Here are 100 books that Cleopatra and Frankenstein fans have personally recommended if you like
Cleopatra and Frankenstein.
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I love reality television, shamelessly. I find it fascinating what people are willing to share about themselves in front of a national audience: their disgusting habits, their motivations, vices, secrets, and most importantly, their vulnerabilities. I think the reason I’m drawn to this medium is because I enjoy examining and thinking about why people make the choices they do. When it comes to my writing, I seek to portray the same multidimensional view of my characters that I see on these shows. I want their selfish choices and most humanizing insecurities to shine equally.
I finished this novel almost as quickly as I started it.
Though, aside from its fantastic hook, I loved Little Fires Everywhere because it’s one of the most empathetic character-driven novels that I’ve read. It’s clear that no character is entirely “in the right” throughout the novel, yet I understood their perspectives equally.
I think Ng’s writing is unflinchingly sincere, even toward characters who keep secrets, act on jealousy, lie, and cause damage.
"Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train and A Slow Fire Burning
"To say I love this book is an understatement. It's a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears." -Reese Witherspoon
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their…
Alice Wilson wants children; her husband, Dan, doesn’t. So Alice "accidentally" gets pregnant, trusting that Dan will eventually go along—and he seems to, at first. But as their marriage falls apart, Alice realizes that, even from the beginning, Dan has cruelly used small criticisms and belittling comments to undermine her…
Why do we pretend like we “come of age” in our teens or twenties? Our frontal lobes haven’t even fully developed yet! I had been so afraid of getting older, but since turning 30, and each year that passes, I find that I fall deeper in love with my life and my friends, even though I still don’t have it all figured out. I love that the heroines of each of these books allow themselves to abandon society’s expectations of them to find their own sense of peace, no matter how messy the process is. I also love that Charli XCX’s album, Brat, is a perfect soundtrack to any of these books.
Sally Rooney sharply captures the emotional confusion of early adulthood.
Her characters are smart, self-aware, and still completely capable of making a mess of their lives, especially when it comes to love and friendship.
What I love most about the novel is the way it treats female friendship as the emotional center of the story. The relationship between Frances and Bobbi feels just as complicated, formative, and intimate as any romantic relationship.
Rooney writes with a kind of quiet honesty about the way we move through our twenties and thirties—trying to understand who we are, what we want, and why we keep repeating the same patterns even when we know better.
'This book. This book. I read it in one day. I hear I'm not alone.' - Sarah Jessica Parker (Instagram)
'Brilliant, funny and startling.' Guardian
'I really like Conversations with Friends. I like the tone [Rooney] takes when she's writing. I think it's like being inside someone's mind.' - Taylor Swift
'A sharp, darkly funny comment on modern relationships.' Sunday Telegraph
Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed and observant. A student in Dublin and an aspiring writer, at night she performs spoken word with her best friend Bobbi, who used to be her girlfriend.…
I love reality television, shamelessly. I find it fascinating what people are willing to share about themselves in front of a national audience: their disgusting habits, their motivations, vices, secrets, and most importantly, their vulnerabilities. I think the reason I’m drawn to this medium is because I enjoy examining and thinking about why people make the choices they do. When it comes to my writing, I seek to portray the same multidimensional view of my characters that I see on these shows. I want their selfish choices and most humanizing insecurities to shine equally.
This novel juggles multiple situationships with humor and poignancy in equal measure.
I found the writing sharp and unexpected. The characters are witty, and despite their shallow choices, I was charmed by them. I wanted to meet them at a party just to see what they do next. One moment I was giggling, and the next I was so frustrated by Carey and Rachel that I wanted to grab them through the page!
What I also appreciate is the novel’s focus on capturing the experience of a complicated friendship alongside the multiple romantic relationships it details.
The Rachel Incident is an all-consuming love story. But it's not the one you expected...
*2023's MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER READ*
'Funny, nostalgic, sexy ... it's everything I want in a summer book' MONICA HEISEY 'Funny, LOVELY, romantic, DRENCHED in nostalgia' MARIAN KEYES 'You will love The Rachel Incident' GABRIELLE ZEVIN, author of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
The Rachel Incident is an all-consuming love story. But it's not the one you're expecting. It's unconventional and messy. It's young and foolish. It's about losing and finding yourself. But it is always about love.
