Books like Cathedral of the Drowned — picked by fans

Thirteen-year-old Clare is a doctor’s daughter whose mom died last year. She joins her dad for two months in a jungly rural district deep in Malawi, where he works for a medical charity and she attends a local school. Claire is deep in her grief—but in Mzanga Village Primary she makes deep connections, then has to confront heartbreak all over again. It’s funny and inspiring to witness the ways the village kids cope with privations and challenges far beyond any Clare has ever known. Burg’s characters rise easily from her pages to life; and her novel pries open our hearts, even just a little, right along with Clare’s.

Another book I read when I was young and never forgot, James P. Hogan's debut novel takes us once again to the Moon. Inspired by Clarke's 2001, it tells a much different story in which Earth's Moon originally orbited another planet entirely. When its first planet was destroyed, the debris became the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the Moon was captured by Earth's gravity. And how did we figure this out? Because our own astronauts exploring the Moon find a long-dead, spacesuited astronaut who is very human but has technology beyond ours. Reverse-engineering that technology puts us closer to exploring beyond our solar system, and it turns out the captured Moon also had an impact on our ancient history. I love this book for its grand, compelling ideas.

I love bugs, and there just aren’t enough books out there about them. Harry the Poisonous Centipede is one my kids asked for over and over when they were little, and that I happily read them again and again. 

When Harry and his best friend George go up the Up Pipe, they find themselves in the dangerous world of the hoo-mans. My kids loved seeing the world through a centipede’s eyes, not to mention their unique centipedish way of speaking, and the scrapes Harry and George get themselves into (and out of) are incredibly entertaining. 

Lingeria is a sarcastic, humor-infused take on the portal fantasy, which forces the author of a beloved fantasy series into the world that he's written - and come to despise.

It's a solidly entertaining book that appropriately skewers a lot of the tropes of fantasy fiction and the associated fandom.

I enjoyed the world of Lingeria and it's definitely a fun read for people seeking to scratch that Discworld itch.

Though this is a war novel meets creature feature I think that the novel’s focus on the characters of the soldiers, most of whom were drafted out of everyday 1960s/1970s American life, merits placement on this list. These soldiers are draftees, compelled by the state to participate in a war abroad, and we get to explore their thoughts, feelings, growth, struggle to survive, and for many death as they endure not just war against other men with guns, but giant centipedes, which any creature fiction lover is going to really enjoy.

In 2017, Scotsman Iain Maloney and his acerbic Japanese wife Minori decided to buy a house in rural Japan. This was no small decision, as Japan houses begin to depreciate almost as soon as they are built. Nevertheless, the author is resigned to spending the remainder of his days in Japan and is ready to commit. The book is ostensibly about one year in rural Japan, but Maloney veers frequently from the narrative path, flashing back and forth in time, riffing on, among other things, soccer, crowded trains, and tired tropes in memoirs written by foreigners.

While many have written about their experiences in Japan, few have taken readers quite so far off the beaten path – literally. Maloney’s understanding of the Japanese language and his immersion in Japanese culture (he’d first arrived in 2005) add credibility and depth, while his self-deprecation and humor make this an entirely enjoyable read.

Dr. No was the sixth James Bond novel Fleming wrote but it was the first one I was finally able to read in paperback when I was about twelve years old.

It transfixed me. I had never read anything quite like it, transporting a boy trapped in small-town Ontario into a wider world of sophistication, sex, and violence.

I devoured the other Bond adventures as fast as I could get my hands on them. If any books made me hunger for faraway glamorous places, it was the Bond novels.

If you can’t imagine the influence Fleming’s worldly writing had on me, you have only to read one of the Priscilla Tempest mysteries.

Haynes Manuals: they’re not just for cars anymore. Haynes also publishes books dedicated to the technical details of planes you’ll never own or service, and spacecraft you’ll never fly in. They’re detailed, they’re technical, and they’re geek gold. With a million color pictures and cutaway diagrams, and text crammed with comprehensive engineering details, the Haynes' Apollo 13 volume is a perfect companion to my Woods pick, or a great standalone in getting literally beneath the skin of the Apollo spacecraft and seeing exactly how all the moving parts worked. By all means buy the Haynes' Apollo 11 Manual too (I did), but I think this one has the edge in terms of technical depth–and you obviously get the full backstory of this aborted and almost disastrous Lost Moon mission too.

I fell in love with this book when I was eleven years old, and I still love it now. That’s despite the fact that I now see just how corrupt and vicious the first human visitors to the moon truly are.

Yet there are moments here that still hold the old enchantment. There’s the instant when the "hero" grasps that night is falling on the moon, and as the shadow of a new, strange "sunset" starts to lengthen that he has perhaps only minutes to live, or there’s the encounter with the Selenites and the realization that he faces an absolutely alien consciousness with no connection to his own.

No-one outdoes Wells in making the fantastic utterly real to the reader.

I am old enough to remember the first lunar landing. I watched it as it happened, on a black-and-white TV screen. I was intrigued by the notion that we, here on Earth, would someday be in conflict with people who were born and raised on the Moon. It’s almost inevitable that you will eventually argue with your neighbors. This novel marks the first occasion that I can recall reading about how such a conflict might start. Even if I do live long enough to see humans walk on the moon again, I will still be thinking about this book.