Here are 100 books that Pigeon Feathers fans have personally recommended if you like
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My taste in music is as eclectic as my bookshelf. I read everything from poetry to Greek tragedies and listen to both historical and contemporary music. When I first imagined Shelby’s story, I aimed to capture how music transforms us, how it shifts our moods and shapes our memories. As I set out to write the first draft, I had never heard of social-emotional learning. However, writing this book, along with my YA novel, A Song for the Road, inspired me to pursue a master’s degree in Humanities focusing on Social-emotional Learning and Creative Writing. I also teach teens and adults how to write compelling emotional fiction.
When I was a teenager, I would have felt very much at home at the vintage record store in London where this story is set. (In fact, my hometown is named London, except my London is in Canada.) The quirky clerks who work there adore their boss, Rob Fleming, and spend their days attempting to outwit one another with music trivia and compiling funny and far-reaching Top Five lists.
As Rob negotiates a recent breakup, he must sort through his ex-girlfriend’s belongings and the emotional baggage he’s collected over the years. Though Rob is an adult, this still feels like a coming-of-age tale. I came away from the book resonating with the bittersweet awareness of what it means to become an adult with a list of careers if time and money were no object.
"I've always loved Nick Hornby, and the way he writes characters and the way he thinks. It's funny and heartbreaking all at the same time."—Zoë Kravitz
From the bestselling author of Funny Girl, About a Boy, A Long Way Down and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll.
Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a…
Stories, essays & dialogues about art, imagination & the erotic life. A young man named Charles writes a series of erotic tales, and his bookish friend Lisa offers light-hearted critiques of them.
Some stories feel like erotic meditations or random erotic moments in a young man's life. Others start with…
Maybe because I’m a novelist, I’ve always loved reading novels about writers—it’s a joy to see my passionate relationship with my own work reflected in these fictional solitary obsessives, my literary siblings. Reading about their own writing gives me a sense of recognition, community, and solidarity, and makes me feel less alone in this odd vocation, which is no small thing. I can’t get enough fictional evocations of the daily discipline of the writer’s life—as well as the trajectory of a literary career—from adolescence (Jo March) to old age (Leonard Schiller).
How could I not love this book? It’s set in the lovely (really!) city of Pittsburgh, and it’s about a lost weekend of literary hijinks and stoned debauchery.
The protagonist, Grady Tripp, is a young male writer making something of an ass of himself, but Chabon makes him so sympathetic, I can’t help rooting for him even as he digs himself in even deeper.
The dialogue crackles, the supporting characters are vivid and colorful, and the plot sweeps the reader up into a whirlwind of incredibly fun trouble.
A deft parody of the American fame factory and a piercing portrait of young and old desire, WONDER BOYS is a modern classic from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY.
Grady Tripp is an over-sexed, pot-bellied, pot-smoking, ageing wunderkind of a novelist now teaching creative writing at a Pittsburgh college while working on his 2,000-page masterpiece, WONDER BOYS. When his rumbustious editor and friend, Terry Crabtree, arrives in town, a chaotic weekend follows - involving a tuba, a dead dog, Marilyn Monroe's ermine-lined jacket and a squashed boa constrictor.
I grew up in the eighties, and that means I grew up watching movies such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Say Anything. Thirty years after watching those movies, some iconic scenes have stuck with me: the characters of The Breakfast Club sliding across the hallway to Simple Minds’ song “Don’t You Forget About Me,” John Cusack holding the boombox over his head while blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” and the Psychedelic Furs “Pretty in Pink” song playing on the soundtrack of a movie by the same name. The books in this list do a lot with those same ingredients of heartbreak, music, and hope that the characters who so often remind me of myself might find love.
The phrase “girl in a band” in the title got me to pick this book up off a table in the bookstore. I am the kind of guy who will pick up five or so books at a bookstore, take them over to the most comfortable spot I can find, and read the first few pages to see if I want to buy any of them.
The writer Kim Gordon was in an indie post-punk band called Sonic Youth, and I had just barely heard of them. After three years in Sonic Youth, Kim marries one of her fellow band members, and they stay married for 29 years. This book starts when the two of them take the stage together for the last time as they head for divorce and the band's breakup.
“They say when a marriage ends,” Gordon writes on the first pages, “that little things you never…
A new edition, part of the Faber Greatest Hits series -- books that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century.
In Girl in a Band Kim Gordon, founding member of Sonic Youth and role model for a generation of women, tells her story. She writes frankly about her route from girl to woman and pioneering icon within the music and art scene of New York City in the 1980s and 90s as well as marriage, motherhood, and independence.
Filled with the sights and sounds of a changing world and a remarkable life, Girl…
Hemingway's Goblet is a rollicking read about a mismatched relationship between a middle-aged commitment-phobic university professor in London and one of his female students, a Korean 15 years younger than him. He is accused of sexually harassing her, but somehow their relationship survives as they join forces to seek to…
I grew up in the eighties, and that means I grew up watching movies such as Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, and Say Anything. Thirty years after watching those movies, some iconic scenes have stuck with me: the characters of The Breakfast Club sliding across the hallway to Simple Minds’ song “Don’t You Forget About Me,” John Cusack holding the boombox over his head while blaring Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes,” and the Psychedelic Furs “Pretty in Pink” song playing on the soundtrack of a movie by the same name. The books in this list do a lot with those same ingredients of heartbreak, music, and hope that the characters who so often remind me of myself might find love.
