Here are 98 books that The Runes of the Earth fans have personally recommended if you like
The Runes of the Earth.
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An avid reader since the age of 7, I have long loved history and fantasy. As a writer, I have a passion to share those things with young readers. I try to create stories that engage imaginations and share some historical facts along the way. As a member of a book reviewing team for new kids’ publications for an online kid lit blog, I also get to read and enjoy what other authors are putting out there as well.
This is another one I have re-read because I love the fantasy aspect. I didn’t come across C.S. Lewis’ books until I was a young adult, and then it was his adult writings. Now, I’m loving catching up on his Narnia series.
Written in 1950, this classic tale lives on, never becoming out of date, and I love that it is currently a stage production.
As a Christian, I also love a classic tale of good versus evil, with the drama between the white witch and the lion hero, Aslan, who overcomes death to save Narnia from the witch’s evil spell. For me, it’s a truly inspirational allegorical tale that stands the test of time.
Lucy steps into the Professor's wardrobe - but steps out again into a snowy forest. She's stumbled upon the magical world of Narnia, land of unicorns, centaurs, fauns... and the wicked White Witch, who terrorises all. Lucy soon realises that Narnia, and in particular Aslan, the great Lion, needs her help if the country's creatures are ever going to be free again...
The Strange Case of Guaritori Diolco
by
Bill Hiatt,
Guaritori awakens from a coma to find that he's lost twenty years--and his entire world.
Fiancée, family, and friends are all missing, perhaps dead. Technology has failed, and magic has risen, leaving society in ruins. Most survivors are at the mercy of anyone who has strong enough magic. Guaritori has…
On the back of my ragged edition of The Fellowship of the Ring is a picture of JRR Tolkien smoking a pipe. Even at a young age, I thought, “That’s what I want!” No, not the pipe. Though it would be cool to have it sans tobacco. I wanted to have my picture on the back of a book that was filled with fantasy characters, adventure, good, evil, magic, and elves. Since that time I have been writing books and chasing after my own characters and epic tales. So I’m thankful for that first inspiration.
When I was around ten years old, I read everything I could get my hands on. This book fell into my mental lap and, though it was intended for an older audience, the puns and wit taught me how funny a fantastical world could be. I mean it has everything: a chameleon (who is actually three people), ghosts, zombies, witch battles, and more puns than you can shake a wand at. The protagonist, Bink, is born without an obvious magical talent, which is illegal in Xanth so he is exiled to Mundania where he is captured by an outcast wizard who wants to use him to invade Xanth. Written in the late 1970s, the book is a little dated but still immensely entertaining and the first of many Xanth books. It’s truly a cornucopia of wordplay.
BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR, BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY • Discover the magical beginning of Piers Anthony’s enthralling Xanth series
Xanth was the enchanted land where magic ruled—where every citizen had a special spell only he could cast. It was a land of centaurs and dragons and basilisks.
For Bink of North Village, however, Xanth was no fairy tale. He alone had no magic. And unless he got some—and got some fast!—he would be exiled. Forever. But the Good Magician Humfrey was convinced that Bink did indeed have magic. In fact, both Beauregard the genie and the magic wall chart insisted…
Every new book I picked up in my teens was about going from this world to another. I didn’t seek them out, they found me. And then I began exploring the possibility of portals in the real world, studying the history and mythology of such things. As I grew, so did the science of quantum physics, which added to my interest on top of the mystery of magic doorways. This has been a passion of mine since I was a child, and I love reading about it and writing about it.
I didn’t realize it until I was nearly an adult, but almost every new book I picked up was about going from one world to another. Usually, from our world to a fantasy world. But this book, the first of the sort I found and read in middle school, reversed that formula. It’s about a boy who comes to our world from a place where people are peaceful. Our world is terrifying, and he wants to get home. This was an awakening for me, thinking that our reality might be the scary place, and we can be the frightening monsters. But I’ve learned, this isn’t far from the truth.
“Well written fantasy with strong character emphasis and empathy” from the author of the sci-fi classic Escape to Witch Mountain (Kirkus Reviews).
At night, Little Jon’s people go out to watch the stars. Mesmerized by a meteor shower, he forgets to watch his step and falls through a moss-covered door to another land: America. He awakes hurt, his memory gone, sure only that he does not belong here. Captured by a hunter, Jon escapes by leaping six feet over a barbed-wire fence. Hungry and alone, he staggers through the darkness and is about to be caught when he is rescued…
"Is this supposed to help? Christ, you've heard it a hundred times. You know the story as well as I do, and it's my story!" "Yeah, but right now it only has a middle. You can't remember how it begins, and no-one knows how it ends."
