Here are 100 books that Disappearing Earth fans have personally recommended if you like
Disappearing Earth.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I’m a writer fascinated by landscape and history—and the American West is my magnet. I’ve set three books in the West. I can’t get enough of the place. An entire national myth is enshrined “where the deer and the antelope play.” Independence. Freedom from the past. Land we can supposedly call our own. The West is so beautiful and also so scarred. I love to read books that deepen my experience of the deserts, mountains, and rivers. I also love to learn about the people who were here before me, those who have hung on, and those who hope to heal the scars. These books are great stories about a bewitching place.
Hernán Díaz’s first novel,In the Distance, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The book is gorgeously written and meticulously researched. The West’s huge, startling landscapes loom on every page. But the real genius here is the novel’s “reverse epic” structure—how Díaz takes a young Swedish immigrant who gets off his ship at the wrong port (San Francisco) and sends him traveling east, against the migrant tides, in search of his brother. The journey doesn’t go as planned. Håkan makes friends and stymies enemies. Stereotypes warp and tumble as Håkan (and the reader) are forever transformed. The descriptions of California gold fields, science expeditions, questing Mormons, and other frontier communities delight and confound. You’ll never cross a Western desert the same way again.
A young Swedish immigrant finds himself penniless and alone in California. The boy travels East in search of his brother, moving on foot against the great current of emigrants pushing West. Driven back again and again, he meets naturalists, criminals, religious fanatics, swindlers, Indians, and lawmen, and his exploits turn him into a legend. Diaz defies the conventions of historical fiction and genre, offering a probing look at the stereotypes that populate our past and a portrait of radical foreignness.
Hernan Diaz is the author of Borges, Between History and Eternity (Bloomsbury 2012), managing editor of RHM, and associate director…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I have read adventure, crime, and thriller books all my life. Reading is a huge relaxation for me and a good novel will transport me from the stresses and strains of daily life into another place in my head. A place where I feel involved with the characters and the environment, a place where I can imagine I could be. A good storyteller is different from a crime writer. They take the reader on a journey that might be through history or different continents. A journey that the reader wants to travel as well. I try to emulate this in my writing.
The story of the young orphan Pip, the escaped convict Magwitch, the recluse Miss Haversham, and her adopted daughter Estella. Dickens weaves the story back and forth between the characters.
You could pick many of Dickens’ books, but I think this story has everything: murder, love, intrigue, and tragedy. A storyteller extraordinaire. I’d go as far as to say that he is Britain’s greatest storyteller.
'His novels will endure as long as the language itself' Peter Ackroyd
Dickens's haunting late novel depicts the education and development of a young man, Pip, as his life is changed by a series of events - a terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor - and he discovers the true nature of his 'great expectations'. This definitive edition includes appendices on Dickens's original ending, giving an illuminating glimpse into a…
My favorite part of being a journalist is interviewing people and getting to see the world through their eyes. I love books–fiction or narrative nonfiction–that captivate my attention and take me to places I would never otherwise get to explore. Here are five books that swept me off to tropical jungles, Siberian volcanoes, ancient civilizations, and helped me think about the world in new ways.
This book attempts to uncover the mystery of what happened to British explorer Percy Fawcett, who in 1925 set off into the Amazon jungle to find the lost “City of Z,” but never returned.
In retracing Fawcett’s steps, author David Grann finds something far more intriguing under the Amazonian jungle canopy: the hidden remains of a complex Indigenous civilization that has much to teach us about who we are today.
**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER**
'A riveting, exciting and thoroughly compelling tale of adventure'JOHN GRISHAM
The story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World
Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to believe that its jungle concealed a large, complex civilization, like El Dorado. Obsessed with its discovery, he christened it the City of Z. In 1925, Fawcett headed into the wilderness with his son Jack, vowing to make history. They vanished without a…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
One of my favorite bits of praise for my books was Michael Silverblatt, of KCRW, saying, "There is no one else like her—she invents a new improvised form for her fiction." The last five books of fiction I’ve written (my total is nine) have been webs, spinning out from one character to another, across different times and places. It lets me be intimate and distant both at once. So I’ve naturally loved reading writers who’ve done this in various ways. People like to quote John Berger saying, “Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one,” and I’m in line with that.
