Here are 100 books that The Journeyman fans have personally recommended if you like
The Journeyman.
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As host of ImmerseOrDie, I've tested over 600 indie novels so far, searching for books that can hold me in their spell for at least 40 minutes. Unfortunately, self-publishing is rife with the quirks and gaffs that burst such glamours: bad spelling, bad formatting, ludicrous dialogue... Even allowing three failures before bailing, only 9% survived. And reading those to completion whittled the herd still further.
So here then are the surviving 1%. A glittering few, plucked from the muck so that you don't have to. I don't promise you'll love them, but I do make one guarantee: they do not suck.
And in the Swamps of Indie, that is high praise indeed.
Everybody loves a good underdog tale, but by my lights, the best underdogs are the ones who aren't even human. So I really connected to Linton's insectoid hero, Sidge. Born a slave but valiantly trying to make a better life among his human "betters," Sidge rises above their constant abuse, confidant that if he can just prove himself, they will finally accept him. But to do that, he'll have to survive a perilous journey. And unfortunately, it's being led by the very people who hate him most. Good luck, Sidge. You're going to need it.
Long forgotten gods have passed judgment on the Age of Man. Sidge, a pious orphan, must unravel a lost past to understand their divine will. But first, he needs humanity to see him as more than a slave. Sidge is a bugman, the only of his kind at the human Stormblade Temple. Raised by his mentor, Izhar, he has mastered the twelve thousand mantras and knows every ritual in meticulous detail. As they embark on the pilgrimage, he wants nothing more than to make Izhar proud and ascend to the rank of Cloud Born. But the favored successor to lead…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
As host of ImmerseOrDie, I've tested over 600 indie novels so far, searching for books that can hold me in their spell for at least 40 minutes. Unfortunately, self-publishing is rife with the quirks and gaffs that burst such glamours: bad spelling, bad formatting, ludicrous dialogue... Even allowing three failures before bailing, only 9% survived. And reading those to completion whittled the herd still further.
So here then are the surviving 1%. A glittering few, plucked from the muck so that you don't have to. I don't promise you'll love them, but I do make one guarantee: they do not suck.
And in the Swamps of Indie, that is high praise indeed.
Most fantasies are set in a quasi-medieval landscape, but Hunt has chosen a deliciously different canvas: the Wild West. His hero is Ross, the estranged son of a famous fantasy author. When dear old dad is murdered, Ross grudgingly attends the funeral organized by the fantasy geeks and role-playing nerds who loved the old man's books. That much, he can handle. But being told that the fantastical world described in those books is real? No way! That disbelief is shattered, though, when Ross himself crosses over and is quickly drawn into the hunt for his father's killer in a nightmare world of gunslingers and monsters where the rules make no sense.
And to make matters worse: he hasn't read the books.
From award-winning author S. A. Hunt comes a blockbuster fantasy tale inspired by such old-school fantasy classics as Stephen King's The Dark Tower, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
After coming home from a stint in Afghanistan, veteran Ross Brigham learns that his father has passed away. Dearly departed Dad was a famous fantasy novelist, and the 300 fans that show up for the funeral demand that Ross finish E. R. Brigham's long-running magnum opus.
Ross and two of the author's devotees investigate his untimely death and discover that he might have been…
As host of ImmerseOrDie, I've tested over 600 indie novels so far, searching for books that can hold me in their spell for at least 40 minutes. Unfortunately, self-publishing is rife with the quirks and gaffs that burst such glamours: bad spelling, bad formatting, ludicrous dialogue... Even allowing three failures before bailing, only 9% survived. And reading those to completion whittled the herd still further.
So here then are the surviving 1%. A glittering few, plucked from the muck so that you don't have to. I don't promise you'll love them, but I do make one guarantee: they do not suck.
And in the Swamps of Indie, that is high praise indeed.
What would you get if Stephen King fathered a love-child on the corpse of HP Lovecraft? You'd get Rust, a full-throated scream of confusion and despair expressed in the chaotic afterlife of one Kimberley Archer. Is she single and dead? Or is she trapped in a living hell populated by the devoted husband and loving child she cannot remember knowing? This one creeped me out completely.
After being pushed in front of the subway C-Line, Kimberly Archer finds herself in an impossible town with a husband she's never seen before and a life she can't remember. The rain never stops, the phones don't work and the doctors think she's delusional.
Kimberly only wants to get back to her fiance in New York. But for that, she needs the help of Fitch, a madman who believes something dark lives at the heart of Rustwood. He'll help her, so long as she joins him on his mission to burn…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
As host of ImmerseOrDie, I've tested over 600 indie novels so far, searching for books that can hold me in their spell for at least 40 minutes. Unfortunately, self-publishing is rife with the quirks and gaffs that burst such glamours: bad spelling, bad formatting, ludicrous dialogue... Even allowing three failures before bailing, only 9% survived. And reading those to completion whittled the herd still further.
