Here are 95 books that Have Mercy On Us fans have personally recommended if you like
Have Mercy On Us.
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I have always loved short stories for the way they pull readers into a complete universe and leave a lasting impact, all in a much shorter span than a novel. This is what makes them special! I love when an author presents an indelible image to recall later, or a passage that makes me go back to roll the words over my tongue again, or a turn of events that leaves me heartsore, or filled with longing, or purpose, or appreciation. Often, these shorter glimpses leave a longer impact because they are required to get and keep attention quickly. And the really good short stories do exactly that.
Although Tove Jansson’s characters are diverse in age, position, and location, each one is immediately knowable in her masterful short fiction.
I love the way she draws me in—often in a sentence or two—and makes me feel I’ve just stepped into the story in real time. Even when her topics are surprising and fantastical, the heart of humanity beats loudly, and I’m reminded of how much we all have in common.
Tove Jansson was a master of brevity, unfolding worlds at a touch. Her art flourished in small settings, as can be seen in her bestselling novel The Summer Book and in her internationally celebrated cartoon strips and books about the Moomins. It is only natural, then, that throughout her life she turned again and again to the short story. The Woman Who Borrowed Memories is the first extensive selection of Jansson's stories to appear in English.
Many of the stories collected here are pure Jansson, touching on island solitude and the dangerous pull of the…
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 always loved short stories for the way they pull readers into a complete universe and leave a lasting impact, all in a much shorter span than a novel. This is what makes them special! I love when an author presents an indelible image to recall later, or a passage that makes me go back to roll the words over my tongue again, or a turn of events that leaves me heartsore, or filled with longing, or purpose, or appreciation. Often, these shorter glimpses leave a longer impact because they are required to get and keep attention quickly. And the really good short stories do exactly that.
This is a “bring to a deserted island” kind of book.
I’m in perpetual awe at the way Carson McCullers wrote with an unflinching eye on people—their strengths and weaknesses and every nuance in between—and always, with love. I have laughed and cried and pondered the largest questions, all in a single McCullers story. And there’s simply no one who writes like she did.
The novelist, dramatist, and poet Carson McCullers was at the peak of her powers as a writer of short fiction.
In nineteen stories that explore her signature themes of wounded adolescence, loneliness in marriage, and the tragicomedy of life in the South, McCullers's novellas "The Member of the Wedding" and "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" are also included.
"[These novellas are] assuredly among the masterpieces of our language," Tennesee Williams said.
I have always loved short stories for the way they pull readers into a complete universe and leave a lasting impact, all in a much shorter span than a novel. This is what makes them special! I love when an author presents an indelible image to recall later, or a passage that makes me go back to roll the words over my tongue again, or a turn of events that leaves me heartsore, or filled with longing, or purpose, or appreciation. Often, these shorter glimpses leave a longer impact because they are required to get and keep attention quickly. And the really good short stories do exactly that.
Most certainly influenced by McCullers and other great voices from the American South is Michael Knight, whose stories are steeped in their setting and its particular concerns.
I love how he shows a community through the kaleidoscope of people living there, each with their own concerns and experiences. As a lover of stories with relatable characters and situations, the quiet honesty of these stories touches me on a deep level.
"Michael Knight is more than a master of the short story. He knows the true pace of life and does not cheat it, all the while offering whopping entertainment." Barry Hannah
Long considered a master of the form and an essential voice in American fiction, Michael Knight's stories have been lauded by writers such Ann Patchett, Elizabeth Gilbert, Barry Hannah, and Richard Bausch. Now, with Eveningland he returns to the form that launched his career, delivering an arresting collection of interlinked stories set among the "right kind of Mobile family" in the years preceding a devastating hurricane.
I have always loved short stories for the way they pull readers into a complete universe and leave a lasting impact, all in a much shorter span than a novel. This is what makes them special! I love when an author presents an indelible image to recall later, or a passage that makes me go back to roll the words over my tongue again, or a turn of events that leaves me heartsore, or filled with longing, or purpose, or appreciation. Often, these shorter glimpses leave a longer impact because they are required to get and keep attention quickly. And the really good short stories do exactly that.
At times creepy and always provocative, Samanta Schweblin’s stories always make me look at the world in a new way.
From the moment I read her short novel Fever Dream, I knew I would read anything she writes, and this newest collection of short fiction did not disappoint. I feel a sort of delicious unsteadiness experiencing her visions, which create worlds that are shocking while being eerily recognizable, too.
