67 Books Like What Still Burns

I do love a good revenge story, and Dylan—the main character—is all about vengeance. Aided and abetted by her best friend, Daniel, that she’s carrying a torch for, the will-they-or-won’t-they as they try to bring down the bad guy has the propulsive plot exploding in more ways than one. This is set in the Bay Area, so it feels like a little mini-vacation if you’ve never been!

Some books may shy away from taboos, but Heather Levy writes fearlessly, dragging topics into the open and spotlighting them, so talking about them is unavoidable.

This isn’t only the story of a woman trying to clear her or her stepbrother’s names after the man who abused her throughout her adolescence turns up murdered; it’s a coming of age as she leans into what she desires and steps into that power.

I love that this is set in rural Oklahoma, a part of the country I feel gets overlooked as far as thrillers and noir go, and the second chance romance and potential that builds between Sam and Eric. This book does feature frank discussions of BDSM/kink and how an abuser exploits it, so please read the content warnings before diving in!

It’s hard to go home again after you’ve lived outside the state for several years, but coming home knowing everyone thinks you’ve killed a man after his body turns up? Well, that’s a great way to open a book, and it just gets better.

Kelly Ford always paints a nuanced picture of Arkansas, juxtaposing the region’s beauty and potential with the poverty and reality of actually growing up there. The relationship between Janie and her high school love interest, Gloria, builds beautifully with a plot twist I didn’t see coming.

I love May Cobb books because of the messy drama, and this one serves this up in spades. A murder, a spicy love triangle, East Texas, and a handsome stranger all at the center of it—count me in!

As the mother of a preteen and a teenager, I also appreciated the inclusion of a teen daughter and how her involvement impacted the plot. While at times I’ve grieved that my two best friends from high school and I no longer live in the same city, this book laced my nostalgia with a healthy heaping of reality and showed that sometimes the people who’ve grown with you may also be the ones holding you back from further maturation.

Another fire, another story, this one a graphic memoir about the 2017 wildfires that ravaged Northern California, claiming dozens of lives and destroying the author's home. It's a beautiful book, illustrated with a simplicity and starkness that pulls you inexorably forward. The night of the fire itself is present in the narrative, but the majority of the book is occupied with what comes after: the unexpected kindness of friends and strangers, the nonlinear progression of grief, the bureaucracy and absurdism of tragedy, and all the questions of how you begin to rebuild.

St. George Reef Lighthouse is located about six miles off Point St. George on the coast of Northern California, not far from the Oregon border. It is built atop, and partly chiseled into, a massive wave-swept rock. Finished in 1892, St. George Reef took roughly a decade to build, at a cost of $752,000, making it far and away the most expensive lighthouse ever built in the United States. The dramatic history of this iconic lighthouse—replete with engineering feats and tragic deaths—is well-told by Powers, who provides one of the best profiles of a single lighthouse ever written. 

In my very favorite story in this book full of favorites, “Pilgrims,” young children cope with adult reality in a Lord of the Flies-like atmosphere where a tragic accident is offset by the innocent gift of a lost tooth, a talisman meant to create magic in a world that can seem devoid of it. How to Breathe forefronts girls and teens struggling with guilt, peer pressure, identity, envy, sickness, death. Sounds grim, but the writing, the world Orringer creates, is as beautiful and moving as it is dark. Her characters are the kind you can live inside, remember being, feel for. I think about them a lot, still, and I read the book more than a decade ago.

Tad Williams has many acclaimed series, but this stand-alone novel is my favorite. The protagonist is pulled into another realm where magic reigns supreme. The protagonist must uncover his past while learning about his place in the magical realm before both worlds are destroyed. The way Williams has connected up the two worlds is unique, and the world-building alone gets this story on my must-read list.

This American classic by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Larry McMurtry, is read by university students worldwide. It’s set in its own time of indulgent decadence where little value is placed on the lives of individuals met by Danny Deck, the sad-sack protagonist, who denigrates his published work to the point of tearing up a copy of the novel he carries with him before drowning his own sorry self in the river of the Rio Grande. Yet, Danny is as much at fault for the sloppy treatment of the company he keeps as his company is for being disingenuous.   

What McMurtry calls normal life, or mundane happiness, through the voice of novelist Deck, is seen as obtainable if one wants to pursue the creative arts. His conclusion is that the two simply don’t mix. As he explores this idea in a higgledy-piggledy fashion, Deck sets about self-destructing, which has nothing to do… show more.

Gloria Anzaldúa was born and raised in South Texas, growing up along the U.S.-Mexican border. For many years she lived in San Francisco, and then in Santa Cruz, California.

The first 113 pages of the book are stories and essays drawn from her life experiences as a woman of Mexican and Indian heritage, daily experiencing life at the physical border between the United States and Mexico.

She was raised in a strongly Catholic tradition, while also drawn to and inventing her own spirituality rooted in indigenous practices of harmony, balance, and reverence for the earth. She was a lesbian in a straight world that condemned her woman-loving sensibility.

Each of these is a “borderland” to be navigated and negotiated, and each of these borders is rich with insight, life, laughter, tears, violence, and love. The last 100 pages of the book is titled “Un Agitado Viento/ Ehécatl, The Wind.” It… show more.