Books like Don't Burn Anyone at the Stake Today — picked by fans

Butter is the kind of novel that sneaks up on you. You think you’re reading a true-crime story about a woman accused of murdering men with her cooking, and then suddenly you’re knee-deep in questions about appetite, femininity, power, and why women are taught to be ashamed of wanting anything at all.

Asako Yuzuki uses food as both pleasure and weapon. Every recipe feels lush and intimate, but also slightly menacing. The real tension isn’t did she do it? so much as why does society need her to be a monster? The novel is at its sharpest when it skewers misogyny, fatphobia, and the way women’s bodies are treated as public property.

It’s not a fast thriller and it doesn’t offer neat answers. Instead, Butter simmers—rich, unsettling, and satisfying. You’ll finish it hungry, a little angry, and far more aware of how often women are punished simply for… show more.

This is an academic book, yes — 29 chapters’ worth of research on Chinese media — but it’s one I’m genuinely fond of. And not just because I helped edit it (though full disclosure: I did). What I like most about the volume is how wide-ranging it is: it takes you through the media worlds of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and Chinese communities beyond the mainland, without pretending there’s a single story to tell.

The second edition builds on what worked in the first, but it also feels very much of the moment. There’s new work here that grapples with fast-moving technologies, shifting politics, and changing media cultures — the stuff that makes studying Chinese media endlessly fascinating and occasionally head-spinning.

It’s the kind of book you can dip into for a specific topic or keep on your desk as a reference, whether you’re a researcher, a… show more.

Shocking reversal of fortunes exposes the lines of assumed gender-based reactions to power and human reactions to power. (Pun intended)

I’m fascinated by both the format Alderman used to tell her story and the way she exposed me to the psychology of human nature. I aspire to this level of storytelling.

I realized the reason men and other demographics of power fear women or other minorities gaining power is that they understand the underbelly of decisions made from positions of power. They’re scared of the tables being turned. Those people might escalate their fear to terror if they see how clearly we see their actions and consider using them ourselves.

It is a profound and unsettling dive into societal decay that feels terrifyingly prescient. Atwood’s brilliance lies in the details—how she exposes the weaponization of language and the stripping of individual identity until even a birth name becomes a forbidden memory. Offred’s internal act of storytelling is a breathtaking form of rebellion; it’s a reminder that even when we are silenced, our internal narratives and small acts of defiance are what keep us human. It isn’t a "feel-good" read, but it is an essential one.

For millennia, we’ve heard the stories in Greek mythology about gods who come down to earth to rape women (Zeus got around), women as seductive sirens who lure sailors to their doom, or goddesses and mortal women alike being exiled.

Because of that, I was intrigued to read this book, a retelling of the familiar narrative, but from the perspective of a woman. I found this book to be very empowering.

I identified with the main character, a woman named Circe (in actuality a goddess) who is exiled because of her powers of witchcraft. However, in her exile, she finds that leaning into her power without the judgment of others makes her stronger.

I loved reading classic Greek mythology, complete with all the familiar characters, told from a woman’s perspective.

Murder mysteries are not usually my thing, but I had a chance to see this author, Oyinkan Braithwaite, speak at an event, and really enjoyed her talk, so I decided to dive in. The book is a little gory, but overall, I found it both fun and funny. The absurd plot about the serial killer behavior proved a great way to explore love and obligation among family, particularly sisters.

Few books have made me question my own life quite like Untamed.

I didn't connect with this book because my life is anything like Glennon Doyle's—it isn't. I connected with it because she puts words to something I think many of us experience: the quiet pressure to become the person everyone else expects us to be. It made me ask myself a deeply uncomfortable question: Whose life am I actually living?

I found myself thinking about all the ways expectations can slowly shape who we are, often so quietly that we don't even realise it is happening. How much of who we are is actually us—and how much of it is the version we've learned to perform for everyone else?

I kept thinking about how much courage it takes to stop performing and start listening to yourself instead.

Written long before quarantines became so fashionable, Jesus in Jim Crace’s novel is an almost peripheral player, because– set during Christ’s forty days in the wilderness – six other people share in the inhospitable desert caves, miracles, and hallucinations. Each character has their own troubles and trials; their own battles with demons to resolve; which they hope isolation and fasting will accomplish. And for each, in ingenious ways, it does… I am a big fan of Crace’s style, rhythm, and invention, and this is one of his finest works.

A novel that is partly based on the real-life anthropologist Margaret Mead and her work in New Guinea in the 1930s, this book had me gripped from the start as it evoked the complex dynamics between the three main characters and their very different approaches to studying Indigenous people.

I was in awe of the power of story-telling in this short book. It shows us how anthropologists might hope to be impartial observers of the people they study, but in reality, these encounters change everyone.

In a near-future world where one can purchase emotionally intelligent androids or “artificial friends” (AFs) to keep children company, we take the AF’s perspective. Klara, who begins as a display item in a department store, is adopted by Josie, a girl with what seems to be a fatal illness, and dedicates herself to trying to save Josie’s life.

Like all AF's, Klara has been programmed to observe and learn, and she seems to have exceptional abilities in this regard. She also possesses an especially kind disposition, keen emotional intelligence, and a number of other qualities that make her feel more human than most of the actual humans in the story.

For me, Klara is one of the great characters in recent literature, and her unique perspective is one of the things that make this immersive speculative novel such a pleasure to read.