A blazing new story collection that will make you feel like the house is collapsing in on you, from the three-time International Booker Prize finalist, 'lead[ing] a vanguard of Latin American writers forging their own 21st-century canon.' -O, the Oprah magazine
The world of Samanta Schweblin's short stories is dark and destabilising. Here, home is not a place of safety but the site of hidden danger, silent menace, unspoken resentment. Picture-perfect doors and spotless windows conceal lives in disarray, slowly unraveling in the face of obsession and fear, jealousy and…
I am a social scientist who has been doing fieldwork and research in Africa since 1999. For me, there’s no more fascinating part of the planet – Africa is the cradle of civilization, more diverse than anywhere else and culturally and institutionally vibrant and creative. I have worked in Botswana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe investigating the determinants of political institutions and economic prosperity. I have taught courses on Africa at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of Ghana at Legon and this summer the University of Nigeria in Nsukka.
It isn’t just African politics that is different. Economics is too. If modern economics had been invented by an African, instead of Adam Smith, it would look very different. Wealth would be measured in people rather than material objects, property, and capital. There would be much less emphasis on markets. Some things, should never be sold, and if they were it would create “bitter money” and bad luck. This book is a great place to start to re-think your ideas about economics.
“fascinating little book adds to the study of culture to political economy” MacGaffey ~Journal of Anthropological Research “presents fascinating material on beliefs about money in some Luo-speaking communities of Kenya… an insightful analysis… a case that will generate fruitful discussions for years to come” Ferguson ~American Ethnologist BITTER MONEY unites symbolic and economic analysis in exploring the beliefs about forbidden exchanges among the Luo of Kenya and other African peoples. Shipton's multi-paradigmatic theoretical explanation briefly summarizes a century of anthropological thought about African exchange, while integrating ways of understanding rural African economy, politics, and culture.
Looking for an adventure in the mid-90s I found myself in East Africa helping wind up a failed African bank, locked out of a t-shirt manufacturing plant, chasing down missing bulldozers (which turned up creating Rwandan refugee camps), taking over a toilet paper manufacturer which couldn’t manage to perforate the paper, and running a match factory on the slopes of Kilimanjaro before selling it to a Nigerian chief who turned up in his private jet. Meanwhile feeling like an alien who really didn’t understand what was really going on around me, and uncomfortable with much of the hard-drinking and arrogant expat culture, drove me to start to write as a way of making sense of what I was seeing and feeling.
As an exposé of the upper-class Happy Valley set in the late 30s/early 40s white Kenya this sets the tone for subsequent settler behaviour. An investigation into a real-life unsolved mystery, the murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, it features an outlandish cast of characters and lifestyles of astonishing decadence and privilege and reads like a thriller.
Just before 3am on January 24th, 1941, when Britain was preoccupied with surviving the Blitz, the body of Josslyn Hay, Earl of Erroll, was discovered lying on the floor of his Buick, at a road intersection some miles outside Nairobi, with a bullet in his head.
A leading figure in Kenya's colonial community, the Earl had recently been appointed Military Secretary, but he was primarily a seducer of other men's wives. Sir Henry Delves Broughton, whose wife was Erroll's current conquest, had an obvious motive for the murder, but no one was ever convicted and the question of who killed…
An Heir of Realms tells the tale of two young heroines—a dragon rider and a portal jumper—who fight dragon-like parasites to save their realms from extinction.
Rhoswen is training as a Realm Rider to work with dragons and burn away the Narxon swarming into her realm. Rhoswen’s dream is to…
Although I’m a cat lover, I’ve spent my career studying the evolution of lizards. As my career progressed, it never occurred to me to investigate cats. They’re too hard to study (ever tried following one?), plus, I thought there was no interesting cat research being done. Then I learned I was completely wrong—cat scientists are conducting great work using cutting-edge techniques. So I decided to teach a freshman class on the science of cats, hoping to lure in cat-loving students and then teach them how scientists study nature, using cats as the vehicle. The class was a success, but something unexpected happened: I became hooked on cat science myself!
This charming book is a bit different from my other selections. Couffer, an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer and director, provides delightful details of the lives of the cats living on the remote island of Lamu off the coast of Kenya.
