Here are 100 books that Thornhill fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m an author of genre-bent stories and grew up with a love of dark tales. In particular, I was a fan of things that layered stories and linked their themes together, even if you didn’t necessarily notice initially. For example, the Alienfranchise is a story of human survival, but also of corporate conspiracy. When I come across books that mix stories or add interesting structural elements, it instantly draws me in, so I set out to create exactly that with my release Ailuros. But I’m not alone in experimenting like that, so I hope you find some fun, scary releases you may not have known about in my list.
Described as a faux documentary in the style of The Blair Witch Project, this one is an interesting take on the horror genre. Interviews, descriptions of crime-related exhibits, and written testimonies all come together to make the book feel both investigative and more than a little fractured. It’s an uncomfortable combination that helps create a nice sense of fear for readers.
In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister--at all costs.
Once a year, a road appears in the forest. And at the end of it, the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons. Lucy's game isn't for the faint of heart. If you win, you escape with your life. But if you lose....
Sara's sister disappeared one year ago--and only Sara knows where she is. Becca went to find the ghost of Lucy Gallows and is trapped on the road…
Mal's older brother has disappeared into thin air. Laura's parents went away for the weekend and when she gives them a call, they have no idea who she is. In pursuit of answers, the teens become entangled with two others similarly targeted by a force they don't understand and now,…
Coming of age in the '70s, I set out to prove that I could do anything men could do as if it were my duty as a woman. This led me to become an exploration geologist, jumping out of helicopters in grizzly bear country. But I had a nagging feeling that I was neglecting what was meaningful to me. I struggled to even know what that was. My next career as a story analyst led me deep into the world of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung and a fascinating exploration of how people find their best life. And I’m still enthusiastically exploring.
From the first chapter, as I read Charlie’s letter to a friend, I wished I could meet the man this teenager would become. The magic of this book is that it is related entirely through journal-like letters. Charlie writes with so much authenticity, curiosity, and vulnerability that I’m glad he has three friends who hold him with love as he faces his demons and comes of age.
I found the ways he makes sense of the world fascinating, humourous, and admirable, and at other times heartbreaking. I sincerely admire Charlie’s strength as he manages to sustain vulnerability and a constant rope of connection to himself, even though it gets very thin at times.
A modern cult classic, a major motion picture and a timeless bestseller, The Perks of Being a Wallflower is a deeply affecting coming-of-age story.
Charlie is not the biggest geek in high school, but he's by no means popular.
Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie is attempting to navigate through the uncharted territory of high school. The world of first dates and mixed tapes, family dramas and new friends. The world of sex, drugs, and music - when all one requires to feel infinite is that…
I’ve always admired epistolary novels—stories told in the form of diaries, letters, or other mass media. They seem so real and so much more believable than plain narratives. When dealing with fantastic subjects, like paranormal phenomena, any technique that can draw the weird back into the real world helps me become more invested as a reader. It’s a quality I’ve also tried to capture as a horror writer. Moreover, the epistolary format pairs well with unreliable narrators, often filtering stories so as to make them more ambiguous and disturbing. From the many epistolary works I’ve read over the years, here are my picks for the most compelling—and creepy.
Of all the epistolary horror stories I've yet encountered, this is the most bizarre and puzzling, thanks to a disturbed, unreliable, maddening, yet pitiable narrator.
Is the young diarist insane, or is she the only person who can see the truth of what’s happening in her sheltered boarding school? Is the new girl, Ernessa, a vampire? Is Ernessa even real at all? I couldn't tell, but I kept wondering.
I thoroughly enjoyed the mystery and the experience of trying to determine what was actually going on.
Writing in the form of a journal this novel tells the story of odd goings-on in a girls boarding school in the late 1960s. The unnamed narrator is a student at the school, she is intellectual and somewhat aloof and associates with an intense clique of girls. When Dora (one of the strangers) is found dead one night, a tragic accident is at first suspected. But then the rumours begin to circulate about Ernessa, the loner of the group. Is she a bad influence? A spoiled brat? Or is she a vampire?
The summer holidays have finally arrived and Scout can’t wait for her adventure in the big rig with Dad. They’re on a mission to deliver donations of dog food to animal rescue shelters right across the state. There’ll be dad-jokes, rock-collecting, and a brilliant plan that will make sure everyone’s…
I was a late reader. I was, in fact, forcefully against reading. You’d have had to drag me by my ear to get me anywhere near a book. I was dyslexic, suffered with Irlen syndrome, and detested the embarrassing fact that I found reading too difficult. I thought my mother had invented some kind of cruel torture when she insisted I read to her every day. It never worked. And then… it did. I read my first book at the age of 12, and it was written in the form of letters. It was Animorphs Book 1 by KA Applegate, and the rest, as they say, is history.
