Needs More Love / Literature

• Ardrana is a gaming world created by John Proulx and John Ritskowitz described in a series of online stories (not fan fiction). The world was created for use in Dungeons & Dragons games, and the stories are the result of games that involved/are recognized by the creators of this site; Ritskowitz is not involved with the site these days; the site is run by John and Shelly Proulx. The site has a wiki format, but only they can edit it. These stories have gotten no media attention, yet there are very detailed stories, some which even link to each other, and there are even several generations of Ardrana; it was started in 1985, but it was unpublished until the 2000s when the Internet allowed the gamers to publish the world and its adventure stories in wiki form.
• Angelfall and the books that are to follow is a series of YA post apocalyptic Urban Fantasy books. Next to all this kitschy angel literature à la Alexandra Adornetto's Halo, the steamy angel sex novels and all the The Hunger Games wannabes, they really stand out - they're gritty, they're beautiful, Penryn, the heroine, can kick so much ass, the angels see themselves as a Superior Species, the hero can cope with the loss of his wings (not a spoiler, it even says so in the blurb) instead of transforming into a weeping wreck or "cold" Jerkass, the writing is beautiful, there is suspense, there is drama, action, romance, even a realistic schizophrenic mother! Plus, the cover is gosh-darn awesomely beautiful. What's not to like about it?
• The Jo Gar stories by Raoul Whitfield. Almost no one seems to know about it today, but Whitfield created a bunch of stories in the 1930s about a Filipino Hardboiled Detective. There's lots of intrigue, police chases, a (kind-of) exotic location in colonial-era Manila that mixes East and West in its culture (though he travels quite a bit outside it too), a lot of the known Film Noir tropes are featured in the stories, etc. No one seems to have adapted it anywhere, or indeed written any sort of fanfic or derivative work about the franchise. What probably killed its popularity was getting overshadowed by other hardboiled works (e.g. by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, both of whom were Whitfield's contemporaries), not to mention similar-sounding franchises involving The Exotic Detective, like Charlie Chan. Today few are even aware it exists—in the U.S., but even more in the Philippines, a former U.S. colony, and where most of the stories are set. A shame, as the description seems exciting.
• The Ashtown Burials by N.D. Wilson is an exciting, endlessly creative YA series without a page on this website. It centers around an ancient organization called the Order of Brendan that is tasked with keeping troublesome immortals under control. Said immortals include real historical figures like Maximilian Robespierre, and mythological or semi-mythological characters like the goddess Arachne, Gilgamesh and the kid who stole Gilgamesh's plant. All running around in 21st-century Wisconsin. And there are mad scientists and giant turtles and cool steampunk weaponry. It's great fun.
• Avalon: Web of Magic by Rachel Roberts. Has a talking ferret. Enough said.
• The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff. A fresh approach to fantasy, without reusing many of the standard tropes, brilliantly crafted, and has complex characters. Also painfully obscure.
• Paolo Bacigalupi is a fantastic dark sci-fi author, probably the best since Gibson. Unfortunately, other than The Windup Girl, his work is nary to be found.
  • The page about his Pump Six and Other Stories could really use some help.
• How to Build a Skydeck is a metaphysical and spiritual take on science fiction by Atlanta author David L. Bradley that deals with race, class, and the divine in a pre-digital setting. An under-appreciated story by an up-and-coming modern author.
• Hey, we've all seen the How to Train Your Dragon movie...but did anyone here know that there was a book? One that came out a solid eight years before The Film of the Book? Well, there is, and it's just one out of a large series. They're for children, but they're filled with quirky humor and clever writing, and can be enjoyed by teenagers and adults too.
• The book Truancy displays a war between a totalitarian city where the educational system acts as a bully to students (from deliberately making students late to locking bathrooms) and a resistance that tries to overthrow the schools. Sadly, nary a copy can be found in bookstores.
• Ex-Heroes is a great example of combining superheroes and zombies for something original and fun.
• Anything Jasper Fforde has written, in particular the Thursday Next series. Anyone with a love of stories and books should read them, but few people have ever heard of them.
• Douglas Coupland doesn't get enough love. His books are incredible and full of little insights about life that we all feel. He's just really good at explaining them succinctly.
• Katharine Kerr's Polar City books - there's two of them, Polar City Blues and Polar City Nightmare. Difficult to find in bookstores, and Kerr apparently doesn't even have her own page here — just the Deverry page. Humanity is a tiny republic trapped between two alien powers who hate each other, and the possible appearance of a new species in human territory has the potential to start a war. Interesting setting and genuinely likeable characters, particularly the first book.
