Here are 100 books that The Ash House fans have personally recommended if you like
The Ash House.
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In my high school creative writing class, my teacher once said that good writing was a bit like looking at a star. If you look directly at it, it gets a little fuzzy and hard to see. But if you look just off to the side, the star becomes vivid and clear. That, to me, is exactly the power of spooky stories for young readers. We all deal with monsters, to varying degrees, throughout our lives. Even kids. But if we look at it just off to the side, through the angle of a fun, spooky story, those monsters suddenly become much more comprehensible. More faceable. More beatable.
It’s been said by smarter people than me how writing horror for kids isn’t about scaring them, it’s about showing them how brave they are.
A Monster Calls is the perfect illustration of that. The scariness and the spookiness are a stand-in for the real-life horrors that this kid is facing. Kids deal with a lot, and this book is the perfect example of how to survive when the worst happens.
The artwork too—wow! I wish I could get some of this artwork to hang on my walls. Absolutely gorgeous book.
The bestselling novel and major film about love, loss and hope from the twice Carnegie Medal-winning Patrick Ness.
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking…
Over the past 50 years, scientists have made incredible progress in the application of genetic research to human health care and disease treatment. Innovative tools and techniques, including gene therapy and CRISPR-Cas9 editing, can treat inherited disorders that were previously untreatable, or prevent them from happening in the first place.…
Ever since I was a child, I’ve been drawn to the creepy and kooky world of the Addams Family. I’ve watched every episode of the 1960s sitcom. I fell in love with the 90s films, and when the Netflix adaptation Wednesday aired, I streamed every episode immediately. I’ve written two books based on Wednesday and her family, and I have an upcoming cocktail book with recipes based on gothic literature. My love of horror books and my understanding of the Addams family led me to seek out the perfect list of Wednesday read-alikes.
In this middle-grade horror novel, Steve is feeling lonely and worried. His newborn brother is sick in the hospital, and his parents are understandably stressed. There’s also a wasp’s nest threatening their home, which becomes a bigger problem when the wasp queen visits him in his dreams. One night, the queen comes to Steve and offers to help “fix” the baby.
I have read many, many horror books. I consider myself a connoisseur of the creepy. This book, intended for middle-grade children, remains one of the scariest books I’ve read. It’s filled with dread while also centering on family.
I can imagine a young Wednesday (as played by Christina Ricci or the late great Lisa Loring) reading this book and imagining what she would wish upon her own brother should a wasp queen approach her.
'The first time I saw them, I thought they were angels.' The baby is sick. Mom and Dad are sad. And all Steve has to do is say, "Yes" to fix everything. But yes is a powerful word. It is also a dangerous one. And once it is uttered, can it be taken back? Treading the thin line between dreams and reality, Steve is stuck in a nightmare he can't wake up from and that nobody else understands. And all the while, the wasps' nest is growing, and the 'angel' keeps visiting Steve in the night.
In my high school creative writing class, my teacher once said that good writing was a bit like looking at a star. If you look directly at it, it gets a little fuzzy and hard to see. But if you look just off to the side, the star becomes vivid and clear. That, to me, is exactly the power of spooky stories for young readers. We all deal with monsters, to varying degrees, throughout our lives. Even kids. But if we look at it just off to the side, through the angle of a fun, spooky story, those monsters suddenly become much more comprehensible. More faceable. More beatable.
There are two things that I’ve always loved in my books: animal POV and spooky vibes.
This book has both! In so many ways, the things we face in our everyday life can feel like a horror story, or feel like monsters. For a fox, that would be things like rabies, hunters, fires, etc.
The prose was so good and so vivid, and I really worried with each different story how the little foxes were going to survive. One of my absolute favorites.
Christian McKay Heidicker draws inspiration from witches, vampires, H. P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe to craft his middle-grade debut, a chilling portrait of survival and an unforgettable tale of friendship.
When fox kits Mia and Uly are separated from their litters, they quickly learn that the world is a dangerous place filled with monsters. As the young foxes travel across field and forest in search of a home, they'll face a zombie who hungers for their tender flesh, a witch who wants to wear their skins, a ghost who haunts and hunts them, and so much more.
Since losing his mom, thirteen-year-old Jack Wilson has spent most of his time seeing just how much trouble he can get away with so that he feels like a winner at something. But he takes his mischief too far and is faced with the possibility of unbearable consequences. He…
I'm the author of over 15 novels written for kids, teens, and adults across several genres. The thing all my books have in common is that they are sad and they are dark. My most recent novel is my most distilled, compressed delivery of deliciously dark sadness yet! Oddly, I'm rarely sad in real life. My daughter suggested that I write books to get the darkness out of my head and onto the page, which I think is very insightful (she is my kid, after all). I enjoy the beauty in the breakdown, I savor the sublime catharsis of tragedy, and I want to share that perspective with everyone.