Alice Wilson wants children; her husband, Dan, doesn’t. So Alice "accidentally" gets pregnant, trusting that Dan will eventually go along—and he seems to, at first. But as their marriage falls apart, Alice realizes that, even from the beginning, Dan has cruelly used small criticisms and belittling comments to undermine her…
I love reality television, shamelessly. I find it fascinating what people are willing to share about themselves in front of a national audience: their disgusting habits, their motivations, vices, secrets, and most importantly, their vulnerabilities. I think the reason I’m drawn to this medium is because I enjoy examining and thinking about why people make the choices they do. When it comes to my writing, I seek to portray the same multidimensional view of my characters that I see on these shows. I want their selfish choices and most humanizing insecurities to shine equally.
I enjoyed reading this novel because of how tangible Martha and her struggle felt to me—both with her own mental illness and with her failing marriage.
This novel illuminated for me the idea that a character can be sad and lonely but at the same time retain a sense of humor and a comedic level of exasperation. I especially loved the relationship Martha has with her sister, Ingrid, and the sharp reflections this novel offers on motherhood and family.
I am a tumbleweed writer—one who moves from town to town every few years—and I have learned to adapt to new communities and break into new friend groups. In a sense, one could say I reinvented parts of myself as I moved from place to place, and I changed hats regarding what job I would get. Although challenging at times, the scope of this atypical lifestyle has provided me with a wealth of experiences to draw on when drafting a story, not only in setting and career, but also the psychological rollercoaster that comes with blowing with the wind.
This is such a beautiful novel from so many angles.
Although not specifically a suspense story, this book has many suspenseful elements. The character work in it is lovely, and the backstory of the girl, Ursa, is doled out in fragments to a final heart-wrenching reveal.
I love books where characters face their demons and push through challenges. Every character in this book is struggling with something significant, yet their individual challenges round out the story rather than overwhelm it.
An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller, and a Goodreads Choice Award finalist.
In this gorgeously stunning debut, a mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again.
After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot…
I have always been a horror lover, from being an 8-year-old card-carrying member of the local Goosebumps Fan Club to reading Ray Bradbury and Stephen King when I should have been reading Classics for school. I love horror that bubbles up slowly and makes you feel like someone is watching over your shoulder. I want to wonder if the legends are true and if my local creepy forest holds secrets of its own. It’s so much harder to scare without falling back on jump scares and gore. Creeping dread is hard to do, but when it’s done well, it has me side-eyeing every shadow.
But slightly disappointed as I was, I ran off to find the book—the book is ALWAYS better. And it was. The creep factor of the set-up was so much better in the book, learning the rules but not fully understanding the situation—building that feeling of dread settling in because you know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. That was this book for me.
I love to be asking questions, and turning pages looking for answers. I loved how the creatures remained so mysterious. I wish I had read the book before seeing the movie.
Soon to be a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE produced by M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN and starring DAKOTA FANNING. You can't see them. But they can see you. This forest isn't charted on any map. Every car breaks down at its treeline. Mina's is no different. Left stranded, she is forced into the dark woodland only to find a woman shouting, urging Mina to run to a concrete bunker. As the door slams behind her, the building is besieged by screams. Mina finds herself in a room with a wall of glass, and an electric light that activates at nightfall, when the Watchers…
Like many readers, I am drawn to stories of vengeance. Stories of someone seeking revenge have a built-in tension and narrative drive. But as the saying goes, when you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. Yes, these tales seldom go smoothly. The consequences of this and the violence that ensues are what I wanted to explore in my latest novel, but several books on my shelf make fascinating stories out of this desire for revenge.
This book surprised me with its sharpened steel edge and uncompromising main character. Joe Reddick has lost it all and is, as a result, a very dangerous man you do not want to cross. When his family is threatened, Joe embarks on a mission to bring down the men who dared cross him and show them what mistakes they had made.
That you root for Joe even as he goes about doing terrible things to more terrible people is a testament to the stellar writing of Haywood in this, one of his most compelling standalone thrillers.
