Here are 100 books that The Passenger fans have personally recommended if you like
The Passenger.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Although I am Jewish, I didn’t know much about Israel until college. I studied in Cairo and Jerusalem and became very committed to Palestinian rights. I married a Palestinian Muslim, and we raised our daughters in the West Bank under Israeli occupation. Now, I spend most of my time talking with people about the need for justice, peace, security, and dignity for everyone and explaining why equality for Palestinians is not only a moral stance but one that is also good for Jews. The books I recommended help young people understand Palestinian experiences so they can resist the dehumanizing messages that are so common in the media.
I love this book because Adam and Leila live in fictional Stone City, which is exactly like the real-life Old City of Jerusalem, Palestine. Their society is divided into the ruling class, called Permitteds, and the lower class, called Nons.
The kids enjoy their friends and school and music until their father dies suddenly, and they might lose their permit to stay in Stone City. Adam gets arrested when he and his friend Zak are falsely accused of attacking a group of Permitted teens.
Adam and Leila’s fast-paced struggle mirrors the struggle of Palestinian children in Jerusalem, and Adam and Leila’s bravery, creativity, and resolve make them heroes.
A thrilling, resonant and inspiring novel about justice, privilege and the power of the young to strive for change.
Set in a world where Adam and Leila and their friend Zak live as Nons under the Permitted ruling class. Then, when Adam and Leila's father dies unexpectedly, their mother faces losing her permit to live in the Stone City with deportation to where she was born. Before music-loving Adam can implement his plan to save Mama, Zak is arrested for a bold prank that goes wrong, with far-reaching repercussions for them all . . .
This is a novel about choices. How would you have chosen to act during the Second World War if your country had been invaded and occupied by a brutal enemy determined to isolate and murder a whole community?
That’s the situation facing an ordinary family man with two children, a…
I am a pediatric emergency physician turned author, and I am passionate about sharing an insider’s view of the emergency room, as well as addressing larger health issues that should be more visible to the general public. The emergency room is a world unlike any other, filled with humor, drama, emotions, and energy twenty-four hours a day, and I like to bring that energy to my stories. I’ve worked in many different medical settings, and every day, I find a new story that is worth sharing.
I never said medical professionals had to be heroes. Dr. Leng is a world-class villain who challenges Hannibal Lecter, and I love how this book shows the scope of destruction that can be created when science is used for evil purposes.
Dr. Leng is so evil you can’t wait to read what he does next while rooting for someone to stop him, and only someone as capable as Agent Pendergast can do so. This is the culmination of the battle, and I recommend reading all of the books in this series.
How can you stop a serial killer who has been dead for a hundred years?
FBI Special Agent A. X. L. Pendergast always wants to protect his protegee Constance Greene from harm. But, against all odds, Constance has found a way to travel back in time. Heading to New York City in the late 1800s, Constance returns to the century of her birth to embark on a dangerous quest: stopping the era's most infamous serial killer, Dr. Enoch Leng, from bringing his nefarious plans to fruition.
If Constance can stop Dr. Leng, she can finally prevent the events that led…
I’m the author of 26 twisty psychological thrillers, many of which are Amazon bestsellers. I’ve sold over three-quarters of a million books and particularly enjoy writing about dysfunctional families and unpleasant neighbours! I spend a lot of time in the Swiss Alps and love the mountains, so thrillers set in the snow are my absolute favourite. I set one of my own books, Forget Me Not, in the Swiss Alps in a location I know extremely well. I’m a full-time author and I’m also an avid reader of thrillers and enjoy nothing more than reading a book with an ending that makes me gasp!
This thriller is set in a remote former TB Sanatorium reached by a funicular, so I was immediately able to envisage it.
A locked-room mystery, the snowstorm added to the layers of fear and creepy vibes. Whilst the characters didn’t particularly grip me, the snowy setting gave me goosebumps.
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK | A New York Times bestseller!
"An eerie, atmospheric novel that had me completely on the edge of my seat." -Reese Witherspoon
"This spine-tingling, atmospheric thriller has it all... and twists you'll never see coming." -Richard Osman, New York Times bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club
Sarah Pearse's next book, The Retreat, is forthcoming.
You won't want to leave. . . until you can't.
Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a…
In the years following his graduation from college, Cole Chen has been back and forth between the U.S. and China, struggling to navigate his transition into adulthood. Estranged from his parents, he returns to Hunan province to work for his friends, while also attempting to write a memoir based on…
When I read, I want to read something that’s going to make me feel something. My friends make fun of me because, whether it is music or books, I want to have my heart shattered into a million pieces and then put back together. And when a little magic is added to the mix, it only makes the story richer and more heartbreaking. This list is everything I love about magical middle grades that makes me feel something on a deeper level about what it means to be human.
