We’ve heard you loud and clear: w*iting p*tiently for the next House Andrews offering would be a lot easier if the Horde had new books to devour in the meantime.
Please help your fellow bookworms, and post your book recommendations and/or requests for book suggestions in the comments. Most people seems to be looking for escapism, comfort reads, cosy fun or feel-good fiction, so you may wish to focus on that.
First, a few guidelines! I knoooow, it’s so hard to be a pagethirsty Horde these days, so many rules, such meanie strict moderators. The heart bleeds :P. But this is the 4th or 5th installment of the recommendations thread, so we’ve learned the lessons on making it more efficient and accessible for all:
- Keep it Current:
We’re looking for relatively new reads—ideally nothing published more than a decade or so ago. We know the Horde is well-read on the classics, and we’ve had hundreds of comments for the perennial favorites like Tamora Price, Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey etc in the previous posts. Please let us know about something you’ve read more recently.
We want to make room for fresh finds and maximize discovery!
- One Recommendation Per Person:
Whether it’s a standalone book, a series, or a beloved author, please keep your comment to just one. It’s easier for everyone to read and make up their mind if they’re not overwhelmed by a wall of text mentioning all the Urban Fantasy authors ever.
If you’ve already +1 replied to someone who recommended your preference, please don’t start another thread for the same books or author.
CTR+F is a shortcut that allows you to quickly search a webpage for key words, if you want to check for previous mentions of your favourites. Here’s how to do the same thing on your mobile phone.
- Stay on Target:
If you’re replying to someone who made a specific request, please try to keep your recommendation tailored.
Steering a fellow Horde bookdevourer who wants to read cosy, feel-good LitRPGs towards gritty miliary sci-fi won’t help, as great as your intentions are. We love all genres, but should respect everyone’s comfort preferences. If OP mentions specific triggers they wish to avoid and you can’t remember whether your book rec contains them, please err on the side of caution.
- Suggestions for Ilona
Ilona is looking for a particular type of read, something similar to Kinsmen or Jayne Castle’s St. Helen series. It can be SF or present day. If you are looking for that type of read that’s more recent, Ilona recommends Jennifer Estep and Jessie Mihalik. They are both amazing, and she has read their entire backlist. If you are an author who would like to recommend your own book to Ilona, please label your comment with Author Recommendation.
Looking forward to your suggestions!
Piper J. Drake, Wings Once Cursed and Bound and Fangs so Bright and Deadly. Set in Seattle with mainly Asian American characters and Asian folklore beings. Lots of fun.
I loved both of these book so much!
the Cainsville Series by Kelly Armstrong
+1
So I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned yet but my latest recommendation is the Villan’s Code series by Drew Hayes.
It’s fun with lots of action, centred around a young thief who gets introduced to a villains guild and joins their ranks. The books focus on her but also cover viewpoints from other villains and superheros in the story. There are 3 books so far, all very long and with good world building. Definitely on the SF spectrum.
To Kill A Necromancer and Citadel, both by C.M. Alongi.
MCA Hogarth’s Earthrise series. Great characters and fabulous world building.
+1 for this too. The multiple spinoff series are also good, but be warned that the tone is *very* different from series to series.
I like Carol Van Natta’s Central Galactic Concordance series, it’s romantic space opera. Series of interconnected standalones with new main couple each book, currently 5 book series with additional novellas.
I started with Overload Flux but there’s a novella Last Ship Off Polaris-G set before it. Psychic powers in space are a win for me 🙂
I loved a new series I found by Colleen Helme “Carrots”!
The Ever King by LJ Andrews
Was I enticed by the last name? Perhaps. Is it one of the best romantasies I’ve ever read? Absolutely. And bonus, the narration is stellar if you’re an audiobook person
I enjoyed Annette Marie’s series Guild Codex: Spellbound; the first book in the series is called Three Mages and a Margarita. Urban fantasy where a ‘normal’ human bartender looking for a job discovers that mages, sorcerers, alchemists, etc. exist in her city but most humans never know it. Series has a long story arc where the heroine finds love and gradually morphs into a ‘combat mythic’ with a bit of magic of her own.
There are also 3 other interlinked Guild Codex series:
Demonized where a woman trying to get her rightful inheritance ends up mixed up with a demon.
Unveiled where a witch is trying to survive her probation but ends up learning more about herself than she expected.
Warped where a mythic who thought he was the only one with these sorts of powers works for the wrong people and gets arrested.
The last book in the last series is due to be released in May 2025. At that point, there will be 31 books/short stories. But all series are stand alone.
The series run concurrently with each other. I especially love demonized.