• The Dragaera books. An excellent, inventive, long-running fantasy series, and almost the only people I know who've read them are the ones I introduced it to.
• HMS Leviathan, a tragicomic novel about the largest ship ever to sail in Britain's Royal Navy, is a compelling story about life at sea and the management of a big ship's company of 2000 people. It's just that here, it only at present has seven outgoing wicks. We can do better?
• The Lighthouse Trilogy, by Adrian Mc Kinty. It's three books that are more teen-oriented, but it's really just a well-written book. It's a shame it doesn't have its own page here.
• The book Finding Darwins God by Kenneth Miller. It goes into the debate between evolution and creationism and talks about how one can find a happy medium in between them. For some reason, it's not getting the love that it should. I guess there are still people who refuse to think science and religion can coincide with one another.
• Nick And Norahs Infinite Playlist: The book more so than the movie. After The Film of the Book came out, it faded into obscurity, and the book gets little recognition. The book focuses more on characterizing the eponymous characters; both of whom are funny, eccentric, and emotional, and connects them through their love of music. They're surrounded by an equally strong cast of supporting characters: Tal — Norah's Jerkass ex, Tris — Nick's Alpha Bitch-but-still- likable ex, Caroline — Norah's inebriated best friend, and Dev and Thom — Nick's gay and wildly funny band mates. It's like an indie movie in book form.
• Eddie and the Gang with No Name: This is the most addicting book trilogy I've ever read! Colin Bateman made it funny, suspenseful, clever, and original to boot.
• Really anything by Robin McKinley, but Sunshine is one of her best works.
• At least in the U.S., Sara Douglass is underappreciated. Her six-book series The Wayfarer Redemption is one of the most human fantasies I've read in years. The main characters are trapped in a prophecy they want to escape, the villain is hell-bent on using said prophecy to forestall his own doom, and the hero has to be warrior, politician, and father in only the first two books. Faraday and Azhure are polar opposites in their role and their disposition, but somehow they both work their way into the heart of the man they love - if only he could choose between them. There isn't any doubt about how the story will end, but the fact that Douglass has created her own world instead of modeling on someone else, and then taken her characters and made them human and worthwhile, has forever made me a fan.
• Zilpha Keatley Snyder: Beautifully poetic writing (or plain Nightmare Fuel if you're talking Witches of Worm), prolific, but most folks only talk about The Egypt Game. She also made a big contribution to gaming. The game of Below the Root is better known than the books it's based on, but it was Genius Programming (a choice of the age, race, and gender of avatar with game stats and NPCs reacting accordingly... in 1984!) and possibly the first game ever to be considered a Canon sequel to something started in another media.
  • Seconded one thousand times over. Of the books that I will never loan or sell, The Unseen was the first on the list. And The Egypt Game is fifth or so.
  • Joseph Fink, co-creator of Welcome to Night Vale, once said on Twitter that if it hadn't been for Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Night Vale would never have existed. He has never elaborated on this, so we don't know which of her books he's referring to.
• In a similar vein to The Wayfarer Redemption—an underappreciated Australian work—I have to recommend The Castings Trilogy by Pamela Freeman. It is set in the world of the Eleven Domains—lands that were conquered by the people of the warlord Acton 1000 years ago, forcing the original inhabitants of the lands to wander as 'Travellers' (similar to gypsies), mistrusted and hated by the blond-haired Actons (similar to European conquerers) who now rule the lands. While the series is a fantasy, it doesn't rely on cliché conventions - no monsters, spellcasting battles or elaborate sword duels. Fantasy elements are incredibly subtle, making them feel much more real-world. The real draw in the story is the Grey-and-Gray Morality that prevents either the Actons or the Travellers from being straight-out heroes or villains—there are very few true villains in the story, with only a couple for contrast. The three protagonists — Bramble, Ash, and Saker—are all sympathetic, compelling and likeable. In additon, the series has a powerful collection of 'stories'—First-Person-POV tales which, in addition to deeply developing the supporting or minor character they focus on, also add a greater layer of depth to the world as a whole. It all comes together in the most subversive, unexpected sort of climax in the last book, which does not fail to deliver. Definitely a series that deserves greater attention, the critics who have reviewed it have praised its originality, unconventional storytelling, world-building and deep characterisation—all while telling an old story in a new formula. READ IT!