The cover of this book has a stack of mix tapes on it and that’s what got me first: that the writer was going to explain love using the metaphor of a mix tape. As a person who has made hundreds of mix tapes myself—and later burned CDs and after that arranged playlists on Spotify—that the phrase mix tape was in the title was enough for me to pick up the book. Plus, I remember back in the 80s when I sat around waiting for a song to come on the radio so I could record it, and that was how I made my first tapes.
Each chapter in this book starts with an image of a mix tape with the songs listed on it. The writer uses the songs on the tape to write about his relationships. The first chapter ends with this line: “I’m going to be up…
“The happiest, saddest, sweetest book about rock ‘n’ roll that I’ve ever experienced.”—Chuck Klosterman
Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die in his arms. Using the listings of fifteen of his favorite mix tapes, Rob shows that the power of music to build a bridge between people…
For the last 19 years, I have worked narcotics K-9s for a private company called Sherlock Hounds Detection Canines. I recently retired from the K-9 work, but over the years, I loved seeing how dogs solve crimes in real life. Not only do they help us solve crimes, but dogs have a way of reaching people and changing lives. Dogs are quite literally “man’s (or woman’s) best friend,” and because of that, they become the best partners for many characters in books. There’s nothing better than discovering a new K-9 series that depicts the real-life love and bond between K-9 and handler.
I love the Timber Creek K-9 Mystery series and Mizushima’s latest book was one of my favorites. As a retired K-9 handler, sometimes books with working dogs get facts wrong. I could tell that Mizushima put a lot of research time into each of her books. I love the fictional K-9, Robo, and Mizushima’s accurate portrayal of the bond between handler and dog.
Mattie Cobb, the main character, is intriguing and makes the reader cheer for her. The dashing veterinarian, Cole Walker, adds a little romance to the storyline. I would recommend starting with the first book, Killing Trail. While each book stands on its own, reading about the mystery of Mattie’s family makes the conclusion of Standing Dead even more thrilling.
From critically acclaimed, master thriller author Margaret Mizushima, comes the eighth installment of the award-winning Timber Creek K-9 mysteries.
“Tense and satisfying,” (JA Jance) Standing Dead is the perfect read for fans of CJ Box and Longmire.
Deputy Mattie Cobb and her sister, Julia, travel to Mexico to visit their mother, but when they arrive, they discover that she and her husband have vanished without a trace. Back in Timber Creek, Mattie finds a chilling note on her front door telling her to look for “him” among the standing dead up in the high country.
It’s hard to pinpoint where my interest in cold cases began, but I remember reading about the Isdal Woman and being intrigued. She was found in Norway in 1970, badly burned, with the labels cut off her clothes. Police discovered fake identities and disguises in suitcases left at the railway station, but, to this day, have no idea who she was. I’m a member of several Facebook groups where people investigate cold cases, and I’m always amazed at how these clues can be put together so many years later. Or, in some cases, how some people go unnamed, or crimes unsolved despite all the resources at our fingertips.
This is a brilliantly plotted book with a fascinating protagonist.
It’s fair to say that Cam Killick has issues stemming from his time in the Marines. He starts looking into a decades-old case of a family who went missing on the way back from a party. It was widely accepted that their car had probably crashed into the marshes and had lain there for thirty years. But when Cam finds the car, the remains of the family are nowhere to be found.
'Compelling and so atmospheric ... the perfect new crime series to dive into' HEAT 'Rob Parker is a master of the stone-cold twist' JANICE HALLETT 'Brilliant pacing ... a great addition to your to-be-read stacks' PRIMA 'The very definition of a one-sitting read' ROBERT RUTHERFORD
Cam Killick left the special forces with a handful of medals, stories he can't share and PTSD so bad he can only find peace under water. Working as a salvage diver in the Norfolk Broads keeps him sane, and the county's many tales of the lost keep him busy.
I first picked up a Clive Cussler book over ten years ago. I previously only ever read nonfiction. I was hooked. I always thought these action-adventure archeological-style novels would be toilet paper, but I was wrong. These books made me want to write them. For years before, I had studied the Egyptians, Sumerians, Incas, Mayans, and Templars. You name it and I knew about it, so I took my own experience and excitement and started creating my own books. The recommendations I have here are from some of the best of the best in the genre if you like sitting on the edge of your seat, twists and turns, and some really interesting history that most of us don’t know.
I will almost never buy a book on Atlantis anymore… except this one got me. Want to know why? I liked the write-up. I was short on adventure novels and I fell in love and read the whole series.
