Here are 71 books that The Grounding of Group Six fans have personally recommended if you like
The Grounding of Group Six.
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I’ve always thought that the most clear-eyed, unforgiving observers in literature are teenagers, not because adolescence is simple (it’s the opposite), but because young people haven’t yet learned to shrug and look away. The novels I've chosen here all have central characters who see the adult world's failures, hypocrisies, and prejudices with a directness that most of us gradually lose; and they all use coming of age as a way to confront a world that is already, in some fundamental way, broken – by grief, violence, or the gap between what adults promise and what they deliver. Those are exactly the themes I love to write about.
I’ve always been fascinated by strange social enclaves and secretive, sealed-off, private worlds, and this book has both.
But in fact, the thing I admire most here is the sense of place and atmosphere. Tartt writes with a lush, immersive style which I found is increasingly compelling as the book went on.
Using a murder as the gateway drug to what’s really a literary fiction character study is both sneaky and brilliant: I was hooked by the story in the first chapter, but once I’d finished the book, it was Richard’s voice, those eerie characters, their strange insular co-dependency, and the biting Vermont winter landscape that really stayed with me.
'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!'
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries.…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I went to four different boarding schools when I was younger, which at the time didn’t seem weird but it definitely is. I think boarding schools are peculiar places, full of teenagers with raging hormones, secret homesickness, and a certain sort of reckless swagger that is a recipe for all sorts of drama i.e. the perfect setting for a novel.I was on quite hefty scholarships and know how lucky I was to be there, but whether you have or haven’t been to boarding school, there is an endless fascination with them. I had a lot of fun writing The Islanders, wallowing happily in my nostalgia and reminiscing with old friends about what we got up to.
Another book about a misfit at a US boarding school. Frankie, our heroine, is sharp, possibly a criminal mastermind, and an ugly duckling turned pretty. At her school–Alabaster Prep–she gets in with a group of older boys and starts to undermine their secret prank society by outdoing them all, with (un)predictably disastrous consequences. This book is so much fun; adults and adolescents alike will love it.
The hilarious and razor-sharp story of how one girl went from geek to patriarchy-smashing criminal mastermind in two short years, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Genuine Fraud.
* National Book Award finalist * * Printz Honor *
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
I’ve never belonged to a secret society, but I’ve always been drawn to the idea. When I wrote Stone Cove Island, I was thinking about secrets passed down between generations of the islanders, and I liked the idea that even within, but I liked the idea that even within this tiny community, there was an inner circle of people invisibly controlling things. I’d heard a story from a friend—and it might just be a story, but I’m not the only one who’s heard it—about a rich, private island where if you did something to displease the residents, they sent you a black sweater. No note. Just the sweater. The message was clear: time for you to go.
How I wish I could read this one all over again for the first time. I can’t, but you can! In this semi-magical spy thriller, 14-year-old Janie is suddenly forced to move to London from Los Angeles with her family, where she fits in badly in her new school as the awkward American. She’s quickly drawn into a secret network of spies – mostly of the amateur variety – who, thanks to an ancient book of potion recipes, can do all kinds of things, like turn into birds.
Fourteen-year-old Janie Scott is new to London and she's finding it dull, dreary and cold - until she meets Benjamin Burrows who dreams of becoming a spy. When Benjamin's father, the mysterious apothecary, is kidnapped he entrusts Janie and Benjamin with his sacred book, full of ancient spells and magical potions. Now the two new friends must uncover the book's secrets in order to find him, all while keeping it out of the hands of their enemies - Russian spies in possession of nuclear weapons.
I am Julia Buckley. I am an avid reader and writer of mysteries. This particular subgenre of mystery focuses on schools and academic settings. I love institutions of learning as settings for mysteries because the buildings can be spooky and oppressive, but also because the dialogue is always intelligent. There is great potential for conflict between students, faculty, and campus interlopers. All of it is intriguing, and it allows for a closed world with limited suspects! If you haven’t read an academic mystery, give it a try! It’s like going back to school, but as a detective.
Number five in the Dublin Murder Squad series, this mystery takes a detective duo to a private English girls’ school and immerses them in the secrets and lies of young women who cling to some elements of childhood but have the ability to connive like any adult.