• The Clouded World, a series of books by Jay Amaro about a race of badass angel-like evolved humans living on a series of massive cities built on pillars to keep them above the turbulent cloud cover that hides them from the Crapsack World below.
• The Schwa Was Here is a delightfully offbeat young adult novel by Neal Shusterman. It's about a kid who's "functionally invisible" and his friends. The book gets relationships in teen social groups wonderfully right, and is often bittersweet, poignant, and mature, especially for something that's narrated in pure Buffy Speak.
• Keys to the Kingdom is largely unknown to adults, though it sells OK and is well-written.
  • In a similar vein, The Seems by Michael L. Wexler and John Hulme is a great series about a secret organisation outside the universe that keeps the world running on time. It has great new ideas, good writing, and a solid plot. Worth checking out.
• Malice, Broken Sky, Storm Thief, and The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray, all by Chris Wooding. The man has a genius for crafting fascinating, wondrous, unique (hellish, nightmare-driven) worlds. His books are also damn near impossible to find (at least on my local shelves), despite usually winning fairly good critical acclaim. The plots vary, but usually follow the pattern of a boy and a girl getting mixed up in fantastic and life-threatening circumstances, and he seems fond of the ambiguous ending. Apart from that, the plots are different and extremely well-written.
• The Hamish X trilogy is a deep, detailed story with well-written characters, settings, and footnotes, and still manages to be hilarious the entire time. Come on, people, you're lying if you say you didn't like it.
• Persuasion by Jane Austen tends to get overlooked thanks to her more famous work, but is arguably better than those novels.
• Any book by L. M. Montgomery that isn't part of the Anne of Green Gables or Emily of New Moon series. She wrote over three hundred short stories, some of which she cribbed for her novels, but not all. As for the novels, mention Pat of Silver Bush, The Blue Castle, or A Tangled Web (1931) and see if anybody recognizes them. Jane of Lantern Hill might get recognized because of the execrable TV movie, but possibly not.
• In the same vein, L. Frank Baum really did write books that weren't about Oz, even if most of them ended up being connected years later by having a character or two show up in Oz. How many people know that Trot and Cap'n Bill were in two of their own books before appearing in The Scarecrow of Oz?
• Peeps by Scott Westerfeld is a cool novel that puts a different spin on vampirism—instead of being a fantastical condition, it's a parasite and people with the parasite, parasite-positives, are called "Peeps". It didn't make the bestseller list, but it's inventive and informative, including factual data on parasites and an interesting main character.
• The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill currently does not have a page on this wiki, but it is a good work of realistic fiction that was well-written enough that it can be mistaken for nonfiction.
• The Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks. Well-written, character-driven fantasy with prominent LGBT themes and an egalitarian society that still has more than its share of troubles. Unfortunately it's kind of hard to find the first two books at this point.
• The Hero.com and Villain.net series by Andy Briggs are an interesting Deconstruction of the superhero genre. The eponymous websites offer powers for download, but ultimately come at a high cost. While it's relatively easy to find them online, the Barnes and Noble website only has the first two of each series available and they don't seem to be library favorites.
• All of Nnedi Okorafor's books. She tends to avoid the Humans Are White trope and most of her books aren't even set in America.
• The Last Dragon Chronicles series by Chris D'Lacey. Its an engaging and well-written series, yet it seems relatively obscure.
• The Gandalara Cycle is a sci-fi/fantasy series from the '80s that's not only well-written and set in an intricate world, but has an edge-of-your-seat plot right from the get-go, which beautifully mixes action and adventure with drama and romance. Some of the more engaging elements include: a species of huge telepathic sentient warcats used as riding mounts for an elite warrior caste in a desert wasteland, justified Laser-Guided Amnesia regarding a stolen powerful gemstone, a search for a lost city, a racial collective-subconscious god-figure, epic swordplay, witty dialogue, and the most amazing Earth All Along twist ending ever. It spans over seven novels (or the alternate printing of two compilations and an 'epilogue') and was completed and published despite one of the co-authors being dead. But despite all its impressiveness, it is difficult to obtain the whole series without going through multiple booksellers (and don't expect to find new copies at all).