This book sucker-punched me. Trigger warning for child abuse, gaslighting, alcoholism, drug abuse, EDs, Incest, and self-harm. Told entirely in verse, this novel follows the lives of identical twins, Kaeleigh and Raeanne, the seemingly perfect all-American girls. But each sister is hiding a dark secret. Raeanne uses drugs, alcohol, and sex to replace the love her father lavishes on her sister. Neither sister is holding onto their dark secrets very well, and pretty soon one will have to save the other. But who will step up? This novel was my first experience reading a novel in verse, and I still marvel at the technical skill it must have taken and the bruise my heart sustained in the process.
Kaeleigh and Raeanne are identical down to the dimple. As daughters of a district-court judge father and a politician mother, they are an all-American family -- on the surface. Behind the facade each sister has her own dark secret, and that's where their differences begin.
For Kaeleigh, she's the misplaced focus of Daddy's love, intended for a mother whose presence on the campaign trail means absence at home. All that Raeanne sees is Daddy playing a game of favorites -- and she is losing. If she has to lose,…
I have always straddled between the worlds of fiction and poetry. I received my MFA in poetry in 2016, but during my time in the program, I was often told my poems were too narrative. Sometimes in my fiction workshops in undergrad, I was told my stories were too poetic. So when I finally jumped into the world of verse, I really fell in love with the intersection of poetry and story. Finally, there was a medium that felt “just right!” There are so many fantastic novels in verse out there—with so many more to come—but I hope you’ll enjoy these five favorites of mine!
Long Way Down does an incredible job of telling such a contained story, telling everything within the span of a single elevator ride.
Reynolds uses the elevator trip to make the protagonist encounter ghosts of multiple dead people in his community, all connected to his murdered brother, and question if vengeance is the right answer to his grief. This is a well-deserved classic, and a must-read for all novel-in-verse fans!
“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of…
I am a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist. For years I had been interested in mindfulness as a way to help my therapy clients, and had dabbled in it myself. But the practice took on new urgency for me in my mid-forties when I developed a long-term illness that led to depression. I was lost and didn’t know how to re-find my equilibrium. Every day felt like an enormous battle as I struggled to keep going, and often thought of ending my life. I’m so thankful that I found relief through mindful connection to myself, to a deeper awareness in which all of our experience unfolds, and through connection to the people I love.
This little volume had been sitting on my bookshelf for several years before I noticed it one day. Nearly every page blew my mind. Chögyam Trungpa writes with startling clarity and insight about the nature of the mind. He captures the beauty—infused with sadness—that we find when we inhabit the simplicity of the present. This is a book that I’ve returned to again and again; with each reading I discover the revelation of a new layer of understanding.
The classic guide to enlightened living that first presented the Buddhist path of the warrior to a Western audience
There is a basic human wisdom that can help solve the world’s problems. It doesn’t belong to any one culture or region or religious tradition—though it can be found in many of them throughout history. It’s what Chögyam Trungpa called the sacred path of the warrior. The sacred warrior conquers the world not through violence or aggression, but through gentleness, courage, and self-knowledge. The warrior discovers the basic goodness of human life and radiates that goodness out into the world for…
Eleven-year-old Sierra just wants a normal life. After her military mother returns from the war overseas, the two hop from home to homelessness while Sierra tries to help her mom through the throes of PTSD.
The world is an amazing, diverse place that needs stories that represent everyone. I identify as gender fluid and am part of my city’s LGBTQIA+ community. For kids, there aren’t enough stories that feature non-straight cis protagonists where that identity isn’t the focus. LGBTQIA+ kids exist. They are normal. Let a gay kid go into space. Let a teenage lesbian solve a mystery. Let a trans girl defeat a dragon. Let an ace teen be a witch. Everybody deserves their adventure.
Hazel Hill thinks she’s the only girl in the 7th grade who likes girls thatway, until Tyler tells her that Ella Quinn told him she likes Hazel.
But Ella Quinn is pretty and popular, and she’s Hazel’s biggest rival in the upcoming speech contest. They talk. Ella confesses she only told Tyler that to stop his sexual harassment. It turns out, Tyler has been harassing a lot of girls.
They tell the school, but the teachers won’t do anything about it, even blaming the girls and punishing them. It is not a coincidence that Tyler’s mom is the superintendent of schools. Determined not to let Tyler get away with it, Hazel comes up with a plan.
Girls in Hazel's school are being harassed by an anonymous person online, someone who seems to know all about their insecurities and dreams. With no one willing to stand up and face the bully, how will Hazel be able to prove her suspicions? Hazel Hill is Going to Win This One confronts bullying, both online and in person, to give children the power to stand up for themselves and speak out against harassment.
