Here are 86 books that Spaceling fans have personally recommended if you like
Spaceling.
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I’ve spent a lifetime reading horror, I was probably in third grade when I stumbled across a battered collection of short stories by Saki in the adult section of the library—where I wasn’t supposed to be. I snuck the book back to the children’s section, started reading, and I was hooked. Then it was Edgar Allan Poe, and from Poe until now, it’s been every horror novel or short story I could find. The best of them have never left me. And they make up my list, The Most Terrifying Novels You Can’t Escape From.
I love Ghost Story because it didn’t just scare the hell out of me, it scared the hell out of me in a very personal way.
It felt like it was something that could have happened to me. Worse, it felt like something that still might happen to me. And at any time. It lingered in my psyche, like the threat of something waiting to occur. The ghost of terror yet to come.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...
What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?
In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.
But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
It’s natural for humans to wonder who or what might have power over our actions. We’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain, channeled the power of the elements, and tamed much of nature to our whim. What if something out there was the architect—or more—of our successes and failures? It’s something I’ve explored since I first began writing: fed by the adventures of living as an “Army brat” with a new life every two years, in keeping with my natural inclination to solve puzzles, and spurred by my fear of death and the equally frightening possibility that someone is or isn’t pulling the strings…
The main reason I’m recommending this book is “The Little Mermaid” (the original version, not a sanitized later edition or off-the-mark Disney interpretation). I loved fairy tales as a kid and “The Little Mermaid” is my favorite because it doesn’t have a happy ending. (Not for the mermaid, at least.) I loved that just because we think things should happen a certain way doesn’t mean they will. The mermaid thought she was fated to be with the prince. But all her planning and sacrifice and suffering didn’t change the possibility that the prince was fated to be with the woman he chose. It was an early and valuable lesson for me on seeing things from a different perspective, and inspiration for one of my own short stories.
A new collection of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales. There are 12 stories which include old favourites such as "The Ugly Duckling", "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Snow Queen", as well as some less well known tales such as "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" and "The Shadow".
It’s natural for humans to wonder who or what might have power over our actions. We’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain, channeled the power of the elements, and tamed much of nature to our whim. What if something out there was the architect—or more—of our successes and failures? It’s something I’ve explored since I first began writing: fed by the adventures of living as an “Army brat” with a new life every two years, in keeping with my natural inclination to solve puzzles, and spurred by my fear of death and the equally frightening possibility that someone is or isn’t pulling the strings…
This is an anthology that falls most recognizably into the theme of this list. It’s the “what if…” premise that examines how villains are made. Nurture versus nature. Fate at its most cruel and cunning. There are 33 stories in this book by different authors working to show you what is and make you wonder what might have been. (And spoiler alert: this collection includes my origin story for the wicked witch from Hansel and Gretel.)
What makes someone a villain? What makes a person "evil"? What drove them to their actions? Were they good once, or have they always had a heart full of darkness? See things from the other side as these 33 stories explore just what makes a villain tick.
Featuring 33 stories by Steven S. Hood, Devin Lagasse, T.C. Cumberland, Jesse Weiner, Michelle Mellon, M A Smith, Alex Collingwood, Eddie D. Moore, Jesse Sprague, A.P. Sessler, Helen Mihajlovic, Lionel Ray Green, J.G. Formato, Ville Merilainen, Nicole Tanquary, J. Patton, P.J. Reed, Kristyl Gravina, Chad A. Clark, S. Locke, Jared Zygarlicke, Paul Tanner,…
Coyote weather is the feral, hungry season, drought-stricken, and ready to catch fire. It’s 1967, and the American culture is violently remaking itself while the country is forcibly sending its young men to fight in a deeply unpopular war.
Jerry has stubbornly made no plans for the future because he…
As an acupuncturist and die-hard romantic, I did a deep dive into Taoist teachings when the love of my life passed away suddenly. I was looking for comfort, for answers, for reassurance that such intense chemistry can somehow transcend death. What happened is a long-buried desire to be an author started spinning my grief into Atlantis Writhing, a romantasy I hoped would uplift others enduring a dark night of the soul.
I was sixteen when I first read Jane Eyre, and I was thoroughly unprepared for how it would change the course of my life.
My mother died when I was eleven, so I found a kindred spirit in the orphaned main character Jane. By the time she grew up and became a governess for the brooding Mr. Rochester, I cared deeply about her happiness.
As intense chemistry sparked between Jane and her employer, I realized that my true joy in life would be to write “can’t put it down” love stories like this one.
Little treasures, the FLAME TREE COLLECTABLE CLASSICS are chosen to create a delightful and timeless home library. Each stunning, gift edition features deluxe cover treatments, ribbon markers, luxury endpapers and gilded edges. The unabridged text is accompanied by a Glossary of Victorian and Literary terms produced for the modern reader.
