Here are 80 books that The Devil Comes Courting fans have personally recommended if you like
The Devil Comes Courting.
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I’ve always been drawn to stories where light trembles on the edge of annihilation. The Deathly Shadow grew from that space—where broken people must still try, even when hope is an ember. I’m especially interested in how violence shapes children—their choices, their trust, and the way they carry themselves through a collapsing world. I strive to write characters with real emotional weight and a filmic sense of presence—where every gesture, glance, and silence means something. I believe the darkest stories, when told with care, can reveal what we most need to protect. This book explores the cost of survival—and whether love, memory, and courage are enough to challenge even the worst of endings.
Jemisin combines geological apocalypse, complex magic, and generational trauma with raw power.
That’s something I explore in my own work, so this trilogy was a strong—if abstract—indirect influence. Few books have stayed with me so viscerally.
The writing is sharp, emotionally devastating, and fearless. It doesn’t just tell a story—it tears through it with tectonic force. It made me want to write braver and more honestly about pain, survival, and what breaks beneath the surface.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
Eleanor Piper would rather tie knots than dance. Raised among sailors and shipping routes, she’s only attending the London Season to appease her ambitious parents. When a fashion mishap at her first ball leads to a creative rescue and an unexpected friendship…
As a queer fantasy author, my work strongly focuses on detailed plots and lush world-building, but as a reader, I have to admit that the things that hook me on a story are vibrant characters—particularly when they come in couples. After all, it’s the characters that explore their lush worlds and who bring detailed plots to life. One of my absolute favorite reading experiences is following a dynamic couple as they play off each other’s strengths and defend one another’s weaknesses to overcome all odds. It’s just the best feeling, in my opinion. So if you’re looking for a great fantasy book—or series—featuring gay couples, here are five of my favorites!
The first book in the Kingston Cycle series, Witchmark is set in a magic-powered
Edwardian era just after the end of a World War. I loved the balance of soaring
magic and gritty realism as well as the unexpected revelations surrounding each
of the characters.
Miles — a witch who is desperate to keep from being used as a
power source by mages — has faked his death and lives in hiding as a military doctor.
However, when Tristan Hunter brings a dying man to Miles’ hospital, Miles’ secrets
are threatened. But Tristan isn’t interested in blackmailing or exposing him.
Instead he needs Miles to help him to track down a murderer and uncover an epidemic
threatening to destroy all the magic in their world.
Obviously, the setting and premise had me from the start but
the real fun of the book was following Miles and Tristan as they tried…
In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a world war, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own. Moving at a brilliant pace and pulsing with deadly intrigue and unforgettable characters, Witchmark grabs readers and doesn't let go until the thrilling conclusion.
Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be a slave to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war…
I began advocating for the rights of California prisoners and their families while incarcerated. As co-director of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), in 2003, I cofounded All of Us or None (AOUON), a grassroots movement of formerly incarcerated people working on their own behalf to secure their civil and human rights. AOUON is now the policy and advocacy arm of LSPC, which I have led as executive director since 2011. Collective victories include ending indefinite solitary confinement in California, expanding access to housing and employment for formerly incarcerated people, and restoring the vote to those on parole and probation.
The restorative justice movement didn’t start until after I got out of prison. We were mandated not to contact victims of our crimes. No one can think clearly when they’re under the threat of force and fear, so it took me many years to find true remorse.
When I was ready to write to the victims of my crime, as I reflected on my life while writing my book, I relied on Danielle’s book and Danielle’s personal guidance. She helped me see where I was minimizing or in denial, and I crafted my letter of repair for three weeks.
Her book helped me hold two ideas as true at the same time: I was participating in an act of harm when I was part of the group that robbed a liquor store and caused the man behind the counter to die, and I had to own that I was a…
The award-winning "radically original" (The Atlantic) restorative justice leader, whose work the Washington Post has called "totally sensible and totally revolutionary," grapples with the problem of violent crime in the movement for prison abolition
A National Book Foundation Literature for Justice honoree
A Kirkus "Best Book of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia"
Winner of the National Association of Community and Restorative Justice Journalism Award
Finalist for the Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
In a book Democracy Now! calls a "complete overhaul of the way we've been taught to think about crime, punishment, and justice," Danielle…
The Sailor Without a Sweetheart
by
Katherine Grant,
Enjoy this Persuasion-inspired historical romance!