With a sharp naturalist’s eye and a delightful voice, Couffer engagingly describes the escapades of several rival colonies of cats as they seek to eke out a living among the fisherpeople and town inhabitants. As well as enjoying the book so much that I could barely put it down, I found it thought-provoking as an example of how the earliest cats may have started associating with humans and began their journey to domestication…or at least as domesticated as cats have become.
Situated off the east coast of Africa, the L amu archipelago is home to a species of feral cat, possibly descended from the domestic cats of Egypt. Jack Couffer''s il lustrated study documents the lives and relationships of the se special cats. '
I have written about the environment as a journalist since 2005, for magazines and newspapers including National Geographic,The New York Times, and Outside. For my last book, I wanted to write about animals as individuals—not just as units in a species, the way they are often thought of by conservationists. Diving into research about animal selfhood was an amazing journey. It helped shape my book, but it also changed the way I see the world around me—and who and what I think of as “people”!
This book tells the true story of an African couple who adopted a lion cub, raised her to adulthood, and then eventually returned her to the wild.
In my reporting on wild pets and reintroductions of captive animals, I learned that Elsa’s story was a bit of a miracle. Such successful reintroductions are very rare. The Adamsons were complex people and their story has an ambiguous legacy, especially given that it may have inspired people who were not really able to care for big cats to try to keep them as pets.
However, there’s no denying that their experience makes for a fascinating read. And by living so closely with her, they were able to see and describe Elsa as an individual, not just “a lioness” interchangeable with any other.
There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when The New York Times hailed it as a “fascinating and remarkable book,” Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us.
Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub in transition between the captivity in which she is raised and the fearsome wild to which she is returned captures the abilities of both humans and animals to cross the seemingly unbridgeable gap between their radically different worlds. Especially now, at a time when the sanctity of the…
As a mom and children’s author, I’ve seen how much children need reminders that they are already loved, already important, and already enough. I’ve written over 30 picture books that explore kindness, confidence, and emotional resilience, but my heart always comes back to one mission: helping kids see their worth.
I created this list because I believe books are powerful mirrors—they show children not only who they are but who they can grow to be. These stories encourage kids to embrace their differences, trust their voice, and carry the confidence that being themselves is the most beautiful thing of all.
This book is powerful because it talks openly about self-acceptance and learning to love yourself.
It shows the struggle of wanting to change who you are, only to discover that your beauty has been there all along. Paired with cute illustrations, it's a story that can help children see themselves with love.
5
authors picked
Sulwe
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
From Academy Award-winning actress Lupita Nyong'o comes a powerful, moving picture book about colourism, self-esteem and learning that true beauty comes from within.
Sulwe's skin is the colour of midnight. She's darker than everyone in her family, and everyone at school.
All she wants is to be beautiful and bright, like her mother and sister.
Then a magical journey through the night sky opens her eyes and changes everything.
In this stunning debut picture book, Lupita Nyong'o creates a whimsical and heartwarming story to inspire children to see their own unique beauty.
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
I grew up in the high plains mining towns of Montana and Wyoming but I couldn’t wait to get out and see the world. Peace Corps was my ticket. A teaching post in Chad, Africa, was open, but civil war and famine loomed, so I chose Afghanistan. After my two-year contract in Kabul, I continued traveling but my fascination with Africa never waned. A job teaching college English allowed me summers to continue traveling. However, I never did get to Africa, so when Carolyn suggested we write about Namibia, I agreed. Someday, I hope to visit before the magnificent black rhino has been wiped off the face of the planet.
Huxley’s parents go to Kenya to start a coffee plantation. And like Blixen and her husband, they know nothing about Africa or growing coffee and must depend on Africans to teach them. Huxley writes a delightful account of her life and the struggles they endure. Her portrayal of the people who work on the family’s plantation is brilliant as is the description of the environment and animals. Huxley also writes from the unsentimental eyes of a child.
When Elspeth Huxley's pioneer father buys a remote plot of land in Kenya, the family sets off to discover their new home: five hundred acres of Kenyan scrubland, infested with ticks and white ants, and quavering with heat. What they lack in know-how they make up for in determination: building a grass house, employing local Kikuyu tribe members and painstakingly transforming their patch of wilderness into a working farm. Huxley's unforgettable childhood memoir is a sensitive account of settler life at the turn of the twentieth century and a love song to the harshness and beauty of East Africa.
