Here are 100 books that The Blonde Dies First fans have personally recommended if you like
The Blonde Dies First.
Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I’ve loved all things spooky and scary ever since stealing my first Stephen King from my mom’s bookshelf (I was eleven—it was the first of many.) I now primarily write mysteries, thrillers, and horror for young adults. At the same time, I consider myself to be a massive nerd. I’m super into video games, comic books, all things horror, puzzles, cosplay, and the list goes on eternally. The combination of the two means that I’m especially passionate about thrilling fiction that also feels relatable to me as someone who is terrified by things like social interactions and internet creepypasta.
It's one of the greatest “be gay, solve crimes” books around! I love how the core murder mystery is not only exciting to uncover but hilarious as well (very Scooby Doo vibes).
While high-schooler Bianca chases down a bird-masked killer and has a relatable gender identity crisis to go along with it, I found myself geeking out over the punny humor, clever puzzles, bird-watching lore, anime references, and so much more.
Murder most fowl? In this sardonic and campy YA thriller, an anxious, introverted nonbinary teen birder somehow finds themself investigating a murder with their neighbor/fellow anime lover, all while falling for a cute girl from their birding group...and trying not to get killed next.
Sixteen-year-old Bianca Torre is an avid birder undergoing a gender identity crisis and grappling with an ever-growing list of fears. Some, like Fear #6: Initiating Conversation, keep them constrained, forcing them to watch birds from the telescope in their bedroom. And, occasionally, their neighbors. When their gaze wanders to one particular window across the street, Bianca…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
I’ve loved all things spooky and scary ever since stealing my first Stephen King from my mom’s bookshelf (I was eleven—it was the first of many.) I now primarily write mysteries, thrillers, and horror for young adults. At the same time, I consider myself to be a massive nerd. I’m super into video games, comic books, all things horror, puzzles, cosplay, and the list goes on eternally. The combination of the two means that I’m especially passionate about thrilling fiction that also feels relatable to me as someone who is terrified by things like social interactions and internet creepypasta.
Gamers, wake up for this one! The moment I saw that there was a horror novel centered around a Twitch streamer, I had this book in my shopping cart. Viv’s trying to revive her channel with an exciting new game but makes the fatal mistake of downloading a mysterious file (we’ve all been there).
It seems like a normal-enough indie horror at first, but then, well… Things get not-so-fun. This book was, as expected, everything a fan of spooky games and livestreaming could ask for.
After spending the summer wracked with guilt about causing the accident that killed her little sister, ambitious gamer and chronic liar Viv returns to Twitch streaming. She never told her parents the truth about the accident, but she hopes that maybe making it big in streaming and giving the money to them is penance enough for her mistakes.
The weekend before school starts, Viv finds the perfect horror game to make her Twitch comeback, and during an offline practice run, an NPC asks Viv for a secret. She decides to tell them the truth about her sister's death since a…
I’ve loved all things spooky and scary ever since stealing my first Stephen King from my mom’s bookshelf (I was eleven—it was the first of many.) I now primarily write mysteries, thrillers, and horror for young adults. At the same time, I consider myself to be a massive nerd. I’m super into video games, comic books, all things horror, puzzles, cosplay, and the list goes on eternally. The combination of the two means that I’m especially passionate about thrilling fiction that also feels relatable to me as someone who is terrified by things like social interactions and internet creepypasta.
Jay lives in a *magical* theme park resort town where everything’s supposed to be perfect—until his friend disappears overnight, and things start to get terrifying and dystopian really quickly.
I imagine Disney and theme park lovers enjoying this one, but as for me, I nerd out an unhealthy amount over immersive experiences and weird tyrannical corporations. In summary, this is a brilliant social horror that will have you on the edge of your seat (I read most of it on a plane and nearly flew out the window.)
'Timely, thrilling, and gripping from start to finish. An absolute page-turner.' -KAREN M. MCMANUS, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ONE OF US IS LYING
NO ONE HAS EVER DIED IN KARLOFF COUNTY Welcome to the funnest place around . . . Jay is living his best life inside Karloff Country, home of the world's most epic amusement park. He's got his family, his crew, and a dope after-school job at one of the parks. Outside Karloff Country, things aren't so great for the rest of the world. But when people come here to vacation, it's to get away from all that to…
I’ve loved all things spooky and scary ever since stealing my first Stephen King from my mom’s bookshelf (I was eleven—it was the first of many.) I now primarily write mysteries, thrillers, and horror for young adults. At the same time, I consider myself to be a massive nerd. I’m super into video games, comic books, all things horror, puzzles, cosplay, and the list goes on eternally. The combination of the two means that I’m especially passionate about thrilling fiction that also feels relatable to me as someone who is terrified by things like social interactions and internet creepypasta.