The two characters, Nina Wide and Eddie Chase, are brilliant. Eddie is a wise-cracking, no-nonsense guy, a British cockney who does the stupidest things and blows stuff up. You can't help but love him. In this book, Nina gets a tip on where to find Atlantis (here, her parents got killed trying to find it), and Eddie has to look after her.
McDermott writes like Clive Cussler on cocaine, so there is literally never a dull moment. Atlantis stuff can be really trite, but this is really good. I had some good laughs and could identify with the frustrations of someone on a goose chase. I also liked the villain in…
Following in the tradition of Clive Cussler and Matthew Reilly, Andy McDermott takes us a roller-coaster ride in search of the legendary Atlantis.
Archaeologist Nina Wilde believes she has found the location of the lost city of Atlantis and now she wants the opportunity to prove her theory. Someone else though wants her dead! With the help of ex-SAS bodyguard Eddie Chase and beautiful heiress Kari Frost, Nina faces a breakneck race against time around the world, pursued at every step by agents of the mysterious - and murderous - Brotherhood of Selasphoros. From the jungles of Brazil to the…
As a queer, disabled YA author, I focus on writing stories that reflect the complexities of identity, disability, and mental health. I believe every teen who is disabled and/or struggles with mental illness deserves to see themselves represented, but I’m also passionate about stories that allow able-bodied readers to gain insight into new perspectives. These book recommendations showcase diverse voices and highlight a disabled experience, and I hope books like these will foster a new generation that values inclusivity and representation. Happy reading!
I was absolutely hooked by the theme of chaotic teenage girldom and hilariously relatable characters, but the thoughtful discussions centering on disability and identity were simply fabulous!
I greatly enjoyed the portrayal of universal feelings of youth—confusion, longing for adventure, and a quest for meaning. The protagonist, who is autistic and Palestinian, highlights representation the world desperately needs more of.
A contemporary teen romance novel, now available in paperback, featuring a Palestinian-Canadian girl trying to hide her autism diagnosis while navigating her first year of high school, for fans of Jenny Han and Samira Ahmed.
Fifteen-year-old Jessie, a quirky loner obsessed with the nineties, is diagnosed as autistic just weeks before starting high school. Determined to make a fresh start and keep her diagnosis a secret, Jessie creates a list of goals that range from acquiring two distinct eyebrows to getting a magical first kiss and landing a spot in the school play. Within the halls of Holy Trinity High,…
Maybe because I’m a novelist, I’ve always loved reading novels about writers—it’s a joy to see my passionate relationship with my own work reflected in these fictional solitary obsessives, my literary siblings. Reading about their own writing gives me a sense of recognition, community, and solidarity, and makes me feel less alone in this odd vocation, which is no small thing. I can’t get enough fictional evocations of the daily discipline of the writer’s life—as well as the trajectory of a literary career—from adolescence (Jo March) to old age (Leonard Schiller).
In this beautifully subtle, thrilling, and finely drawn novel, Brian Morton captures a certain kind of relationship better than anyone else: an old and nearly forgotten male novelist named Leonard Schiller becomes infatuated with Heather Wolfe, the young, female graduate student who is writing her thesis about his work.
This is a novel about fame, intellectual companionship, and ambition, and Morton handles these themes with compassion, insight, and masterful control. I love this novel as much for its startling truths about human nature as for the brilliance of the writing itself.
Leonard Schiller is a writer in his seventies. All of his books are out of print; he's left no mark in literary history; a lifetime of dedicated labor has brought him few rewards. Heather Wolfe is a graduate student in her twenties. She read Schiller's novels when she was growing up, and they changed her life. She decides to write her master's thesis about Schiller's work, and she sets out to meet him.
Starting Out in the Evening is a novel about the unexpected consequences of that meeting--and the unexpected consequences of art. Heather blows into Schiller's life like a…
I discovered my love for story early, growing up on TV and movies. I spent a good chunk of my teen years sitting in the dark watching everything that came out, especially foreign films. It’s safe to say that I learned the basics of storytelling by watching all the greats, from Hitchcock to David Lean to Kubrick. It’s no wonder I became a screenwriter rather than a novelist. But when I realized that story is story, regardless of the story form (book, movie, or TV commercial) a whole other world opened to me and my talent for story blossomed. Over the years, I grew this talent and passion and launched a career in Hollywood.
This book is an old standard but one of the best books ever written on how to write. More about the writing process than story, per se, it is still essential for any writer interested in upping their story development game. Don’t be put off by the focus on “young writers” in the title; this is for old and young.
Gardner systematically guides the reader through both theory and practicum, delivering a primer on how to not just write solid fiction but how to think like a writer. I love this book.
This classic guide, from the renowned novelist and professor, has helped transform generations of aspiring writers into masterful writers—and will continue to do so for many years to come.
John Gardner was almost as famous as a teacher of creative writing as he was for his own works. In this practical, instructive handbook, based on the courses and seminars that he gave, he explains, simply and cogently, the principles and techniques of good writing. Gardner’s lessons, exemplified with detailed excerpts from classic works of literature, sweep across a complete range of topics—from the nature of aesthetics to the shape of…
