Tag: book list

It’s officially the spooky season! Well, here in Florida, it still feels like summer, but I love this time of yearr. Give me a big cup of pumpkin spice tea, some cozy reads, and a lot of scented candles. And what better way to enjoy the season by reading some spooky books! I know not everyone is into the horror-centric world of the spooky season, but there’s so many ways to celebrate without scaring the pants off yourself. I’m sharing five books that give you those perfect spooky vibes without having to keep the lights on at night. Here’s five not-so-spooky books perfect for the Halloween season!

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

If witches are what you crave, then I highly suggest The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. It’s the story of a lonely witch named Mika who is a part of a coven of witches in England that only meet once every three months. In order to feel a little bit of belonging, she’s created a persona on Instagram where she’s…a witch who shares her potions with the world. And when someone messages her asking if she can help show three young witches how to use their magic, she’s skeptical at first but does it anyway. What she finds is a funny little house filled with found family and a place where she can belong.

Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org

---

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

If you’re into zombies, then this one is for you. While this isn’t at the Walking Dead level of zombies (and they have a different name in the book), it’s about a marshal named Hart who works to protect the small town from zombie attacks and the undertaker, Mercy, who makes sure that those who have passed are properly buried. And guess what? They hate each other. Yep, if Hart could work with any other undertaker, he would, but in this weird world that they live in, he’s got to do business with Mercy every once in a while. And if you couldn’t love it anymore, it’s also a little bit of a You’ve Got Mail retelling where they write anonymous letters to each other. The book is charming, adventurous, and filled with zombie hoards. Definitely perfect if you want to read something with a little magic, but a lot of heart.

Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org

---

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

If you’re into ghosts, then this one is for you. This is the first Good Morning America Book Club pick that I really liked and if you’re not a fan of romances, then this might be perfect. It’s about a young woman named Florence who is a ghost writer for one of the most popular romance writers in the world. However, she hasn’t written a single thing in almost a year after experiencing the worst break up in her life (and possibly not believing in love anymore). Her new editor, Benji, isn’t giving her any wiggle room and Florence needs to finish the book in a day otherwise she may lose the job that’s paying her bills. Suddenly, she gets an unexpected call from her family back home only to find out her father has passed away. Struck by the news, she immediately returns home only to remember why she left in the first place: she’s able to see ghosts and helped solve a huge missing person’s case back when she was a kid. Since then, the town has considered her a little batty and Florence has never wanted to return to that town. But while she’s there, she’s met with a new ghostly friend; her new editor Benji. As she navigates through the loss of her father and figuring out what she’s going to do next, she’s visited by her dead editor who helps her in more ways than one. Truly a surprising and engrossing story. I really loved this one and if you’re a lover of ghostly romances, then definitely check it out!

Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org

---

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

If you’re into gothic retellings with a more modern twist, then you should check out Reluctant Immortals. The story follows Lucy and Bertha. You may know these names as the significant lovers of two very famous literary men: Dracula and Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre. In this story, Lucy and Bertha have shed the nasty worlds that they’ve been imprisoned and find themselves immortals living in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Lucy is the main protagonist as she carries jars of Dracula’s ashes across the city and Bertha tries to avoid the voices of Mr. Rochester following her around. But when the boys find a way to ensnare groups of young people in the California desert (think of Charles Manson and the cults of the time period), it’s up to Lucy and Bertha to set aside their feelings and help the innocent. With a few special appearances from other characters and an adventure through the California coastline, this book is perfect if you want something a bit more spooky that won’t be too heart-clenching.

Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org

---

Three Kisses, One Midnight by Roshani Chokshi, Sandhya Menon, and Evelyn Skye

If you’re not looking for any kind of magical creatures and just want something more fun, then you’ll really like this trio of YA romances all set during the same day with three different characters and all the romantic tropes. It follows Onny, Ash, and True: three best friends who have been waiting for the perfect night (the night of the town’s Halloween ball) to try a potion Onny brewed with the help from her Filipino grandmother. Of course, it’s a love potion that helps the person who drinks it to see their feelings for them. Each story follows one of the friends through a funny set of experiences with their OTP. You get a full range of the different romantic tropes and the stories are so perfect for the Halloween season. Nothing spooky about this one, but you will find yourself feeling a lot for these characters as they all fall in love.

Find it on Amazon | Find it on Bookshop.org

I recently started watching this documentary series called Great Greek Myths where they share all the tales of Greek mythology in a way that’s digestible and offers all the kinds of iconography and art dedicated to the gods. It made me really fall in love with Greek myths and also a better visualization than what I learned in school. I’ve been collecting stories based off Greek mythology for years, but something about these stories never sticks with me when I read them. Maybe it was my lack of understanding these stories that I couldn’t fully appreciate it. But now, I’m ready to tackle them again and wanted to share a few with you too. It may have taken me my entire life to finally appreciate Greek mythology, but I’m here now and I’m ready to read all the Greek mythology retellings. *This post may have affiliate links.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school…again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he’s angered a few of them. Zeus’ master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect.

Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’ stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

As Princesses of Crete and daughters of the fearsome King Minos, Ariadne and her sister Phaedra grow up hearing the hoofbeats and bellows of the Minotaur echo from the Labyrinth beneath the palace. The Minotaur – Minos’s greatest shame and Ariadne’s brother – demands blood every year.

When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods – drawing their attention can cost you everything.

In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne’s decision to betray Crete for Theseus ensure her happy ending? Or will she find herself sacrificed for her lover’s ambition?

Ariadne gives a voice to the forgotten women of one of the most famous Greek myths, and speaks to their strength in the face of angry, petulant Gods. Beautifully written and completely immersive, this is an exceptional debut novel

Circe by Madeline Miller

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.

