22 Books Like The Stolen Child

Junger, a non-religious man, very nearly died even as he lay conscious in the midst of high medical drama. He hears his father's voice. This is a true story, a powerfully written page turner, that will make you think about what may be outside our direct knowledge.

...WoW! This book was a revelation! What would happen to you if you had a life altering accident? MaryJo teaches us about her journey with love, compassion, even humor. It is intense to read, but also incredibly insightful and powerfully transformative. I was crying at many parts, and not the ones you would think! Yes, MaryJo lives in a wheelchair. But her insights and her teachings transcend, like all good yoga - the body. And leave us squarely with the power of our own minds. This book is a must!

I love this book’s two freedom fighters: the historical Sarah Grimké and the fictional enslaved woman Handful.

It’s the early 1800s in Charleston, SC. Privileged white girl Sarah bucks cultural expectations for women, while Handful fights the cruel slavery system. Sarah repudiates her upbringing in order to support abolition, and Handful stakes everything in pursuit of freedom, “to leave or die trying.”

I loved learning about the Grimké sisters, giants in the abolition movement, and the West African story-quilt tradition, whereby women tell their lives through the art of needlework. This book was transformative for me; Sarah’s and Handful’s transgressive courage has helped me through difficult times of my own. If they could face their obstacles, then by golly, I can face mine.

I love this book because it is a war novel without a single battlefield or battle, except the one for Siegfried Sassoon’s sanity. I became fascinated by WWI as a teenager. I can’t say why this war caught my imagination, but it did, and that fascination has continued for my whole life.

I gobbled up books, movies, and history about the war, and I especially loved the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, a noted poet and war hero who publicly refused to continue fighting in 1917. When I re-read his poetry fifty years later, I found a kinship with that refusal and the boys around me who were conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War.

I was a dreamy, romantic teenager, which is why Sassoon’s words pierced my heart: “Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin they think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.” Oh! How I cried over his poems… show more.

I love this book because it took me on a surprise adventure through the life of a black boy (and young man) raised in the South. I met Laymon at a writing workshop a few months prior to this book’s release date, and I heard him read an excerpt from it.

I was immediately hooked on his storytelling ability. The language is so authentic to him and his experiences, and he holds nothing back. I love the vulnerability that saturates each page as I follow him through his addictions and struggles. While his life is so different from mine, the idea of finding one’s identity in society could not be more relatable.

A friend recommended this book to me when I was blogging about my Dad’s death. I took his advice and I’m glad I did.

In the wake of my dad dying, I felt disjointed from the world, and it felt as if nothing was real, as if I was living in an altered reality.

In reading The Year of Magical Thinking, I was able to take comfort from Joan Didion. Even though her circumstances were different, I was able to relate to her experience.

Published just two days after World War II was declared in Europe in 1939, and two years before the United States would enter the conflict, Dalton Trumbo’s powerfully emotional story centering on horribly wounded American World War I soldier Joe Bonham sparked controversy for its anti-war stance, while also winning the 1939 National Book Award for Most Original Book.

Apparently inspired by an article Trumbo had read about the Prince of Wales paying an emotional visit to Curley Christian, a Canadian soldier who’d survived the loss of all four limbs at the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge. Johnny Got His Gun is simply a gut-wrenching read that took me to places no one should really go.

Let’s just say I was a different 14-year-old the day I closed its covers and sat thinking for a very, very long time.

Years ago, I watched a documentary on the orphan train movement, which took place between 1854 through 1929. Coordinated by the Children’s Aid Society in New York City, amidst the cholera epidemic, an estimated 250,000 children became orphaned and subsequently homeless or abandoned.

The Children's Aid Society devised a plan to transport orphaned children by train to homes in the West to solve the orphan crisis and address the inadequate welfare institutions of the day. Many children were helped, and others became victims of families looking for cheap labor.

This book holds a special place in my heart because I had always intended to write a story about this movement. Then, one day, walking into Barnes & Noble, I saw this book on the best-sellers rack. Needless to say, I was inspired to start writing my own novels and berated myself for not having done so sooner!

I love all things Irish. I would venture a guess that more than half of what I read is by Irish writers. Every year, my family visits Ireland–from Dublin to Dingle to Donegal. I am intensely interested in Irish history as well as literature.

This book checks off all these boxes for me. Young Willie Dunn leaves his family and the girl he loves to fight in WWI in 1914. On the Western front, it’s the letters from home and the other Irish soldiers who keep him going through the horrors of battle. Willie is able to return home, only to find Ireland itself on the brink of a civil war.

I give this book to anyone I know who, like me, is charmed by the magic of Ireland, to history buffs and lovers of Irish literature, and to those who seek love stories that happen in WWI. I cried… show more.

I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.

When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.

Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!