Books like Travelers Along the Way — picked by fans

A thoughtfully built world that includes people who ride into battle on the backs of phoenixes? Yes. Everyone needs this in their life. Sister queens, found family, and bonds with magical creatures -- Crown of Feathers is brimming with details that make this world feel real and lived in. 

Filled with magic, prophecy, and ancient goddesses, Hunted By the Sky transports you to a world where a girl with a star-shaped birthmark seeks revenge for the murder of her parents, and a boy who is willing to do anything to save his father will soon meet. In this beautiful novel, you will find thoughtful worldbuilding and fantastical mirrors to our own reality, exploring identity, class, and love. 

A transporting and unforgettable blend of science fiction, dystopia, and Old West. The world of Dustborn is both familiar and unfamiliar at once, filled with tight-knit communities, dangerous villains, and maps to a better place. In these pages, you'll find a story of survival, family, and hope

If you’re a fan of reimagined classic fairy tales, you’ll love C. J. Redwine’s Robin Hood-esque take on Snow White (with dragons!)

Unlike the classic Princess Snow White of old, Princess Lorelai is no simpering miss. She’s a powerful magic-wielder with a cause. As Lorelai learns to control and develop her magic, friends (and dragon-shifters!) join the quest to rid her kingdom—and the young shifter king she loves—from its menace: her wicked aunt, who used magic to take over the land.

With some imagery loosely borrowed—and creatively adjusted!—from the classic Snow White story, this new tale features a fresh heroine who doesn’t expect anyone to rescue her kingdom for her. The Shadow Queen is a romantic and epically-reimagined fairy tale with beautiful themes of sacrificial love.

No one should claim to understand the crusades without having first read this book.

This work by a scholar of Islamic history is based entirely on Muslim sources, and as such provides a mirror image to the works which draw heavily on Latin, Greek, French and Italian sources. It is concise (119 pages), easy to read, and backed by a large document section as well as recommended reading for each chapter. For anyone who is not an Islamic scholar, the book is worth owning for the clear, succinct definitions of key Arabic terms such as iqta, qadi, and jihad itself. The guide to Arab names is invaluable. The book provides an overview of sources, describes the Muslim Middle East before the crusades and then describes Muslim reaction to the various Christian incursions into the Dar al-Islam as depicted in contemporary Arab and Turkish sources.

Readers may be familiar with The Arabian Nights, the source material behind this fascinating novel. Yet, what distinguishes Jamila Ahmed’s retelling is her focus on the famed storyteller, Shaherazade, whose exposure of the Seljuk king’s wife’s infidelity sets in motion a violent chain of events in twelfth-century Persia.

In lush, sensuous prose, Ahmed fills this vividly imagined, action-packed novel with compelling characters and labyrinthine tales within tales populated with mythical adventurers and creatures with magical powers.

The elaborate, psychologically complex portrait of Shaherazade at the heart of the novel celebrates the power of storytelling while paying homage to the agency of the storyteller.

There has been an explosion of interest in the Crusades since 9/11, with many medieval historians working hard to push back against over-simplified and often inaccurate depictions of Christian holy war and Christian-Muslim relations. This impressively researched book adds a fascinating new dimension to the story of the Crusades, examining relations between newly arrived European Catholics and the many and varied indigenous Levantine Christian communities in the decades following the Crusader conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. MacEvitt rejects the dominant narrative, which held that the Frankish conquerors, imbued with the rigid prejudices of an intolerant European Christendom, had little interaction with or understanding of the local populations. Instead, he paints a portrait of a surprisingly practical and flexible Crusader regime, characterized by extensive Frankish-local social, religious, and legal interactions. MacEvitt's nuanced model, which he dubs "rough tolerance," avoids both idealization and demonization, and offers a fruitful way to approach… show more.

I first read this book over thirty years ago and it is set during the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars in Southern France. There is a major love and romance element to the plot that sees Roland, a troubadour, pitted against his half-brother Amalric.

I bought the book second-hand and have read it a few times over the years. Beforehand, I knew very little about the brutal Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade in particular, and this book ignited my interest in a period not often covered in historical fiction. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this little-known period of history.

I chose this book as an easy leisure read for a holiday in Greece, and I fell in enduring love with it. Umberto Eco is not only the master of the theory of sign systems (semiotics) but also able to escape from the dry plains of scientific conclusions to the rich landscapes of historical narratives.

In this book, he shows us that Europe’s early development has not just been the linearly ascending advance from ancient Greece, via the Roman Empire, to the Renaissance. The narrator he invented for his book lets us return to the many threats from which the Middle Ages in Europe could emerge.

I started reading it as an entertaining storytelling book, but in the middle of this adventure, I realized how deeply into scientific thought Eco, the specialist in medieval studies, had abducted me.

I have always been fascinated by medieval history, but I became interested in this particular era after reading this book and learning about the German Order of Swordbrothers (Schwertbrüderorden). 

What intrigued me was that they were a small Order, not very pious or saintly. They were unorthodox and argued constantly with Bishop Albert, the leader of the Christian mission. They were a rough and ready lot, acting more like brigands than warrior monks. One of the brothers murdered the first master, and they locked up their second master when he tried to exert more control over their behavior. Over time, they were accused of almost every crime.

I loved Christiansen’s book, which opened a new world of discovery. He writes in a witty, easy-to-read style that hooked me from the beginning.