Here are 100 books that Turbulent fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love 'Show, Don’t Tell' because it really brings a novel to life for the reader. It’s something so many writers struggle with, but it can turn a so-so novel into one readers can’t put down. Losing yourself in a story is the sign of great writing, and when a writer can show me what’s in their head and do it in a way that makes me forget I’m reading, well, that’s a book that keeps me turning the pages until it’s done. And that’s my favorite part of reading, writing, and teaching writing.
This book is one of my all-time favorites, because even though I knew it was fiction, it felt like nonfiction as I was reading it. It was that authentic, and that alive. I truly felt like I was reading an actual history book about an event from my own world.
The narrative structure was also amazing, telling the entire story through interviews with survivors of the zombie war, and I was riveted by those stories. They showed me what it was like to face that zombie horror, which made me desperate to know what happened, how they survived, and how they managed. Although I was reading, it felt like I was watching actual people tell their tales.
It began with rumours from China about another pandemic. Then the cases started to multiply and what had looked like the stirrings of a criminal underclass, even the beginning of a revolution, soon revealed itself to be much, much worse.
Faced with a future of mindless man-eating horror, humanity was forced to accept the logic of world government and face events that tested our sanity and our sense of reality. Based on extensive interviews with survivors and key players in the ten-year fight against the horde, World War Z brings the finest traditions of journalism to bear on what is…
When an EMP brings down the power grid, Dr. Anna Hastings must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology. She joins devoted father Mark Ryan and his young daughter on a perilous journey across a thousand miles of backcountry trails.
I grew up watching the best horror movies of the 80s. My parents put me to bed watching Nightmare on Elm Street and this harbored my passion for a truly scary bedtime story. Zombies became my focus when I was trying to decide what road to take with my own writing. There’s something familiar about them, since they were once humans, but also terrifying. They don’t need to eat or sleep, they never stop, and they’ll just keep coming no matter how much you fight them off. I spent my twenties devouring every zombie book and movie I could and now I'm privileged to be a part of this classic horror genre.
The governor series satisfied my Walking Dead craving without being redundant. It gave me a deeper look into the bad guy we all just love to hate so much. There were twists and turns in this story and once I hit the end my jaw was literally dropped from the shock of all that was revealed about this character’s back story.
Based on the award-winning graphic novels created by Robert Kirkman, if you liked The Walking Dead TV series, you'll love this.
The world has gone to hell - and that story starts here.
Philip Blake's life has been turned upside down. In less than seventy-two hours, an inexplicable event has resulted in people everywhere . . . turning. Now the walking dead roam the streets, massacring the living, and it seems that nowhere is safe. Escaping his small town, Philip has just one focus in life - to protect his young daughter Penny. And he'll do whatever it takes to…
I love writing and reading about comedy, friendship, and satire. I also love making fun of the absurdities in our society that we tend to accept without thinking. The world is a dark and scary place, and it’s my honor to help people leave their anxieties behind for awhile. I hope you enjoy the books on this list and the escape they provide as much as I do.
It might seem strange that this outrageous and thoroughly enjoyable comedy wound up on my list of workplace comedies.
In the original version of Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet was stuck in a Regency-era comedy of manners. Her only choice of life “careers” was “wife.”
Grahame-Smith has taken Austin’s words and turned this classic upside down by giving her a very important job—Zombie Killer.
It’s a hilarious take on the power of women, and, strangely enough, adding a Zombie apocalypse has made some of the characters’ motivations much more understandable.
Elizabeth’s workplace is her small village in England, and, always on call, she has lots of work to do.
I loved this book, and I think Austin would have, too. It’s my kind of humor.
When an EMP brings down the power grid, Dr. Anna Hastings must learn what it means to be a doctor in a world deprived of almost all technology. She joins devoted father Mark Ryan and his young daughter on a perilous journey across a thousand miles of backcountry trails.