I have never encountered a story that depicts the dread and heartbreak of growing up more authentically than Black has done in the pages of this Newberry-awarded novel for children.
It is both as brutal and as delicate as the creepy antique doll (which may or may not be haunted) at the center of the story. Three kids head out on their own, determined to lay the spirit trapped within the doll to rest while the all-to-real fears and quiet dangers of their regular lives snap at their heels.
It is a book of loss, acceptance, and courage that will remain nestled in my heart for life. I am literally tearing up right now as I think of it.
My name is Eleanor Kerchner. You can call me the Queen. I died in 1895. Now it's time to play.
A chilling ghost story by the bestselling author of The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black.
Recipient of a Newbery Honor Award. An ALA Notable Book. A Kirkus Reviews Best Book. A School Library Journal Best Book. A Booklist Editor's Choice Books for Youth. A Publishers Weekly Best Children's Book. A 2013 Goodreads Choice award nominee. A People Magazine 'Best New Kids Book'.
I love fantasies that dream up totally new worlds! Some people condemn the fantasy genre as formulaic, and sometimes they’re right—but it shouldn’t be so! Fantasies can explore worlds as wide and wild and wonderful as the human imagination itself! Anything’s possible! But I also love a fantasy world that’s as real, coherent, and consistent as our own real world. I think that’s the ultimate challenge for any author: to create it all from the grassroots up. And for any reader, the trip of a lifetime! My personal preference is for worlds a bit on the dark side—just so long as they blow my mind!
The richness and depth of Cornish’s Half-Continent world are just amazing! I get the feeling that, like Tolkien, the author has spent a whole lifetime developing and living in this world before he ever thought of turning it into a novel.
Skolds, fulgars, the dark trades, gastrines, rever-men, gaulding, cruor, Cathar’s Treacle–the inventions just keep coming and coming. As real as if they’d always been there! And the language that goes with them is equally wonderful—Cornish’s love of words is on a par with Tolkien! For the sake of the story, Book 2, Lamplighter is a must-read—I loved the big reveal the whole story’s been leading up to.
Meet Rossamünd?a foundling, a boy with a girl?s name who is about to begin a dangerous life in the service of the Emperor of the Half-Continent. What starts as a simple journey becomes a dangerous and complicated set of battles and decisions. Humans, monsters, unearthly creatures . . . who among these can Rossamünd trust? D. M. Cornish has created an entirely original world, grounded in his own deft, classically influenced illustrations. Foundling is a magic-laced, Dickensian adventure that will transport the reader.
Throughout my life, I’ve moved around quite a bit, and in the process, members of my family and I have encountered many wildly strange people and things. The universe itself is a wild place when you delve into the more exotic aspects: black holes, quantum physics, and measurable differences in subjective realities. It’s hard to say what the real boundaries are, and so I look for stories that stretch my ability to conceive what could be–and that help me find wonder in all the darkness and strangeness around me.
Yoko Ogawa’s dystopian, magical realist novel delves into the darkness underneath our pursuit of—if not the normal—the routine. We witness a protagonist’s world shrink day by day through legally enforced forgetting. As the situation on the isolated island in which the protagonist lives deteriorates, perhaps the most terrifying part is that she finds herself complicit in her own isolation and near-total lack of agency.
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020, an enthralling Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance from one of Japan's greatest writers.
'Beautiful... Haunting' Sunday Times 'A dreamlike story of dystopia' Jia Tolentino __________
Hat, ribbon, bird rose.
To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.
When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately…
A gay retelling of the classic fairy tale--a scrumptious love story featuring ungrateful stepsiblings, a bake-off, and a fairy godfather.
Cinderelliot is stuck at home taking care of his ungrateful stepsister and stepbrother. When Prince Samuel announces a kingdom-wide competition to join the royal staff as his baker, the stepsiblings…
What can better give expertise on the books one loves than decades of reading? I’ve always had a passion for sympathetic, strong characters, especially women. At the core of all my novels, readers will find a sympathetic and strong heroine. In Girlfriend Trouble, Lian is the catalyst that changes the lives of everyone around her for the better; or, more precisely, Lian’s compassion, wisdom, and serene nature are what change things. I’m probably too idealistic, but it’s better than being a cynic. There’s an element of this in all the books I’ve recommended, and those I’ve written. I like to think there’s more of it in the real world too.
For me, personally, this book taught me how truly lucky I was while living in my truck for 5 years in the early 2000s. 15-year-old Lutie and her 12-year-old brother, Fate, are thrown into a desperate adventure after their stepmom dies. Their odyssey across America in an attempt to find their long-lost father, and the perils of being homeless in Las Vegas and avoiding the life-threatening perils of living in a car and dodging unsavory and predatory people, is a harshly realistic depiction of...well, reality.