The novel is set in three end-of-century time-frames—1893, 1993, and 2093. In the opening, set in a mansion on Washington Square in New York, we discover we’re in an America where same-sex marriage has been legal for a long time, and a young man is about to run off with a suitor his father distrusts (a new version of a Henry James plot). The next section is in Hawaii, the colonized Paradise, where descendant characters (with the same set of names, juggled) stumble and grab what they can of freedom and love. My favorite section is the last, where characters with those recurring names are in a New York of “cooling suits” and “decontamination chambers” and totalitarian rule. This is a wild and really quite brilliant book, whose sprawling parts are fueled by a searing vision.
'This magisterial follow-up to A Little Life offers three books in one . . . Yanagihara weighs up damage and privilege - social, emotional, political, colonial in a gripping, immersive ride through alternative Americas.' - The Guardian 'Best Reads For Summer'
'After the painfully affecting [A Little Life] To Paradise gives us three stories far apart in space and time but each unique in their power to summon the joy and complexity of love, the pain of loss. I'm not sure I've ever missed the world…
One of my favorite bits of praise for my books was Michael Silverblatt, of KCRW, saying, "There is no one else like her—she invents a new improvised form for her fiction." The last five books of fiction I’ve written (my total is nine) have been webs, spinning out from one character to another, across different times and places. It lets me be intimate and distant both at once. So I’ve naturally loved reading writers who’ve done this in various ways. People like to quote John Berger saying, “Never again shall a single story be told as though it were the only one,” and I’m in line with that.
In a novel inspired by the decade-long kidnapping of three women in Cleveland, Ferrell has crafted a story out of voices. We hear each of the young women—their inner obsessions and distractions, the details they live inside of—before, during, and after their confinement, and their joy in each other. But Ferrell has also included the Miss Metropolitan of her title, a nosy woman living on the same street, with her eager attentions misdirected, one of the neighbors who didn’t notice. There’s an extra ambition in the reach of that, a context that insists on including unexpected corners, picking up lots of loosely connected characters to get the full meaning of the story.
A finalist for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction A finalist for the 2022 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
Introducing an extraordinary and original writer whose first novel explores the intersections of grief and rage, personal strength and healing--and what we owe one another.
Fern seeks refuge from her mother’s pill-popping and boyfriends via Soul Train; Gwin finds salvation in the music of Prince much to her congregation’s dismay and Jesenia, miles ahead of her classmates at her gifted and talented high school, is a brainy and precocious enigma. None of this matters to Boss Man, the monster who abducts…
As a writer who can never seem to tell a simple chronological, beginning/middle/end story in the books I write, I want to make a case for fictional works that fall somewhere between novels and traditional short story collections: shape-shifting novels. A shape-shifting novel allows for an expansiveness of time—for exploring the lives of generations within a single family, or occupying a single place, without having to account for every person, every moment, every year. Big, long Victorian novels, remember, were typically serialized and so written, and read, in smaller installments. The shape-shifting novel allows for that range between the covers of a single, and often shorter, book.
I knew little about North Woods when I started reading it, except that it chronicled the lives of different inhabitants of a farmhouse in western New England—a region I love—and featured an intriguing image of what I assumed was a bobcat on the cover.
North Woods brings its setting vividly to life; while there are fascinating characters—including a colonial-era English soldier who abandons the war to cultivate an apple orchard on the farmhouse property—the flora and fauna of the farm and its surrounding woodlands play equally important roles.
I’m grateful to my daughter, the same sensitive reader who cried when she finished Homegoing, for posting a photo of her copy of North Woods along with her lunch one day and piquing my curiosity.
A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries—“a time-spanning, genre-blurring work of storytelling magic” (The Washington Post) from the Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of The Piano Tuner and The Winter Soldier.
“With the expansiveness and immersive feeling of two-time Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell’s fiction (Cloud Atlas), the wicked creepiness of Edgar Allan Poe, and Mason’s bone-deep knowledge of and appreciation for the natural world that’s on par with that of Thoreau, North Woods fires on all cylinders.”—San Francisco Chronicle
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
My favorite part of being a journalist is interviewing people and getting to see the world through their eyes. I love books–fiction or narrative nonfiction–that captivate my attention and take me to places I would never otherwise get to explore. Here are five books that swept me off to tropical jungles, Siberian volcanoes, ancient civilizations, and helped me think about the world in new ways.
