Here are 87 books that Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter fans have personally recommended if you like
Lola Benko, Treasure Hunter.
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I’ve been hooked on adventure stories since I started reading. When I became serious about writing for young readers, I couldn’t resist creating fearless kids out to tackle. Indiana Jones-sized dangers. While I love writing these kinds of stories, I can’t resist reading them either. If there’s an added element of magic or sci-fi time-travel, I have to find out what happens and how. The most fun is to read these stories aloud to the young readers in my family in hopes they’ll also fall in love with adventure/fantasy—maybe one of them will even write a few of these books. That would be fabulous.
This book is filled the Mayan mythology. I found that the magic was fascinating, and I couldn’t get enough of the monsters, gods, and giants. They make for an exciting read—even if you’re not a middle grader.
Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents J.C. Cervantes' take on Maya mythology featuring a boy who has to stop the god of death.
"A perfect storm of inspiring heroes, surprising twists, and some seriously scary monsters. This hilarious, expertly-plotted adventure keeps you racing through the pages and leaves you desperate for the next book (and craving a steaming mug of hot chocolate)!" --Shannon Messenger, New York Times best-selling author of the Keeper of the Lost Cities series and the Sky Fall series
Zane has always enjoyed exploring the dormant volcano near his home in New Mexico, even though hiking it is…
Middle grade always takes a big portion of my TBR pile. I love the hopefulness that kids this age have. And for a child reader, a book can be a way to work out big emotions in a place far removed from their own life. I love the function of a portal in taking the reader that much further away from their reality. As a child, the fantasy A Wrinkle in Time got me through a difficult period. This love of fantasy and children’s literature is the reason I started writing in the first place. And why I got an MFA in writing specifically for children and young adults.
This is a “big” book in that it is reminiscent of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series.
It is epic in scope, in action, and in humor—it is laugh-out-loud funny! The portals are many and, to further complicate things, have guardians. I loved the mixture of Hindu mythology with modern-day references (there are a lot!) along with a very modern kid sensibility. A thrill ride of an adventure.
Best-selling author Rick Riordan introduces this fantasy adventure by New York Times best-selling author, Roshani Chokshi, inspired by the great epics she grew up on.
Named one of 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time by Time magazine!
Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from her latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that…
I love any book that carries me away into a different world, allows me to feel new possibilities, and makes me think. That is what I call magic. This creative magic has filled all aspects of my life. In addition to writing, I am a theatre artist, a mentor, an advocate for women and girls, and a creativity facilitator. In other words, I believe in the creative powers of people to make a more just and enriched world. My goal is always to inspire others to find their own voice, and to use it to make a difference. That’s what guides my reading, and my book recommendations. Enjoy!
I read books for all ages, because good stories transcend age, gender, race, etc. I love books that teach me something new, especially those with smart, sassy, and determined female protagonists. Maya and the Rising Darkis a delightful middle-grade read, with an empowered 12-year-old girl leading the way. Rich with diversity, I loved journeying into the mythology of the Orisha gods with Maya and her friends
In this highly anticipated contemporary fantasy, twelve-year-old Maya's search for her missing father puts her at the center of a battle between our world, the Orishas, and the mysterious and sinister Dark world. Perfect for fans of Aru Shah and the End of Time and The Serpent's Secret.
Twelve-year-old Maya is the only one in her South Side Chicago neighborhood who witnesses weird occurrences like werehyenas stalking the streets at night and a scary man made of shadows plaguing her dreams. Her friends try to find an explanation-perhaps a ghost uprising or a lunchroom experiment gone awry. But to Maya,…
The older I get, the more fascinated I am with family history and the way certain traits or talents get passed down – or not. Unfortunately, we don’t always know much about our own ancestors. Maybe that’s why I appreciate a multigenerational story that shows all the forms a young person’s “inheritance” can take, whether money, looks, a special skill or talent, or even a disease. And because I’ve always loved a good mystery, I enjoy books where a young person seeks to uncover a family secret. Finally, now that I’m on the older side of the generations, I appreciate a book that portrays older family members realistically and with respect.
This book has several of my all-time favorite story elements.
First, it’s historical fiction based on an impressive but long-overlooked female pioneer: Kate Warne, the first woman Pinkerton detective.
