Here are 67 books that Wise Children fans have personally recommended if you like
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Bad things happen to good people every day, and it seems unfair. I’ve lost friends to cancer, heart disease, and accidents, and I always wonder why it had to be someone who was decent and good and kind. At the same time, other people get away with all sorts of crimes, including murder. I can’t change the way the world works. So, in my own books and the books I like to read, the good guys might have some tough times, but in the end, they win. And the bad guys get what they deserve.
I laugh out loud at the awkward social situations Lady Georgina, 34th in succession to the throne of England, gets into.
Although she has been trained in all the proper graces, she is impoverished, and I find her creative, muddled attempts to figure out who murdered the body in her bathtub while meeting royal expectations endearing and amusing. I also enjoy glimpses into the mores of the royal family in 1930.
The New York Times bestselling author of the Molly Murphy and Constable Evan Evans mysteries turns her attentions to "a feisty new heroine to delight a legion of Anglophile readers."*
London, 1932. Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie, 34th in line for the English throne, is flat broke. She's bolted Scotland, her greedy brother, and her fish-faced betrothed. London is a place where she'll experience freedom, learn life lessons aplenty, do a bit of spying for HRH-oh, and find a dead Frenchman in her tub. Now her new job is to clear her long family name...
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…
I wrote my first mystery in second grade, thinking I was writing a page-turning thriller when in reality I penned a sweet, little cozy where everything turns out okay in the end and everyone always has a cup of hot chocolate and a vanilla cookie in hand. Somehow, I’ve managed to turn my love of baking and writing into a long-term career. With over 30 mysteries and counting I’m not sure if I’m going to run out of recipes or ways to kill someone off first.
This is the series that got me hooked on culinary mysteries and Diane Mott Davidson is the GOAT. If you’re looking for a cozy winter escape filled with food and a side of delectable murder, this is the book for you. Could you pick up any of the books in this long-running series, sure, but don’t do it—resist temptation. Start at the beginning when we meet Colorado caterer Goldy Bear as she whips up delicious sweet and savory eats while solving a murder. Trust me, you’ll thank me later because once you finish this book you’ll be running to the nearest bookstore for the next installment and running to your kitchen for a midnight snack.
MEET THE CATERER WHO WHIPPED UP THE MULTIMILLION-COPY MYSTERY SERIES– AS GOLDY SOLVES HER FIRST MURDER!
Diane Mott Davidson’s winning recipe of first-class suspense and five-star fare has won her and caterer Goldy critical raves and a regular place on major bestseller lists across the country. In Goldy’s tantalizing debut, she serves up a savory dish of secrets, suspicions, and murder....
Catering a wake is not Goldy’s idea of fun. Yet the Colorado caterer throws herself into preparing a savory feast including Poached Salmon and Strawberry Shortcake Buffet designed to soothe forty mourners. And her culinary efforts seem to be…
Enchanted by mysteries of the cozy, comic, or traditional sort, I was delighted to realize that they replay the holy grail myth. Here the Waste Land is the community paralyzed by the crime that cannot be undone, murder, the sleuth is the Grail Knight, and the Grail Cup is the restorative magic of the solution. Cozy or comic or traditional sleuths find the murderer by asking the right questions, so re-storying or restoring the fertility of the realm. Comedy is used for rebirth in the face of tragedy. I began to write cozies-with-an-edge, emphasizing women heroes who need each other as they face issues of today’s wasteland in climate change.
I love comic worlds that make unlikely families from the impoverished, slightly crazy, and the unlucky. Here is a study of friendship, affection, suspects, and oddballs washed up at the well-named Last Ditch Motel. Scottish therapist Lexy Campbell is stranded in small-town California by a faithless husband. She won’t desert her one client accused of murder by exploding toilet. Flummoxed America and California, this fish-out-of-water hooks up with Kathi, the allergic laundry operator, and her wife, Noleen, the Motel receptionist who hates people. Add perfectionist gay Todd trying to get Lexy into California grooming while too phobic to live with his beloved, stir in single mother Della, tiny Diego, and nerd Devin. Lexy’s car crash detecting needs them all. Last Ditch is a surefire series. I pre-order every one.
Lexy Campbell fights to prove the innocence of a client she's been providing marriage guidance to after she is accused of murdering her husband.
It's the Fourth of July in California and Lexy Campbell is headed home to Scotland. But first she must deliver her final dose of marriage guidance to the elderly Bombarros. They don't turn up for the session, but the cops do. Turns out Mr Bombarro is in the morgue and Mrs Bombarro is in the jail, arrested for murder.
