J.L. Eck the writer
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GREAT Books to Add to Your Reading List
(Just click on any cover to go its page on Amazon)

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Need a good book recommendation? I've read and highly recommend all of the books on this page! From fantasy to literature and even non fiction and everything in between, you're sure to find your next good read here!
(Just click on the book cover to be taken to Amazon)

Novels

Below are some of my favorite novels. These books influenced me and my writing. And they were incredibly entertaining too!
#1 Bestseller on Amazon * Winner of Kindle Book Review's Best Indie Book of 2012 Award

Hard Science Fiction


This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.
A New York Times Bestseller

Metaphysical and Visionary


The mesmerizing story of one man's descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation. On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuries confine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man's disbelief falters; soon, even the
Fantasy

Coming of Age


A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman’s first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.

This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...

Mythology, Fairy Tales & Folk Tales

Swallow, daughter, pull them in, those words that sit upon your lips. Lock them deep inside your soul, hide them ‘til they’ve time to grow. Close your mouth upon the power, curse not, cure not, ‘til the hour. You won’t speak and you won’t tell, you won’t call on heaven or hell. You will learn and you will thrive. Silence, daughter. Stay alive.

The day my mother was killed, she told my father I wouldn’t speak again, and she told him if I died, he would die too. Then she predicted the king would sell his soul and lose his son to the sky.
Science Fiction - Time Travel

Shipwrecked in the wild Paleolithic with their modern tools and weapons turning to dust, time travelers from the year 2233 go native to survive.
With stirring imagination and an eye for colorful detail, award-winner Matthew Thayer transports readers back to a European continent that is a sea of green, a sensory overload of natural beauty. Home to woolly mammoth, hairy rhino, wolf pack and forests without end, it is a land unspoiled.
There is also danger and adventure at every turn.
The book series 30,000 B.C. Chronicles begins with Bordeaux. Strong women, brave men and despicable villains, the characters rise to meet the many challenges of the ancient world. The memories they share of home and the scarred Earth they left behind paint an intriguing picture of mankind’s future.

Womens Fiction

When Julie Jacobs inherits a key to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy, she is told that it will lead her to an old family treasure. Soon she is launched on a winding and perilous journey into the history of her ancestor Giulietta, whose legendary love for a young man named Romeo rocked the foundations of medieval Siena. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families immortalized in Shakespeare’s unforgettable blood feud, she begins to realize that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is the next target.
#1 in several categories!

Young Adult


Ceony Twill arrives at the cottage of Magician Emery Thane with a broken heart. Having graduated at the top of her class from the Tagis Praff School for the Magically Inclined, Ceony is assigned an apprenticeship in paper magic despite her dreams of bespelling metal. And once she’s bonded to paper, that will be her only magic…forever.

Yet the spells Ceony learns under the strange yet kind Thane turn out to be more marvelous than she could have ever imagined—animating paper creatures, bringing stories to life via ghostly images, even reading fortunes. But as she discovers these wonders, Ceony also learns of the extraordinary dangers of forbidden magic.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author's ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel

Neverwhere is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he discovers a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her—an act of kindness that plunges him into a world he never dreamed existed.

Slipping through the cracks of reality, Richard lands in the Neverwhere—a London of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth. The Neverwhere is home to Door, the mysterious girl Richard helped in the London Above. Door, a noblewoman whose family has been murdered, is on a quest to find the agent that slaughtered her family and thwart the destruction of this underworld kingdom. If Richard is ever to return to his former life, he must join the journey to save Door's world—and find a way to survive.

Visionary - Coming of Age

A young man's awakening to his inner voice gets him out of his head, so he can follow his heart.

In his mountaintop village in southern Spain, Pablo's entire life seems planned out for him--his place, his vocation, his future. When family tragedy catapults him into an unconventional journey of self-discovery, everything he holds true is called into question. His hopes and dreams. His doubts and fears. His faith in something greater, and his belief in himself. With the help of an unlikely ally, Pablo soon finds that the profound transformation of his inner world leads to dramatic changes on the outside as well.

Read the bestseller everyone is talking about!

Psychological Thrillers


One night, Mia Dennett enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn't show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. At first Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia's life.
Time Travel

"Imhotep" is the first book in a four-novel series about the ancient Egyptian architect.
Stumbling in the dark of an unfinished tomb beneath the sands of Saqqara, American tourist Tim Hope unknowingly passes through a time portal that leads to ancient Egypt — a time before the Sphinx, before the great pyramids of Giza, and long before the loss of his beloved Addy.
When he discovers that two other Americans preceded him through the time portal, Tim immerses himself in the ancient world to search for them. As he becomes more comfortable with the simpler, more immediate land, he finds himself irresistibly attracted to the delicate Meryt, a wbt-priestess for the god Re.
Classics Women's

“I have no use for a baby girl. Get rid of her tonight!” He towered over her as she cringed in fear.