• The Three Worlds Cycle by Ian Irvine is fantasy at its greatest. It spans 11 books (2 quadrilogies and a trilogy) so far, with another book or two still to come, and around 200 years of history, with a vast mythology and history backing everything up. It treats magic (or 'the Secret Art') with intelligence, giving it a pseudo-scientific background and drawbacks that stop it being the game-breaker it is in most high fantasy settings. The main characters are relatively believable, being generally normally skilled people out of their element (with a few legendary people playing more background roles), and the stories are gripping: the protagonists end up in seemingly hopeless situations that they only manage to escape by the skin of their teeth, and the cliffhangers, dear god, the cliffhangers. The guy ends the last book of the second quadrilogy on a massive cliffhanger and basically says, 'Whelp, better wait a couple of years for the next book to come out to find out what happens!' Go read them. They're long and imposing, but well worth the time.
• Anything by Tamora Pierce. She's a brilliant writer and her works are epic, but virtually no one I know outside my immediate family knows about her.
  • To expand on this, Tamora Pierce writes young adult swords-and-sorcery fantasy. The language she uses is accessible, the worlds are detailed and rich, and the plots and challenges her characters face are at once fantastic and real. Most of her main characters are women and they are the most unapologetically awesome women around. She doesn't shy away from the uglier side of growing up. Her Tortall heroines deal with puberty, crushes, jealousy, rumors, bullies, and other ugliness, all while still maintaining a story about women becoming warriors. (She also, in a genre that rarely shows this in full, shows her heroines growing into their sexuality and dealing with safe sex and taking ownership of their bodies. Kel gets an anti-pregnancy charm not because she wants to have sex at that point, but because she wants to be able to decide when she has children.) The Circle saga is more focused on the quartet as they grow into their magic, but is still beautiful, and contains clashes of cultures and deals with prejudice within magical academia, in addition to showing the children growing into adults and dealing with all manner of crises.
• The Dark Touch series by Amy Meredith. Teenage girl fighting demons and no sparkly vampires in sight.
• Villains by Necessity is a great book that should have never been taken out of print. It deconstructs the fantasy genre, but not in a "here's why this sucks" way. If you can find a reasonably priced used copy of the novel, or if you can download it from a site that won't put your computer at risk, then it's well worth your time to read.
• The Nancy Drew Files and The Hardy Boys Casefiles Spin-Off series are considered some of the better books in either franchise by fans of the characters. A Darker and Edgier teen series designed to try and keep hold of fans of the series as they aged, they removed the previous rules of the main series, such as Never Say "Die" and No Hugging, No Kissing, which had the side effect of giving the writers more freedom to write better stories. They had a respectable run of about 12 years and around 120 books each (from roughly 1985 to 1997.) Sadly, nowadays they're mostly forgotten by people who only remember the blue-and-yellow hardback versions of the books.
• Gene Wolfe. Full stop. Universally acknowledged as one of the great, if not greatest science fiction and fantasy writers by members of the speculative fiction community, such as Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Orson Scott Card, and Michael Swanwick...yet not many people read him. The Book of the New Sun, Book of the Long Sun, and Book of the Short Sun cycle is vastly underappreciated.
• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Bronte, whose sister Charlotte deliberately sabotaged the novel's success. It was also awkwardly controversial at the time, what with all the feminism and stuff.
• Anything by Storm Constantine besides Wraeththu, which is often the only work of hers that both fans and non-fans are familiar with. This is not helped by the fact that her other books tend to be difficult to find.
• After Man: A Zoology of the Future is an interesting book with cool illustrations and creative creatures. The book, however, has faded into obscurity, as almost no one remembers or talks about it much.
  • It's still more popular than The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution or Man After Man: An Anthropology of the Future, though.
  • Probably displaced at least in part by the similar concept of The Future is Wild, on which After Man author Dougal Dixon also worked.
• How To Become King is a not-well-known Dutch children's book featuring a boy's quest to become the king of his country—by actually going to different regions and solving their supposedly unsolvable problems. Between the hilarious situations involved in the problems he solves, the idiosyncratic bureaucrats setting tasks they hope he can't complete, and the genuinely serious (but not anvilicious) lessons to be learned, this book deserves to be way better known than it is. I'm not sure if it was ever more popular in the Netherlands, but here in the US the only people I know who've ever read it are in my family.
• Year of Rogue Dragons is a series of three high fantasy books set in the Forgotten Realms. The pace is excellent, the characters are charismatic and the scenes are well-described. However, it doesn't get mentioned often.