Second, it has both a high-stakes political story as the characters try to protect the president of the United States from assassination and a high-stakes personal story, as Nell Warne (Kate’s fictional niece) tries to uncover the secret of her father’s death. Did he really kill his own brother? Nell refuses to believe it.
Third, Nell is a funny, spit-fire narrator. And finally, there are secret codes for the reader to solve!
Eleven-year-old Nell Warne arrives on her aunt's doorstep lugging a heavy sack of sorrows. If her Aunt Kate rejects her, it's the miserable Home for the Friendless.
Luckily, canny Nell makes herself indispensable to Aunt Kate...and not just by helping out with household chores. For Aunt Kate is the first-ever female detective employed by the legendary Pinkerton Detective Agency. And Nell has a knack for the kind of close listening and bold action that made Pinkerton detectives famous in Civil War-era America. With huge, nation-changing events simmering in the background, Nell uses skills new and old to uncover truths about…
I began my own writing journey in 2007. I skipped many HS classes just to stay home and read. I want to know the ending of a story. I want happy ending. Life is hard, but when I have the ability to write the stories I write with the ending that so many are deprived of, at least I know I can find it in a book of my own choosing. That is my love of romance.
If you love Indiana Jones or tales of King Soloman’s Mines then this is a great book. Very sexy. I will say (because it’s an old book, and yes, I’ve read and re-read it many times. It’s just that good!)
There is major head-hopping, but the story is so compelling that you can actually see past that. As a young girl, the heroine followed in her father’s archeological footsteps. Her father was known as Crackpot Sherman and she is out to prove he was not a crackpot, but things don’t look too promising.
A trek up the Amazon and Rio Negro rivers and a thousand miles through the jungle in a search for the heart of an unknown tribe. Family dynamics, a frustrated, but, definitely, a hero to die for. One of the best stories that will keep you turning the pages, when you are just dying to put it…
A fabulous lost Amazon city once inhabited by women warriors and containing a rare red diamond: it sounded like myth, but archaeologist Jillian Sherwood believed it was real, and she was willing to put up with anything to find it-even Ben Lewis.
Ruffian, knock-about, and number one river guide in Brazil, Ben was all man-over six feet of rock-hard muscles that rippled under his khakis, with lazy blue eyes that taunted her from his tanned face. Jillian watched him come to a fast boil when she refused to reveal their exact destination upriver in the uncharted rain forests-and resolved to…
I grew up a fan of all things sci-fi, Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, and so on. But the older I got, the pickier I got, wanting more depth in character, creative stories and fun, but believable action. I read classic sci-fi like iRobot, Starship Troopers, and Enders Game, to name a few. I did find some contemporary authors I liked like Marco Kloos, Detmare Wehr, and Rebecca Branch, but they were needles in a haystack. So, instead of complaining that there were not enough good books out there, I started writing my own. A decade later I have 8 published titles and more on the way.
This book is a little more Space Opera than Sci-fi as it focuses more on the adventure than the impossibility of the technology. It takes place thousands of years in the future when man kinds had spread out across the galaxy and forgotten about Earth, for the most part. The characters are not deep, and the story relies more on action than complexity, but it’s fun. It moves from one event to another, the main character is a bit of a rogue that you can’t help but like and his female counterpart is smarter, faster, and deadlier than he will every be, so it's good she is on his side. One of the reasons I like these books (10 book series with some spin-offs) is because it is very different from my style. If my books were Angus Steaks, these would be an Ice-cream Sunday.
They say the Earth is just a myth. Something to tell your children when you put them to sleep, the lost homeworld of humanity. Everyone knows it isn't real, though. It can't be.
But when Captain Jace Hughes encounters a nun with a mysterious piece of cargo and a bold secret, he soon discovers that everything he thought he knew about Earth is wrong. So very, very wrong.
Climb aboard The Renegade Star and assemble a crew, follow the clues, uncover the truth, and most importantly, try to stay alive.
Experience the beginning of a sprawling galactic tale in this…
I love to read, and a good story is one thing. But once you’ve read the story, you know how it ends. It’s the characters in the story that determine if you want to go back and read them again. These are stories that I enjoy reading over again, (some several times) although I know how the story ends. The characters in these stories have inspired me to write my own.