+1000
Particularly for the 4 books of the Demonized series, starting with „Taming Demons for Beginners.“ It has a fantastic story arc for an atypical heroine and hero. The demon is captivating and relatable, yet remains viscerally other: a distinct personality, logic and language, shaped by his very different realm. It has amazing world-building, sly humor, strong action and one of the most beautifully done, erotic slow burns I‘ve read in a long time.
Yes! All of her Guild Codex and related/spin off series are amazing! I just finished Kit’s latest Warped and I want the next on SO BAD!
Love her work!
I would further the recommendations of Annette Marie by mentioning her Spell Weaver series.
I loved the book ” a wizard ‘s guide to defensive baking”
I adore the Saints of Steel books by this same author! I’ve re-read them at least five times now. And the audiobooks are great. T. Kingfisher forever! That inimitable D&D romance adventure worldbuilding flavor! I bet future fans of Maggie the Undying would love them!
Because it is extraordinary writing – ‘Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times’ by Katherine May. On the face of it, it is a simple account of one woman coming to terms with the cold and dark of winter, recovery after family crises, and, giving up her vocation – a career that no longer worked for her.
This makes it sound like a misery memoir or a trudge of a read – it is not.
It was published in 2020 and was a BBC Book of the week and UK Sunday Times bestseller for a reason – it is lovely: an elegant and restorative read for those times when you might feel depleted, burned-out, or, want to retreat a little from real life.
A little off-topic in terms of genre, however!
Anything by Canadian author Tanya Huff. She wrote the series that the tv show Blood Ties was based on. Feisty female ex-cop turned P.I. teaming with a vampire. Unfortunately I think the e-books are only available on Amazon (I have all of her books in paperback)
+1 on Tanya Huff. I really like her The Gales series, first one is Enchantment Emporium, only three books, wouldn’t have minded more 😉
They won’t be for everyone though, I would definitely describe them as quirky. Let’s just say if you have a family made powerful by fertility magic, there will be a lot of fertility rites going on. So ymmv, try before you buy 😊
+1 Tanya Huff
Didn’t Tanya Huff also write a space opera series where the main antagonist was villainous sentient plastics trying to kill us? I still think about that series a lot…
I can’t see that anyone has recommended her yet – Elizabeth Moon.
She does High Fantasy and SciFi, and I have really enjoyed all of it.
In the 2020s she has written 2 additional books in the previously 5 book Vatta series. I have finished the first and started the second.
the Vatta’s War series was the best. graphic audio did them and i so enjoyed the entire series. plucky heroines and wise, crafty elder women are my go to stories.
+1
I’ve read everything she’s written, and loved all of it. Currently rereading Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, first in her high fantasy series.
Mead Mishaps series by Kimberly Lemming, starting with That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon. Really funny, good adventure, and spicy.
I just read The Witchwood Knot, by Olivia Atwater, who instantly became an author whose books I want to read. More Gothic fantasy, with deep fairy lore. Sort of like if Jane Eyre were a witch, and Mr. Rochester some kind of rat demon.
Partwolf on inkitt app or literotica is one is not embarrassed by their browser history.
His shifter stories are well written, his females as capable as the males.
As with most shifter stories there is violence.
I love reading fantasy/ paranormal and one of my favourite authors is TJ Green who has written a series of books based on the White Haven witches although there are shifters and vampires sometimes involved in the stories. The stories involve a group of witches (male and female) who solve mysteries and murder. The stories can be quite thrilling as you get involved with the characters but not bad enough to give you nightmares!
The first one is Buried Magic: Paranormal Witch Mystery (White Haven Witches Book 1) available on Amazon.
Very good stories. Totally enjoyed them.
Just one? Now that’s a fantasy! I haven’t seen this recommended prior, but I have found a series by the author, Markus Matthews, the Bounty of series. It is great fun to read. Superhero turned bounty hunter now that’s different.
And available in kindle unlimited
Beware of Chicken. It is a light hearted hilarious litrpg with minimal game elements. 3 written and a 4th on the way. Our hero is transported to a world of magic and hates his sect. He runs off to hid and feeds his chicken too much. Includes mud fights, confused cultivators, lot of laughs.
Thank you for this rec! I just read the whole 4 book series and loved it. Two of my favorite themes are found family and competence porn.
I recommend the twisted luck series by Mel Todd, Not too dark and an asexual heroine so only romance with secondary characters . Found the world building (earth) original. Eight books
I love the Luck series. Hooked me eight away!
Anything by Susanna Kearsley, but I would start with The Winter Sea. It’s historical romance with some fantasy in it. I’ve read everything by her over and over again. If you visit her website, you can read the first chapter of most of her books for free to see if you like them. Highly highly recommend!