Lola is a beautiful blend of fantasy and magical realism about a sister and brother who would do anything for each other. This story really took me by surprise. I saw the gorgeous cover online after a friend told me to check it out. She knew it was going to be a book I loved, and wow!
I was blown away by its vivid setting, quirky cast of characters, sibling love, and gut-punch ending. I don’t want to give anything away, but this book made me cry and left an ache in my heart long after finishing it.
1
author picked
Lola
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
8,
9,
10, and
11.
What is this book about?
A simmering tale of magic, adventure, and the extraordinary bond between a brother and sister who'd journey to the ends of the Earth to save each other. From the acclaimed author of Lotería comes a heartfelt story rooted in Mexican magical realism.
Ten-year-old Lola has always been touched by magic. In her Mexico City home, built around a towering tree, she is accustomed to enchanted blooms that change with the seasons, a sandbox that spits out mysterious treasures, and mischievous chaneques that scuttle about unseen by all but her. Magic has always been a part of her life, but now…
I’m a bit fairy tale obsessed. I love how the characters go into the woods and face wolves, witches, stepmothers, and ogres. But despite the abuse and neglect and trauma, they somehow emerge whole. These five books each have a unique heroine, not with a sword, but with her own quiet strength. Each one is a cathartic but reassuring guide into the woods and out again, acknowledging that though there will be hurt and heartbreak, transformation and healing will follow. If you love fairy tales for the same reasons I do, come, step onto the path. The magic of hope and healing awaits.
This book has everything I want in a fairy tale novel: an immersive setting, green magic, romance, shape-shifting creatures, and of course, resilience and healing.
Before I read Kell Wood’s debut novel, I had never thought about the long-term consequences Hansel and Gretel surely experienced at the hands of the witch in the gingerbread house, but now I can’t un-see it. Of course, these two people, now young adults, would have some serious (but unique) struggles.
Also, I love it when an author weaves multiple fairy tales and/or folkloric elements into a story, and Woods is fantastic at this!
After the Forest is a dark and enchanting fantasy debut from Kell Woods that explores the repercussions of a childhood filled with magic and a young woman contending with the truth of “happily ever after.”
Ginger. Honey. Cinnamon. Flour.
Twenty years after the witch in the gingerbread house, Greta and Hans are struggling to get by. Their mother and stepmother are long dead, Hans is deeply in debt from gambling, and the countryside lies in ruin, its people starving in the aftermath of a brutal war.
Greta has a secret, though: the witch's grimoire, hidden away and whispering in Greta's…
I grew up in a family of writers; my parents and three sisters were all successful writers, and I was the odd one out with a passion for teaching. I love to simplify, diagram, and make the complex graspable. And what’s not to like about a career in which people listen to you tell them what to do? I began writing after years of teaching, and my first novel was a mystery—a genre that no one in my family had yet written and which I’d been loving since my first Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie. Now, I combine the two: teaching and writing. Playing to both strengths and passing along what I’ve learned.
Another book that focuses on story structure, and explains the difference between literary and commercial fiction without talking down to those of us who aspire to the latter. I found it full of illuminating visuals, excellent examples, and exercises to help me immediately apply his advice. And above all, remember that advice weeks later as I write more and more pages.
It works because he does more than expound. He *engages* the reader–mentally and physically. Reading the book is like taking a master class.
How does plot influence story structure? What's the difference between plotting for commercial and literary fiction? How do you revise a plot or structure that's gone off course?
With Write Great Fiction: Plot & Structure, you'll discover the answers to these questions and more. Award-winning author James Scott Bell offers clear, concise information that will help you create a believable and memorable plot, including:
• Techniques for crafting strong beginnings, middles, and ends • Easy-to-understand plotting diagrams and charts • Brainstorming techniques for original plot ideas • Thought-provoking exercises at the end of each chapter •…
San Diego Private Investigator, Brig Ellis, is hired by a wealthy industrialist to help him acquire the final horse in a set of twelve palomino miniatures that once belonged to the last Emperor of China. What begins as a seemingly reasonable assignment quickly morphs into something much more malevolent.
I graduated from Wheaton College, MA, at the time, a women’s college where I developed a heightened appreciation of the power of women’s abilities to strive for more and achieve more. After learning about an ancestor’s involvement in founding the first women’s only medical school, I knew those graduates’ stories needed to be unearthed from the shadows of history by writing my book. Every March, to coincide with Women’s History Month, I celebrate these women, other glass-ceiling smashers, and the authors who write about them through my list of #31titleswomeninhistory. I have presented to the American Medical Women’s Association, local chapters of AAUW, ADK sorority, and Soroptimist International, among others.