Every new book I picked up in my teens was about going from this world to another. I didn’t seek them out, they found me. And then I began exploring the possibility of portals in the real world, studying the history and mythology of such things. As I grew, so did the science of quantum physics, which added to my interest on top of the mystery of magic doorways. This has been a passion of mine since I was a child, and I love reading about it and writing about it.
Straight up, Dungeons and Dragons players pulled into the fantasy world they were playing the game in! Considering I was playing D&D multiple times a week when I found these books (and this book includes the first three of the series, The Sleeping Dragon, The Sword and Chain, and The Silver Crown), I was entranced! Then the author did a few things I’d never thought of. He brought in a guy in a wheelchair who entered a body of his character who could walk. He also later introduced gunpowder, and guns that used magic to fire bullets. The ideas were new and fresh to my teenage mind, and I was fascinated!
Seven college students meet for another night of role-playing games, where they will be cast as wizard, warrior, cleric, or thief. However, their conniving gamemaster has something entirely new planned for them. The seven gamers are cast into an alternate world of magic, fire-breathing dragons – and a quasi-medieval culture with slavery. The only way back to Earth is through a dragon-guarded Gate Between Worlds, about which little is known.
The five men and two women face tough challenges – simple survival in a harsh environment as well as finding the mysterious Gate to bring them home. Publishers Weekly praised…
I’ve always been a fan of dark comedies. Fargo. Heathers. Fight Club. There’s something about being able to laugh about tragedy that feels both cathartic and as if you might get struck down by lightning. But I also grew up on a steady diet of supernatural horror à la Stephen King, Peter Straub, and early Dean Koontz. So combining the supernatural and dark comedy into my writing seemed like a natural fit. While I’m drawn to dark comedies of all sorts in both fiction and film, I have a soft spot for those with a supernatural element that involves death, either in the literal sense or as a character.
Not only is this novel about death and dying (10,000 times, to be exact), but it also features Death as a main character. So it gets bonus points for hitting both of those marks when it comes to my love of dark comedies about death. But it’s also a story about finding a reason for living, that reason being the aforementioned Death, who just so happens to be the main character’s love interest. It’s complicated. At turns both thought-provoking and laugh-out-loud funny. Reincarnation stories have always intrigued me and this one does it in a fashion unlike any other.
When I was a girl, my grandmother called me an ‘old soul’ and said she thought my fascination with the 19th century meant that I’d lived then in another life. Ever since, this notion that a person might have lived before has always fascinated me! I gravitate to books that bring the past and present together in all sorts of ways–through memory, ghosts, time travel…and reincarnation. Now my own books of suspense for kids and teens deal with many of those same themes. I always write books I would want to read myself!
I’ve always had an interest in the Salem Witch Trials. So Gallows Hills is a spine-tingling novel that ticks a lot of boxes for me! 17-year-old Sarah moves to a new town and is asked to be a fortune teller at a local fair. When her fortunes start coming true, people question her. Is she a witch? Then she starts having visions that link her to a time and place long ago. I love the idea that our past is always with us, and that we are doomed to repeat the past until we can deal with it!
Sarah agrees to play the fortune teller at the school fair. But as she looks into the ball, disturbing images appear and the students begin to believe that she is a witch and threaten her. As the danger increases, Sarah's mother and her friend intervene and prevent disaster.
My passion for Chinese history took root when I began reading Jin Yong’s wuxia novels, which are all steeped in Chinese historical background. My fiction writing career began with historical fiction based on Chinese history. Through my earlier research work, I discovered that Chinese historians have always given short shrift to the influence of women on cultural, political, and social developments throughout the ages. That led me to decide to center my writing around inspiring Chinese female historical figures. After publishing The Green Phoenix and Tales of Ming Courtesans, I branched out to write wuxia fantasy novels, but with the same objective of featuring admirable female historical/fictional characters.
I am a great fan of the sensational xianxia drama The Untamed, which is why I love this novel from which the drama is adapted.
One thing that I really like about the novel is the character Wen Qing. My heart is captured by her quiet ways of going about her practice of medicine, her deep but understated affection for her brother Wen Ning, and her unwavering loyalty to her good friend Wei Wuxian after facing adversities together with him. She actually saves him twice, the second time with her own life.
What also strikes me as outstanding is the way the novel constantly asks the thought-provoking questions: what is good and what is evil, and why are unorthodox ways deemed as evil?