So here then are the surviving 1%. A glittering few, plucked from the muck so that you don't have to. I don't promise you'll love them, but I do make one guarantee: they do not suck.
And in the Swamps of Indie, that is high praise indeed.
The books that grab me most firmly are the ones where the premise itself gets me in a headlock and screams: "READ ME!" at the top of its lungs while twisting my ear until I give in. Case in point: Catskinner's Book.
After years of failure, long-time loser James Ozwrycke has finally assembled a life. Sort of. He's got a tiny apartment and a crappy job, which might not be much to you, but it's enough to pay the bills and fuel his video game habit, and that's the best life James has ever known. So how did he manage to score this skid row utopia? By entering an unusual agreement. All he has to do is let a demon use his body every now and then. You know, to kill people. But that's not so bad. Is it?
Catskinner's Book is a science fiction/urban fantasy novel set in a surreal world unlike any that you have seen before. James Ozryck has a monster in his head. All of his life the entity that he calls Catskinner has made him a fugitive, afraid to get too close to anyone, afraid to stay in one place for too long. Catskinner kills, without compassion and without warning, and is very good at it. Now James has learned that Catskinner is not the only monster in the world, a world that has suddenly become a far stranger and more dangerous place than…
For me, games have always been a way of playing mathematics. Every game has a hidden piece of mathematics behind it, and if you can understand that mathematics, I’ve found that it gives you a real edge in playing the game. I travel a lot for my work as a mathematician, and I love to ask about the games they play when I visit a new country. Games tell me a lot about the culture and people I am visiting. My book is my way of sharing my passion for games and mathematics with my readers.
This book is Hogwarts meets The Glass Bead Game meets The Handmaid's Tale. I was recommended it when I talked about my games book at a local bookshop. I must admit that I was initially very nervous about a book riffing on one of my favorite books of all time (The Glass Bead Game), but I really enjoyed it.
It is set in a school that trains students to play the game against a political backdrop that Margaret Atwood could easily have conjured up. It helped to give another perspective on Hesse’s fictional game that, as I said in my first recommendation, I’ve been obsessed with ever since reading about it as a student.
'BEAUTIFUL' JOANNA CANNON
'MESMERISING' ERIN KELLY
'TOTALLY ADDICTIVE' JOANNA GLEN
'SUMPTUOUS' OBSERVER
'DIZZYINGLY WONDERFUL' THE TIMES
WINNING WAS EVERYTHING...
UNTIL IT DESTROYED THEM
Two young men, Leo and Carfax, close friends and fierce rivals. A family ripped apart by madness and tragedy. One woman, her life built upon a lie, with a mysterious connection to them all...
'INGENIOUS' GUARDIAN
'A STORYTELLER OF RARE IMAGINATION' MAIL ON SUNDAY
'BRILLIANT' WOMAN & HOME
'A RICH DELIGHT' SANDRA NEWMAN
'CAPTIVATING' DAILY MIRROR
'AN IMMERSIVE, IMAGINATIVE SLICE OF STORYTELLING' DAILY EXPRESS
'MAGICAL' IRISH INDEPENDENT
I've spent the last half-century researching complex systems and mathematical modeling, both at research centers including The RAND Corporation, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Int'l Center for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna), as well with professorships at New York University, Princeton and the Technical U. of Vienna. I have also had a lifelong interest in the connection between science fiction and science fact, and have explored the relationship in several of my books including X-EVENTS, The Cambridge Quintet, and Paradigms Lost. I also served as editor for the volume Mission to Abisko, which gives an account of a week-long meeting between sci-fi writers and scientists held north of the Arctic Circle in Abisko, Sweden some years back.
By the early twentieth century, violent crime was the number one political issue in America. In response, Congress passed the Swift and Sure Anti-Crime Bill, which gave a previously convicted violent criminal one fair trail, one quick appeal, then immediate execution. But to prevent abuse of the law, it was necessary to create a machine that could detect lies with one-hundred percent accuracy. It was clear that such a Truth Machine would change the world. But the race to perfect the Truth Machine forces one man to commit a shocking act of treachery. Now he must conceal the truth from his own creation---or face execution.
The conflict here is truth versus justice, as is often the case in human affairs. I was extremely interested in seeing how the author would balance these two seemingly irreconcilable factors. The book does a startingly job in resolving this conflict, in the process creating…
Prepare to have your conception of truth rocked to its very foundation.
It is the year 2004. Violent crime is the number one political issue in America. Now, the Swift and Sure Anti-Crime Bill guarantees a previously convicted violent criminal one fair trial, one quick appeal, then immediate execution. To prevent abuse of the law, a machine must be built that detects lies with 100 percent accuracy.
Once perfected, the Truth Machine will change the face of the world. Yet the race to finish the Truth Machine forces one man to commit a shocking act of treachery, burdening him with…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
In my career as an academic librarian, I was often asked to teach students to think about the credibility of the information they incorporate into their academic, professional, personal, and civic lives. In my teaching and writing, I have struggled to make sense of the complex and nuanced factors that make some information more credible and other information less so. I don’t have all the answers for dealing with problematic information, but I try hard to convince people to think carefully about the information they encounter before accepting any of it as credible or dismissing any of it as non-credible.