In this book, I admired author Stephanie Dray's ability to portray Frances Perkins, the first female US cabinet member, as a multifaceted woman who defied societal expectations driven by her determination and intellect to set her apart in a political world dominated by men.
My respect for Perkins grew as Dray revealed the complexities Perkins faced in balancing her public career with the responsibilities of marriage and motherhood. I felt connected to this aspect of Perkins' life; understanding her personal struggles made her an even more relatable character and her accomplishments even more remarkable.
Beyond the personal narrative, I discovered the inner workings of FDR's administration and the crucial contributions Perkins made in shaping policies that still affect us today, earning her place in history.
She took on titans, battled generals, and changed the world as we know it…
New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Dray returns with a captivating and dramatic new novel about an American heroine Frances Perkins.
Raised on tales of her revolutionary ancestors, Frances Perkins arrives in New York City at the turn of the century, armed with her trusty parasol and an unyielding determination to make a difference.
When she’s not working with children in the crowded tenements in Hell’s Kitchen, Frances throws herself into the social scene in Greenwich Village, befriending an eclectic group of politicians, artists, and activists,…
I love to take destination thrillers with me on vacation. It’s like a double whammy of travel. I also love to write destination thrillers and have written quite a few, including my first book, set in a charming lakefront community on Lake Erie, Ohio. My other destination thrillers include Beneath the Surface, set on a luxurious super yacht on a trip to Catalina Island from Newport Beach, California, and my latest, Under the Palms, set at a fabulous Laguna Beach luxury resort. I love to write about grown-ups behaving badly. Dropping the characters into a beautiful resort or vacation setting increases the suspense.
This quirky and original thriller is set on a fabulous private island off the coast of Mykonos.
Friends gather for a weekend getaway at a former movie star’s home. Sounds fun, right? It is for the reader but not so much for the characters in the story. As the winds batter the island, cutting off access to the mainland, the luxurious estate becomes the scene of a crime.
I loved the setting, the writing style, and being transported to a Greek island.
“Alex Michaelides hits the trifecta with his third novel, The Fury. The highly original story presents the reader with the king of all unreliable narrators, enough twists and turns to power two novels, and a host of characters that bleed right on the page. ” ―David Baldacci
A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder ― from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient
I am a tumbleweed writer—one who moves from town to town every few years—and I have learned to adapt to new communities and break into new friend groups. In a sense, one could say I reinvented parts of myself as I moved from place to place, and I changed hats regarding what job I would get. Although challenging at times, the scope of this atypical lifestyle has provided me with a wealth of experiences to draw on when drafting a story, not only in setting and career, but also the psychological rollercoaster that comes with blowing with the wind.
I love when stories tease out backstory in little bits, and this book does that wonderfully.
Right from the opening chapters, seeds of intrigue are sprinkled everywhere, and I had so many questions that I needed answers to. It’s the kind of opening where it seems that life is going well for the character, yet there is something amiss.
And then the metaphorical rug was pulled out from under me, and I had to stay up well past my bedtime because I just needed to know more.
REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK | INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“This fast-paced read has everything you could want in a thriller: secret identities, a mysterious boss and a cat & mouse game that kept me guessing the whole way through.”—Reese Witherspoon
“One of the best thrillers I’ve ever read... Amazing.”—Jesse Watters
Evie Porter has everything a nice, Southern girl could want: a perfect, doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence and a garden, a fancy group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist.
The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location…
Lea's second novel chronicles the unlikely friendship of Ivy-educated George Mayes and elderly Maine woodsman Evan Butcher.
It memorializes the all but vanished oral culture from which Evan derives; it also plumbs the depths of addiction and the glories and challenges of recovery. Evocations of the natural world are lyrical…
As a writer who can never seem to tell a simple chronological, beginning/middle/end story in the books I write, I want to make a case for fictional works that fall somewhere between novels and traditional short story collections: shape-shifting novels. A shape-shifting novel allows for an expansiveness of time—for exploring the lives of generations within a single family, or occupying a single place, without having to account for every person, every moment, every year. Big, long Victorian novels, remember, were typically serialized and so written, and read, in smaller installments. The shape-shifting novel allows for that range between the covers of a single, and often shorter, book.
I knew little about North Woods when I started reading it, except that it chronicled the lives of different inhabitants of a farmhouse in western New England—a region I love—and featured an intriguing image of what I assumed was a bobcat on the cover.
North Woods brings its setting vividly to life; while there are fascinating characters—including a colonial-era English soldier who abandons the war to cultivate an apple orchard on the farmhouse property—the flora and fauna of the farm and its surrounding woodlands play equally important roles.
I’m grateful to my daughter, the same sensitive reader who cried when she finished Homegoing, for posting a photo of her copy of North Woods along with her lunch one day and piquing my curiosity.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
