Books like The Bad Lands — picked by fans

Roberts wrote many better-known novels—e.g. Northwest Passage and Rabble in Arms. Few people remember this wonderful adventure, which takes young Steven Nason on Benedict Arnold’s doomed expedition up the Kennebec River to assault Quebec. (Arundel is a town in southern Maine.) Exuberant writing, great historical detail, and a wonderful depiction of New England Indian life. A classic.

The appealing heroine Diony Hall moves with her new husband into the Kentucky wilderness. A beautiful variation on the archetypal plot, “Someone Goes on a Journey,” written in gorgeous prose and featuring many perfectly rendered actual characters such as Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Boone. The story shows determined human nature struggling against hostile nature, the earliest of the great American themes.

The West used to begin in Ohio. Some of my ancestors moved there around 1816. Their experiences must have been very similar to those of the Lucketts family depicted in The Trees by the masterful writer, Conrad Richter.

The trees so closely grown and tall, one could not see through them or over them. They had to be toppled. Children got lost in the trees while playing; some never made it back to their homes. Lost forever.

The rich narrative, reminiscent of pioneers’ old diaries the novelist read prior to writing, fills the reader’s ear with character, honesty, pathos, and heart. Richter won the Pulitzer Prize for The Town, the third novel in his Heartland Trilogy. But the trilogy’s first book, The Trees, is my favorite.

Colonial Jamestown, an English soldier turned American explorer, a bought wife who is in fact an escaping ward of King James I—a brutal pursuer, pirates, shipwrecks, Pocahontas’s brother, an Indian attack on Jamestown, poison! The plot is overloaded with incidents, but the details of colonial life are fascinating and Johnston’s perfect mastery of colonial English make this a thrilling adventure, a number one best-seller in 1900. For years it was a standard on school reading lists and was twice made into a film. Hard to find, but worth the effort.

This historical novel has been heralded as a fresh look at the era of the Little House books, and it does a wonderful job of looking at frontier life in Dakota Territory in 1880 from the perspective of Chinese-American Hanna. It’s also an examination of a daughter trying to navigate an often prickly relationship with her white father, made even more difficult after the death of Hanna’s Chinese-Korean mother. I love Hanna’s careful study of everyone around her—observances that are borne from a need to protect herself from racism, but which are also windows to empathy and understanding. Despite her father’s resistance to Hanna following her dream to become a dressmaker, Hanna prevails, using her knowledge of her father’s own nature to win him over.

Switching gears from the Domestic Suspense genre, I’d like to recommend a historical fiction gem. It’s been a while since I finished this first book in a series, but this story – and the mother of all mothers, Jeanie – has stuck with me. Her story is a constant reminder that womankind of the 1800s was made of steel and I’m not sure I would’ve survived back then. Jeanie’s life quickly turns from wealthy and having an esteemed reputation to losing it all. She’s then forced to follow her husband’s dreams of prairie life where Jeanie is forced to live off the land and faces the harshest of conditions, natural disasters, and the worst tragedy a mother can experience. (sidenote: follow this author on TikTok where she reads the real letters from Jeanie!)

Welcome to Hard Times is a shorter novel. It is of the length of the classic western that was popular at the time that this novel came out (1960). This novel is sometimes described as an anti-western or an ironic western, as it takes a non-heroic view of people dealing with evil in a frontier town. It was made into a movie by the same title, but the movie is not well known. The novel is similar in tone to the movie McCabe and Mrs. Miller, which some people do not like because of its non-heroic or skeptical tone. Readers who like their westerns upbeat and unequivocal may not appreciate Doctorow’s novel, but readers who are willing to consider less-than-pristine views may find an interesting treatment here.

In this dystopian romance, I love how the society Claire lives in is not ours, but a futuristic, prescribed society where she does her best to fit in, but she never feels comfortable.

Sometimes I’ve felt that way about my life, too. Outside the walls, where the Wastelanders live, is violent and unknown, with a reputation like the badlands in a Mad Max movie. When a rebellion happens, and Claire is exiled, she’s immediately on her own.

I like that the people who rescue her are not what she expected and that living with them forces her to examine her beliefs. I enjoyed her character arc and look forward to seeing where John and Claire go next. 

This novel has it all, ancient lore, nightmares, mysticism, self-discovery, friendship, a budding romance, and intense action and adventure.

When four friends are sucked into an alternate universe filled with danger, they must survive a host of nightmarish threats and find their way to the center of the web to escape.

I love stories of survival against the odds, but this was exceptionally interesting as the threats are not what anyone would expect. Much of the book takes place in the badlands of South Dakota, another place I’m familiar with. I’m a sucker for a story set in a place that would be difficult to survive under the best of circumstances.

Will-Weber extensively researched the drinking habits of every U.S. president from George Washington to Barack Obama to compose this outstanding volume. Mint Juleps is brimming with fascinating facts. Did you know that the Carters, who were Southern Baptists, were much heavier drinkers than the Reagans? (Ronald Reagan, who effectively imposed the twenty-one-year drinking age on all fifty states, was the son of an alcoholic and wary of alcohol abuse). I think that I enjoyed the profile of George Washington the most, who not only plotted American independence over a pint or two but distilled his own applejack brandy as well.