Books like The Crucible — picked by fans

When Dr. Tenma sacrifices his social standing by defying orders to save a child, he takes comfort in the fact that he did the right thing. It’s not that he thinks one life is more important than the other; it simply happens that the boy was rushed in first with a gunshot wound in the head. Who wouldn’t put him ahead of all emergencies? 

At the heart of Monster is a knot of ethical conundrums: are all lives equal? Who do we save? Who deserves to die? What happens if the right choice leads to the worse outcome? What do we do then? Do we try to undo the good that we did? Naoki’s Monster is as cynical as it is compassionate. It’s almost rare to find a brilliant psychological thriller with this much heart in it.

What a sensible-sounding title to a series that was anything but. David Lynch is famously known for avoiding explaining his work lest he kills the mystery, but not only did Frost deftly provide an explanation while keeping the mystery alive, he aggrandized the lore behind it into mythology. 

This is more of a general recommendation for the myriad of terrific horror-themed short stories that I’ve been reading since I was young. The Most Dangerous Game, The Birds, The Upper Berth, anything by Poe, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Specialty of the House, the list goes on. And on.

These types of short stories always have a disturbing premise that makes you shudder; they are paced so that you can’t turn the pages fast enough and often end with a stunning twist. I picked this book since I feel it is a quintessential example of this genre and because I have a personal bias since I used it as the basis for the pilot episode of my TV series. 

This novel has so many reasons to recommend it. It incorporates radical experimentation and horrifying surgeries being done in a bizarre hospital. To make it even more mysterious, there is a hurricane threatening the island which complicates the investigation of US Marshall Teddy Daniels searching for a patient who has disappeared.

I loved the creepy island hospital and the use of weather as a character.

A fascinating exploration of the Salem witch trials that illustrates how the New England girls whose accusations lead to the wrongful execution of thirteen innocent women and imprisonment of some two hundred more were victims of war trauma in the Maine woods. During the so-called King Phillip’s War, Puritan immigrants who seized land as part of their Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter waged horrific, brutal battles with Native Americans defending their land from coveters and invaders. Their wives and children were there to witness and suffer it. This book was a key to my greater understanding of the land seizure and other events that led to and fueled the Salem Witch trials. 

Jane-Emily is a YA classic, both a sweet romance and a spooky ghost mystery, set in the early 1900s. 

It’s also the book I described in my introduction as the one that made me fall in love with this genre! I first read it when I was about ten, and I immediately recommended it to my best friend, who was also an avid reader. To this day, we are both still scared of those mirrored gazing balls people display in gardens.

When my own children were young, I bought an old paperback on eBay and read it to them, savoring the story that I’ve re-read so many times once again. Even after all these years, Emily’s ghost still delivers chills as she unleashes her wrath on the innocent nine-year-old Jane, and the romance developing between Jane’s young aunt and an old friend of the family plays a part.

One exciting… show more.

Diane Foulds, a descendant of one of the victims condemned to death during the Salem Witch Trials, thoroughly researched many of the people involved in the events that led to the execution of 19 innocent victims. I am not a descendant, but these events have fascinated me since childhood, because they were so outlandish and led to such unnecessary tragedy. In this book you will learn about not only the victims, but the ‘afflicted’ young girls whose wild, unfounded accusations and theatrics during the trials convinced the judges that many people were witches. It is easy to connect with each individual, as the book centers on them, to understand why the entire episode was character-driven. It is even easier to sympathize with the victims and appreciate how they suffered. 

This is an excellent work of historical fiction about the Salem Witch Trials with a primary focus on George Burroughs, one-time minister at the church in Salem Village.

At the time of his arrest, Burroughs had been living on the frontier in Maine. The story moves from Indian raids on frontier settlements to the political machinations in Salem Village and Salem Town to demonstrate that accusations of witchcraft were more about power and political vindictiveness than fear of the supernatural. 

When the deities dedicated to the history of the French and Indian War got together to recommend their own list of the best books on the war that made America, they made Francis Parkman’s multi-volume work required reading. And the good news is that even if they had not, it is worth diving into headfirst.

The French and Indian War is often overshadowed by the American and then French Revolutions that followed on its heels. Yet, neither of them would have ever happened without the completely lopsided British victory in the first. Parkman, writing in the Nineteenth Century, was among the first scholars to shed light on the immense impact wrought by the fight for control over North America in the 1750s. His work is massive as it digs into the very origins of both countries’ humble beginnings and rapid growth in the New World. But fear not! If his… show more.

I’ve read this at least twenty times and still love it, and it still makes me cry.

It’s the first of Thane’s Williamsburg series but easily stands alone. I was about eleven when my mother recommended it and my sister and I began reading it aloud to each other. I loved the characters, led by young Tibby Mawes and Julian Day, the schoolmaster she adores.

I also love the wealth of rich historical detail, including lavish descriptions of clothing and food, and of course, the romantic complications amidst the American Revolution. When I visit Williamsburg, instead of thinking about colonial history, I find myself saying, “Here’s the apothecary shop where Tibby went to buy medicine for Kit,” and “Here’s where Julian picked Tibby up after her arm was broken.”