Here are 100 books that Good Material fans have personally recommended if you like
Good Material.
Book DNA is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
This recommendation list is a celebration of these authors’ creativity! Like every reader I love a good story, and this list highlights five books that not only weave entertainment within their respective genres—but also tell their stories in unique visual ways by being fearless with formatting. I love being into a story and seeing there’s a journal entry or letter coming up—it’s like an intimate view into the characters’ world and experiences, and I want to eat it up! If you’re interested in finding more authors who do this, Googling “epistolary novels” will help.
I could listen to Fredrik Bachman’s characters monologue about life all day, so to get to read a book where eight of his quirky—and yes, anxious—people share bits of their lives and hard-fought wisdom is a gift to humanity.
Not to mention, many of the chapters are formatted as witness interviews between the authorities and the characters caught in a hostage crisis.
Heavy? Not when it’s Backman writing. He creates the most vivid scenes, even when all he’s working with on the page is dialogue.
The funny, touching and unpredictable No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a major Netflix TV series
'A brilliant and comforting read' MATT HAIG 'Funny, compassionate and wise. An absolute joy' A.J. PEARCE 'A surefooted insight into the absurdity, beauty and ache of life' GUARDIAN 'I laughed, I sobbed, I recommended it to literally everyone I know' BUZZFEED 'Captures the messy essence of being human' WASHINGTON POST
From the 18 million copy internationally bestselling author of A Man Called Ove _______
It's New Year's Eve and House Tricks estate agents are hosting an open viewing in an up-market apartment when…
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 think I sometimes get in trouble for saying this, but the truth is, I don’t give a shit about the likability of characters, whether I’m reading or writing. I’m here for a good time, not a long time. Because of that, fiction is the most riveting for me when interesting characters start making bad decisions. Any good narrative train wreck must create tension that keeps ratcheting up in its pages, and these are some of the books that do that most expertly, in my opinion. So, grab something to hold onto while you go on some of my favorite wild rides.
This book is chaos-defined, and I felt absolutely giddy when I first read it. Olivie Blake knows what readers want, and her books are not afraid to speak to their id. How could I not love a school of twentysomething lust-filled, murderous magicians?
It is also happy to scratch the romance itch; it’s the rare book where it feels like any two characters could have a romantic relationship, and many do. Even better, it’s full of delicious twists and betrayals and never lets its characters off the hook.
An Instant New York Times Bestseller A Goodreads Best Fantasy Choice Award Nominee
The much-acclaimed viral sensation from Olivie Blake, The Atlas Six—now newly revised and edited with additional content.
• The tag #theatlassix has millions of views on TikTok • A dark academic debut fantasy with an established cult following that reads like The Secret History meets The Umbrella Academy • The first in an explosive trilogy • Indigo's Top 10 Most Anticipated Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books of 2022 • Tor.com's Most Anticipated SFF of 2022
Each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to earn…
I can't be the only one to see men with power manipulate their status to hold back others. This isn’t just a Hollywood thing. A Sunday supplement piece by a young gay actor about his troubled life with a leading director struck a chord. Fate led me to him, and he connected me with others who shared off-the-record stories of exploitation and ambition. I wanted to tell these tales but not launch yet another bad news book into an already battered world. I aimed to create something accessible and engaging, darkly funny while shining a light on Hollywood's underbelly.
After 608 days, Maggie is single again and almost 30–two things that give cause for concern and reflection. Thankfully, Maggie takes no blame for either thing happening and plows on, determined to find the pearl in the gritty oyster her life has become.
I laughed, but I also found myself filled with sad recognition of how we all too often set goals we’ll never score, only to find that halfway home is where the heart is.
The No. 2 SUNDAY TIMES Bestseller
An Observer Best Debut of the Year
'Intoxicating ... heralds a really good author to watch' The Times
'Hilarious and profound' Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love
'Wildly funny and almost alarmingly relatable' Marian Keyes, author of Again, Rachel
'Monica Heisey is a genius' Nina Stibbe, author of Reasons to be Cheerful
One of the most hotly anticipated, hilarious and addictive debut novels of 2023, from Schitt's Creek and Workin' Moms screenwriter and electric new voice in fiction, Monica Heisey.
I feel like when you get a divorce everyone's wondering how…
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I’m Gen X, through and through. And because I grew up in that (glorious?) time before social media, I didn’t have the worry that my messy-woman missteps would be exposed online. But the trade-off to keeping my mistakes as private as possible was that I often felt like I couldn’t live boldly. So now I’m fascinated by the ways other women handle the messier aspects of their lives: the obsessions and frustrations, the secrets we all keep, the duality we choke down. I want to know what we’re each quietly starving for, what’s driving us when we strip away social expectation and are left to sit with our gnawing hungers.
Humor has always pulled me through the hard parts of life, and laughter is the test that tells me if I’ll be compatible with someone when we first meet. So to read a ridiculous character who’s coming in hot right on page one, charging through the story with absolutely no filter, epic foibles fully (and uncomfortably) detailed, and unable to stop making terrible decisions had me cackling out loud.
