100 Books Like Swan Light

From the very first page, Someone Like You had me hooked.

This is one of those books you pick up “just to start” and before you know it, hours have disappeared because you simply can’t put it down. It’s full of interesting characters and plot twists and left me feeling on edge, with my heart racing as I turned those pages faster and faster. 

I loved the setting with its super creepy vibes, which only increased exponentially when more and more scary things started happening. I really warmed to Carey and her son and was rooting for them throughout. The explanations at the end made complete sense and tied things up perfectly.

I thought this was an excellent debut novel and I look forward to reading more by Elena Frost. 

This is a wonderful historical fiction story, which I love for the way the tale has been crafted around a ghostly lighthouse inhabitant, weaving in and out of time.

Lighthouse legends and their historical backgrounds have always been fascinating for me. Fictional stories based on historical facts always draw me in. This particular author visits the locations in the stories to gather the information, which is something I admire greatly. The kids in this story become convinced they could assist in helping to right a past wrong. It had me thinking: what if we were able to do that?

I love this as a page-turning adventure for young readers to immerse themselves and learn some interesting facts, along with a tale for the imagination.

I love old technology, and lighthouses epitomize this. This book does two things. It brings to life the sheer hardship of building massive structures in what appear to be impossible places. Often, the engineers and builders had to battle the environment, and sometimes animals could help predict when catastrophe might be about to strike.

The book also tells the story of an amazing family who were instrumental in putting lights around our coasts. This saved, and still saves, thousands of lives. Reading such amazing stories as these shows the tenacity of those involved, and I think I can teach us a lot about becoming successful in the modern world, too. 

Although a bit dated, Holland’s book offers a wonderful and wide-ranging tour of the general and often contentious history of America’s lighthouses. It also includes profiles of many of the nation’s most noteworthy and important lighthouses, broken down by region, and presented in a way that highlights the reasons why they are so memorable. Numerous historic images enliven the text.

This book is fresh in my mind because I was lucky enough to read an advanced copy (the book will be out in February 2025) and felt myself swept across a stormy sea into one of the most tightly-knit communities I’ve read in a thriller. The Scottish island of Eilean Eadar has around 60 residents, one computer between the whole island, no mobile signal, and a priest who seems to control everything.

It is a perfect set-up for a mystery, as two detectives head over from the mainland to investigate an apparent suicide. The weather is wild, the island’s customs are archaic, and gossip travels faster than the gale-force winds. I love island settings–the sense of being cut off from the rest of the world–and I found this one irresistible.

There is a feeling that everybody is being watched all the time and that their positions in the community are… show more.

The variety of subjects covered in this collection of 22 short stories demonstrates Bradbury's prowess as a master craftsman and the reason why I count him among my literary heroes. 

More than a few of these tales have become legendary, including “A Sound of Thunder.” Bradbury's premise of how the death of a butterfly in prehistoric times could have drastic changes in the future is a variation on the famous “butterfly effect” and a fine example of the relationship between chaos theory and the physics of time travel.
For me, the most incredible story in the collection is “The Fog Horn” in which an elusive sea monster attacks a lighthouse after being attracted by its foghorn for years. This story was the inspiration for the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.

Fresnel lenses, invented by Frenchman Augustin Fresnel, are the crown jewels of lighthouse illumination. They not only greatly increased the intensity of the light, as compared with earlier forms of lighting, but also became one of the most important and strikingly beautiful inventions of the nineteenth century. Levitt’s luminous prose and great skill at storytelling makes this a fascinating and compelling read. It will make you look at lighthouses and Fresnel lenses with a well-deserved measure of awe.

At its core, the history of America’s lighthouses is about people. Undoubtedly the most important actors are the male and female keepers, who—often with the invaluable assistance of their families—faithfully kept the lights shining and the fog signals blaring. Guardians of the Lights presents a wonderful survey of many of the most interesting and unique lighthouse keepers through the centuries, focusing special attention on their noble actions in the service of saving others.

In the late eighteenth century, and throughout the nineteenth, the Stevenson family were great innovators in lighthouse design and construction. While not the first to successfully tackle the engineering challenge of building a massive stone lighthouse offshore, where it would be subject to the merciless thrashing of the ocean, the Stevensons did become the most famous and respected group of engineers doing that kind of work. Their signature lighthouses off the Scottish coast, including Bell Rock and Skerryvore, served as standards for lighthouse builders who followed in their footsteps. Bathurst’s elegantly written book is a captivating profile of this consequential family.

This book inspired my own writing with its detailed rendering of 19th century life. It has all of my favourite things: lighthouses, ships, horses, buggies, wharves, and whales. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband or my last.” How can you resist this first sentence? The novel’s massive lighthouse, and the child who has lived there all her life, inform some deep part of my world view.