Although this technically isn’t a fantasy book, it’s still one of my favorites. Dr. Michael Murphy is a biblical prophecy scholar and archaeologist. A modern-day Indiana Jones with a mysterious and dangerous benefactor who gives him clues to find ancient biblical artifacts while a diabolical cabal is intent on stopping him. A thrilling read that’s hard to put down.
Tim LaHaye created the Left Behind Series, which has become one of the most popular fiction series of all time. Those novels, with more that 50 million copies sold, presented a unique combination of suspense and substance drawn from his lifelong study of Biblical prophecy.
Now Tim LaHaye has created a new series that begins with Babylon Rising. The novels in this new series are even faster-paced thrillers based on prophecies that are not covered in the Left Behind books and that have great relevance to the events of today.
Babylon Risingintroduces a terrific new hero for our time. Michael…
I went to four different boarding schools when I was younger, which at the time didn’t seem weird but it definitely is. I think boarding schools are peculiar places, full of teenagers with raging hormones, secret homesickness, and a certain sort of reckless swagger that is a recipe for all sorts of drama i.e. the perfect setting for a novel.I was on quite hefty scholarships and know how lucky I was to be there, but whether you have or haven’t been to boarding school, there is an endless fascination with them. I had a lot of fun writing The Islanders, wallowing happily in my nostalgia and reminiscing with old friends about what we got up to.
This book is a brilliantly written, honest story set at a prestigious prep school (Ault) in the US. Its sometimes infuriating main character, Lee, doesn’t have a great time there and mostly it’s her own fault. But Lee is a scholarship girl and the unwritten rules of the privileged society she has just chosen to enter bewilder her. This is definitely a coming-of-age book for people who are already well into adulthood. At the end of the book, when real life crashes in on Lee, Sittenfeld writes a chapter that I could read over and over again. It’s so hauntingly true and wise in the way that you can only get by looking back at a sad period in your life later, when you’re happier.
An insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.
Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.…
I’m a Korean American author who believes life is too short to read books that bore you, classics or otherwise. I’ve always had eclectic tastes and like to pick out books the way customers choose bonbons at my chocolate shop (which I’ve co-owned since 1984). And while I do read and often write longer works, I’ve always preferred to fall into a world from the opening line and bow out soon thereafter. By nature, I’m a minimalist – and maybe don’t have the greatest attention span – so I’m in awe of short works that stand on their own. They’re just more dramatic and memorable to me.
The author, a columnist, wrote these family stories as an homage to his bigger-than-life mom Patty while she was battling cancer. Told with heart, laugh-out-loud family anecdotes, and love, always love, Saalman brings you into an unforgettable midwestern world of then and now, although even the modern-day Indiana stories echo with “yore” to my more urban ears: his parents’ solid working-class values, their casino date every Saturday night, Patty’s job as the hostess of a diner. Ultimately, she would outlive her death sentence by five years.
"Scott's personal, poignant essays are a tribute to family and to the enduring nature of love. Read them in one delicious gulp or sit back on the couch and imagine yourself on Brushy Fork Road and savor then slowly." - Angela Himsel, A River Could Be A Tree
I had a rotten childhood. Stuck in bed with asthma, I couldn’t do sports; but I could roam space and time with books, especially science fiction. Yet when I tried to re-read my beloved sci-fi titles as an adult, I got a shock. The books with sound science had terrible writing; the well-written books were full of scientific schlock. I realized that if I wanted sci-fi that was both technically astute and rewarding to read, I’d have to write it myself. And so I did.
My friends and I discovered Raintree County as undergrads, and found in it everything that matters – history, character, politics, and above all action. Here is life with all its pleasure and horror, apostasy and faith, sacrifice and victory. Here too is the core of American democracy, its glories and fiascos: a love letter to the Republic, more than ever relevant in the factional bitterness of today. An unforgettable novel from a man who killed himself at 34.
Throughout a single day in 1892, John Shawnessy recalls the great moments of his life—from the love affairs of his youth in Indiana, to the battles of the Civil War, to the politics of the Gilded Age, to his homecoming as schoolteacher, husband, and father. Shawnessy is the epitome of the place and period in which he lives, a rural land of springlike women, shady gamblers, wandering vagabonds, and soapbox orators. Yet here on the banks of the Shawmucky River, which weaves its primitive course through Raintree County, Indiana, he also feels and obeys ancient rhythms. A number-one bestseller when…
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