• Michelle Sagara (often published as Michelle West), particularly The Sun Sword. Sprawling, scaled out to the massively epic and down to the lives of the servants and slaves caught up in events. Hard to describe—Better Than It Sounds, but it's hard to make it sound like anything! Full of gods and magic and politics and demons in a world that has power the way D&D does, sort of, but owes little to D&D or Tolkien. Just read the books.
• The DragonCrown War Cycle by Michael Stackpole. Why the prequel and trilogy are so overlooked is a mystery; his nuanced fantasy world subverts a number of fantasy stereotypes. Elves are different, but not necessarily better—including Fantastic Racism against a magically created winged elf race. The closest you have to dwarves are a race of gnome-like pseudo-shapeshifters who are tunneling experts. The Mooks train and even ride raptors (the dinosaur kind) into battle. Magic is a well-developed system of equivalent exchange and enchantments. The setting develops gunpowder weaponry and explores its impact on fantasy warfare. The characters, dialogue, and descriptions are all excellent, and the Big Bad absolutely qualifies as a Magnificent Bastard.
• The Bartimaeus Trilogy It has great humor, plot, and characterization that resonates strongly; with all this it is criminal that it isn't on the list yet.
• The Roar by Emma Clayton. The premise is interesting, sort of like TRON meets Ender's Game. The protagonist is likable and deals with tough conflict for a 12-year-old. The Big Bad, Gorman, and The Rival (because he doesn't necessarily qualify as The Dragon), Reuben, are both legitimately threatening villains. A sequel called The Whisper recently came out, so it must have a following somewhere.
• Kameron Hurley's Bel Dame Apocrypha. If you like science fiction with thorough world-building, memorable badass female characters, Bio Punk and/or war, with thought-provoking themes of gender politics, classism and religion...you're going to love these. (I can't seem to find anyone else who has read this trilogy, which is why I'm currently the only troper working on the page.)
• The Legend Series by Marie Lu. It may come off as a cash-in on The Hunger Games, but it combines Dystopian lit tropes with a detective story with legitimately surprising twists.
• The entire output of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who were the undeniable flagship of Soviet science fiction. Really, it has everything a science fiction fan could wish for: strict scientific accuracy, with the early novels being on the rock-hard end of the scale (it helps that one of them was an astronomer with a strong background in physics and computer science as well), which never got in the way of a good, intelligent story; interesting, well-thought-out plots with strong social/political commentary (their main body of work is "hard social science" than classic hard SF, while nowhere near as soft as Space Opera); deep characterization; excellent writing; their trademark humor, which has more or less become sort of a brand name in Russian SF circles, and even more. Their early works were a SF version of Socialist Realism, singing praises to the state and the party, but they quickly evolved and later books contained massive amounts of criticism of the Soviet system (almost all their latest books were censored; some could not be published), and generally went into Darker and Edgier territory, but from a philosophical/intellectual point of view. In short: "the thinking man's" SF, always interesting, always thought-provoking, often dark and sad, yet never devoid of hope and, ultimately, love for humanity, often funny and written exceedingly well. However, outside of Russia, the Strugatskys are known mostly only in the other former Soviet republics and some other states of the former Eastern Bloc (Poland, the Czech Republic and those parts of Germany that used to form the GDR stand out here). They are hardly read anywhere else. There are some translations into English, but a) they don't do justice to the original work and b) are often based on the censored versions (in Russia itself, new editions have been released after the fall of the USSR, based on the original author versions). Anyone with a good command of Russian and interest in SF should definitely pick up one or two Strugatsky novels and see if they won't get hooked on them—odds are that they will. Sadly, Boris died in 2012 (and Arkady about 20 years before him), so no more books are forthcoming.
• The Mediochre Q Seth Series. The one book released so far has never gotten a non-flattering review—but, on Amazon at least, it so far only has six reviews at all. It didn't even have a page on This Very Wiki until the author himself put one there.
• Satyrday starts with the moon getting stolen from the sky by the great old owl and his army of ravens. A boy and a satyr set off to her rescue through now dark and cold world. For whatever reason, the book is largely unknown.
• The Zaregoto series. Another work of Nisio Isin brimming with philosophical trickery, passion for deconstruction and witty plots and twists; likely the only reason it doesn't get the popularity it deserves is because it never got adapted into anime like his other works. If you are fond of his other works like Bakemonogatari, then you really should enjoy it.
• The Jack Blank trilogy of books by Matt Myklusch. Everything one could love about superhero fantasy wrapped up in one neat package, loaded with eye candy, action, and a great story with plenty of cool characters. Somehow it's not as popular as such a great series deserves.