The new novel from the critically acclaimed and award-winning author - When Joe Reddick and his family are threatened in their LA home by a masked, knife-wielding intruder, it means serious trouble for a gang of desperate criminals. The threat sends Joe Reddick over the edge. He's lived the nightmare of losing a family to a crazed killer once, and he's not going to let it happen again. After sending his wife and son to safety, he goes to war, determined to kill those responsible. Soon Reddick’s living nightmare will finally be over. One way or the other . .…
Aside from my brief stint as a bossy know-it-all when I was little, I have always been that quiet girl no one notices. In high school, it took me at least ten minutes and five tries to get myself to wish my desk partner a happy birthday. I spent a lot of my adolescence trying to find myself, so I understand what it’s like to feel lost. My greatest wish is for my book to help at least one person feel how these books helped me.
I will never pass up an opportunity to discuss one of Zack Smedley’s books. This one is one of the most beautiful, truthful, and book-hangover-inducing stories I have ever enjoyed reading.
Its narrator, a boy struggling to tell and come to terms with a difficult truth, will live in my heart and mind forever. I advise people to check for content warnings, as Smedley’s work never fails to leave me an emotional wreck.
Owen Turner is a boy of too many words. For years, they all stayed inside his head and he barely spoke-until he met Lily. Lily, the girl who gave him his voice, helped him come out as bi, and settle into his ASD diagnosis. But everything unravels when someone reports Owen's biggest secret to the school: that he was sexually assaulted at a class event. As officials begin interviewing students to get to the bottom of things, rumors about an assault flood the school hallways. No one knows it happened to Owen, and he's afraid of what will happen if…
I’m the author of two YA fantasy novels – We Are Blood and Thunder and We Are Bound by Stars. They’re set in a fantasy world, Valorian, governed by a (literally) colorful magic system and a pantheon of gods, and are all about power, fate, and discovering your true self. Both novels are dual narrative and feature a host of female main characters, who I think are complex, flawed, and relatable. As a child, I was obsessed with Lord of the Rings but always wondered why all the real heroes were men, which inspired me to write these books – partly, too, because of the wonderful female-led fantasies which have come out in the interim.
Samantha Shannon’s world-building in this series is second to none. We find ourselves in a future alternate version of the world, where the government monitors the population for those people with extraordinary powers: clairvoyants. Paige, our main character, is one of these – and a bit of an antihero to boot (my favourite kind of hero!). You will love and be frustrated by her – and root for the simmering romance plot.
THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION, FULLY UPDATED WITH NEW MATERIAL
A lavishly reimagined tenth anniversary edition of the first novel in the sensational Bone Season series, by the Sunday Times and New York Times-bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree.
'A fabulous, epic fantasy thriller ... Lavish, ebullient, escapist' The Times
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Welcome to Scion. No safer place.
The year is 2059. For two centuries, the Republic of Scion has led an oppressive campaign against unnaturalness in Europe.
In London, Paige Mahoney holds a high rank in the criminal underworld. The right hand of the ruthless White Binder,…
I am a reader and an author. Both my reading and writing diets are deeply grounded in gothic novels. This list mixes up some of the classics from way back with more recent works. All of them give the flavor of this fascinating realm in literature. There is nothing more satisfying than lucking into a story that is truly original, too, which these recommendations are. Find a comfy perch with a drink of your choosing and take some time with these books. I wouldn’t steer you wrong, and I stand behind all five of these recommendations.
This novel's compelling cover reeled in this reader straightaway and, indeed, delivers with a plot that captures the gothic folk horror genre in a tidy and well-written package.
As I read it, it felt like Harvest Home and The Wicker Man were seated on either shoulder. Overarching the story is also a "morality play" at work, expertly woven in. Bonus points for historical roots and an English village setting.
So original, so folky horror, so good and, simply put, a treat.
'Withered Hill is the ultimate nightmare destination' Laird Barron
Inside
A year ago Sophie Wickham stumbled into the isolated Lancashire village of Withered Hill, naked, alone and with no memory of who she is.
Surrounded by a thick ring of woodland, its inhabitants seem to be of another world, drenched in pagan, folklorish traditions.
As Sophie struggles to regain the memories of her life from before, she quickly realises she is a prisoner after multiple failed escape attempts. But is it the locals who keep her trapped, with smiles on their faces, or something else,…
