Clean fiction recommendations?

[MormonGuitarGirl]

Hi guys,

I'm having a bit of trouble finding clean fiction. Even some of the books I've bought in the Christian section at Barnes & Noble have language I find...not clean.

It's frustrating to have to travel to an LDS bookstore every time I want a book; I'd love to be able to shop at B&N without it being such a hassle. I try to stick with publishers like Tyndale and Thomas Nelson, but I'm open to suggestions.

I guess my questions are, where do you buy books that don't make you feel gross and which novels do you enjoy?

My favorite genres are mystery, suspense and drama, but I'm willing to dabble in others.

Thanks so much!

Edited December 16, 2014 by MormonGuitarGirl

[pkstpaul]

Can there be any bad words? I read an LDS novel (indie published on Amazon) called Wind of Fire, which I enjoyed.  It had one character that some a couple of 4 letter words, but none that would make you blush. The character needed to be set apart from the others and a bit of a rebel. CS Lewis would be my recommendation, but obviously that is a bit dated.

[PolarVortex]

Maybe you could try visiting used-book stores and browsing through books published in the first part of the 20th century.  When I was a kid, I sneaked up into my grandmother's attic one day and found a bunch of mystery and suspense novels from the 1930s and 1940s.  Not only were they clean (except for constant smoking and social drinking), but they were like going back in a time machine to the world of long ago.  I loved them.

[Connie]

I don't buy books unless i've read them and find them worth reading more than once (well, unless it's kindle freebies).  That's why i'm a big fan of my library, the online library and kindle freebies.  I'm pretty careful about which kindle freebies i go for though.  I research the book first.

 

For me to be able to tell if a book is worth my time has taken some practice on my part.  This is what i have learned to do.  I use goodreads.com a lot.  They give me recommendations based on books i've already read for one thing, and i've found some good groups that particularly deal with clean reads.  I will browse their bookshelves to find stuff and read reviews to get an idea on content.  Another good website is compassbookratings.com which rates books based on content (violence, profanity and sex/nudity).  So that's another resource i've used.

 

Hope that helps some.  If you give me an idea of some books or authors you have enjoyed, i might be give you some recommendations.

[Backroads]

Try Abingdon Press.

[Connie]

Also Bethany House and Shadow Mountain.

[Guest]

Shannon Hale's "Books of Bayern" is clean. It can get intense and a little violent (there is a war between countries), but there is no bad language or sex.

[Just_A_Guy]

Just_A_Girl very much enjoys Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

[PolarVortex]

Just_A_Girl very much enjoys Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

 

Oooooh... one of my favorites.  The whole movie can be seen on YouTube.  I think there was a remake of this in the 1960s called Ten Little Indians that I saw on television as a kid in the 1970s. 

[Guest MormonGator]

Go old school. Dickens is the greatest. 

[Connie]

Agatha Christie is great if you're interested in mysteries and haven't tried her books before.  She can get a bit languagy at times though.  I just found out that Hercule Poirot's Christmas is on sale for $1.99 for amazon kindle and at google play.