Just finished a reread of Shadowy Horses — my favorite. She loves Scotland!
Great rec! I love her so much – most of her books have a time-travel/multiple timeline element in them and characters are so richly drawn.
Helen Harper
The Firebrand Series
It is loaceted in London. There are a Lot of supernaturals in. The typical vampires and werewolfs, but also some new not so common ones.
The heroine works as a Police man, and in the First Book, she Discovers, that she belongs to the supernaturals, too. I don‘t say, what she is, read the First Book!
I Like it very much, but be careful, once you start, you read until the end of the Book.
Enjoyed her “The Lazy Girl’s Guide to Magic” series starting with Slouch Witch. Too funny! The main character is deceptively painted as a slacker, whose not, and the MC stuffy. Sparks fly and etc, 3 Book series and a Novella.
I don’t usually read funny books, because humor is difficult and if something is billed as laugh out loud, etc, it usually doesn’t work for me. But Alexandra Rowland came out with Running Close to the Wind and I downloaded the audio without even looking at the description because I loved her previous work so much. This was very different, but still fantastic and the narrator only added to it. Funny, colorful, magical and over the top. Also pretty cozy, about a family of ragtag and ramshackle pirates.
Anything by Nalini Singh, I especially love her ongoing Guild Hunter and Psy Changeling series. She writes fantasy, contemporary or even mystery.
Starter Villain by John Scalzi…could stop snickering. A fun light read
+1 — Talking dolphins and cats — a riff on all the James Bond villains. Very funny!
Mark Hayden’s King’s Watch series. Not cozy as such, but very funny and very British. At the moment you get 12 books out of it, but the series isn’t finished yet. This one definitely made me laugh, as friend as well, and the stories are good, too.
So glad someone mentioned this – it would have been my second choice.
What I like about it in addition to what you have said is that he is self published and breaks some of the rules of publishing/ authorship as a result. Some of these things I enjoy, some of them I don’t as much but I am utterly fascinated by his choices.
For example, his protagonists originally started out in a straight thriller series (which is referred to in this series) and as far as I know that had no paranormal elements in whatsoever. And then suddenly in this series, there are. It’s a bit like what would happen if before Maggie there had been a book about her as, I dunno, a normal detective series heroine.
KF Breen Sin and Chocolate, the Demigod of San Francisco co series. Yum.
the dark fairy tales series and the demon days, vampire nights series are great, too. she has a knack for writing funny, quirky fmc who are also bada**. I love her almost as much as Ilona andrews. 🙂
Her Magical Midlife series is one of my go-to’s when I need a light hearted, slow burn, with side characters that make me chuckle out loud (Edgar!)
+1, This series makes me laugh. Graphic Audio version is great too.
Lindsay Buroker – shadows of Winter
+1
+1 Great and prolific author
+1
She’s funny and a very fast writer. Writes good action sequences and slow burn romance.
+1 and she has so much published. loved all of Lindsay’s earlier series.
Elizabeth Hunter just published the first book in a portal fantasy series, it’s called First Light and it was a lovely read. The second one is already listed to be published in April, she tends to be a fast writer.
I love her. I’ve read all of her vampire series, sheesh, I think there are at least 3 series there.
Junkyard Cats series by Faith Hunter is an excellent SciFi series.
+1
also her Soulwood series (although it contains spoilers for the Jane Yellowrock series so you need to read the JY series first which is also very good IMO).
Would anyone be willing to summarize the books? Sometimes I have a hard time tracking the posts. Worst case like the top 10 most recommended?
That’s actually a great idea. I have some spare time in the evening (7:00 ish EST), and I can spend it compiling a list of the recommendations. How did you want me to do it? (I can do a google doc, which would probably be easiest and most painless, but I’m open to other suggestions)
It’s been done! A (very rough) compilation’s been made of everything at the time I wrote it (it’s probably outdated by now).
The sorting system’s nonexistent, but I’ll add in the genres tomorrow, and probably a short summary/blurb about each book!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m-e5zQdyeVfUiSQQImLWxUZruETBmBHWs16CJROtzR0/edit?usp=sharing
What a good deed on your part! Thank you 🙂
you’re amazing. thank you!
I am so incredibly relieved I followed my whim and searched this page for “spreadsheet” before attempting to make my own just now, after putting off doing so for days (weeks). A million thank you-s!!
wow, a delightful gift. thank you so very much.
Daine Duvall’s Immortal Guardians series.
I recently discovered the books by Lisa Cassidy, love all of them!
I recommend an Indie author named Elm Jed. She has a couple of series, one paranormal and one mafia.
