Here are 63 books that Shane fans have personally recommended if you like
Shane.
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As the fourth “oldest daughter” in my motherline, and my interest in genealogy and family history, my trajectory was set decades ago to become the keeper of the family letters, telegrams, photos, pilot logbooks, and stories. After researching
what happened to the three brothers lost during WWII, I also have casualty, missions reports, and more. Before publishing the first book, I had bylines in newspapers and magazines, and I’ve blogged regularly for several years. Because of the wealth of historic photos and stories, I began history Facebook pages for three Iowa counties, as well as one for cousins to share memories and photos. If you enjoy family stories, you’ll enjoy the books on this list.
It has been interesting to read the reviews for this book. I ordered it when I learned it was about family history, but another wanted it because of horse whisperers in the title, yet another was drawn because of the artwork of one of the Allen brothers.
This is a corner of history that was new to me—a family moving from Missouri to the wilds of Montana to oversee a timber operation, but the sons learning training horses from Blackfoot Indians, which turned into jobs. They also trained horses for the army during WWI. They were hunters and mountainmen. Leather items they made still survive among descendants.
Lee and Edd Allen's interests were so different.
Lee stayed with their parents when they moved to California, still cherishing the outdoors. Edd was an artist, illustrator, printmaker, and lived in Paris for a time. One etching is in the Smithsonian, and others…
The Horse Whisperers from Anaconda chronicles the lives of horse whisperer brothers Lee and Edd Allen. Born in Pike County, Missouri and raised in Anaconda, Montana, the two became admired in their youth as they followed the teachings and traditions of their family and Blackfoot Indian friends to help build the American West. Richly illustrated with antique photographs, this novella explores the art of horse whispering as applied to everyday life and the grit that polished America into the gem it is today.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
All my writing starts with the question, How did we get here? As the granddaughter of a grocer and the daughter of a food editor, I grew up wondering about the quest for new and better foods—especially when other people began saying “new” and “better” were contradictions. Which is better, native or imported? Heirloom or hybrid? Our roses today are patented, and our food supplies are dominated by multi-national seed companies, but not very long ago, the new sciences of evolution and genetics promised an end to scarcity and monotony. If we explore the sources of our gardens, we can understand our world. That‘s what I tried to do in The Garden of Invention, and that’s why I recommend these books.
This fascinating book answers questions you never thought to ask. What would Southern California be without citrus groves or palm trees? Why does the Australian eucalyptus cover so much of this western state, and who were the elite conservatives who saw their own survival in the battle to save the redwoods? Find out here!
At the intersection of plants and politics, Trees in Paradise is an examination of ecological mythmaking and conquest. The first Americans who looked out over California saw arid grasslands and chaparral, and over the course of generations, they remade those landscapes according to the aesthetic values and economic interests of settlers, urban planners, and boosters. In the San Fernando Valley, entrepreneurs amassed fortunes from vast citrus groves; in the Bay Area, gum trees planted to beautify neighborhoods fed wildfires; and across the state, the palm came to stand for the ease and luxury of the rapidly expanding suburbs. Meanwhile, thousands…
I teach literature, Labor Studies, and writing at San Diego City College and have written three San Diego-based novels: Drift, Flash, and Last Days in Ocean Beach, along with Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, a radical history of San Diego that I co-wrote with Mike Davis and Kelly Mayhew. Both as a writer and as a daily wanderer on the streets of San Diego, I have a passion for the psychogeography of the city space and a deep curiosity for and love of the people I encounter there.
In this moving novel, the late great Oakley Hall took me back to World War II era San Diego. What I love about it is it paints a much fuller portrait of the lost city of old than he does in his first San Diego-based novel.
This book is filled with wonder, dread, love, and longing but what makes it noteworthy is its keen eye toward history and the darkness at the heart of the city’s streets and neighborhoods—and at the center of the war itself.
The Sweeping Novel of a Twentieth-Century California Life
Love and War in California tells the story, through the eyes of Payton Daltrey, of the last sixty years of an evolving America. The award-winning author Oakley Hall begins his newest work in 1940s San Diego, where his endearing, wide-eyed narrator must define his identity in terms of self, family, and World War II. As his classmates disappear into the war one by one, he becomes obsessed with abuses of power and embroiled with the charming, dangerous Errol Flynn; with the Red Baiting of the American Legion; with the House Un-American Activities…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
My favorite books are funny/sad. In my own writing, I aspire for balance between satire and sympathy, going to dark places and shining a light of hilarity on them. I’m compelled by the psychological complexities of desire, particularly in female characters—flawed, average women, struggling for empowerment. For me, desire is inextricably bound with loss. I’m inspired by loss both superficial and profound, from misplaced keys to dying fathers. Many voices clamor in my head, vying for my attention. I’m interested in ambitious misfits, enraged neurotics, pagans, shamans, healers, dealers, grifters, and spiritual seekers who are forced to adapt, construct, reinvent and contort themselves as reality shifts around them.