Compelling! Like all Tana French novels, the dialogue is amazing and electric, and the plot won’t let go of you, even after you finish.
"An absolutely mesmerizing read. . . . Tana French is simply this: a truly great writer." -Gillian Flynn
Read the New York Times bestseller by Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" (The Washington Post).
A year ago a boy was found murdered at a girls' boarding school, and the case was never solved. Detective Stephen Moran has been waiting for his chance to join Dublin's Murder Squad when sixteen-year-old Holly Mackey arrives in his office with a photo of the boy with the caption:…
I’m the author of eleven novels for young readers (so far!). I’m also a lifelong bookworm, and I’ve got a special love for all things creepy, fantastical, and odd. Growing up, I adored mysteries from Scooby-Doo to Sherlock Holmes, and you could often find me hiding under the covers with a stack of books and a flashlight long after I should have been asleep. Here are five more recent middle-grade mysteries that I've loved. If they’d been around when I was a kid, they would have kept me up hours past my bedtime.
This story has so many delicious ingredients—ancient boarding schools, secret societies, enigmatic notes slipped into pockets, young allies banding together against a powerful enemy—and they all combine to make the kind of book that classic mystery fans will devour.
For fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Blackthorn Key series comes an award-winning boarding school mystery about twelve year old Emmy, who's shipped off to a prestigious British school. But her new home is hiding a secret society ... and it may be the answer to Emmy's questions about her missing father. With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit in. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in…
I love how urban fantasy mixes magic and the real world, and I’m obsessed with stories that explore identity, especially when life throws you a curve ball and you need to recalibrate your existence around questions like “Who am I? Where am I going?” These books are set in contemporary fantasy universes and explore the themes of identity in different ways. Their worlds are bleak, which makes the spots of humor shine brighter and the protagonists’ triumphs all that more satisfying. As Ursula LeGuin said, “There must be darkness to see the stars.”
In this alternate Victorian London, those with purple eyes can see ghosts and spirits. Normally, this would mean Silas would have an elite career, but because he’s a trans man, he’s sent to a horrific girl’s boarding school for ‘treatment’.
I love how this book explores how you can be ‘you’ when everyone sees you as something else. Even though the institution is monstrous, it heightens the importance of Silas’s battle for identity. I really connected with him and couldn’t stop turning the pages, as I wanted to see how he’d survive and triumph.
A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.
New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!
Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.
London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.
After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed…
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 love urban fantasy and all the associated genres, like paranormal and horror. I love the question of “what if” and exploring how things would work if certain rules of magic or the supernatural were real. I love the variety and scope of world building that can be done parallel to and within our world through urban fantasy. That “what if” question is at the center of my own writing, and especially when I read non-fiction on topics like parallel universes and aliens and demons, I get so much inspiration for stories and worlds and what might be happening just beyond our view.
The Progeny is one of the best books I read last year. It’s a really fun and unique read because it combines historical fiction with urban fantasy and just a hint of sci-fi. The main character, Emily, has had her memory erased—but now someone is trying to kill her. She must figure out who she was and what was so important that she erased it from her memory, a journey which takes her on a quest through Europe to find out who she really is. The story explores the true history of Elizabeth of Bathory and ties it in with suspense and superpowers for a fast-paced story that is unlike any other. I read it in a couple of days because I couldn’t put it down.
New York Times bestselling author Tosca Lee brings a modern twist to an ancient mystery surrounding Elizabeth Bathory, the most notorious female serial killer of all time.
Audra Ellison has no idea why she's had her memory wiped clean, only that she chose to erase her past to protect someone else. But soon, a handsome stranger tells her she's special. Unique. That she has the power to influence the minds of others. And that her life is in danger.
She soon discovers that she is the descendant of a serial killer, the infamous "Blood Countess" Elizabeth Bathory, and that…
Some men need killing. Whether monsters, serial killers, or husbands, women often face off with danger and must put a stop to it. How they do that fascinates me as a former psychotherapist. Must her life be in imminent danger, his finger depressing the trigger, for her to shoot? What if he terrorized or stalked her, but at the moment of death, she sneaks up on him? What if this guy killed her family, and she seeks revenge? Where we draw these lines in fiction informs who we are as humans and the very nature of our souls. And each of the books on my list, prism-like, reveals a separate facet.