But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia to be raised in the shadow of King Peleus and his golden son, Achilles. “The best of all the Greeks”—strong, beautiful, and the child of a goddess—Achilles is everything the shamed Patroclus is not. Yet despite their differences, the boys become steadfast companions. Their bond deepens as they grow into young men and become skilled in the arts of war and medicine—much to the displeasure and the fury of Achilles’ mother, Thetis, a cruel sea goddess with a hatred of mortals.

When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece, bound by blood and oath, must lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause, and torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows. Little do they know that the Fates will test them both as never before and demand a terrible sacrifice.

Built on the groundwork of the Iliad, Madeline Miller’s page-turning, profoundly moving, and blisteringly paced retelling of the epic Trojan War marks the launch of a dazzling career.

Lore by Alexandra Bracken

Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family’s sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory. For years she’s pushed away any thought of revenge against the man–now a god–responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.

The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and, at last, a way for Lore to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore’s decision to bind her fate to Athena’s and rejoin the hunt will come at a deadly cost–and still may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

The ancient city of Troy has withstood a decade under siege of the powerful Greek army, which continues to wage bloody war over a stolen woman—Helen. In the Greek camp, another woman—Briseis—watches and waits for the war’s outcome. She was queen of one of Troy’s neighboring kingdoms, until Achilles, Greece’s greatest warrior, sacked her city and murdered her husband and brothers. Briseis becomes Achilles’s concubine, a prize of battle, and must adjust quickly in order to survive a radically different life, as one of the many conquered women who serve the Greek army.

When Agamemnon, the brutal political leader of the Greek forces, demands Briseis for himself, she finds herself caught between the two most powerful of the Greeks. Achilles refuses to fight in protest, and the Greeks begin to lose ground to their Trojan opponents. Keenly observant and coolly unflinching about the daily horrors of war, Briseis finds herself in an unprecedented position, able to observe the two men driving the Greek army in what will become their final confrontation, deciding the fate not only of Briseis’s people but also of the ancient world at large.

Briseis is just one among thousands of women living behind the scenes in this war—the slaves and prostitutes, the nurses, the women who lay out the dead—all of them erased by history. With breathtaking historical detail and luminous prose, Pat Barker brings the teeming world of the Greek camp to vivid life. She offers nuanced, complex portraits of characters and stories familiar from mythology, which, seen from Briseis’s perspective, are rife with newfound revelations. Barker’s latest builds on her decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives—and it is nothing short of magnificent

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

I’m close to finishing Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard. It’s cunning, intriguing, and definitely one of those books I’ll be following along as each book publishes. One of its unique features is that it has multiple POVs creating an ensemble cast of characters for you to follow throughout the story.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a huge fan of books that have an ensemble cast. It can be two characters or seven characters, I will read them. You can also consider this multiple POV, but if there’s more than two or three main characters and each of them gets the same amount of love throughout the story, then it makes the books so much more fun for me to read. I think of books like Game of Thrones where each character is plotting their way to the top of the royal food chain and each does so in their own various ways. There’s always overlap or the characters come together eventually in one big reveal or twist of some sort. It may get tricky to remember each character and what their specific plot is, but just the sheer ability of authors to compartmentalize their characters and seamlessly create a story that gathers them all in the end is truly my favorite part of these books.

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground. Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter.

It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades. Wars were fought for them, and won by them.

One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery. In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable.

Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings. Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity.

Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar’s niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan’s motives are less than pure. As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

The result of over ten years of planning, writing, and world-building, The Way of Kings is but the opening movement of the Stormlight Archive, a bold masterpiece in the making.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .

A convict with a thirst for revenge

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

A runaway with a privileged past

A spy known as the Wraith

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first

The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokski

It’s 1889. The city is on the cusp of industry and power, and the Exposition Universelle has breathed new life into the streets and dredged up ancient secrets. Here, no one keeps tabs on dark truths better than treasure-hunter and wealthy hotelier Séverin Montagnet-Alarie. When the elite, ever-powerful Order of Babel coerces him to help them on a mission, Séverin is offered a treasure that he never imagined: his true inheritance.

To hunt down the ancient artifact the Order seeks, Séverin calls upon a band of unlikely experts: An engineer with a debt to pay. A historian banished from his home. A dancer with a sinister past. And a brother in arms if not blood.

Together, they will join Séverin as he explores the dark, glittering heart of Paris. What they find might change the course of history–but only if they can stay alive.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett

‘Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.’

People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. But what if, for once, the predictions are right, and the apocalypse really is due to arrive next Saturday, just after tea?

You could spend the time left drowning your sorrows, giving away all your possessions in preparation for the rapture, or laughing it off as (hopefully) just another hoax. Or you could just try to do something about it.

It’s a predicament that Aziraphale, a somewhat fussy angel, and Crowley, a fast-living demon now finds themselves in. They’ve been living amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and, truth be told, have grown rather fond of the lifestyle and, in all honesty, are not actually looking forward to the coming Apocalypse.

And then there’s the small matter that someone appears to have misplaced the Antichrist…

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin

This is the way the world ends. Again.

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze — the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization’s bedrock for a thousand years — collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

Let the Dragon ride again on the winds of time.

The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, an Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.

When The Two Rivers is attacked by Trollocs-a savage tribe of half-men, half-beasts- five villagers flee that night into a world they barely imagined, with new dangers waiting in the shadows and in the light.

A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab

Kell is one of the last Antari—magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black.

Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they’ll never see. It’s a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they’ll first need to stay alive.