Perhaps one of the most well-known books in the world, Jane Eyre follows the life of its eponymous orphaned protagonist. From her early life Jane is strong-willed, passionate and kind but comes up against a lot of struggles. She lives with her aunt and uncle during early childhood, where…
Not only have I written six critically acclaimed novels for middle-grade readers, including three historical fictions, I am the parent of a tween and teen who is always looking for great read-alouds and read-alongs for my own family. I am a firm believer that this is a valuable way to encourage literacy and love of story as I wrote in a recent, much-discussed essay inThe Atlantic. Having lived abroad, including as an exchange student and camper in the Soviet Union and for three years in Belgium, I am also a huge believer in expanding our own as well as our kids’ knowledge of history beyond our own borders, cultures, identities, and perspectives.
Schlitz’s latest historical novel, set in Ancient Greece, is one I read aloud to my own kids, who like many are already well versed in Greek and Roman mythology.
The story of the rebellious daughter of a noble family and an enslaved boy, it’s a haunting and beautifully rendered introduction to classical philosophy and the story of Socrates. Reading this together gave us a chance to discuss the classical world as a real place and its culture and religion in detail and depth.
Schlitz’s books are among the most literary and original out there and this one was written to stay with you for a very long time.
The Newbery Medal–winning author of Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! givesreaders avirtuoso performance in verse in this profoundly original epic pitched just right for fans of poetry, history, mythology, and fantasy.
Welcome to ancient Greece as only genius storyteller Laura Amy Schlitz can conjure it. In a warlike land of wind and sunlight, “ringed by a restless sea,” live Rhaskos and Melisto, spiritual twins with little in common beyond the violent and mysterious forces that dictate their lives. A Thracian slave in a Greek household, Rhaskos is as common as clay, a stable boy worth less than a donkey, much less…
I have a passion for becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. I spent 28 years in parish ministry attempting to remind people of the call of Jesus and the needs of the human heart. I left ministry and operated a private practice as a registered psychotherapist for almost 20 years. I am now retired and an author of three books. I'm still working at the task of becoming a better human being and helping others to do the same. The books I have recommended in my book list are all examples of people with similar mindsets.
The Soul's Code is a penetrating psychological and spiritual study of how we get to be who we are and the necessity of listening deeply to the call of your own life.
It will surprise and move you to be more aware of those formative experiences that are intrinsic to human experience. This book assisted me greatly in hearing my own soul's voice and inspiring me to write my own book about this experience.
Plato and the Greeks called it 'daimon', the Romans 'genius', the Christians 'Guardian Angel' - and today we use terms such as 'heart', 'spirit' and 'soul'. For James Hillman it is the central and guiding force of his utterly unique and compelling 'acorn theory' which proposes that each life is formed by a particular image, an image that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as the mighty oak's destiny is written in the tiny acorn.
Highly accessible and imaginative, The Soul's Code offers a liberating vision of childhood troubles and an exciting approach…
Homeless following the death of his adoptive parents in a car crash and the subsequent loss of their farm tenancy, Seb decides to enrol as a residential student at the Asklepios Foundation, a College of Natural Medicine, boasting a sanctuary modelled on an ancient Greek healing temple. Spending a night…
Ever since watching Sliding Doors back in the late 90s, I’ve been fascinated by forking narratives. I don’t know if I’ve yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love that “what-if” spark–what if I chose this job over that one? Who would I have met? Who would I have married? Who would I be? That last question, I believe, is the kicker–we all only get to live this one life, so our choices are our choices. Only in the realm of fiction can we really be in someone else’s head, and writing my fifth novel, Lines, and its twinned/entwined plots was doubling the fun.
If you are of a certain age, you may remember Choose Your Own Adventure novels, where you read an enticing setup of a story, and then you are asked to choose–go to page xx for this action or page yy for this other action. These books were often adventure or mystery tales, and they were fairly short.
Well, this author took this concept to new heights–she wrote over 150 different endings. All written in the second person, in this book, you can fall madly in love as well as die tragically, so caveat emptor!
There are hundreds of lives sown inside Pretty Little Mistakes, Heather McElhatton's singularly spectacular, breathtakingly unique novel that has more than 150 possible endings. You may end up in an opulent mansion or homeless down by the river; happily married with your own corporation or alone and pecked to death by ducks in London; a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park.
Is it destiny or decision that controls our fate? You can't change your past and start over from scratch in real life—but in Pretty Little Mistakes, you can! But be warned, choose wisely.