• The Michael Vey series by Richard Paul Evans. It has an interesting premise, where a group of kids who were born around the same time had an in-utero experiment performed on them, giving them electric-based powers. However, instead of the typical lightning powers you see in shows like One Piece, each kid has their own unique power that involves electricity in some form or another. The protagonists are likable, relatable, useful in their own right, and go through a lot of great Character Development. The Big Bad, Dr. Hatch, is probably one of the cruelest, manipulative in literary history. He might be a bit Obviously Evil, but when he fools the characters into thinking he's good, you can buy why they believe him.
• Kage Baker's Company series. In the future, they invent time travel. But to test it, they invent immortality (by transforming people into cyborgs). They travel back, find a kid who's going to die, and turn them, then return to the future to see whether they're still there. History, scifi, romance, and intrigue/spy novels all rolled into one. How does everybody not know about these?
• Cut & Run, an M/M crime romance series by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux, starring FBI Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett. Fantastic balance between case-related thrills, intrigue, action, Belligerent Sexual Tension for days, Snark-to-Snark Combat, and some genuinely tender moments.
• Croak by Gina Damico. A YA trilogy about Grim Reapers, at various points hilarious, sweet, tear-inducing, and the romance is the kind of awkwardly wonderful thing that teenagers in love for the first time excel at. Sometimes it manages more than one of these at once. The trilogy is beautifully structured with a killer ending (literally—it's about Grim Reapers, after all).
• Ahmed Al-Sheikh's "Lunen" is a fun and original sci-fantasy action-adventure, in a world where strange moons, your birth moon and your parents' birth moons, decide what powers you get, and detailed and elaborate fight scenes. But it's mostly unknown, due either to being independently published, or people ignoring it for being an Arab author but NOT an Arabian nights type of story.
• The Newsflesh trilogy is an awesome mishmash of zombies, bloggers, political conspiracies and road trips. Not to mention possibly the most scientifically grounded zombie virus in fiction so far—in spite of the whimsical aspect of being a mutated hybrid of the cures for both cancer and the common cold, the impressive amount of in-depth research and detail that goes into explaining how it infects hosts, its biological limitations, and how humans eventually adapt to it is just amazing. Just reading about the zombie virus as depicted in the novels feels almost like a crash course in virology and epidemiology, to the point where you'll be second-guessing other fictional zombie viruses after reading this series.
• While it didn't stand out among similar works like Goosebumps or Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, and the books are hard to find, The Midnight Library series is a dark, engaging, and truly frightening experience. All the characters are wonderfully human and never feel like generic two-dimensional cutouts. They're fleshed out so you know their dreams, anxieties, and lives before the terror sets in, ensuring you feel something when they meet their inevitable(and usually horrific) fate. The monsters and nightmares that haunt these books are terrifying, and often relevant to real-life fears. Like Lauren's online persona Jessica in "Liar", who eventually takes over the shy girl's life, a fable of bullying and how self-image can make us lose sight of who we want to be. Or the computer game in "Endgame", which grants neglected Simon the chance to payback his tormentors...at the cost of his humanity. The writing is ominous and keeps the tension high, always ensuring the reader never feels truly safe. While it's not immune to cheesy stories and situations, the characters don't blunder like idiots to obvious death, but fall victim to their own flaws, and even then remain sympathetic. Just don't go in expecting happy endings, because these books are often as tragic as they are chilling, and even the most likable, innocent kids aren't safe.
• Chuck Wendig's Miriam Black series of urban fantasy novels feature a protagonist who can see how a person will die by touching them. Combine that with lots of swearing, gore, and inner struggles with fate and destiny, and it makes for a wicked fun ride. As a bonus, the book covers will make you stare for a good long while with the sheer amount of detail put into the illustrations.
• Most of Henrik Drescher's works come across this way, as they are unknown to the majority of the literary audience, probably due to his surreal and sometimes nightmarish art styles being uncomfortable for some people to handle. However, Drescher has created many memorable and creative books such as Pat the Beastie, Simon's Book, (which was one of his few works that appeared on the popular PBS series Reading Rainbow, and Klutz. He has also done illustrations for other works such as The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship and Brer Rabbit and the Wonderful Tar Baby for Rabbit Ears Productions and The Gruesome Guide to World Monsters.
