100 Books Like The Ventriloquists

I’m a geek for a good undercover story because of the constant underlying tension. Place that undercover story in an alternate world, and you’ve got my attention! Leviathan takes place in Scott Westerfeld's fabulous re-imagining of the events surrounding WWI. It’s a world where the secrets of DNA were discovered far earlier and put to use as natural “machinery.”

Our star is Deryn Sharp, one of my favorite middle-grade heroines. She’s a commoner disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman, brave and fearless and clever… and living in constant fear someone will discover her secret. Even so, she faces conflict head-on and is quick on her feet.

She fights on the side of the Darwinists, using extraordinary genetically altered creatures, against the Clankers and their steampunk-style weaponry. They’re no match for Deryn, though, as she saves the day again and again with her mind… show more.

I’m a complete sucker for fantasy built around a seemingly unremarkable protagonist who responds to extraordinary circumstances with remarkable strength and courage. Add in a cross-dressing bad-ass heroine, and I’m hooked. This book is, in part, the story of Winter Ihernglass, a young woman who escapes her past by dressing as a man and enlisting in the Vordanai Colonials.

This is a complex novel reminiscent of the Napoleonic wars. The world-building was wonderful, the writing gritty, the military action realistic, but it was the way Winter earned the respect of her fellow soldiers that wouldn’t let go of me.

This is slightly outside the boundaries of a wartime novel, as it takes place in the Old West, but it’s a fantastic book for this list, and shouldn’t be overlooked if you love this trope. Jess Harney makes a name for herself as a notorious male sharpshooter and outlaw. Her first-person voice is one of the most interesting I’ve read, and I loved how she fit in as one of the guys while never sacrificing who she was. She barely even thinks about her gender as she so naturally considers herself male. Books like this really highlight the blurred lines between cross-dressing out of necessity or desire, and I’m excited to see more authors addressing this trope with the nuance of queerness which is often part of it.

This is a story that challenges our understanding of identity–Zhu is a girl, and she is a male novice in a monastery. Zhu wears her dead brother’s name like armor and schemes to make his fate hers as well. Zhu is as unapologetically callous as the world that discarded her. Zhu lives as a man and never wishes to live as a woman, but her pronouns never change.

Her story forces the reader to confront the heavy hand of circumstance in our lives and our definition of self. Zhu performs gender without regret or longing, it is a tool of her survival; instead, she defines herself in her ambition. And even though the person that Zhu ultimately chooses to become isn’t one we might admire, her relationship to gender speaks to those of us who sit between the boundaries of gender, who move between, or who fill more than one… show more.

I worked in local papers at the start of my career and was always amazed at why a network that had so many talented writers produced so few books about the hilarious things and the tragic things we experienced. I think it's partly because local newspapers are often seen as a stepping stone, we focus on the famous at the pinnacle of their career, editing a national newspaper for example, when in fact local news careers could and should be an end in themselves.

Roger Lytollis is not only a brilliant writer, but his book is remarkably personal in the way he faces his own demons and how journalism helped him cope with extreme shyness and depression. Coupled with hilarious stories, I couldn't put it down.

This is the tenth in a charming series of children’s books about Freddy the Pig and the other talking animals on the Bean farm that began in the early 20th century, two decades before Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Freddy has been called a renaissance pig—a detective, poet, pilot, newspaper editor, and much more. 

In this story, the rapacious owner of the local newspaper employs various underhanded tactics to shut down the rival paper edited by Freddy. The scheme is thwarted when Freddy’s lawyer, Old Whibley the owl, convinces a judge that the would-be monopolist engaged in “kidnapping, theft, and conspiracy in restraint of trade.”

As is evident, by the 1940s, when the book was published, antitrust was recognized in popular culture as the legal tool for protecting the victims of unfair competitive tactics—which is still how we see it today. 

This is one of the best Native books I’ve ever read. As a white-passing Native who lived away from the tribe, I really identified with Louise Wolfe’s experience as one of the few Native families in their mostly white, middle-class Kansas town. Lou’s struggle against racism on a macro and micro scale is relatable, and the story is wonderfully rewarding. It's a must-read.

The Stoics were expansive philosophers, in that they were concerned about many diverse aspects of our existence: politics, ethics, epistemology, therapy, cosmology. The Stoics also aimed for their philosophy to be practical; hence, they wrote in accessible, readable fashion, so their teachings could reach many. The New York Times philosophers’ column, “The Stone,” shares Stoic concerns in applying philosophical thinking to a wide variety of topics, in a manner accessible to many. The Stone Reader is an anthology of some of the most popular essays from the New York Times column; the essays touch on many subjects, such as violence, anxiety, happiness, faith, and political power.

A collection of American humorist Dave Barry’s newspaper columns, which I’m often re-reading and laughing a great deal. Definitely ‘of it’s time’ in parts (aka a bit dated), but it also contains plenty of general observations about life, family, and defending your home against tornados. A good one for the loo, as shaking with laughter might help you ‘move things along’. 

As a foreign correspondent based in Vienna, I'm often asked to arrange interviews for reporters flying in from London. I remember a journalist from the Sun newspaper who flew in and wanted a translator. I found a local book author, but he canceled when he found out it was for the Sun. The journalist asked him why, and he said, "You wouldn't understand."

But that journalist had a first-class honors degree in literature from Oxford. Of all the types of journalism, tabloid is reviled, yet it attracts the best journalists. It starts the ball rolling on the best stories, and in its purest form, it is never about fake news; it's about taking on the biggest bully in the playground. I love it, and this book is pure tabloid.