Certain of the old lady's innocence, Lexy decides to stay and clear her name. But after her…
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…
Enchanted by mysteries of the cozy, comic, or traditional sort, I was delighted to realize that they replay the holy grail myth. Here the Waste Land is the community paralyzed by the crime that cannot be undone, murder, the sleuth is the Grail Knight, and the Grail Cup is the restorative magic of the solution. Cozy or comic or traditional sleuths find the murderer by asking the right questions, so re-storying or restoring the fertility of the realm. Comedy is used for rebirth in the face of tragedy. I began to write cozies-with-an-edge, emphasizing women heroes who need each other as they face issues of today’s wasteland in climate change.
For sheer delight, I give you mysteries featuring not-very-competent bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum, because they use comedyto portray as well as endurea world of endemic violence. Serious stuff like organized crime is made visible and bearable to the reader by foregrounding Stephanie’s chaos-strewn friendships with walking disasters like ex ‘ho Lula. The great comic creation, Grandma Mazur (aged 70, looks 90) also drags our beloved sleuth into peril that is hilarious as well as life-threatening. This time Grandma becomes a holy terror in online gaming, a change from geriatric sex-crazed boyfriends, falling into coffin caskets, or shooting the dinner chicken. Evanovich collides the crime caper with darker textures of urban suffering. Read for comedy as a survival skill with plenty of sex, death, and doughnuts.
Personal vendettas. Hidden treasure. A monkey named Carl. Stephanie Plum is as fearless as ever in the fourteenth hilarious novel in Janet Evanovich's bestselling Stephanie Plum series. Fearless Fourteen is not to be missed by fans of Harlan Coben and JD Robb.
Raves for Evanovich's bestselling series: 'A laugh a minute against a background of dastardly crime with a ditzy heroine and two - yes TWO - of the hottest heroes ever created' (Woman's Weekly); 'A laugh-out-loud page-turner' (Heat).
Stephanie's desperate enough for a bit of extra cash that she's agreed to help run security…
I am an award-winning author who grew up in a family of painters, poets, sculptors, and novelists; people who designed their lives around, and dedicated their lives to, artistic expression. I knew I wanted to be a writer at age three when I began dictating a poem every day to my mom. I first fell in love with Jane Austen as a student at Oxford, where I read my favorite of her novels, Persuasion.
I loved reading this book to my kids, who were immediately drawn into the heartbreaking story of Judith, a girl with Down Syndrome, who was separated from her twin sister, Joyce, and institutionalized for many years. This separation led to great pain for both sisters, until decades later, when Joyce brought Judith home, and enrolled her in an art program for differently-abled people. Slowly, Judith flourished, going on to become an artist of renown, with work displayed in museums and galleries around the world.
This tremendous story, of the bond between sisters, the therapeutic value of the creative process, and the potential for creating meaning and joy through artistic expression, helped my very young children develop empathy for and a deeper understanding of differently-abled people.
A moving and powerful introduction to the life and art of renowned artist, Judith Scott, as told by her twin sister, Joyce Scott and illustrated by Caldecott Honor artist, Melissa Sweet.
Judith Scott was born with Down syndrome. She was deaf, and never learned to speak. She was also a talented artist. Judith was institutionalized until her sister Joyce reunited with her and enrolled her in an art class. Judith went on to become an artist of renown with her work displayed in museums and galleries around the world.
Poignantly told by Joyce Scott in collaboration with Brie Spangler and…
I’m the child of immigrants and grew up imagining a second self—me, if my parents had never left India. Then, when I became a writer, doubles kept showing up in odd ways in my work. In my first play, House of Sacred Cows, I had identical twins played, farcically, by the same actor. My latest novel features two South Asian women: one, slightly wimpy, married to an unsympathetic guy called Mac, and another, in a permanent state of outrage, married to a nice man called Mat. My current project is a novel about mixed-race twins born in India but separated at birth.
I read this gorgeous, fanciful book in the days after my second child was born, confined to bed with the baby but exploring the imagined city of Entralla with twins Alva and Irva Dapp. This novel is a municipal guidebook, illustrated with photos of a model of Entralla, created by Carey, who is also a visual artist.
The fiction is that Irva built this model: wanting to know her city but terrified to leave the house, she instead constructs a miniature of it based on reports from her twin sister. I love miniatures and models, so the idea of a replica of a city in a novel about twins was irresistible, apart from Carey’s delicious prose.
The city of Entralla - along with Gondal, Brobdingnag and the Emerald City - is not somewhere you are likely to have visited. Only one guidebook to the place exists, despite its historic landmarks and the considerable civic pride of its inhabitants.