• Variant by Robison Wells. The story centers around an orphan named Benson who is sent to a prison-like private school. Since most of the students are either orphans or have no proper home life, it was easy for the academy to fall under the radar without somebody taking legal action. A lot of the students have had their spirits broken and blindly obey the corrupt system. Benson later learns that some of the students are androids, so it leaves the readers in suspense for who he can trust and who he cannot. It has only one sequel so far, so it at least had enough fans to get that.
• The works of Barry Lyga. Most of his books have likable, relatable characters in situations you want to see them overcome. The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl and its sequel, Goth Girl Rising both have characters you shouldn't like (Donnie being kind of selfish at times and Kyra being a rebellious bitch), but Lyga manages to make you root for them despite their flaws. TAAOFAGG is probably the only work of his that is on this site, but his other books deserve honorable mentions. Hero Type is a good social commentary on free speech, patriotism, and manipulation from the media. I Hunt Killers is an entertaining detective story about the son of a famous serial killer using what his father taught him to weed out criminals.
• Echo Company Series is four-book series by Ellen Emerson White—-under the pseudonym Zack Emerson—-that follows Army Pvt. Michael Jennings during his year-long stint in the Vietnam War. Because he was drafted, 18-year-old Michael is less than thrilled about being in the Army. After a chance encounter leads to his meeting an Army nurse, Rebecca Phillips, who steals his heart, Michael feels better about his future. Yet Rebecca spurns his advances, wary about getting involved with someone who might be killed at any moment.
• ''The School for Good and Evil. Fairy tale subversions, a Darker and Edgier second book, and two strong female protagonists? What's not to love?
• The Vesik Series by Eric R. Asher follows a necromancer named Damien Vesik as he runs a shop called Death's Door, where he is helped by three resident fae and his vampire sister's human boyfriend; meanwhile he balances this with battling demons, zombies, and eldritch abominations with the help of his mentor Zola, his shop's resident faeries, the vampire coven his sister lives with, and a tribe of werewolves.
• Cornelia Read's Madeline Dare series of novels. Madeline is among the rarest of protagonists—those who can inhabit almost any story genre and make it engrossing just by being there. Whether it's a serial killer investigation, a look at a mysterious school for "mentally ill" teenagers, or a cold case involving a distant cousin, her unique perspective on these scenarios makes for interesting reading.
• The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips. A heart-wrenching memoir serving as an introduction to a long-lost Shakespeare play being published for the first time? Or an impressively well-constructed fiction perpetrated by a conman who also happens to be the author's late father? Read and decide for yourself. Whichever option you choose, Arthur Phillips' literary talents cannot be denied.
• Things Not Seen by Andrew Clements. It's always interesting to find stories that take a fantasy or sci-fi setup and tell it in the most realistic way possible. This novel, from the author of Frindle, does that in spades. 15-year-old Bobby Phillips wakes up invisible one morning and him and his parents try to decide what to do. We quickly learn Bobby's personality through his witty and sarcastic first-person narration. And the story ends up being a clever and well-written look on what it means to have a disability. Tragically underrated.
• The series Timmy Failure by Stephen Pastis is a much better book series than you'd think. It's funny, heartwarming, and surprisingly deep.
• Young Samurai by Chrish Bradford. A great series spanning eight books where the main protagonist, an English boy, gets stranded in Edo period Japan and needs to learn to become a samurai warrior and later, a ninja himself in order to be able to fight back against a ninja who is out for his blood. Contains well-written fight scenes, memorable characters, and is definitely a piece of work that needs some loving.
• Voyage To The Bunny Planet By Rosemary Wells. The book focuses on a certain bunny who's day went bad, boredom, and sickness. Whenever the bunny decides to sleep they get carried away by a giant friendly queen bunny who shows the bunny "the day that should have been", which takes them to a happy, peaceful, and sweet version of what their day would had been. The Animated Adaptation makes it even sweeter with its soundtrack and narration. It can also make a good bedtime story.
• Speaking of Rosemary Wells, another book series that began in 1998 is called Yoko. The series focuses on a Japanese kitten who teaches readers about Japanese culture, and traditions. The first book has a message about racism and dealing with different foods from different cultures. Some of the Yoko stories were adapted into the animated series Timothy Goes to School, also based on Yoko & Friends and the Timothy Goes To School book.
• Summer Celebration by Natan Alterman is, like most of his later work, obscure and overlooked. Most poetry aficionados in Israel would gush about his first three poetry books but would have nothing to say about his later work, which is a shame because this novel in verse and its study of contemporary life in Israel is fascinating and well-written, with an engaging plot about a Hyperlink Story. If you can read Hebrew, you should definitely give it a shot.