Though written by an academic philosopher, the highly readable On Bullshit weighs in at a breezy eighty pages.
What I love about this book is the way the author differentiates the bullshitter, who attempts to persuade without any regard for the truth, from the liar, who cares about the truth but tries to hide it. Frankfurt goes on to make a strong case for why bullshit is far more dangerous than lying.
In an age where bullshitters get more far attention than they deserve, this is even more relevant than when it was first published in the social-media-free year of 1986.
A #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means…
As a long-time expat in France, a creative and a Black woman, I get othered and rejected a lot. I’ve had to learn how to own my story – of starting over, of building something from nothing, of remembering where I’ve been, and reminding myself of where I’m going. I had to learn to reject the labels that others want to put on me and draft my own personal hype mantra – then embellish it with a little bombshell sparkle. The books I’ve chosen are meant to entertain while giving you the chance to remind yourself of who you are and who you can choose to be.
Sometimes things happen in life that bring us to our knees – illness, relationships fail, job losses.
And we may feel small, overwhelmed, incapable. In this awesome book about living audaciously, Jones advises the reader to write their own oriki, or personal hype mantra.
When we are at our lowest, we need to look back and see how far we’ve come, remind ourselves of who we were, who we are,and who we will be.
Just as we have the power to write our own orikis, we have the power to write our own next steps. That’s pretty bad-ass.
From the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Judging You, a hilarious and transformational book about how to tackle fear--that everlasting hater--and audaciously step into lives, careers, and legacies that go beyond even our wildest dreams
Luvvie Ajayi Jones is known for her trademark wit, warmth, and perpetual truth-telling. But even she's been challenged by the enemy of progress known as fear. She was once afraid to call herself a writer, and nearly skipped out on doing a TED talk that changed her life because of imposter syndrome. As she shares in Professional Troublemaker,…
Victoria Talwar, PhD, is a professor and the chair of the Department of Educational & Counselling Psychology at McGill University. She is a recognized leading expert on children’s deception and has published numerous articles on children’s honesty and lie-telling behaviors. Dr. Talwar has given workshops to parents, teachers, social workers, and legal professionals. Among other distinctions, she was awarded the Society for Research on Child Development Outstanding Early Career Contributions to Child Development Research award. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Division 7), a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and a member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada.
The Wigglebottom books were a favourite in my house. This book was no exception.
Howard knows that lying is wrong, but he chooses to do it anyways. It is an excellent illustration of the negative emotions of guilt and worry that come from telling lies – it is like having a monkey on your back which just gets bigger and heavier with every lie.
However, this is also an illustration of redemption when Howard makes the right choice to tell the truth and feels better. We read this book many times and it prompted many conversations about what it feels like to lie, to tell the truth, and why it is better to tell the truth.
LISTEN BETTER to the little voice in your head, your intuition. Lying is wrong. Award-winning…educator endorsed. FREE download discussion ideas, poster, video, song and interactive questions. www.wedolisten.org
The We Do Listen Foundation is helping millions of children listen better to others, their hearts, feelings, bodies, and to intuition, the little voice in the head. 15 Howard B. Wigglebottom books, animations, songs and lessons help ages 4-7 become better listeners, learn important life lessons and feel good about themselves.
No one ever gets in trouble for too much listening.
Have a good listening day or the day of your choice.
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
After completing a psychology degree, I became an interventions facilitator in a prison and worked with offenders who'd committed serious violent crimes. It was while I was in this role that my fascination for criminal psychology grew. Once I left the profession, I put my experiences to good use in fiction, going on to write The Serial Killer series of three psychological thrillers. With the most recent, The Serial Killer’s Sister, I incorporated my love of puzzles and games into a twisted story of a serial killer who uses a childhood game known to his sister as ‘The Hunt’ to track her down and torment her.
This story centres on four friends who met and forged their friendship at boarding school where they played a lying game – targeting others and gaining points for an elaborate lie successfully believed. These were sometimes harmless… but sometimes not.
Years later, summoned by one of the friends, they reunite. A buried secret from their past now threatens to resurface. I thought this was an intense read with the tension slowly building and with some great revelations that kept me turning the pages. I love the way the author paints such a vivid, atmospheric picture so you can become fully immersed in the story.
'To read [The Lying Game] is to have your nerves slowly but inexorably shredded as, over and again, the tension builds and then evaporates until the final, unexpected denouement' Metro
'A gripping, unpredictable narrative that shifts like sand underfoot, and a plot that turns like the tide.' ERIN KELLY bestselling author of HE SAID SHE SAID
'Thank goodness for Ruth Ware...[The Lying Game is] gripping enough to be devoured in a single sitting' Independent
Four friends. One promise. But someone isn't telling the truth. The twisting new mystery from bestselling phenomenon Ruth Ware.