Lutie McFee's history has taught her to avoid attachments...to people, to places, and to almost everything. With her mother long dead and her father long gone to find his fortune in Las Vegas, 15-year-old Lutie lives in the god-forsaken town of Spearfish, South Dakota with her twelve-year-old brother, Fate, and Floy Satterfield, the 300-pound ex-girlfriend of her father. While Lutie shoplifts for kicks, Fate spends most of his time reading, watching weird TV shows and worrying about global warming and the endangerment of pandas. As if their life is not dismal enough, one day, while shopping in their local Wal-Mart,…
I have a great interest in personal stories, well written. My memoir, The Full Catastrophe, was published in 2016. I wanted an answer to my own question “How could a well-educated, intelligent woman marry an abusive man?” Writing allowed me to find my answers. From that time on, I have taught people to write their own memoirs, have lectured on memoir, facilitated group discussions on memoir, and written articles on memoir. I am now in the process of writing another memoir.
Both a captivating and heart-breaking memoir, this book is the story of a woman and her mother—the mother who abandoned her and her siblings and father. It moves back and forth in time from when the mother leaves and we hear stories of what happened to each of her children, to the present day as the mother lies dying. This memoir is beautifully told, with details so sharp and clear you can almost watch the action as it unfolds to finally tell you how Cistaro copes with the mother who refused to stay. This story is for all mothers and daughters, ones that stay and ones that go.
"A story that lingers in the heart long after the last page is turned." —HOPE EDELMAN, bestselling author of Motherless Daughters and The Possibility of Everything
This provocative, poignant memoir of a daughter whose mother left her behind by choice begs the question: Are we destined to make the same mistakes as our parents?
One summer, Melissa Cistaro's mother drove off without explanation Devastated, Melissa and her brothers were left to pick up the pieces, always tormented by the thought: Why did their mother abandon them?
Thirty-five years later, with children of her own, Melissa finds herself in Olympia, Washington,…
I was a small child when I saw Elizabeth’s photograph in the newspapers. She'd been stolen when she was a few months old and reunited with her family four years later. Many decades afterwards, I traced the photograph for research purposes. It was exactly as I remembered: a confused, little girl who'd believed she was an adored, only child until she was removed from the woman who stole her. Perhaps she’s the reason I’m fascinated by books about children reared under an assumed identity. Such books have offered me a glimpse into another world where such an act is committed and set against a fascinating, informative background.
I’m fascinated by lighthouses. This interest was fostered by my late father, a merchant seaman whose life depended many times on their guidance. So, it was easy to love this book, where I learned about their inner workings through Tom, the meticulous lighthouse keeper.
When he was joined on his remote island by his wife, Isobel, it was the inner workings of their minds that captivated me as they struggled with an ocean that had offered them a longed-for child and a crisis of conscience that was exposed in its searing complexity by the illuminating lighthouse beam.
The years-long New York Times bestseller and Goodreads Best Historical Novel that is “irresistible…seductive…with a high concept plot that keeps you riveted from the first page” (O, The Oprah Magazine)—soon to be a major motion picture from Spielberg’s Dreamworks starring Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz, and Alicia Vikander, and directed by Derek Cianfrance.
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young,…
Zeni lives in the Flint Hills of Southeast Kansas. This tale begins with her dream of befriending a miniature zebu calf coming true and follows Zeni as she works to befriend Zara. Enjoy full-color illustrations and a story filled with whimsy and plenty of opportunity for discussions around the perspectives…
I come from worlds that look much like the worlds in these books: raised in poverty, absent father, generational trauma, and mental illness running strong in my genes. I’ve always been interested in the ways our opportunities shape us, and the coping mechanisms we wield—secrecy, denial, anger, violence, even love—as we try to survive.
Marais does an excellent job of moving among these three point-of-view characters: a Black woman and two white sisters, all brought together by a child and the question of parentage. At the heart of the story is life in apartheid-era South Africa. A must-read for anyone who loves messy families and complex characters.
From the author of the beloved Hum If You Don't Know the Words comes a rich, unforgettable story of three unique women in post-Apartheid South Africa who are brought together in their darkest time and discover the ways that love can transcend the strictest of boundaries.
In a squatter camp on the outskirts of Johannesburg, seventeen-year-old Zodwa lives in desperate poverty, under the shadowy threat of a civil war and a growing AIDS epidemic. Eight months pregnant, Zodwa carefully guards secrets that jeopardize her life.
Across the country, wealthy socialite Ruth appears to have everything her heart desires, but it's…
