Here are 87 books that The Voyage Home fans have personally recommended if you like The Voyage Home. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of The Night Watchman

30sz5qv7

From 30sz5qv7's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Unknown Author Why 30sz5qv7 loves this book

This book opened up a whole new world to me that I was unfamiliar with

By Louise Erdrich ,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Night Watchman as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN FICTION 2021

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

It is 1953. Thomas Wazhushk is the night watchman at the first factory to open near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota. He is also a prominent Chippewa Council member, trying to understand a new bill that is soon to be put before Congress. The US Government calls it an 'emancipation' bill; but it isn't about freedom - it threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land, their very identity. How can he fight this betrayal?

Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Pixie…


If you love The Voyage Home...

Ad

Book cover of Aggressor

Aggressor by FX Holden,

It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.

The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…

Book cover of Horse

Jinny Webber Author Of Serpent Visions

From Jinny's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historical Novelist Shakespeare Mythology Professor

Jinny's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Jinny Webber Why Jinny loves this book

I love how the different time periods work, all connected to the real stallion Lexington and Jarrett, the slave who’s with him since the day he foaled (and named him Darley). Insights on slavery from slaves’ POV, the Civil War and Reconstruction, horse racing and the owners and plantations, horse art and a Smithsonian search—and more. Beautifully written.

By Geraldine Brooks ,

Why should I read it?

38 authors picked Horse as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review

"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…


Book cover of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

Jo Scott-Coe Author Of Unheard Witness: The Life and Death of Kathy Leissner Whitman

From Jo's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Jo's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Jo Scott-Coe Why Jo loves this book

I was most interested in Richardson's tracing of the mid-20th century origins, attacks on, and eventual fracturing of the "liberal consensus" in mainstream American politics.

By Heather Cox Richardson ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Democracy Awakening as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

** #4 New York Times bestseller **

In Democracy Awakening, American historian Heather Cox Richardson examines how, over the decades, an elite minority have made war on American ideals. By weaponising language and promoting false history, they are leading Americans into authoritarianism and creating a disaffected population.

Many books tell us what has happened over the last five years. In Democracy Awakening, Richardson wrangles America's meandering and confusing news feed into a coherent story to explain how America got to this perilous point, what we should pay attention to, and what the future of democracy holds.


If you love Pat Barker...

Ad

Book cover of Trusting Her Duke

Trusting Her Duke by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.

Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…

Book cover of The Berry Pickers

Jinny Webber Author Of Serpent Visions

From Jinny's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Historical Novelist Shakespeare Mythology Professor

Jinny's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Jinny Webber Why Jinny loves this book

Set in Nova Scotia and Maine, where the berries are picked by Indians, as they’re still called, this is amoving story, alternating chapters between Joe, the son of the berry-picking family, and Norma, his sister Ruthie, who was kidnapped by a child-hungry town woman and raised as her own. Suspense, sensory details, and so much emotion—guilt, loss, anger, and love—easily expressed by the Indian family and not at all, by Norma’s adoptive family—that influence course of the characters’ lives. I learned a lot about a historical era I knew nothing about.

By Amanda Peters ,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked The Berry Pickers as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Prize Winner
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a mystery that will haunt the survivors, unravel a family, and remain unsolved for nearly fifty years

"A stunning debut about love, race, brutality, and the balm of forgiveness." —People, A Best New Book

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes. She is last seen by her six-year-old brother,…


Book cover of Regeneration

Ann Hood Author Of The Stolen Child

From my list on WWI love stories.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a romantic who believes in love and loves poetry, yet is also fascinated by WWI. I remember watching the movie All Quiet on the Western Front on television with my grandmother on a Saturday afternoon and being completely mesmerized. Over the years since then, I’ve even traveled to Sarajevo, where the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand set the war in motion, and to Gallipoli in Turkey, where a disastrous trench battle took place for almost a year. When I read about WWI Trench Art–art made by the soldiers awaiting battle in the trenches–my fiction writer's imagination was struck by the idea for my book below.

Ann's book list on WWI love stories

Ann Hood Why Ann loves this book

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…

By Pat Barker ,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked Regeneration as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe

The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.

In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back…


Book cover of The Silence of the Girls

Jinny Webber Author Of Serpent Visions

From my list on literary fiction based on Greek myths.

Why am I passionate about this?

Ever since spending a year on a Fulbright teaching grant on the island of Cyprus, where Aphrodite arose from the seafoam, I’ve been enticed by the Greek mythic world, a fascination that began much earlier with reading Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. Subsequent trips to Greek islands, museums, and archeological sites enhanced those ancient resonances, as did Mother Goddess studies and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Recent writing residencies at Cyprus College of Art and on Evia island immersed me in the Greek atmosphere and mythos as I edited Serpent Visions. My career was spent as a community college teacher, where my courses included ‘World Literature, Homer to Dante,’ and Shakespeare, another keen interest.

Jinny's book list on literary fiction based on Greek myths

Jinny Webber Why Jinny loves this book

The ‘girls’ are the Trojan women, voiceless in Homer’s Iliad except, briefly, Andromache, Cassandra, and Hecuba.

Women drive the plot, from Helen, the Spartan queen abducted by the Trojan prince Paris, who is blamed for starting it, to Briseis, the Trojan captive Agamemnon takes from Achilles, but they say little.

