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Books Like An Ember in the Ashes
If An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir worked for you, these indie books offer a similar reading experience. The comparison comes from AI analysis of each full manuscript (pacing, tone, tropes, and more), not from marketing copy.
A Study of Shattered Spells
Josiah DeGraaf
Only teachers know what really happens at a magic school… Chintor Academy is celebrated as the place where the best music mages are forged. But beneath the surface, bullies rule with cruelty, teachers scheme against each other, and the student destined to save their nation is far from ready. Kalina didn’t know what she was getting into when she agreed to teach at Chintor. Now, as a first-year teacher, she’s tasked with finishing the training of this prophesied violinist. Their nation’s sworn enemies are nearing victory, and she has mere months to prepare him before their country collapses. When Kalina uncovers the abuse of a vulnerable student, she’s thrust into a dangerous dilemma. Exposing the school’s underbelly means she’ll be fired and unable to prepare their hero. Keeping quiet means her students will suffer. The fate of the nation—and her soul—hangs in the balance.
Adventure
Embers in the SALT
Klood P. Trouvay
Syra, known in the fighting pits as the “Greykiss,” has spent years trying to leave that life behind. But in New Merserat, a monster’s reputation is a debt that’s never fully paid, and when someone from her past returns, Syra is pulled back toward the violence she thought she had escaped. Then there is Lienne Blumaker—a seemingly ordinary young librarian troubled by unexplained headaches, and one of the few people who sees the woman behind the reputation. When House Saltbird offers Syra a lucrative security contract at its remote Salt Field, the danger seems familiar enough: sabotage, hired blades, men willing to kill for coin. Instead, she finds herself among a mercenary crew that neither trusts nor wants her, while something far stranger moves through the white expanse beyond the camp. As fear closes in and the mystery deepens, Syra must decide whether survival still means keeping everyone at a distance—or whether some bonds are worth becoming vulnerable for. A literary, character-driven dark fantasy of mercenary tension, slow-burning intimacy, hard-won trust, and the monsters people become—and believe themselves to be.
Dark Fantasy
Wraithbound
HL Hopkins
Daisy Hartridge has never been good at life—but she's spectacularly bad at it when she is dragged through a dimensional rift into a world of wraiths and wraith riders. Thrust into Artonia, where her emotions literally take physical form. Three powerful wraiths that she must bond with, or lose. For the other riders, duty, control and routine are everything, and with her head full of chaotic brain-squirrels, those are definitely not areas she excels in. She can't even get to class on time! But as she's forced to navigate a conspiracy that reaches deeper than anyone realises, against a ticking clock none of them fully understand, she gains a creeping suspicion that, for once, she might actually be the only one equipped to stop it. With a found family of deeply flawed allies at her side, Daisy stumbles toward answers—and the uncomfortable truth that saving Artonia might require taking a closer look at herself first. Content Warnings Explained: Child Abuse - relationship between a child and caregiver featuring coercive control and verbal bullying. Graphic Violence/Gore - briefly features a character being shot, with a short reference to bloodshed. Mental Health Crisis - relates to a key character's struggle with guilt and self.
Fantasy
Tabitha Unleashed
Robert W Adams
“I’ll risk anything to save her. Even the secret of what I am.” Tabitha Griffin has plenty of things making her life hell—guilt, fear, shame, that suicide attempt thing, and her twin sister’s cancer. But nothing terrifies her more than being the center of attention. So naturally, she enters the biggest televised talent competition in the country to win the million-dollar prize that could save her sister’s life. There’s just one problem. Tabitha isn’t performing an illusion. The impossible things she does on stage are real. As the competition turns her into a national sensation, Tabitha finds friendship, first love, and a reason to believe she might deserve a future after all. But when a growing political movement turns her into an unwilling symbol of queer resistance, every secret she’s fought to protect begins unraveling. It’s all a distraction from winning the competition. But as her two worlds collide, Tabitha must choose which secrets to keep, which to reveal—and to whom. Because saving her sister’s life is the only way to save her own.
Contemporary
WorldWind
Brett Schneider
Sixteen-year-old Zuma “Z” Alexander is grieving her father, fighting with her mother, and barely holding herself together when she chases a legendary green flash across the Pacific on a kiteboard. Instead of finding light, Z finds a doorway. Pulled into Vindurheim, a flooded world of rival seafaring peoples, ancient prophecy, monstrous creatures, and brutal war, Z is stranded far from Earth with no obvious way home. Her only advantages are a dead phone, her talent for kitesurfing, a stubborn refusal to stay out of trouble, and fragments of knowledge from a world far more technologically advanced than this one. As Z becomes entangled in a conflict between the Paskari and Vin-Paskari, she must decide whether finding her way home matters more than saving the people who have given her something she thought she had lost: purpose. WorldWind is a YA portal fantasy adventure about grief, survival, found family, and discovering that sometimes the way forward begins by being blown completely off course.
Fantasy
Frost and Iron, the Ashland Chronicles, Book One
Edale Lane
“A very detailed and deeply drawn vision of how people will survive and rebuild in the aftermath.” —The Lesbian Review A hunter from the marsh. A queen forged by duty. A bond neither expected. Lark Sutter has never feared the wilds of Saltmarsh Reach. Raised by her iron-willed grandmother and tempered by wild weather, loss, and hard survival, she’s become a hunter and fighter who protects her own. But when a raider attack leaves her friend on the brink of death, Lark is driven to the last place she ever thought she’d go: Verdancia’s gleaming capital, demanding aid from a queen she has no reason to trust. Queen Azaleen Frost is no stranger to sacrifice. Crowned young, she rules Verdancia with a steady hand and a heart kept tightly guarded. Duty rises above all—until Lark storms into her hall, mud on her boots, fire in her eyes, and desperation in her voice—shaking Azaleen’s resolve in ways she cannot ignore. As Verdancia edges toward open conflict, fate binds Lark and Azaleen in an uneasy alliance. Threatened by war hawks, cultists, looming shortages, and scheming politicians, the two women must stand together if they hope to save their people and fortify the kingdom for what lies ahead. A sweeping post-apocalyptic sapphic epic, Frost and Iron blends political intrigue, survival, found family, slow-burn romance, and front-line action. Perfect for readers who love fierce heroines, dangerous alliances, heart-wrenching stakes, and richly drawn worlds on the brink of war.
Post-Apocalyptic
The Last Safehouse, A Love Worth Dying For
K.C. Mitchell
They took everything from her. Now, she’s their biggest threat. Krista Fitzpatrick’s eighteenth birthday was supposed to be a celebration. Instead, it ended in bloodshed. Her parents, highly trained government assassins, were executed, and now the killers are hunting her. Targeted for a microchip she knows nothing about, Krista is plunged into a world of espionage, deception, and deadly alliances. Krista must rely on the one person she’s not sure she can trust to keep her alive: Oliver Paige, a former Navy SEAL with one mission. He’ll break the rules, cross lines, and defy orders to protect her. But the more time they spend together, the more dangerous their growing connection becomes. As the stakes become greater, Krista must decide who to trust. Because sometimes the last safehouse… is you. 🔥 Perfect for fans of Red Sparrow, The Bourne Identity, The Bodyguard, and Every Last Breath, a high-stakes romantic thriller where love could be the ultimate weapon—or the greatest risk of all. This is the first book in The Last Safehouse Series. Each book follows The Firm’s elite operatives as they risk everything for love, loyalty, and the fight for justice with hope, faith, and redemption threads that weave throughout.
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