K-pop horror. That should be enough said already, but it somehow gets even better. Disgraced popstar Sunny enters an idol competition in the hopes of making a career comeback, but things become complicated in the wake of a mysterious death and terrifying visions that begin to plague her.
Obviously, anyone who loves idol culture will enjoy this one, but so will those who have experienced the perils of fandom in general or who get a kick out of intense reality competitions.
Squid Game meets Wilder Girls in this debut sapphic supernatural thriller set in the glittering, cut-throat world of K-pop rivalry. A disgraced idol comes face-to-face with the demons of her past when the competition she enters turns out to be a deadly trap.
"The sweetest spot between horror and romance." Chloe Gong, #1 bestselling author of These Violent Delights
After a shocking career-ending scandal, eighteen-year-old Sunny Lee spends her days longing for her former popstar life and cyberstalking ex-groupmate Candie. They were inseparable - before leaving tragedy and heartache in their wake. Now Candie is chasing stardom in a new…
In my poetry, stories, novels, and scripts, I have long been drawn to the workings of chance: how it can charm characters by the opportunities it appears to offer; how it can turn attractive prospects inside out; and how it can so often force characters to confront realities which, perhaps for a long time, they have sought to avoid. Through different genres—science fiction, mainstream literary, lyric poetry, and realistic drama—I have, over the years, explored the notion of the fork in the road. Will a character choose their path wisely? Will they choose foolishly but press on against all odds? In literature, in lfe, such questions are crucial.
On the surface, this is a comedy of mistaken identity with identical twins, Sebastian and Viola, at its heart. It concerns members of the nobility: Orsino, Olivia, and Viola (disguised as Orsino’s serving-man, Cesario). But there are other characters, too, who drive the sub-plot. Key among these is the jester, Feste, who knows that all of life is uncertain, a matter of ‘the wind and the rain,’ and that so much of existence is to do with confronting forks in the road. At the end of the play, the ’toffs’ dutifully pair off: Olivia marries Sebastian and Orsino marries Cesario (or rather, Viola, unmasked in the nick of time). And Feste is on hand to pronounce on the mutability of life and on how its choices aren’t always ours to make.
Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and enters Orsino’s service. Orsino sends her as his envoy to Olivia—only to have Olivia fall in love with the messenger. The play complicates, then wonderfully…
I am an Associate Lecturer and Adjunct in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta. After being a piano teacher, working in communications for an NGO, and heading up the children’s department at a public library, I returned to university. While in graduate school, I underwent treatments for breast cancer, leading me into researching and teaching medical narratives, while focusing on works by breast cancer survivors. Introduced to graphic literature by a colleague, I began exploring a whole new world of literature. I now teach courses on graphic literature: memoirs, histories, speculative fiction, and the occasional comic.
This compelling graphic novel adaptation captures Butler’s Afrofuturist science fiction in its dark-toned palette and relentless movements in and across panels, with pages crammed with characters traveling within and outside of an urban enclave surrounded by gangs and criminals. The red of apocalypse and the California desert saturate pages, signaling current and immanent violence and danger and a landscape in environmental crisis. Through it all, Lauren reflects on how a new vision is required to liberate the oppressed without reproducing the conditions that brought it about. Amidst the bleak and violent scenes, we read excerpts from her Earthseed journaling of an unfolding religion where God is Change.
A futuristic world portrays the ongoing struggles of Black Americans for equity, racial justice, and economic and cultural futures. Its spirituals and Black culture form a new platform for Lauren’s exodus to a new land, a journey fraught with danger and difficult decisions,…
The graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's groundbreaking dystopian novel, Parable of the Sower, the follow-up to Kindred, a #1 New York Times bestseller
In this graphic-novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America's future. In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community.…
This is the Inspiring true story of a young girl surviving Mengele’s hell. This is an incisive, harrowing, and touching memoir of Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam, who are sent to Auschwitz only to be torn from their parents and given to Josef Mengele, "The Angel of…
I spent more than 10 years and 25,000 nautical miles voyaging as the captain of my sailboat, Swell. My desires for life did not fit the common mold and context of where I grew up in Southern California– I sailed away wanting to understand the meaning of life, live simply and closer to nature, experience and learn from other cultures, be in solitude and ask life’s bigger questions. I chased my big, unlikely ocean dream and succeeded, but not without radical challenges, learning, and growth.
Steven Callahan not only survived this harrowing sea adventure but also wrote about it in such a powerful way. His unique descriptions constantly made me smile. I love how he was able to capture his evolving relationship with the ocean, his spirituality, himself, and the creatures he encounters during the 76-day saga of being adrift in a life raft on the Atlantic after his sailboat sunk.
I didn’t want to put this book down, he was just so courageous not to give up. It was fascinating to be in his head through this radical journey, especially as he questions the meaning of life while fighting to hang on to his own.