I grew up watching the best horror movies of the 80s. My parents put me to bed watching Nightmare on Elm Street and this harbored my passion for a truly scary bedtime story. Zombies became my focus when I was trying to decide what road to take with my own writing. There’s something familiar about them, since they were once humans, but also terrifying. They don’t need to eat or sleep, they never stop, and they’ll just keep coming no matter how much you fight them off. I spent my twenties devouring every zombie book and movie I could and now I'm privileged to be a part of this classic horror genre.
I absolutely loved this book because I am one of those not-so-rare adult Disney movie lovers and this book had all the classic fairy tales I’ve come to know and love through Disney, but with the unique twist of being reimagined as zombie tales! It was the best of both worlds for me. I also loved that as you read through the different fairy tales they all start to connect to one another. It was very cleverly written and not overly disgusting that even non-horror lovers could read and enjoy it.
Once upon a time, a mysterious plague beset a quiet village in the woods—a plague of the walking dead. Suddenly, beloved fairy tale characters are thrown into a world of stark violence and horror: Cinderella is worked to death before the ball, Pinocchio is made from children's corpses, and Little Red Riding Hood finds more than wolves in the forest.
Surreal and full of black humor, Zombie Fairy Tales is a genre-bending narrative of a world on the brink of apocalypse, a world with no happily ever afters.
I’m a writer who loves to read and wants to write all the fantasy genres, or at least, wants to try. I’ve always been fascinated by monsters and the question, “What if?” Dystopian, Apocalyptic, Post-Apocalyptic, and Fantasy gives us the freedom to explore both these things. It’s amazing how these genres can bend our world and expectation when we explore these two things. What if the world ended but not in the way we expect? What if monsters were real? What if we are the real monsters? These questions are terrifying but so fascinating to consider and blending fantasy with apocalyptic has been a safe way to explore them.
This book felt so real. Ilsa Beck did such an amazing job at writing a book about a very saturated genre that was fresh and terrifying because her use of science really made me think this was a very real way the world could end. Also, it is wonderful when a book features a flawed, but strong female lead, something I always strive to write in my books. The main character, Alex, is real and three-dimensional and relatable, even as she’s trying to survive a sudden zombie apocalypse all on her own.
A cataclysmic event. A dramatically changed world. A zombie army. Can three kids really survive... and who can they trust?
Alex has run away and is hiking through the wilderness with her dead parents' ashes, about to say goodbye to the life she no longer wants to live. But then the world suddenly changes. An electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky zapping every electronic device and killing the vast majority of adults. For those spared, it's a question of who can be trusted and who has changed...
Everyone still alive has turned - some for the better (those who acquired…
I feel like I’ve read all of my life—though I know at some point someone had to teach me—but stories and storytelling are in my DNA. The first four books were my writing “primers.” I learned more about storytelling from them than any how-to book. They also fueled my passion to write in different genres. You will notice the words “blush free” in some of my recommendations. That is because I love well-told stories that live between prim and steamy, books where I don’t have to flip past the steamy stuff to get back to the story. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have!
This recommendation is a little different from the others on my list. This “Titanic in Space” story really caught my imagination. It’s intense, romantic, and wildly believable. It does have romantic tension, but nothing steamy—the characters don’t have time or the safety for messing around. That is also another reason for my recommendation. It is an action and adventure story that includes great world-building and character interactions that make sense. I also love the author’s other books, but they aren’t blush-free. I do have to flip some pages to get past the steam. But it’s the Titanic! In space! Super fun read.
A reimagining of the Titanic disaster set in the far future among the stars…
Traveling unexpectedly aboard the luxury liner Nebula Dream on its maiden voyage across the galaxy, space marine Captain Nick Jameson is ready for ten relaxing days, and hoping to forget his last disastrous mission behind enemy lines. He figures he’ll gamble at the casino, take in the shows, maybe even have a shipboard fling with Mara Lyrae, the beautiful but reserved businesswoman he meets.