Whether this book should be taken as a polemic against feminism or support of feminism at its most radical—i.e., women may not always get it right in their fiercest battles, and that’s okay—is probably in the eye of the beholder-slash-reader.
But it doesn’t matter which side I’m on (cough, the second one) in terms of what this book means to me. Which is that adolescence is a tumultuous time when we all get to learn who we are and what matters most to us—if we’re lucky. If we’re less lucky, someone may come along and take advantage of our fresh, unfolding minds such that we never get a chance to bloom.
The girls at Modesta High School feel like they're stuck in some anti-feminist time warp-they're faced with sexism at every turn, and they've had enough. Sponsored by their new art teacher, Ms. Stark, they band together to form the Daughters of Eve. It's more than a school club-it's a secret society, a sisterhood. At first, it seems like they are actually changing the way guys at school treat them. But Ms. Stark urges them to take more vindictive action, and it starts to feel more like revenge-brutal revenge. Blinded by their oath of loyalty, the Daughters of Eve become instruments…
When I read, I’m not just seeing the words on a page; I’m escaping into the world crafted by the author. Since I was a child, I’ve always been a lover of fantasy – it was an escape for me to slip between the pages and be a part of the world inside them. Especially if they were beautiful and filled with hidden danger. I wanted to have my heart pound out of my chest, to have the thrill of magic, wonder, and fear. Now, I try to write those types of worlds; because of the books which inspired me. I only hope you love them as much as I do.
I still remember the first time I came acrossHeart of Mist.
It completely overtook my senses and propelled me into the Upper Realmof her universe. Bleak, the female lead, is unlike any other female protagonist I’d ever come across – being angry, brave, and dealing with trauma by playing with a piece of rope. She felt real.
And the Upper Realms? I wanted to be there; discovering the forests of Valia and traversing their immense tree houses.
In a realm where toxic mist sweeps the lands and magic is forbidden, all Bleak wants is a cure for her power.
Still grieving the death of her guardian and dangerously self-medicating with alcohol, Bleak is snatched from her home by the Commander of the King’s Army, and summoned to the capital.
But the king isn’t the only one interested in Bleak's powers.
The leader of an infamous society of warriors, the Valia Kindred, lays claim to her as well, and Bleak finds herself in the middle of a much bigger battle than she anticipated.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Fantasy, mystery, magic, and otherworldly realms—these have fascinated me since childhood. Growing up in Landshut, a town straight out of a fairytale, with misty hills and an ancient castle, I’ve always felt surrounded by magic. It makes you wonder what secrets lie in the woods or castle grounds. I crave fast-paced, suspenseful, fantastical books with a dash of romance and just enough weirdness to keep things exciting. If you’re like me and love stories that keep you guessing, check out my list of the best fantasy books that do just that. Plus, my debut Epic Fantasy novel is coming out this year, and it fits right into that category!
This story follows Alex, a girl haunted by ghosts only she can see. Because of this extraordinary ability, she gets—despite being a crime suspect—chooses to go to Yale and oversee their secret societies that meddle with magic. As she tries to rebuild her life, the death of a girl and her suspicions about the societies pull her back into danger.
The book’s intricate plot and suspense have made me read it multiple times, with its vividly real world, societies, and characters making me eager to visit New Haven and see if it matches the story. Its twists and turns ensure you'll be hooked and constantly wondering what comes next. Also, I've loved Yale since I first saw Gilmore Girls.
*The adult debut from the author of SHADOW AND BONE - now a Netflix Original series!*
The instant SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestseller that Stephen King calls 'Impossible to put down'.
Galaxy 'Alex' Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale's freshman class. A dropout and the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved crime, Alex was hoping for a fresh start. But a free ride to one of the world's most prestigious universities was bound to come with a catch.
Alex has been tasked with monitoring the mysterious activities of Yale's secret societies - well-known haunts of the…