Both center on found family, the mafia series does delve into ptsd with the FMC. Learning coping mechanisms and therapy and how to navigate all of that while in a relationship. It can get very heavy at times but there is plenty of humor around balance it out.
Both series do a good job with representation of LGBTQ as well as hetero characters, all the colors of the human rainbow are represented in both series.. well, the whole rainbow in the paranormal series. (Maroon succubi)
Elm is also a Ilona Andrews fan.
I discovered books by BR Kingsolver. There are multiple series and they are all fun reads.
DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL!!!!! (Audio version is incredible but just reading is still super fun.) Book 7 just came out.
+1 read these off a recommendation in a previous book rec post here, it was my first lit RPG and loved it!
Recently listened to and enjoyed The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods. Not all happy but has happy endings and some magic.
No Foreign Sky by Rachel Neumeier. Cover seems like it will be cheesy, but it was one of my favorite books of the last few months. I loved it!
Highly recommend her whole back catalog. The UF one is the Black Dog series, which wraps up this year.
A lot of her books (No Foreign Sky, Tuyo) focus a lot on different cultures figuring out how to work together
Haven’t read that one, but her Invictus duology is good.
I really love her Tuyo series – intense but awesome. Not light-hearted (some brutal parts) but so, so good. Unexpected allies from different cultures forge a strong bond.. Honourable people doing the best they can to be just and loyal and kind, and defend those who need it.
Her portal fantasy Death’s Lady trilogy is pretty interesting, I liked the 4th book best (follows a side character from the main trilogy).
thanks for mentioning her!
May I suggest Linzi Days midlife in Gretna series. She is a marriage celebrant know as registrars in the UK who inherits the position of the recorder to the unseen Fae Dragon Viking and Celtic races from her grandmother. Cue problem because said Grandmother blocked her powers!! Really good and also funny.
The Sixth World Series by Rebecca Roanhorse. Absolutely fantastic. Two books right now, so probably an appetizer for the BDH.
I have been reading a lot of good ARCs from Chris Kennedy Publishing lately and 2 series really stand out for this group, but since I can only pick one, I will go with Kacey Ezell’s Ashes of Entecea series. It is a clean space opera that I think fans of Jennifer Estep will enjoy. The first book is The Queen’s Fixer.
The House Witch Series: A Humorous Romantic Fantasy
by Delemhach
just finished “How to summon a fairy godmother ” Thoroughly enjoyed.
Author Jenny Schwartz. The House that walked thru Worlds is delightful. Part of the Uncertain Sanctuary series. Reminded me of the Innkeeper.
I have read this series and agree. Great reads.
+1
This series (Uncertain Sanctuary) was going to be my recommendation! The House that Walked thru Worlds is fantastic. I don’t know how to describe it… Part space opera, part Gothic novel, part mystery, all speculative fiction? The world building to be really interesting and engaging.
+2 Love this series! And yes, very Innkeeper-esque.
Marko Kloos- Palladium Wars series (Aftershocks is book 1) is my current wait (book 4 is coming to me soon).
Believable military scifi is so hard to find it’s not funny. He’s good. Being ex-military probably helps.
Bloke also wrote two of the best episodes of Netflix’s Blood Death and Robots season 1 (Lucky 13 a stand out) if you need further motivation to check it out !
oops Netflix show is Love Death and Robots
Yes! Also love his Frontlines series, good future Earth SciFi hostile alien encounter with a lovely non-romantic romantic couple.
I didn’t like the Red Winter series as well as the other two. The Guild Codex is the best!!
https://www.annettemarie.ca/readingorder
Anything by Nathan Lowell. I discovered him in Kindle Unlimited. Start with Trader’s Tales.
The Forth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. The 3rd one comes out in January.
One of the best books I read this year. With dragons, romance, suspense, magic, friendship, enemies to lovers, surprising twists
Since most of my other favorites are on here, I’ll recommend
Homicidal Aliens Are Invading And All I Got Is This Stat Menu by JJ Ackerknecht
Is it ok to recommend something in another genre? Right now I need laughter, and Jana Deleon’s Fortune Redding mystery series is a gut-buster! It’s outrageous enough to appeal to some UF/scifi fans (a burned CIA assassin is sent to hide out in a very weird, remote little Louisiana town), and I always laugh till I cry (or until my family thinks I’m nuts). Bonus: there are 20-something books in the series so far, so though they are quick reads they’ll keep you going.
Apparently I already own this…looks like I’ll be re-reading it.
As good as the earlier books in the series are, the story gets better, or at least funnier, as it goes on.
Love that “to Gertie” becomes a common term – and does not always refer to Gertie…
+1 I love, love, LOVE that series to the tune of reading them plus 30 times. The series just keeps getting better.