Throughout my life, I have been fascinated by humanity’s place within deeper time. As a boy, I collected rocks and fossils, and at university studied geology. The long term has also been a theme running throughout my journalism career at New Scientist and the BBC, and it inspired my research during a recent fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. I believe we need to embrace a deeper view of time if we are to navigate through this century’s grand challenges – and if we can, there’s hope, agency, and possibility to be discovered along the way.
The concept of the ‘good ancestor,’ originally coined by physician Jonas Salk, is the focus of Roman Krznaric’s excellent book about our relationship with future generations.
I’ve known Roman for a few years now: he spoke about long-term time on a panel I organised at the Hay Festival a few years ago, and he makes an appearance in my own book on a trip we both made to the House of Lords to watch a debate about future generation policy.
He is a crystal clear thinker and communicator, and I’ve learnt a lot from him. One of the most interesting (of many) ideas in his book is the idea that we are “colonising” the future: treating it as some distant no-man’s land where we can dump environmental degradation, malignant heirlooms, carbon emissions, and so on.
Of course, the future belongs to the people living there: our grandchildren. Roman makes a…
'This is the book our children's children will thank us for reading' - The Edge, U2
How can we be good ancestors?
From the first seeds sown thousands of years ago, to the construction of the cities we still inhabit, to the scientific discoveries that have ensured our survival, we are the inheritors of countless gifts from the past. Today, in an age driven by the tyranny of the now, with 24/7 news, the latest tweet, and the buy-now button commanding our attention, we rarely stop to consider how our actions will affect future generations. With such frenetic short-termism at…
Most drunks struggle to accept that they have a disease called “alcoholism” and feel shame, intertwined with fear, having to admit it. I, on the other hand, embraced it. Being alcoholic meant I wasn’t “crazy” after all like Grandma. At 21, I embraced the disease along with 12 Step recovery, thanking my lucky stars that there was something I could do about my chaotic hippied lifestyle. “Don’t pick up the first fix, pill, or drink and you can’t get drunk.” Could the solution be so simple? It is. From the moment I set down the drink and drugs, I knew I had to share this amazing revelation with others and my writing career began.
Full disclosure, I know Bill Hanlon and we exchanged books at one of several speaking engagements together.
I cherish this book and have a signed copy featured in my collection. It is a simple straightforward ingenious way to disrupt destructive patterns in all relationships. And it works! Being in the mental health field, I would make this wonderful book mandatory for all counselors to read, if I had that power.
Full of examples on how to modify micro-behaviors, results could not be more life-changing. I found that I had the power to alter destructive patterns in my life by reacting differently in any given situation! Bill’s book explains how to do it.
"If you do one thing different, read this book! It is filled with practical, creative, effective, down-to-earth solutions to life's challenging problems."-Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Divorce Busting
The 20th anniversary edition of a self-help classic, updated with a new preface: Tapping into widespread popular interest in highly effective, short-term therapeutic approaches to personal problems, author Bill O'Hanlon offers 10 Solution Keys to help you free yourself from "analysis paralysis" and quickly get unstuck from aggravating problems.
Tired of feeling stuck all the time when you're trying to solve a problem or are facing conflict? Do you get easily flustered or…
Zeni lives in the Flint Hills of Southeast Kansas. This tale begins with her dream of befriending a miniature zebu calf coming true and follows Zeni as she works to befriend Zara. Enjoy full-color illustrations and a story filled with whimsy and plenty of opportunity for discussions around the perspectives…
All my books, for adults and kids, include the theme that things are seldom what they seem. I link this to the slow realization when I was young that my family had an uncommon history. Novels featuring spies go deep into this theme, as a good spy is always manipulating their environment and presenting versions of themselves that may or may not be true. When my own children were little, we read so many of these novels. That reading is what inspired the Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls series.
This novel ticks all the boxes! A diverse cast of characters from different backgrounds and different parts of the world are brought together in a secret spy society and embark on an engaging international adventure to save the world.
I’m an avid traveler so the global setting of this fast-paced series appeals to me as does Ponti’s deft hand at weaving a mystery. We get clues enough to stay glued to the page but not so many we figure out the ending too soon. The ‘family’ dynamics of the spy kids grounds the story. Readers might recognize their own sibling interactions in the pages.
A New York Times bestseller! A GMA3 Summer Reading Squad Selection! “Ingeniously plotted, and a grin-inducing delight.” —People “Will keep young readers glued to the page…So when do I get the sequel?” —Beth McMullen, author of Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls
In this thrilling new series that Stuart Gibbs called “a must-read,” Edgar Award winner James Ponti brings together five kids from all over the world and transforms them into real-life spies—perfect for fans of Spy School and Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.
Sara Martinez is a hacker. She recently broke into the New York City foster care…