Over Easy is the first part of Madge’s story, followed by The Customer is Always Wrong. They can be read separately as each stands on its own, but are best absorbed one after the other. These books are visually inventive and full of unforgettable characters who leap off the page and lodge in your imagination. The story follows Madge, an open-hearted artist who finds refuge and adventure in the wise-cracking, fast-talking, drug-taking world of the Imperial Café where she gets a job as a waitress after being denied financial aid to cover her last year in art school. Full of wit and pathos, Mimi Pond captures the perfect balance of hilarious and heartbreaking, all with fantastic drawings. She makes it look easy!
Over Easy is a brilliant portrayal of a familiar coming-of-age story. After being denied financial aid to cover her last year of art school, Margaret finds salvation from the straight-laced world of college and the earnestness of both hippies and punks in the wisecracking, fast-talking, drug-taking group she encounters at the Imperial Cafe, where she makes the transformation from Margaret to Madge. At first she mimics these new and exotic grown-up friends, trying on the guise of adulthood with some awkward but funny stumbles. Gradually she realizes that the adults she looks up to are a mess of contradictions, misplaced…
I enjoyed writing The Karma Kaper. Just as there's tragedy and comedy in every aspect of our lives there's humor in crime. It's fun bringing that humor to my audience. I also believe in justice for all. Sadly, as American courts are currently more concerned with criminals' rights than victims' rights there are no guarantees victims will receive the justice they deserve. No one can predict if a jury of 12 will find a defendant who has committed a crime guilty. Then, there's the highest court of appeal - fiction! Between the covers of a novel, a crafty writer can ensure just verdicts and devise macabre punishments for the bad guys! It doesn't get any better!
John Steinbeck wrote the Working Days... journals while writing The Grapes of Wrath.
The intent of the journal was to establish a schedule, including a completion date for the novel. What he reveals about his self-doubt is tonic for any writer who is haunted by the same malaise.
Here is the entry for June 18, "…I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty to it… If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time."
Sometimes, I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity…John Steinbeck’s honesty and humility remind me that self-doubt is a part of the creative process.
John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath during an astonishing burst of activity between June and October of 1938. Throughout the time he was creating his greatest work, Steinbeck faithfully kept a journal revealing his arduous journey toward its completion.
The journal, like the novel it chronicles, tells a tale of dramatic proportions—of dogged determination and inspiration, yet also of paranoia, self-doubt, and obstacles. It records in intimate detail the conception and genesis of The Grapes of Wrath and its huge though controversial success. It is a unique and penetrating portrait of an emblematic American writer creating an essential American…
As a former librarian I have long been fascinated with Borges’s view of books: their metaphysical shape and their tendency to open into the uncanny and the infinite. Illness early in life drove me to books, to their particular isolation. Since then, I’ve found that worlds can open almost anywhere in literature by way of a mood, a patina of language, a vision, a set of images completely beyond the control of the writer. Now, I read these books to remind me of what fiction can do, the places it can go, the worlds it will open.
I stumbled on this book in a free box outside a bookstore when I was a teenager and the family I had moved across the country to be with had collapsed.
My sisters and stepmother moved out of state, my brother moved to California, and my dad, after borrowing my student loan money for truck driving school, went over the road.
Bloodsport was rain-rippled—with a gigantic, dried fly smashed flat in the middle, sliding like a secret toy over the page.
An entire world opened up. I felt no less alone, but the experience changed my understanding of realism, the mythic, and the surreal: a book of immense oddness about a father and son journey up an apocalyptic river, toward Ratnose, the leader of a motorcycle gang.
Welcome to the wilderness of masculinity, where anything goes-where women throw themselves unreservedly at men and games are played to the death. This is the outdoor paradise of the Hassayampa, a legendary river whose bank is overrun with prehistoric and mystical creatures prime for hunting and whose water is said to turn honest men into liars. Here a father takes his prepubescent son on an unforgettable adventure, a rite-of-passage quest that starts as an innocent fishing trip and soon turns into a bizarre Homeric journey. In turn comic and brutal, Blood Sport is more than just the ultimate cult outdoor…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
As a child, I enjoyed a special relationship with an oak tree in my backyard. My father indulged my love of nature with backpacking trips in the mountains of California. In my teens, he published my booklet on edible wild plants. My maternal grandmother encouraged my interest in Indigenous uses of plants with books, field trips, and stories from her anthropology studies at UC Berkeley. My mother cultivated my creativity with ferocious intensity and supported my desire to earn a Ph.D. I landed my dream job at an alternative, interdisciplinary, small, public liberal arts college and have taught botany there for nearly 30 years. I love teaching plant-centric environmental history.
In this book, I love how Douglas Cazaux Sackman uses image analysis to develop his arguments about gender, race, and class in this historical account of California's iconic citrus tree.