Alva and Irva are identical twin sisters, and Entralla is their home. By nature, Alva is an explorer, and longs to travel the world. Irva is a recluse, for whom every step outside the house is an ordeal. But the twins belong together and cannot survive without each other. It is when Irva refuses to leave the house…
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…
As a female grown up in a working-class neighborhood in East Naples (Italy), and as an academic researching political ecologies in Italy, Brazil, and the USA, I am especially interested in how sex/gender, class/work, and race/coloniality are intersected in people’s lives, and especially in how this shapes their perceptions and experiences of environmental problems. This approach has led me to look for the connections between labor and the environment both within and beyond waged/industrial work and formal trade unions, including the unpaid housework and subsistence production done in working-class, peasant, Black, and Indigenous communities and the social movements that represent them.
This is a novel that I have read again over the years, gifted to my loved ones, and recommended to my friends. Set in Kerala (India) between the early 1960s and early 1990s, the book tells the story of the ill-fated love between an upper caste woman and a lower caste man, set against the grain of parallel stories and events involving other members of the two characters' families and village.
What struck me was the profound humanity with which the motivations and worldviews of all characters are depicted and the author's ability to illustrate the chain of suffering that connects them as related to larger social schemes–such as post-colonial relations between the British and the Indian branch of the family.
'They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.'
This is the story of Rahel and Estha, twins growing up among the banana vats and peppercorns of their blind grandmother's factory, and amid scenes of political turbulence in Kerala. Armed only with the innocence of youth, they fashion a childhood in the shade of the wreck that is their family: their lonely, lovely mother, their beloved Uncle Chacko (pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher) and their sworn enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun,…
All my life I’ve been pushing against limits. Being the oldest of five children born to a farm couple who became mill workers, I was frequently reminded by family that “people like us” did not need much education, didn’t get the good jobs, and shouldn’t “rise above themselves.” Being a girl, I had additional limits. Naturally, when I learned to read, I was drawn to books in which characters broke through unfair restraints to have adventures and accomplish great deeds. I wanted to be one of those people. By the time I came of age, I knew I had a shot at becoming the heroine of my own story!
This book is for any girl, like me, who grew up with a sister she envied. I loved seeing Louise come to terms with her own worth and her own beauty. I felt that I was fighting her battles with her. In the end we both made peace with our sisters and gained confidence in our own merits.
Katherine Paterson's remarkable Newbery Medal-winning classic about a painful sibling rivalry, and one sister’s struggle to make her own way, is an honest and daring portrayal of adolescence and coming of age.
A strong choice for independent reading, both for summer reading and homeschooling, as well as in the classroom, Jacob Have I Loved has been lauded as a cornerstone young adult novel and was ranked among the all-time best children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal.
"Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated . . ." With her grandmother's taunt, Louise knew that she,…
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!
One is a novel in verse I keep coming back to for the way it uses form to make the reader feel the emotional journey of its protagonists.
Crossan uses verse to capture the emotional intimacy of a relationship between two conjoined twins as they encounter challenges in everyday life, including grief. This book uses visual form so smartly and subtly to show us how these two depend on each other, as well as what it means for Tippie to find herself away from her twin.
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Winner of the Carnegie Medal * Winner of the YA Book Prize * Winner of the Children’s Books Ireland Book of the Year Award
Tippi and Grace share everything—clothes, friends . . . even their body. Writing in free verse, Sarah Crossan tells the sensitive and moving story of conjoined twin sisters, which will find fans in readers of Gayle Forman, Jodi Picoult, and Jandy Nelson.
Tippi and Grace. Grace and Tippi. For them, it's normal to step into the same skirt. To hook their arms around each other for balance. To fall asleep listening to the other breathing. To…
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…
I’m an avid reader of speculative fiction: fantasy, science fiction, horror, “what-if” stories of our world with a twist... you name it, I’m in. But what really sells a spec-fic story for me is the characters that populate the world – the relationships that form the heart of the otherworldly story – and I’ve always found sisterhood, in particular, extremely compelling. I’ve actually written two speculative books featuring sisters myself, and have another sisters-driven adventure coming out next year! I’m also one of three sisters, and growing up, these relationships served as the basis of so many memories, as well as informed so much of who I am.
This slim novel is actually the second in McGuire’s Wayward Children series, which I wholeheartedly recommend in its entirety. The premise: a school for teenagers who once found secret, magical doors to other worlds when they were younger—and who, for various reasons, are sent back from those worlds to ours again. I particularly loved Jack, the burgeoning mad scientist sister in Down Among the Sticks and Bones, as well as her complicated relationship with her sister, Jill. I’m also a big fan of unique worlds and high-concept premises, and McGuire’s series absolutely checks both of those boxes!
Winner: 2022 Hugo Award for Best Series Winner: 2018 Alex Award Winner: 2018 ALA RUSA Fantasy Award
Seanan McGuire returns to her popular Wayward Children series with Down Among the Sticks and Bones―a truly standalone story suitable for adult and young adult readers of urban fantasy, and the follow-up to the Alex, Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Award-winning, World Fantasy Award finalist, Tiptree Honor List book Every Heart a Doorway
Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.