I began studying philosophy, both western and Asian, as a college freshman, and I never stopped. Much of my career in philosophy was devoted to building bridges between western and Buddhist traditions. The best philosophers try to make their ideas as clear as possible. But standards of clarity can differ across traditions, and this sometimes makes it difficult to present the theories and arguments of one philosophical tradition to those who think in terms of another. I have struggled with this in my own efforts at bridge-building, and I am always appreciative when I see other scholars of Buddhism achieve the sort of clarity I aim for.
A key claim of Buddhist philosophy is that all the facts about persons are causally determined. This claim leads people to wonder where Buddhists stand on the so-called ‘free will’ problem: can someone whose actions are determined by earlier events be held responsible for what they do? This question never arose in Indian Buddhist philosophy, but modern scholars have had much to say about whether Buddhism’s causal determinism is compatible with the practice of praising or blaming people for what they do. This book collects some of the best attempts to answer the question.
Throughout the history of Buddhism, little has been said prior to the Twentieth Century that explicitly raises the question whether we have free will, though the Buddha rejected fatalism and some Buddhists have addressed whether karma is fatalistic. Recently, however, Buddhist and Western philosophers have begun to explicitly discuss Buddhism and free will.
This book incorporates Buddhist philosophy more explicitly into the Western analytic philosophical discussion of free will, both in order to render more perspicuous Buddhist ideas that might shed light on the Western philosophical debate, and in order to render more perspicuous the many possible positions on the…
I have lived in London most of my life, and what I love most about it are the wild places, the spots where the city and nature rub shoulders. When reading fiction, ‘place’ matters a lot to me, and if I am familiar with the setting, I like it to be accurate. That said, I love a little fantasy to stretch the boundaries. As well as being a writer and editor, I have worked part-time in bookshops for over forty years, and during that time, I must have read hundreds of novels set in and around London. These are five of my absolute favourites.
As with all the books I have chosen, the River Thames is a central part of this story.
From the affluence of Chelsea, it moves through the varied moods of the river, from crime in Rotherhithe through the Thames Barrier Park (one of my favourite London parks) to the point where it becomes the North Sea. At each twist and turn in the tale, the river matches the events perfectly.
The story is centred round a crime, but what I found fascinating was how a single error of judgement on the part of an innocent academic leaves him homeless, jobless, and in danger, with nowhere to run but a tiny patch of grass by the river.
One May evening in London, as a result of a chance encounter and a split-second decision, the young climatologist Adam Kindred loses everything - home, job, reputation, passport, credit cards, money - never to get them back. With the police and a hit man in merciless pursuit, Adam has no choice but to go underground, joining the ranks of the disappeared, struggling to understand how his life has unravelled so spectacularly. His journey of discovery will take him along the Thames from Chelsea to the sink estates of the East End. On the way he encounters aristocrats, priests, prostitutes and…
Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS
by
Amy Carney,
When I was writing this book, several of my friends jokingly called it the Nazi baby book, with one insisting it would make a great title. Nazi Babies – admittedly, that is a catchy title, but that’s not exactly what my book is about. SS babies would be slightly more…
I write books about feisty girls who follow their dreams and don’t let fear stand in their way. Growing up in London I was an extremely shy child with a full-blown fantasy life, but at eighteen decided it was time to channel my inner “feisty girl”, take charge of my destiny, and travel to America to pursue my dream of becoming a writer. Now, many years later I am the proud author of five middle-grade novels, and the mother of four amazing children who are all off following their own dreams. When I’m not writing books about feisty girls, I’m reading other people's. Here are some of my favorites.
Okay, this is an old-fashioned book with some old-fashioned views, but it was my childhood favorite, so I had to include it! Orphaned Maria is sent to live with a distant relative at Moonacre Manor, but all is not as perfect as it seems, and it isn’t long before Maria discovers a world of hidden secrets and ancient feuds. It can’t have been easy growing up a feisty girl in Victorian England, but Maria Merryweather manages it, and I love that about her. She is stubborn, brave, and inquisitive, refusing to let anything dampen her spirit. As well as a passion for life Maria also has a passion for good food, (like me) so eat a snack while you read this because the descriptions will make you hungry! A perfect balance of mystery, magic, and teatime treats.
'The Little White Horse was my favourite childhood book. I absolutely adored it. It had a cracking plot. It was scary and romantic in parts and had a feisty heroine.' - JK Rowling - The Bookseller
Winner of the Carnegie Medal in 1946 and J.K. Rowling's favourite childhood book. This bestselling favourite fantasy classic is 'one of the most of the most magical stories in the world.' - The Independent. This is the story of a thirteen-year-old orphan, a Moon Princess, and a mysterious white horse.
Maria Merryweather, a plain London orphan, is sent to Moonacre Manor to…