Six years ago, Amy decided *not* to elope with Captain Nate Preston. Now, he is back in the neighborhood, and he is shocked to discover that Amy is unmarried. Even more surprising, she is clearly battling some unnamed illness. Thrown together by circumstances outside their…
I’m a lifelong sci-fi/fantasy reader who loves the way speculative fiction helps us explore who we are, what we could become, and how to troubleshoot the future before we get there. As a parent and active community member, I’m looking for fresh perspectives on how to tackle the increasingly complex challenges of our time, perspectives that go beyond simplistic solutions like finding bad guys and killing them in climactic battles. I hope books that showcase nonviolent social change in all its complexity can help us imagine better ways to make a difference in our own lives.
Another nonfiction book, Healing Resistancedoes a splendid job showing the philosophical connections between nonviolence on an interpersonal level and nonviolent social change movements. Drawing on the tradition of Kingian nonviolence, this book is a useful starting place for anyone who wants to understand what nonviolence is and isn’t as well as how it works. It’s also chock full of recommendations for other books and is a great jumping-off point for further reading. Sometimes nonviolence doesn’t look like what we expect.
An expert in the field offers a mindfulness-based approach to nonviolent action, demonstrating how nonviolence is a powerful tool for personal and social transformation
Nonviolence was once considered the highest form of activism and radical change. And yet its basic truth, its restorative power, has been forgotten. In Healing Resistance, leading trainer Kazu Haga blazingly reclaims the energy and assertiveness of nonviolent practice and shows that a principled approach to nonviolence is the way to transform not only unjust systems but broken relationships.
With over 20 years of experience practicing and teaching Kingian Nonviolence, Haga offers us a practical approach…
Ever since I was a boy growing up in a small working-class shipyard town in the great Pacific Northwest near Seattle, I have experienced the jaw-dropping beauty of the natural world and human kindness overflowing, right alongside the numbing horror of human cruelty, war, racism, and environmental damage. It didn’t make sense, this joy and woe, so I’ve had a life’s mission to find ways of healing and integrating a broken world. These books have been a balm and refuge, offering me a deeper perspective, spiritual grounding, and pathways toward “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.” I hope they might benefit you too.
This great book re-inspired me about Gandhi’s nonviolent and spiritually grounded approach to social justice and liberation.
I first read Gandhi when I was 16. The author digs into Gandhi’s three-level “iceberg” approach: first is “self-purification”—healing, self-care, transforming unwise views and attitudes, cultivating love and compassion; second is “the constructive program”—engaging in community improvement, new ways of doing things, restorative social practices; and only then could a person take part in “satyagraha”—the great marches and protests aimed at liberation from British colonial rule.
The author then applies the approach to current problems in our world. I loved Gandhi’s integration of social justice, healing, service, and spiritual practice and his faith in nonviolence as a way of life, not just a technique—it's a profound teaching.
The Gandhian Iceberg presents a bold, new interpretation of Gandhian nonviolence from the rare perspective of an author who is equal parts writer, scholar, and frontlines practitioner. The book faces the current crisis of climate change and the intensification of social unrest around the world, and calls for a new convergence of serious, spiritually-rooted US nonviolence activists prepared to offer themselves in service to a social change movement unlike any seen before. The book approaches radical social transformation and its realistic requirements, with a blend of solid research, moving personal testimony, and compelling vision. The Gandhian Iceberg is written from…
I’m the author of five books on subjects ranging from comedy and music to sports and pants (specifically, blue jeans). I’m a longtime Boston Globe contributor, a former San Francisco Chronicle staff critic, and a onetime editor for Rolling Stone. I help develop podcasts and other programming for Sirius and Pandora. I teach in the Journalism department at Emerson College, and I am the Program Director for the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival and the co-founder of Lit Crawl Boston.
The author is perhaps best known as an instigator of the “microhistory” field of study (of which I’m an avid fan and sometime practitioner). But he’s also a chronicler of protest, including one book on the worldwide demonstrations of 1968 and another, Ready for a Brand New Beat, that notes the civil rights impact of Martha and the Vandellas’ "Dancing in the Street". I’ve often felt that I was born late, just missing so many of the cultural convulsions that have informed my writing. With Non-Violence (2006) Kurlansky gives us a historical foundation for the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era.
The conventional history of nations, even continents, is a history of warfare. According to this view, all the important ideas and significant changes of humankind were put forward in an effort to win one violent bloody conflict or another. This approach to history is only one of many examples of how societies promote warfare and glorify violence. But there have always been a few who have refused to fight. Governments have long regarded this minority as a danger to society and have imprisoned and abused them and encouraged their persecution. This was true of those who refused Europe's wars, who…
I am a researcher and teacher who studies global security. I first thought this meant the study of various forms of violence: wars, terrorism, genocides. And, I still study all of that. But the events of the Arab Spring in particular led me to see the importance of nonviolent protest movements as an important form of global conflict. These movements, often called “civil resistance,” have proved surprisingly capable of toppling dictators and bringing about democratization. But the news is not all good: they also frequently spark mass repression, civil wars, and even wars between countries. Understanding contemporary global conflict requires understanding how nonviolent movements work.