He favors factual history inclusive of multiple perspectives and experiences including those of people often marginalized or disappeared entirely in master narratives. I value authors who challenge simplistic accounts of the past.
This innovative history of California opens up new vistas on the interrelationship among culture, nature, and society by focusing on the state's signature export - the orange. From the 1870s onward, California oranges were packaged in crates bearing colorful images of an Edenic landscape. This book demystifies those lush images, revealing the orange as a manufactured product of the state's orange industry. "Orange Empire" brings together for the first time the full story of the orange industry - how growers, scientists, and workers transformed the natural and social landscape of California, turning it into a factory for the production of…
I've always loved reading to myself and others. I've been an English teacher for years. I love sharing good books and have the reputation of being a good resource, especially for moms with children. I’m happy to share everything from memoirs and history books to classics and children’s picture books. Walking through a library or a bookstore is a favorite activity, so finding not only new books but excellent books about books is always a treat. I love to understand what makes a book work well as a story, thus books that delve into the richness of a story through personal narrative or literary criticism have been favorites to keep on my shelves.
Mitali Perkins is a winsome, thoughtful writer who easily draws the reader into her discussions of the timelessness of each classic book. This book is a blend of memoir, literary criticism, and moral formation. My favorite part of Steeped in Stories was her contagious love for each book. She reminded me why I loved them, and why I wanted my children to read them when they were younger. Not only does Mitali guide the reader through what makes these books classics in a good sense, she also helps us see them with discerning eyes so that instead of ditching old books for problematic parts, she helps us navigate them with young readers in mind.Steeped in Stories discusses The Hobbit, Heidi, Emily of Deep Valley, Little Women, and The Silver Chair.
The stories we read as children shape us for the rest of our lives. But it is never too late to discover that transformative spark of hope that children's classics can ignite within us.
Award-winning children's author Mitali Perkins grew up steeped in stories—escaping into her books on the fire escape of a Flushing apartment building and, later, finding solace in them as she navigated between the cultures of her suburban California school and her Bengali heritage at home. Now Perkins invites us to explore the promise of seven timeless children's novels for adults living in uncertain times: stories that…
I came of age reading Mary Stewart, Daphne du Maurier, and Phyllis Whitney by flashlight after my school night bedtimes. Their plots mingled romance and murder so elegantly, heightening the already incredible stakes of whether they would physically survive intertwined with the anxiety over the couple’s relationship surviving. All these years later, I still love a good story that makes me wonder how in the world the pair will make it through danger—and if there’ll be a kiss at the end.
Growing up in rural East Texas, some of my earliest memories center around the fire station where my father was a volunteer firefighter.
Although this book is set in Northern California, it manages to render the small town and its politics familiar enough that I can almost smell the smoke. Lex’s reluctance to return to where everyone else in her immediate family died is tempered by the romance igniting between her and an old flame, but everyone has secrets here—and some can be deadly.
From the author of One of Those Faces comes the haunting story of a young woman's return home to face her tragic past, the fire that killed her family, and what remains in the ashes.
Alexis "Lex" Blake swore she would never return to the town where she'd lost her home and her family in a devastating fire that only she survived and can barely remember. But when her aunt dies, leaving behind a mountain of debt, Lex has no choice but to head back to Northern California to settle her family's estate.
I taught English and creative writing for 37 years in San Francisco, California. In 2018, Ron Cabral and I published And Then They Were Gone, which tells the story of the People’s Temple teenagers we taught. Many of them never returned after the Jonestown massacre and died there. We hope this story about our young students—their hopes, their poetry, their efforts to help make a better world—will bring some light to the dark story of Jonestown.
Woollett’s novel is based on much research on Peoples Temple and Jonestown. She came to the US from Australia for interviews with many survivors and others—including Ron Cabral and me because of our knowledge of the teenagers in the Temple. It’s a great read and adds much to the understanding of those who joined the Temple. Evelyn Lyndon (all the characters have fictional names except Jim Jones) is the “Beautiful Revolutionary” who, with her idealistic husband, joins the Temple and eventually becomes one of Jones’s mistresses. I recognize many of the book’s characters, sometimes two people rolled into one. Only in a novel could Woollett be in the minds of the characters she follows in this story, who are all believable and vividly drawn.
The thrilling new novel, inspired by the events at Jonestown in the 1970s.
It's the summer of 1968, and Evelyn Lynden is a woman at war with herself. Minister's daughter. Atheist. Independent woman. Frustrated wife. Bitch with a bleeding heart.
Following her conscientious-objector husband Lenny to the rural Eden of Evergreen Valley, California, Evelyn wants to be happy with their new life. Yet she finds herself disillusioned with Lenny's passive ways - and anxious for a saviour. Enter the Reverend Jim Jones, the dynamic leader of a new revolutionary church ...
Meticulously researched and masterfully written, Beautiful Revolutionary explores the…
