96 Books Like Bohemian Gospel

I adore reading atmospheric adventures of mystery, supernatural, and ghostly powers; this book has these values in abundance. Noemi’s alluring character is smart, savvy, and admirably vulnerable. Loved her. At High House in the Mexican countryside, Noemi discovers ghostly entities repeatedly forming blisters across the walls. How mysterious and threatening; I was fascinated.

The best part of the novel for me was the emotional intelligence of the characters because their behavior is both suspiciously rational and heart-stopping clever. Gripping as all heck. This family was obsessed with a relentless desire to rule and control their destiny at all costs via Otherworld powers. Absolutely compelling. I was breathless along with Noemi at every step as she was drawn into the dangers and treacherous family secrets that threatened to kill her.

Jane Eyre retelling in Ethiopa with magic—need I say more? Rich, quirky Magnus lives in a seriously haunted house, and the only exorcist willing to help him is broke, blunt Andromeda. I could not love these two more. Magnus is a beautiful weirdo who has been haunted and spoiled for far too long, and Andromeda puts him in his place. The banter, the creepiness of the house that is literally trying to kill them—no wonder Reese Witherspoon picked this one for her book club! 

This is the only book I reread regularly (life is short, so many titles!) because it is gobsmackingly brilliant. The story is about a woman visiting an English country town who’s mistaken for a former resident and convinced to take that person’s place. It’s beautifully written, with great characters, typically compelling plot, but the twist! I gasped out loud the first time and have never failed to get chills on every reread. You don’t see the surprise coming, and yet it is absolutely logical and perfect. I keep trying to find someplace where Stewart trips up or gives it away, and there’s nothing. I bow down.

Like Blackwood, Matthews retells Jane Eyre (and another classic gothic novel I won’t name to avoid spoiling the story). This is a gender-swapped version of Jane Eyre: John Eyre is a humble schoolmaster who accepts a position as tutor to two boys at the home of Bertha Rochester, a wealthy, eccentric, and beautiful woman with many secrets. Bertha is a refreshingly powerful heroine, and the supernatural spin Matthews puts on the original story takes the sinister atmosphere up several notches.

For years, I used to walk past the statues of St. Wenceslaus, František Palacký, and other Czech national heroes without giving them much thought. After reading this book, I came to appreciate how much Prague’s monuments can tell us about the city’s history. Their creators offered a variety of interpretations over the meaning of “Czechness”, and these monuments have inspired passionate debates about nationhood and religion ever since. The book also made me think about ways that monuments can exclude others and inspire hatred, and not just in Prague. Consider, for example, statues celebrating the Confederacy erected by white supremacists decades after the end of the Civil War. Many still dot my part of the country.

The Night of Wenceslas was the first thriller I read. I was in my teens, and into reading poetry at the time. My parents knew the author—we had even spent Boxing Day together—so Lionel Davidson was the first real novelist I met in person and I remember being excited to read this book.

The protagonist, Nicholas Whistler is young, half English and half Czechoslovakian. He hates working in his father’s business and is in debt because of his dissolute lifestyle. As a way out of his problems, he is lured into carrying out a mission in Prague and finds he has been duped into becoming an unwitting spy.

This book did not stop me from reading poetry—but spurred me to read much more widely.

Women rarely feature as central figures in most works about Prague. In this book, Iggers introduces us to an array of fascinating female writers, activists, powerful ladies of society, and survivors who have lived in Prague and its environs over the past two hundred years. Each chapter includes a brief introduction and excerpts from these women’s writings, such as diaries, letters, and newspaper articles. The reader can thus hear these women’s voices and feel transported to a different moment in history. Some entries are hard to read, such as Milada Horáková’s farewell letter to her teenage daughter, written on June 23, 1950. The lead defendant in Communist Czechoslovakia’s first public show trial, Horáková was executed three days later. Wilma Iggers is a Czechoslovak native who escaped to Canada after the Nazis invaded her country in 1938, which only enhances the perspectives that she brings to these women’s lives. 

I believe that I’ve read this short novel three times now. The story follows a son and his father as they walk through the outskirts of gritty, post-Communist Prague, chatting along the way. They, of course, stop at a few pubs as well. Narrated with wry humor and sympathy, their stroll reveals much about generational differences and efforts to remember troubling episodes from the past. Each man describes experiences that could only happen in this city. This novel inspired me to think long and hard about how walking can create a sense of place and belonging, and how walking is so often central to urban life. Most importantly, this book is a true joy to read. 

The book uses verse to create a modern-day fairy tale, mixing magic with contemporary Prague. This makes magic feel so close and tangible for us as readers.

Because of this, we believe our protagonist Ilana and sympathise with her as she makes friends with the ghost of a Jewish boy from decades ago, and fights the hold of the strange and charismatic Wasserman, who has the ability to make the memory of children disappear.

Despite its magical appearance, this story still tackles compelling real-world issues of racism, war, and diaspora in a compelling way.

Peter Sis is an acclaimed international writer, artist, and filmmaker. He’s created several award-winning children’s books. In The Three Golden Keys, Sis recaptures his lost childhood in Prague and takes the reader on a dark, mysterious adventure through Prague to find the three keys that will unlock the three rusty padlocks of his childhood home and of his own childhood memories.

I like his art more than his storytelling which is often so personal as to be cryptic. So why am I recommending this book? Because his illustrations of Prague are so beautifully detailed, surreal, and mysterious. It’s a work of art that’s personal, poignant, and poetic. It’s a gorgeous book but perhaps enjoyed by adults more than children.