I was initially drawn to this book for the perfect cover, but I quickly fell in love with the writing and a story that captures that frustrating push and pull of wanting what we can’t have. It’s a delightful mess of bees, goats, awkward sex, strange conversations, and women doing whatever they want.
** SOON TO BE A MAJOR HBO SERIES STARRING JODIE COMER **
'Made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty.' MONICA HEISEY 'Utterly addictive. . . I laughed so hard it ached.' GILLIAN ANDERSON 'Juicy, salacious and compelling. Trauma shouldn't be this fun.' SARA PASCOE
Greta liked knowing people's secrets. That wasn't a problem. Until she met Big Swiss.
Big Swiss. That's Greta's nickname for her - she is tall, and she is from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed top to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two…
I grew up in New York City, the only child of a busy editor/publisher and a classical musician. We lived in a two-hundred-year-old brownstone that was full of history and books. Often, my fictional and real worlds overlapped. I explored the dark spaces in our old house and imagined the ghosts that might still dwell there. I sat in eight-foot-high windows in the summer and near fireplaces with Victorian marble mantels in winter and read Nancy Drew, Alice in Wonderland, Tolkien, Poe, Shakespeare, and more. Those stories dropped like seeds into my psyche and eventually bloomed into the thrillers and mysteries I write today.
Lisa Jewell is a master of psychological suspense, and I felt this was one of her best. I love true crime podcasts, so using a podcaster as a protagonist and having clips from her show in the story added a layer of reality to the fiction.
The main character meets a woman with the same birthday as her while out celebrating. She decides to do a podcast series around the theme of birthday twins—an innocent, even fun beginning to a story that becomes anything but. For much of the book, the main character knew something was very, very wrong but had no idea where the menace was coming from. It made me squirm—in a good way. I couldn’t put it down.
Buy now and prepare to be hooked from the Number One bestselling thriller author . . .
* AN INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * * OVER 6,000 FIVE STAR REVIEWS * * AUDIBLE NO.1 SIX WEEKS IN A ROW *
'Gloriously dark' Lucy Foley 'A moody, slippery novel' Gillian McAllister 'One hundred percent brilliant' Clare Mackintosh 'Shocking and creepy and glorious' Nicola Walker 'Utterly addictive' Claire Douglas ___________
Celebrating her 45th birthday at her local pub, podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie is also celebrating her 45th.
I can't be the only one to see men with power manipulate their status to hold back others. This isn’t just a Hollywood thing. A Sunday supplement piece by a young gay actor about his troubled life with a leading director struck a chord. Fate led me to him, and he connected me with others who shared off-the-record stories of exploitation and ambition. I wanted to tell these tales but not launch yet another bad news book into an already battered world. I aimed to create something accessible and engaging, darkly funny while shining a light on Hollywood's underbelly.
I’ve spoken to people who really couldn’t get into this book, and I consider them somewhat deranged. It’s a rollicking good read, and maybe it helped that I enjoyed the author reading the story, which added to my enjoyment. I’ll go out on a limb and suggest very few authors make great audiobook performers. Mortimer absolutely does, getting the voice of the squirrel spot on.
There’s a strange and convoluted plot set in the not-terribly-underworld of London. A brilliant neighbor part for Kathy Burke should Mortimer ever be fielding Netflix offers. It’s a book you’ll read in days, not weeks. Fast-paced and has me on edge for part two–out in August.
*WINNER OF THE BOLLINGER EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE FOR COMIC FICTION 2023*
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'Funny, clever and sweet'- Sunday Times
'The much loved comic proves adept at noirish fiction in a debut whose surrealist humour sets it apart' - Observer
My name is Gary. I'm a thirty-year-old legal assistant with a firm of solicitors in London. To describe me as anonymous would be unfair but to notice me other than in passing would be a rarity. I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish…
Don’t mess with the hothead—or he might just mess with you. Slater Ibáñez is only interested in two kinds of guys: the ones he wants to punch, and the ones he sleeps with. Things get interesting when they start to overlap. A freelance investigator, Slater trolls the dark side of…
I think I sometimes get in trouble for saying this, but the truth is, I don’t give a shit about the likability of characters, whether I’m reading or writing. I’m here for a good time, not a long time. Because of that, fiction is the most riveting for me when interesting characters start making bad decisions. Any good narrative train wreck must create tension that keeps ratcheting up in its pages, and these are some of the books that do that most expertly, in my opinion. So, grab something to hold onto while you go on some of my favorite wild rides.
I truly believe Kiley Reid is a national treasure. Her second book centers around a small southern college town, and as someone who attended one of those myself, I can tell you that it perfectly captures that spirit. Even though the book is more character study than plot-forward, the southern sorority girls, the writing professor, and the overworked RA all come together to make an absolute mess in the end.