But Hansa, a thirteen-year-old child-bride in rural India, refuses to remain a victim of the oppressive society where a female child is an unwanted burden. Instead of drowning her baby, Hansa escapes from her village with three-month-old Tara.
Hansa soon discovers that life as a teenage mother is fraught with danger. But a single lie opens the door to a promising opportunity far from home.

Literature & Fiction

In this savage saga of love, war, lust, and magic set in the tenth century, young Sigrid is destined to be the mother of the king of the Nordic lands that would become Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and England.
A devout believer in the old Nordic gods, Sigrid is visited regularly in her dreams by the goddess Freya, who whispers to her of the future. Though Sigrid is beautiful, rich, arrogant, and matchlessly clever, her uncanny ability to foresee the future and manipulate the present guides her through dangerous politics as a bloody war between Vikings and Christians rages on.

Lesbian Romance

Inspired by a true story, this novel traces the unpredictable journey of a young woman living alone amid the political unrest and social taboos of Manhattan during the 1960s, oblivious to her own feelings until being smitten by the sight of a total stranger in town for the weekend whose name and number she's prevented from getting. To overcome her anxiety, she downs a glass of gin mistaken as ice water, awakening the next morning in a fog, but fixated on finding that one person in a city of millions before time runs out. On a fast paced track towards an ending you can’t possibly foresee, this book will erase any doubt you harbor in the existence of love at first sight and forever fortify your faith in happily ever after.
#1 New York Times bestseller
Named a top five book of the year by Amazon

Women's Fiction


In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.
FRANCE, 1939
In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn't believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.
Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

Time Travel

Get the complete boxed of Nichole Van's House of Oak series—all four full-length novels in this Amazon Bestselling series!

Time is not a river. It is a vast cosmic sea. Where each life exists as rippling circles on its surface, past and future being eternally present. And occasionally, one expanding ring intertwines with that of another, weaving the lives of two people together . . .

Explore four stories of love which transcend Time itself.
Ghost Story

A masterfully crafted story of love, loss, and second chances. Set during the fear and panic of the Great Influenza of 1918, The Uninvited is part gothic ghost-story, part psychological thriller, perfect for those who loved The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield or The Vanishing by Wendy Webb.Twenty-five year old Ivy Rowan rises from her bed after being struck by the flu, only to discover the world has been torn apart in just a few short days. 
But Ivy’s life-long gift—or curse—remains.  For she sees the uninvited ones—ghosts of loved ones who appear to her, unasked, unwelcomed, for they always herald impending death. On that October evening in 1918 she sees the spirit of her grandmother, rocking in her mother’s chair. An hour later, she learns her younger brother and father have killed a young German out of retaliation for the death of Ivy’s older brother Billy in the Great War.
Horrified, she leaves home, to discover the flu has caused utter panic and the rules governing society have broken down. Ivy is drawn into this new world of jazz, passion, and freedom, where people live for the day, because they could be stricken by nightfall. But as her ‘uninvited guests’ begin to appear to her more often, she knows her life will be torn apart once more, but Ivy has no inkling of the other-worldly revelations about to unfold.

Inspirational Books

These are the books that have changed my life. They just might change your life too!
The bestselling book by one of the 21st century’s most innovative and exciting spiritual thinkers.

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, Tolle expands on these powerful ideas to show how transcending our ego-based state of consciousness is not only essential to personal happiness, but also the key to ending conflict and suffering throughout the world. Tolle describes how our attachment to the ego creates the dysfunction that leads to anger, jealousy, and unhappiness, and shows readers how to awaken to a new state of consciousness and follow the path to a truly fulfilling existence.

A New Earth was an Oprah Book Club pick and reads as a traditional narrative, offering anecdotes and philosophies in a way that is accessible to all. Illuminating, enlightening, and uplifting, A New Earth is a profoundly spiritual manifesto for a better way of life—and for building a better world.

What is it that magically draws us to step outside our normal realm of existence? That unexplainable energy that sings a calling to our soul?

A knowing which came in the late summer of 2011, my pilgrimage was
the culmination of several years in which I began learning to listen to the energies of the Universe. Listen to the knowledge my soul cradles deep within. Listen to the love and guidance of my guardian angels. Believe that all I need to know, all I need to understand, is available to me if I simply remain open to the forces of the Universe ...and listen.