All his plans vaporize when the ship suffers a wreck of Titanic proportions. Captain and crew abandon ship, leaving the 8000 passengers…
Growing up, I’m not embarrassed to admit the horror genre was too scary for me. I don’t remember when it was but at some point that changed and it’s become my favourite. It started with horror movies but as I became a writer, that love transferred to horror books. My favourite type of horror focuses more on the character than the scares. I don’t see why I should be worried about a character’s fate if they’re one-dimensional. I’d trade in great character development for clichéd scares in horror any day.
First of all, if you go into this book expecting a slasher story, you’ll be disappointed. While its characters are rooted in the horror genre, the story focuses more on thriller until its final act. However, the best thing about the book is its character development with its main character and the other Final Girls. While the plot collapses in on itself every so often, the character work keeps it afloat and provides the suspense to make the reader scared.
VOTED GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD BEST HORROR NOVEL OF 2021
A Good Morning America Buzz Pick
“The horror master…puts his unique spin on slasher movie tropes.”-USA Today
A can't-miss summer read, selected by The New York Times, Oprah Daily, Time, USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer,CNN, LitHub, BookRiot,Bustle, Popsugar and the New York Public Library
In horror movies, the final girls are the ones left standing when the credits roll. They made it through the worst night of their lives…but what happens after?
Like his bestselling novel The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady…
In order to read, I need fast-paced action, adventure, compelling characters with depthful backstories and motives, and a way of challenging and commentating on the most controversial morals of the present day. To write, I need the exact same thing. Every world I create is filled with action in every chapter, characters with invincible will-strength, and situations that bend the very borders of moral thinking.
The Culling, The Sowing, and The Raising by Steven Dos Santos provides one of the most compelling stories of conflicting choices I have ever encountered. My strongest love for this story is the main protagonist, Lucky, and his stoicism through the hardships that he is forced to endure. This story taught me to always search for the best option in life, and that there is always a choice, even when it seems that there isn’t. From this story, I will always take with me the ability to love fiercely and do what I must for that love.
Recruitment Day is here...if you fail, a loved one will die For Lucian “Lucky” Spark, Recruitment Day means the Establishment, a totalitarian government, will force him to become one of five Recruits competing to join the ruthless Imposer task force. Each Recruit participates in increasingly difficult and violent military training for a chance to advance to the next level. Those who fail must choose an “Incentive”—a family member—to be brutally killed. If Lucky fails, he’ll have to choose death for his only living relative: Cole, his four-year-old brother. Lucky will do everything he can to keep his brother alive, even…
Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform.
A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes ofThe Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I readMr. Burnsand saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.
It's the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive?
Mr Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future for America's most famous family.
When I was eleven, I picked up a book about a girl and a boy who get lost on a backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada. It’s the first book I can remember reading over and over and over again. I wanted to be in that tent and in that forest figuring out how to survive. Since then, I’ve been hooked on books about people facing grueling physical challenges, surviving in the wilderness, and finding out what they’re made of. They’re urgent and compelling and the stakes are high, and I’ll never stop loving the thrill of reading about people being pushed to their physical and mental limits.
This book is tense! Jess is alone in the Canadian wilderness, still injured from the car accident that killed her mom, and now her dad has been murdered and his cabin burned down. Jess must figure out how to survive in the cold with no shelter and no way out when nobody knows where she is. This is part survival story and part thriller. Jess is driven by her desire to survive as much as her desire for revenge. The survival aspect here is enough to keep you reading, but I also loved trying to piece together the mystery of why her dad was killed.
Jess is stranded in the woods. She has few supplies and only her dog for company. Her survival skills are limited, and she has disabilities that make physical labor a challenge. And winter is on its way. How did she get here?
Alternating between the past and the present, this tightly-paced novel tells the story of a girl who survived a car crash that killed her mother, then was pulled from foster care and sent to live with her estranged survivalist father in the remote Canadian wilderness. Jess was just beginning to get to know her dad when a secret…