Most of the chapters in Silence of the Girls are first-person in Briseis’ voice, with interspersed third-person chapters focusing on Achilles and Patroclus. We see the war from a broad, realistic perspective, but the tragedy in the center is of the women—as the Greek playwright Euripides recognizes in his play ‘The Trojan Women’ among others.

Pat Barker gives us the full, moving story in this novel and its sequels, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home.

By Pat Barker ,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked The Silence of the Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF THE 21ST CENTURY

'Chilling, powerful, audacious' The Times

'Magnificent. You are in the hands of a writer at the height of her powers' Evening Standard

There was a woman at the heart of the Trojan War whose voice has been silent - until now. Discover the greatest Greek myth of all - retold by the witness that history forgot . . .

Briseis was a queen until her city was destroyed. Now she is a slave to the man who butchered her husband and brothers. Trapped in a world defined by men, can she survive…


If you love The Voyage Home...

Ad

Book cover of The Duke's Christmas Redemption

The Duke's Christmas Redemption by Arietta Richmond,

A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.

Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…

Book cover of Testament of Youth

Deborah Carr Author Of The Poppy Sisters

From my list on World War One that live rent free in my head.

Why am I passionate about this?

I discovered my passion for the First World War when researching my great-grandfather’s service history in the cavalry. I also write historical fiction with several of my books being set during the First World War and have spent thousands of hours over the past twenty years researching different aspects of this period, both from the point of view of the V.A.D.s, wounded soldiers, medical staff treating them, as well as grieving families. The stories I’ve come across never fail to haunt me and I can’t imagine I’ll ever tire of wanting to discover more about the people who survived these experiences, or stop needing to write books about them.

Deborah's book list on World War One that live rent free in my head

Deborah Carr Why Deborah loves this book

I first read this book about twenty years ago and still find it heartbreaking to think it was written by someone who experienced first-hand the horror of the First World War and with it so much pain and grief brought about not only from her experiences as a V.A.D. but also from her own personal losses.

It is a book that helped me understand as much as anything possibly could living in the twenty-first century, how much of a struggle it must have been for ordinary people to keep going and survive that dark time in history.

By Vera Brittain ,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Testament of Youth as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An autobiographical account of a young nurse's involvement in World War I.


Book cover of Circe

Raymond Walker Author Of Under Dark Skies

From Raymond's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Raymond's 3 favorite reads in 2025

Raymond Walker Why Raymond loves this book

The myth of "Circe" haunts the ancient world. This novel was a new beginning to a wonderful tale well told and written. I would recommend it.

By Madeline Miller ,

Why should I read it?

54 authors picked Circe as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The international Number One bestseller from the author of The Song of Achilles, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…


Book cover of The Daughters of Mars

Joanna Higgins Author Of In the Fall They Leave

From my list on WWI Angels of Mercy.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I’m neither a healthcare professional nor a historian, my passions are reading great fiction and continually striving to write it. Degrees in literature led to college teaching and then full-time writing. And that, to the publication of six works of fiction, including four historical novels. So, add to the mix, then, the years spent studying and teaching literature as well as those spent writing and rewriting—and, too, being an inveterate reader—and you have, in brief, the sum of my expertise. Each of the works listed below, I feel, has super qualities. I certainly enjoyed reading such masterful work and hope you will as well.   

Joanna's book list on WWI Angels of Mercy

Joanna Higgins Why Joanna loves this book

As a writer, I found so much to admire in The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally. Simply put, it’s epic. I was blown away by Kenneally’s Tolstoian precision of narrative and by the drama of two sisters who leave their confined lives in Australia and serve as nurses in WWI, first on a hospital ship in the Mediterranean and then on the Western Front. Keneally recreates a full sense of the times, showing how individuals can become enmeshed and shaped by huge historical events. The sisters confront not only the terrible effects of war but also a secret that haunts them. This is a stunning, multi-layered novel by a master, The Daughters of Mars has earned numerous accolades—and no wonder. It’s beautifully written and deeply affecting.  

By Thomas Keneally ,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Daughters of Mars as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1915, two spirited Australian sisters join the war effort as nurses, escaping the confines of their father's dairy farm and carrying a guilty secret with them. Used to tending the sick as they are, nothing could have prepared them for what they confront, first in the Dardanelles, then on the Western Front. Yet they find courage in the face of extreme danger and become the friends they never were before. And eventually they meet the kind of men worth giving up their precious independence for - if only they all survive.

At once epic in scope and extraordinarily intimate,…


If you love Pat Barker...

Ad

Book cover of Old Man Country

Old Man Country by Thomas R. Cole,

This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.

In these and other intimate conversations, the book…

Book cover of Hamnet

Lucy Fisher

From Lucy's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Unknown Author Why Lucy loves this book

It really brings to life how Shakespeare and Agnes's world in Stratford-upon-Avon might have been, and makes you feel how the pain of a child's loss was felt no less keenly hundreds of years ago.

By Maggie O'Farrell ,

Why should I read it?

47 authors picked Hamnet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021
'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times
'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell

TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither…


Book cover of The Night Watchman
Book cover of Horse
Book cover of Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,210

readers submitted
so far, will you?