90 Books Like Beauty and the Clockwork Beast

I love The Host because it has two female heroes, but one is a parasite inside the other. When a parasitic alien race, the Souls, invades earth, Wanderer is placed in the body of Melanie Stryder. When implanted, Souls are supposed to completely subsume the host, but Melanie Stryder won’t give up her mind or her body that easily. Melanie is a hero because of her strength and willingness to sacrifice anything to maintain her autonomy. Wanderer is a hero because of her empathy and willingness to defy the construct of her society and forge a new path. The book is the most interesting portrayal of the capacity for sentient beings to develop empathy against all odds that I’ve ever read. It’s also a remarkable portrayal of a most imaginative female bond.

When encountering a spinster alone at a ball, there is no excuse to forget proper manners, even—or perhaps especially—if one is a vampire. Or werewolf. I adored the voice in this book, which gave that Jane Austen feel, except brimming with humor.

The characters enchanted me as they balanced between high-society manners and the reality of living with (or being) supernatural creatures. The interactions between solidly practical Alexia and exasperated Lord Maccon made it a romance I couldn’t help but root for.

Even if Alexia was soulless, you can’t convince me her werewolf wasn’t her soulmate. A perfect blend of Victorian London and paranormal romance.

All of R. Lee Smith’s novels are dark, explicit, and fascinating, but my favorite (and it was a Sophie’s Choice, for sure!) is The Last Hour of Gann. The heroine, Amber, and her spaceship full of fellow pioneers crash land on a dystopian alien world inhabited by lizard people. The humans are woefully unprepared to survive in the wild and all too willing to turn on one another. When a passing lizard/warrior/judge, Meoraq, stumbles upon their camp, Amber jumps at the opportunity to beg for his aid, a near-impossible task without knowing his language. Together, they learn to communicate, and as Meoraq embarks on the futile task of keeping “his humans” safe, so begins the delicious, inexplicable, slow-burn romance between woman and lizard that I never knew I needed.

I recommend this book because it was one of the first books that made me feel like the world was bigger than anything I’d known.

When I read it, I remember feeling that rush, that sense of being lifted out of my own life and dropped into a place where courage mattered, and strange new landscapes waited around every corner. It wasn’t just adventure; it was escape, wonder, possibility. 

Readers who love getting lost in another world will understand that feeling immediately. And it fits my theme because it reminds me that stepping into the unknown, whether on Mars or in an ancient story, can change the way you see everything.

A similar concept to Man in the High Castle, The UNtied Kingdom explores an alternate reality in which the Axis won World War II. The book begins in modern-day England where down-on-her-luck and former pop star, Eve, suffers a hang-gliding accident while filming a has-been “where are they now” reality TV show. She falls through a wormhole into the WWII alternate reality and is saved by Major Harker, only to be arrested as a potential Axis spy. When Harker embarks on a mission to infiltrate enemy lines, he drags Eve along on his mission for her Axis intelligence, and so begins their exciting, adventure-filled romance. Will he ever believe that she came from a different reality? Will she be able to help right the wrongs in his? Is this world the one she belongs in—with him? The questions that Johnson (no relation!) explores are intriguing, heart-wrenching, and kept me riveted… show more.

I’ve picked this story from the 1950s because, as a teenager, it stirred my sense of wonder at time and space.

Dard Nordis must get safely to the ship that will carry him, his family, and his friends from the tyranny that has overtaken Earth to freedom among the stars. Halfway into the book, hundreds of years pass with the turn of a page, the tyranny of old Earth is just a distant memory, and Dard is in a new world far from the troubled world that he knew.

The story opened up for me the potential for a profoundly new life.  It stirred my desire to discover the universe through scientific exploration. There is no romance here, but there is family, friends, and an adventure like no other!

High school student Kip Morgan wins an internship at an oceanographic institute in Hawaii where he, with help of new friend Julie Scott, overcomes multiple personal and engineering challenges to solve an archaeological mystery and raise a sunken ship from the sea floor. This story from the 1970s was key in guiding me toward a life of science, and the portrayal of a realistic, mentored research experience gave me a vision for what I might do in my own journey through college and into science.

I loved the exotic location, scuba diving, and seafloor exploration, mystery, adventure, and romance!

This fun story from the 1990s revived my youthful joy in reading at a time when the busy-ness of adulthood had stolen it away. Siri has forgotten who she is and is swept into multiple space adventures as she tries to reconstruct her lost memories and regain the power and place she once held with her people. In the process, she finds friendships (the Drapsk!) and romance (Morgan!), and comes to understand herself better.

In reading this book, I realized that the science fiction stories I like best are ones that deal with relationships, mystery, and discovery and not just complicated technologies and their implications for society. I realized that I could have fun reading again if I had some fun science fiction with adventure, romance, and exploration!

Autistic minds are uniquely suited to interface with 26th-century computers. Has this led society to appreciate autistic people? Of course not! Instead, they’ve been turned into a caste called Operators, enslaved computer programmers denied human rights. But this is starting to change, and recently-liberated Operator Hoshi Archer has a new life as a private investigator. Her latest case? A serial killer who’s ritually murdering Operators. Dora Raymaker vividly describes autistic experience in a way that no non-autistic writer could, and it was profoundly moving for me to read a book written from the viewpoint of a character whose sensory processing was so much like my own. On top of all this, Hoshi and the Red City Circuit is a gripping can’t-put-it-down detective thriller!

Mary is described on the first page of Allegedly as “just born bad, plain and simple.”

When readers learn that Mary has been incarcerated since the age of nine for killing a baby, the claim is easier to believe. Yet, as the story unfolds, the reader learns that Mary’s mother is an abusive narcissist and the actual events of the death are put into question.

This story brings up important issues about nature versus nurture, mental illness, and a justice system predicated on the assumption that to be Black is to be born guilty.