Also known as MDZS, the blockbuster danmei/Boys' Love novels from China that inspired comics, animation, and the live-action series The Untamed! This historical fantasy tale of two powerful men who find each other through life and death is now in English, for the very first time!
Wei Wuxian was once one of the most powerful men of his generation, a talented and clever young cultivator who harnessed martial arts and spirituality into powerful abilities. But when the horrors of war led him to seek more power through demonic cultivation, the world's respect for his abilities turned to fear, and his…
My name is Jeannie Reed. I was an executive for many years and, for many years, an editor and a professional psychic in concurrent full-time careers. Eight years ago, a spirit started making itself known in my apartment in New York City. He's still here. This spirit's presence is not unusual. What is unusual is that he communicates by drawing. Drawings anybody can see. This man died in 1920. I had zero interest in him until now, though I had heard of him, a great artist, Amedeo Modigliani. I am not soft-minded. I doubted this whole thing for a year. Until finally, it was unavoidable.
Dr. Stevenson was the founder and director of the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In the course of his work, he started to encounter very young children who reported details of lives they had lived before. Many, many young children. Rather than dismissing the stories as fantasy, he started paying attention when he realized many of the stories were provable.
He spent decades traveling the world, finding and talking to the children who remembered. (Since his death, Dr. Jim Tucker has continued the research at UVa. His own work is totally worth a read: Life Before Life: Children's Memories of Previous Lives.)
The concept of reincarnation has been around for thousands of years, and is a part of many religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. In addition to these religious beliefs, many people believe it offers an explanation for the mysteries of life. There are children that claim to remember previous lives as adults or even animals. These claimed memories might affect the development of the child and be incorporated into the child's personality.
This book presents an in-depth look at Dr. Stevenson's forty years studying children who claim to remember previous lives. It is an informative, professional read that dispels…
As well as a novelist, I’m an astrologer who’s intrigued that 6,000 years ago - when Lilith apparently existed, alongside Adam and Eve - marks a point in an astrological cycle when a matriarchal era became a patriarchal one, followed by a fated reunion of the feminine and masculine energies. That era of unification begins now, and I call it the New Earth. I Am Lilith shares these big-scale and hopeful understandings about human evolution in a wildly luscious story. It is for those who are ready for unity and sense that the time has come for a New Earth.
This may be my favourite book ever, apart from I Am Lilith. It shares lucid past life memories of the author in very ancient Egypt, as well as her experiences living through World War II in Eastern Europe, revealing purposeful links between souls incarnated in both lives. The spiritual knowledge is astounding, and the depth seems endless. I’ve read it multiple times and often randomly read a few pages, each time seeing something new. It’s very evocative, with fascinating descriptions of life and spiritual practices in very ancient Egypt while highly evolved beings were still active. It explains how the pyramids were made, and that a long era of separation and dense consciousness was due before a return to unity again would rise. It also explains the truth of passionate human love and sexual connection, through spiritual yet also very human eyes. It’s a mighty tome to take on,…
An autobiography that connects the twentieth century European life of internationally beloved teacher Elisabeth Haich and her lucid memories of initiation into the hidden mystical teachings of the priesthood in ancient Egypt. It reveals her insights into the subtle workings of karma, reincarnation, and spiritual development.
Tina Proffitt is a former educator in love with writing romance novels, who believes there’s nothing more romantic than reincarnating with those she loves. After her first one-on-one past life reading with Dr. Doris E. Cohen, she was hooked and has never looked back. (Pun intended) She wants to share her passion for living a life free from fear and full of love. She writes reincarnation romance novels in the genres of mystery, science fiction, contemporary, and YA.
Tyson’s Gift: How an 8-Pound K9 Became a Man’s Greatest Spiritual Guide by police officer Brandon Wainwright is the story this country needs to hear, especially now. From beginning to end, the author brings the reader into his personal life and the ups and downs of his relationships with an openness that appeals to mother, father, sister, or brother. Anyone who has ever loved or been loved by an animal will find healing and hope for the future, that we never really have to say goodbye when our hearts are open.
As a police officer, Brandon Wainwright has seen a lot in his ten-plus years on the force, but nothing so strange or life-changing as the spiritual awakening he experienced when his dog, a precocious Chihuahua named Tyson, passed away . . . and then began communicating from the other side.
Once a hardnosed skeptic, Brandon found himself thrust into unfamiliar territory, consulting with spiritual intuitives and pet communicators in an effort to uncover the truth about the afterlife—embarking upon an incredible journey that would shake his perception of reality and challenge his beliefs about what happens to us after we…