The classic book that changed the way scholars of global conflict, including myself, think about nonviolent resistance.
While nonviolent resistance has often been viewed as morally superior but strategically less effective, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan showed that, in fact, movements that use primarily nonviolent strategies have been twice as effective as those that use violence.
Their work challenges assumptions about the necessity of violence to create political change and firmly plants “civil resistance” as a major force in global politics that needs greater attention from policymakers and scholars alike.
For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results, even in Iran, Burma, the Philippines, and the Palestinian Territories. Combining statistical analysis with case studies of specific countries and territories, Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan detail the factors enabling such campaigns to succeed…
I am an activist and always have been. My organizations, Spread The Vote + Project ID and Project ID Action Fund work on the ground and on impactful policy nationwide. I would never have been able to build a movement or an organization that makes a real impact without the lessons that I have learned from the past. Every book I have read about how change was made before me has helped me do the work I do and my hope is that future leaders will learn these lessons too.
Movements require strategy, planning, and patience. This book offers case studies of some of the best-known movements of the modern age and shows how none of them happened by accident.
This book is a must read for anyone who wants to make real change.
There is a craft to uprising,and this craft can change the worldFrom protests around climate change and immigrant rights, to Occupy, the Arab Spring, and #BlackLivesMatter, a new generation is unleashing strategic nonviolent action to shape public debate and force political change. When mass movements erupt onto our television screens, the media consistently portrays them as being spontaneous and unpredictable. Yet, in this book, Mark and Paul Engler look at the hidden art behind such outbursts of protest, examining core principles that have been used to spark and guide moments of transformative unrest.With incisive insights from contemporary activists, as well…
I spent the 1970s as an officer in the U.S. Navy UDT/SEAL Teams, giving me insight into the military aspects of peacebuilding. I have spent the last forty years researching and teaching international marketing and negotiations at USC and UC Irvine, after receiving a Berkeley PhD. I was also the director of the UC Irvine Center for Citizen Peacebuilding for ten years. I have published four books on international negotiations and all my ten books in print are on the topic of peace in families, neighborhoods, commerce, and international relations.
Pinker’s masterpiece is hugely important for two reasons.
First, it well makes the case that the world is the most peaceful it has ever been. This is so despite what you see on TV. Second, he explains four reasons why: rule of law, rule of reason, rule of women, and international trade.
I have spent the last forty years teaching and promoting international trade. The fundamental truth of human relations is: The first persuasion was coercion; the first sophistication is exchange. We are almost through with coercion in this 21st century.
Readers of Pinker’s book will walk away with a greater understanding of what it takes to create peace in the modern geo-political climate.
'The most inspiring book I've ever read' Bill Gates, 2017
'A brilliant, mind-altering book ... Everyone should read this astonishing book' Guardian
'Will change the way you see the world' Daily Mail
Shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2012
Wasn't the twentieth century the most violent in history? In his extraordinary, epic book Steven Pinker shows us that this is wrong, telling the story of humanity in a completely new and unfamiliar way. From why cities make us safer to how books bring about peace, Pinker weaves together history, philosophy and science to examine why we are less likely to…
I’ve spent a lot of my career teaching people to navigate the complex, often messy intersection of ethics, communication, and human behavior. As a behavior analyst, teacher, supervisor, and coauthor of Daily Ethics: Creating Intentional Practice for Behavior Analysts, I’ve seen firsthand how the ability to have honest, compassionate, and courageous conversations can make or break relationships, teams, and outcomes. I chose these five books because they’ve shaped how I show up in my work and life—and because I have seen their contents help others become more intentional, committed, and successful communicators.
This book changed how I think about language, particularly during high-stakes conversations that involve ethics.
I didn’t just learn about nonviolent communication—I started noticing all the subtle ways judgment, blame, and assumptions creep into everyday communication. Rosenberg’s approach made me more curious and less reactive, which has been a gift in my professional and personal life.
When I apply the book’s principles, I feel like I’m speaking in a way that builds connection instead of walls. It’s not always easy or comfy, but it’s always worth it.
5,000,000 COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE • TRANSLATED IN MORE THAN 35 LANGUAGES
What is Violent Communication?
If “violent” means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, finger pointing, discriminating, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, using political rhetoric, being defensive or judging who’s “good/bad” or what’s “right/wrong” with people—could indeed be called “violent communication.”
What is Nonviolent Communication?
Nonviolent Communication is the integration of four things:
• Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and…