Effortlessly weaving multiple narrators and storylines together, this book is everything I want satire to be. Each character is rich and fully realized, often dabbling in doing “bad” things but never making you quite dislike them. I can’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching everything go tits up.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER National Bestseller USA Today Bestseller
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick
An Indie Next Pick A LibraryReads Pick
From the celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age comes a fresh and provocative story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a professor and three unruly students.
It's 2017 at the University of Arkansas. Millie Cousins, a senior resident assistant, wants to graduate, get a job, and buy a house. So when Agatha Paul, a visiting professor and writer, offers Millie an easy yet unusual opportunity, she jumps at the…
I think I sometimes get in trouble for saying this, but the truth is, I don’t give a shit about the likability of characters, whether I’m reading or writing. I’m here for a good time, not a long time. Because of that, fiction is the most riveting for me when interesting characters start making bad decisions. Any good narrative train wreck must create tension that keeps ratcheting up in its pages, and these are some of the books that do that most expertly, in my opinion. So, grab something to hold onto while you go on some of my favorite wild rides.
This is my most recent “can’t look away” read. The titular Piglet hits rock bottom and keeps digging after her idea of a perfect life with her fiancé Kit goes up in flames. Lottie Hazell really knows how to do a set piece with constant escalating tension. Every food-related meltdown in Piglet proved more anxiety-inducing than the last, particularly a scene of Piglet frantically trying to bake a croquembouche on the day of her disastrous wedding.
I always appreciate a book that refuses to give the reader breathing room and puts you in the scene with its characters. Piglet’s pages and pages of bad decisions–and the empathy Hazell’s narrative still manages to weave in for her characters–make this a gripping, satisfying read.
Discover a deliciously dark and piercing story of food and secrets, a Stylist Best Debut Novel of 2024.
'A sharp, dark, must-read story about appetite, ambition, secrecy and shame' Daily Mail
'If I owned a bookstore, I'd hand-sell Piglet to everyone' New York Times Book Review
'A dark, weird, satisfying tale about greed and desire' i News
-------------------
Her life is so full, so why is she hungry?
For Piglet - an unshakable childhood nickname - getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss - effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding...…
I have always been drawn to the idea of a friendship turning into lasting love. When two people are friends first, they can be vulnerable with each other, support each other, and develop a tender intimacy before the fireworks. My young adult years as a tomboy and outdoor education instructor meant I was often the only girl among many guys, and I developed some very deep and meaningful friendships. My first love was also a tender friend first, and I’ll never forget the power of our bond. Writing friends to lovers stories always feels like home to me. Enjoy these five friends to lovers “must-reads”!
I am a sucker for lifelong friends to lovers with a bit of the taboo, and this book delivered!
Our hero is a sexy hockey player with a dark past, and our heroine is a dancer with an overprotective and controlling family. When, on her wedding day, she learns the jerk she’s being forced to marry has been cheating on her, she runs right into the arms of her childhood crush and friend Jasper, who offers to whisk her away so she can figure out what to do and how to face her parents.
Jasper and Sloane were made for each other from page one, and I loved rooting for them! Add in the delightful small-town vibes, the belonging that comes from being part of an amazing, tight-knit family, and some steamy times, and it’s a recipe for an all-nighter (reading, that is).
Two childhood friends. Two broken hearts. One impromptu road trip to get away from everything. That's all this was supposed to be.
To Jasper Gervais's fans, he's the handsome, talented hockey heartthrob on TV. But to Sloane, he'll always be the lost boy with the sad eyes and a heart of gold.
The man she's loved in secret all her life.
So when her life falls apart on the day she's supposed to marry someone else, it only makes sense that he's the one to swoop in and save her. And when his world comes crashing down around him, she's…
We are in a time where everything seems fraught, and cozies remind me that there are other paths. I write science fiction and fantasy, a genre known for making things worse. But secretly, I want my books to explore what happens when people talk to one another and make the kinder choice. It’s easy to escalate. But having a book with tension and interest and plot twists, while also making the reader feel secure is much harder. Watching characters in unexpected genres have cozy moments reminds me it’s possible. And also, sometimes you just want a hug from a book.
I began recommending this book before I even finished it—it was that good. Maybe counterintuitively, I’d categorize it as cozy horror. Or fantasy romance. It’s a book that’s so very hard to describe. The main character is a literal monster, but their ability to shapeshift and “mask” was also relatable—as was her journey of falling in love. I adored reading about how she worked hard to make the person she cared for feel safe.
It’s an extremely comforting story in an unexpected genre wrapper.
A Most-Anticipated Book of 2024: LitHub, Polygon, Apple, Goodreads
"Wiswell raises the bar on the outcast as protagonist . . . the ultimate monster slayer story, if the monster is just a misunderstood creature searching for love." - Kristi Chadwick, Library Journal (starred review)
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance-from the perspective of the monster-by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell
Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters…