This novel follows several different characters: a Canadian diver and scientist, a community living on a Pacific island, and a pair of friends from Chicago studying literature and computer science.
I was immediately hooked on the stories and the beautiful, immersive writing that takes you deep into the ocean to meet giant manta rays, pods of dolphins, and metropolis-sized, rainbow-hued coral reefs. Heartbreaking, imaginative, panoramic, and gorgeous.
A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while…
My favorite part of being a journalist is interviewing people and getting to see the world through their eyes. I love books–fiction or narrative nonfiction–that captivate my attention and take me to places I would never otherwise get to explore. Here are five books that swept me off to tropical jungles, Siberian volcanoes, ancient civilizations, and helped me think about the world in new ways.
The photos in this book are breathtaking. Cecilia Blomdahl is a Swedish woman who lives on the archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole together with her partner and two dogs.
Her book chronicles one year of dramatically changing light: polar nights, snow-capped mountains, and oceans teeming with beluga whales and cod. It is absolutely magical.
Join Cecilia Blomdahl in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, the world's northernmost town.
Located in the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole, Svalbard is a unique archipelago that boasts stunning wintry landscapes, endangered Arctic animals, and awe-inspiring natural phenomena. Since 2015, Cecilia has called this beautiful and remote location home. Along with her partner, Christoffer, and her dog, Grim, she has adjusted to life at the top of the world-where polar bears roam free and northern lights shine bright.
With evocative text and spectacular photography, Cecilia shares the joys and challenges of adapting to an inhospitable climate. Her story begins in the darkness…
My therapeutic journey with PTSD has been a long and bumpy road that I still work through to this day, close to fifteen years now. Given the silent suffering that so many go through, I feel that the more we talk about and advocate for seeking help the more people we can save. The common thread with my picks is resiliency. The characters face their symptoms and don’t give in to them. If a thriller novel can reach someone because they identify with the struggles discussed in the pages, then maybe that book can be the bridge to them finally getting the help they need.
I also said of Sullivan’s Sleeping Bear, “This guy gets it.”
In particular, Connor captures the internal, psychological symptoms of PTSD with his protagonist Cassie Gale, an Army veteran that experiences a soul-shattering trauma.
As a result, Gale withdraws into herself, isolates and seeks solitude away from all her friends and family, and misleads people on her wellbeing, mental state, and readjustment after the event.
What I found particularly intriguing about Sullivan’s debut novel was the dual aspect of both Cassie’s symptoms, and that of the buried emotions and memories of her dad.
As the plot unfolds and Cassie’s father Jim is pulled into the story, he experiences his own psychological symptoms as events from his service are recollected, all while wrestling with the undeniable panic of a parent worried sick over the fate of their child.
I again was surprised to learn that Connor wasn’t a veteran, as…
WINNER OF THE BARRY AWARD FOR BEST FIRST MYSTERY/CRIME NOVEL
"Sleeping Bear is...one of those rare novels that keeps getting better and better and better. Remember the author's name-Connor Sullivan." -James Patterson
A former Army veteran seeking solitude in the Alaskan wilderness after her husband's death finds herself a pawn in a deadly game with Russia in this white-knuckled and "heart-stopping thrill ride" (Chris Hauty, author of Deep State).
After her young husband's untimely death, Army veteran Cassie Gale decides to take a few days of solitude in the Alaskan wilderness before she starts her new job. But when she…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am an award-winning historian, biographer, and political commentator. As a specialist in Soviet history, my books have been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, Finnish, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.
Plokhy is a renowned Ukrainian-American historian who makes no secret of where his sympathies lie. His partisan, pro-Ukraine narrative of the war and its origins is vigorous and informative.
Of particular value is his highly illuminating account of the triangular relationship between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States in the run-up to the war.
Despite repeated warnings from the White House, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 shocked the world. Why did Putin start the war-and why has it unfolded in previously unimaginable ways? Ukrainians have resisted a superior military; the West has united, while Russia grows increasingly isolated.
Serhii Plokhy, a leading historian of Ukraine and the Cold War, offers a definitive account of this conflict, its origins, course, and the already apparent and possible future consequences. Though the current war began eight years before the all-out assault-on February 27, 2014, when Russian armed forces seized the building of the Crimean parliament-the…