In September 2014 I followed my soul knowledge and embarked on the Camino Santiago de Compostela, an ancient pilgrimage path some 500 miles crossing the French Pyrenees and west across the north of Spain.
With teenage children and in-laws in tow, the Fleetwood family embark on their 3 month adventure just days after the tragic loss of their beloved dachshund, Coco.

When two miniature dachshunds in smart winter coats are spotted in Moscow, it’s game on! A riotous, often hilarious dachshund spotting competition for the lovable, long-bodied dog ensues across 15 countries.
In this book, over 250 beautiful souls share such life-changing moments - experiences that inspired, uplifted, shook us to our core, got us back on track (or onto a new track altogether), and led us toward our true selves. The 365 inspiring stories include:
  • discovering your purpose,
  • experiencing a spiritual awakening,
  • leaving a job/relationship/home/religion to follow your soul's whispers,
  • bravely opening up to love,
  • receiving messages from beyond,
  • tapping into your inner strength,
  • finding the beauty and wisdom in all of life, even in the difficult moments,
  • and so much more!
While the experiences themselves vary greatly, each of these moments transformed the authors and helped them shift in a positive way. These true stories (one page each - for quick inspiration!) were written with love and infused with the intention that you'll be able to discover the beauty in your own life shifts, too.
The beautiful practicality of her teachings has made Pema Chödrön one of the most beloved of contemporary American spiritual authors among Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. A collection of talks she gave between 1987 and 1994, the book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties. Chödrön discusses:

  • Using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage
  • Communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down
  • Practices for reversing habitual patterns
  • Methods for working with chaotic situations
  • Ways for creating effective social action


Now a New York Times Bestseller -- True stories inspired by one of the most iconic, beloved, bestselling books of our time
 
In the ten years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of readers to set out on paths they never thought possible, in search of their own best selves. Here, in this candid and captivating collection, nearly fifty of those readers—people as diverse in their experiences as they are in age and background—share their stories. The journeys they recount are transformative—sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, but always deeply inspiring.
Becoming a writer begins with a simple but important belief: You are a writer; you just need to write.

In You Are a Writer, Jeff Goins shares his own story of self-doubt and what it took for him to become a professional writer. He gives you practical steps to improve your writing, get published in magazines, and build a platform that puts you in charge.
You see all those successful people. They're rocking it. How do they do it? Are they super smart? Do they have a team of personal assistants to do their bidding? In Make Your Day, you will find out the five things successful people do every morning that create the life of their dreams- five things anyone can do every morning to launch themselves into unlimited success. And the best part is, these five things aren't difficult or time consuming. Take a sneak peak into what some of the world's most successful people are doing every morning and you too can start rocking it!
The 10th anniversary edition of one of the most iconic, beloved, and bestselling books of our time.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love touched the world and changed countless lives, inspiring and empowering millions of readers to search for their own best selves. Now, this beloved and iconic book returns in a beautiful 10th anniversary edition, complete with an updated introduction from the author, to launch a whole new generation of fans.
 
In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.
Do you feel separate or disconnected? Are you tired of your frantic, busy lifestyle?
When is the last time you felt truly alive, and filled with the joy of being?
This unique and uplifting book will show you how you can liberate yourself from a hectic, unfulfilling life by creating and then deepening quality connections with your Body, your True Self, Others in your life and with Spirit. You will learn how to be happy withouth being perfect. (Here's where you sigh with relief. Ahhh.)
You are not doomed by your genes and hardwired to be a certain way for the rest of your life. A new science is emerging that empowers all human beings to create the reality they choose. In Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, renowned author, speaker, researcher, and chiropractor Dr. Joe Dispenza combines the fields of quantum physics, neuroscience, brain chemistry, biology, and genetics to show you what is truly possible. Not only will you be given the necessary knowledge to change any aspect of yourself, you will be taught the step-by-step tools to apply what you learn in order to make measurable changes in any area of your life.
Automate Your Routines, Guarantee Your Results hilariously delivers a five-step formula that shows you how to automate your morning, evening, and eating routines.

We’ll also walk through how to permanently eliminate your bad habits, liberate your brain power, and focus on what is most important to you.

The formula combines the principles of computer programming - a language whose sole purpose is to automate - with the basics of human behavior to show you how to guarantee the results you desire.
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  • NEW Novels
  • Naupaka Blooming
  • The Fantastic Mind Blog
  • About J.L. Eck
  • Must Read Books
  • Resources for Writers