I adored the beautiful selkie poems which lend the collection its name. The Last Selchie Child had me longing for the ocean!

I love the watercolor paintings in this wordless picture book!

This book is perfect for sparking the imagination of young readers, but I enjoy it as well! A young boy falls out of a fishing boat and is rescued by a friendly seal, but the minor details of the story are left to interpretation.

Who is the boy? Why does the seal help him? Is the seal a selkie? Are sea creatures capable befriending humans?

These are a few of the questions I asked myself as I pored over the blue and green seascapes, marveling at their shimmer and light. I have always been curious about what lies beneath the waves, and this picture book offers readers a glimpse of ocean magic!

I have to admit, although I know a lot about gods, I haven’t spent a ton of time reading about folkloric creatures, like faeries, brownies, and selkies. This book, set in a gothic old house in the English countryside in the 1850s, definitely made me feel my neglect of the topic; luckily, I got to learn alongside magician John Blake and Lord Thornby as they investigate the spell that’s holding Thornby trapped.

One remarkable thing about this book is the intriguing and clever magic system. The romance is great. And the twist at the end—well, I didn’t see it coming.

This book is a summer creamsicle of a book, melting down your fist as you devour it. It’s the sun beating down in parking lots as you run toward the water, sand crunching under your flip-flops. If you took Joan Didion’s descriptions of SoCal and crossed them with Anne-Marie MacDonald’s deft descriptions of mother/daughter pathos, then sprinkled it with 70’s childhood nostalgia, you’d get this daydream of a book.

Oh, yeah, and it’s also about a deadbeat parent who may or may not be an ocean deity. I accidentally grabbed this off the library shelf one day and loved it so much that I bought it. I take every opportunity to recommend it. It’s a beach read in the best, literal sense of the term.