• The Tales of Alvin Maker by Orson Scott Card was moderately successful in its early days, but largely overshadowed by Card's other young adult sci-fi/fantasy series. Unfortunately, it seems to have been almost entirely forgotten of late, partly thanks to a much-maligned case of Seasonal Rot in its later volumes, and partly thanks to an egregious case of Schedule Slip that has led some of its few fans to doubt whether it will ever be resolved. Which is a shame, since the early books are truly some of the strongest and most original American fantasy novels out there, finally bringing a unique setting and concepts to a genre that desperately needed a shot in the arm. Set in an alternate version of the 19th century American frontier where folk magic is real, the series effortlessly combines fantasy with Alternate History, religious philosophy, American folklore, and an intimate portrait of a fascinating period of American history that's seldom seen in popular culture. What's particularly frustrating is that there's virtually no fanfiction for the series, even though the setting is perfect for it; there are still huge swaths of Alternate!America that haven't been seen yet, still alternate versions of historical figures who we haven't met yet, and still many unanswered questions about how its alternate timeline will develop as history rolls forward.
• New English Library: a literary phenomenon of its time in The '70s Britain, a catalogue of vigorously written pulp fiction novels which, although remarkably nasty Torture Porn with a hidden right-wing polemic, could often produce gems of the type and which were popular and well-received by readers. The genre also acted as a launching pad for authors who later became famous for more respectable works of fiction (often writing under pen names), such as Michael Moorcock.
• The Sister Fidelma mystery series by Peter Tremayne, about a lawyer nun in seventh-century Ireland, is criminally overlooked.
• The Hearts We Sold is a melancholy, sweet, and sometimes funny Faustian tale that deserves a much bigger fandom than it currently holds. The characters are realistic and memorable, despite their completely outlandish situation, and the world it builds is genuinely fascinating. No word if there'll be a sequel yet, but for what we have now, it's extremely good—and has plenty of room for fanfic and fanart, too!
• The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness is a series by Michelle Paver with an exciting plot and great world-building. It's set in a prehistoric Europe with magic, where the main characters try to stop a group of evil mages. Unfortunately, it isn't very well-known and there is barely any fandom for it.
• The Summer King Chronicles is Xenofiction meets High Fantasy with a dash of Norse Mythology for flavor. The prose is beautiful, letting you really feel what it is like to be a gryfon, without the Narm usually associated with Hold Your Hippogriffs.
• The Thickety series by J.A. White. Incredible worldbuilding involving witches (mostly wicked, some good), weird and/or terrifying monsters, and a great magic system that really makes magic seem dangerous and incredible at the same time... The main protagonist, Kara Westfall, is very relatable but also grounded, and overall there's just so much to explore! Also, plenty of Nightmare Fuel; although the books are targeted at a middle grade audience, people of any age group could be spooked.
• Mary, Bloody Mary is a Historical Fiction novel by Carolyn Meyer about Mary Tudor and her life as Henry VIII tries to divorce her mother. It was the rare thing known as a sympathetic Mary story (before The Tudors came along anyway) and creates a fascinating portrait of a caring and kind young girl who would eventually become a tyrant through her Trauma Conga Line.
• The Nevermoor series by Jessica Townsend. So far, there are only two books (Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigancrow and Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow), with more to come. The story follows Morrigan, a clever but phenomenally unlucky young girl who is cursed to die on her eleventh birthday. When the fated day arrives, however, she's rescued by Jupiter North, who whisks her away to the hidden world of Nevermoor. He's forced to do so by smuggling her in, very illegally—and unless they can find a legal way for Morrigan to stay, she'll be deported back home, where she'll almost certainly die. The series is funny, magical, and has one of the best heroines in children's lit since Matilda Wormwood. I fully believe that as the series picks up steam, a lot more people will be talking about it. But until then, I'll just be in the Tumblr tag, screaming my feelings into the void.
• Senlin Ascends is a brilliantly written Steampunk series set in an immense tower inspired by the Tower of Babel, about a man trying to find his lost wife. It's full of innovative locales, with quirky tech like beer-me-go-rounds, a giant theatre house with no audience where tourists come to participate, and steam-powered airships, with an intense character focus and the idealism and sense of wonder that are the hallmarks of Steampunk.

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