Before The Perfect Storm, before In the Heart of the Sea, Steven Callahan’s dramatic tale of survival at sea was on the New York Times bestseller list for more than thirty-six weeks. In some ways the model for the new wave of adventure books, Adrift is an undeniable seafaring classic, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived more than a month alone at sea, fighting for his life in an inflatable raft after his small sloop capsized only six days out. “Utterly absorbing” (Newsweek), Adrift is a must-have for any adventure library.
I’ve chosen these books because they take me to times and places I can’t go (although I did serendipitously get to Kerala, and am hoping to go to the West Coast of America one day).Girl with Two Fingers takes you into the studio, hopefullyas if you could have been there yourself. I want readers to be able to share something of the experience I was so lucky to have. And to be able to see perhaps more questioningly when they look at art.
I read this play first aged sixteen, and connected strongly with it, because of the young motherless shipwrecked heroine.
I spent significant periods of time with my grandfathers when I was growing up, and I read Prospero more as a grandfather figure than a father one.
When Freud and I were in the studio for days and weeks and months together, I felt like Miranda on Prospero’s island. The same created world. The same isolation.
With Lucian as the Prospero figure, summoning a few other characters that came and went to his studio.
No one can go to a fictional island of course, but yet Shakespeare takes us there.
Performed variously as escapist fantasy, celebratory fiction, and political allegory, The Tempest is one of the plays in which Shakespeare's genius as a poetic dramatist found its fullest expression. Significantly, it was placed first when published in the First Folio of 1623, and is now generally seen as the playwright's most penetrating statement about his art.
Stephen Orgel's wide-ranging introduction examines changing attitudes to The Tempest, and reassesses the evidence behind the various readings. He focuses on key characters and their roles and relationships, as well as on the dramatic, historical, and political context, finding the play to be both…
I’ve been writing fantasy/mystery for around twenty-five years and have self-published a YA series of six books titled the Tyler May series before gaining a traditional publishing deal in 2019. Since then, I’ve had four books published (the Banyard & Mingle Mysteries) which chart the investigations and adventures of a pair of roguish private detectives in a future, Dickensian Britain. I am constantly researching – and have been for many years – true crime stories, and my intake of books, TV, and film consists of archaeology, forensics, crime, murder mystery, fantasy, and thriller. I’m also partial to a good historical whodunnit.
After the Snow follows the adventures of a boy who finds his family is missing when returning home in the snow-bound hills. The settings and atmosphere in the book are beautifully worked, as is the voice, which I found to be bold, fluent, and captivating. The characters are strong and the plot bumps along at a good pace. Another must-read!
The oceans stopped working before Willo was born, so the world of ice and snow is all he's ever known. He lives with his family deep in the wilderness, far from the government's controlling grasp. Willo's survival skills are put to the test when he arrives home one day to find his family gone. It could be the government; it could be scavengers--all Willo knows is he has to find refuge and his family. It is a journey that will take him into the city he's always avoided, with a girl who needs his help more than he knows.
Kindle Book Award Finalist. Readers' Favorite Book Award Finalist. Gotham Writers' YA Novel Discovery Contest Finalist. B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
Brigit Quinn has always felt like an outsider. Growing up in a small town where her mom’s pagan practices are the stuff of local gossip, she’s spent her whole life trying…
I worked as an industrial electrician for over two decades. At one point during a meeting to discuss an upcoming project, a question was posed about the delivery time of a specific piece of equipment. When the answer was given that it would be about a year away, it got me thinking: what if a specialized piece of equipment—critical to the grid and with an equally long lead time—was destroyed, how would the grid survive? More importantly; how would we survive? That single statement was the spark that ignited the fire in me to learn all about the grid, and to write Dark State.
I first heard of The Disaster Diaries from an interview with author Sam Sheridan. While not a book strictly related to a grid failure, it was still about disaster and surviving the breakdown of societal norms.
What was so amazing about the book—and something that endeared the author to me, was his humility regarding his own lack of preparedness. Here was a man who had been an EMT, a mixed martial arts fighter, a fire-fighter, and a cowboy, and yet he still didn’t feel prepared enough to survive a disaster!
What follows is a unique journey as he learns stunt driving, knife fighting, even how to steal a car, all to help him prepare for “The Big One.”
Sam Sheridan has been an amateur boxer, mixed-martial-arts fighter, professional wilderness firefighter, EMT, sailor, and cowboy, and has worked in construction at the South Pole. If he isn't ready for the apocalypse, we're all in a lot of trouble.
Despite an arsenal of skills that would put most of us to shame, when Sam had his son and settled down, he was beset with nightmares about being unable to protect him. Apocalyptic images filled his head. If a rogue wave hit his beach community, could he get out? If he was forced outside the city, could he survive in the…
