21 Books Like Helm

'The Naked Light' contains all the ingredients of the very best historical fiction, and I knew I was going to love it from the very first page. Set in the years immediately after the First World War, the plot centres on three women - Kit, an androgynous artist seeking solace from the horrors of war, Florence, the repressed and stifled sister-in-law of a vicar, and Phoebe, a motherless adolescent, adrift and angry. All three women are living in a village bereft of most of its men following the war, and overlooked by the Face, an ancient crude 'face' cut into the chalk of the Downs. This Face has supposedly protected the village up until recently, but now darker forces are coming to the fore. The novel beautifully examines the age old traditions of our land and its dark and sometimes sinister myths, which may or may not be myths. It's… show more.

This is a rare book. A beautiful, heartbreaking, important book. It's a book that will stay with me for a very, very long time. The storyline follows Dawn in the 1980s, a young mother who falls in love with another woman, and her estranged daughter Maggie in the present day. Maggie has an unusually close relationship with her father Heron, who brought her up as a single father. But Heron has been keeping secrets from Maggie, and when the past comes back to haunt them, Maggie has to reckon with everything she thought she knew about her life. Utterly brilliant, I was captivated from page one.

Dystopia now seems to be waning as a genre, mainly because there's been a lot of very similar stuff. This is different - powerful and compelling. The Guardian called it "the Lake District's answer to The Handmaid's Tale". This does it a disservice by suggesting it's derivative. It's not. There's plenty of originality here.

I was immediately struck by the quality of the writing. Atwood is a writer's writer - she understands how to use language to its full effect and how to arrange the words on the page so they do more than we expect of them.

I have never read a novel so close to prophecy.

Published in 1995, Parable starts in July 2024 amidst the election of an autocrat who, by the sequel Parable of the Talents, literally pledges to “make America great again.” I started my platform in 2015 in the same context.

This novel pulled me into its harrowing tale of how to survive civilizational collapse: the dismantling of systems, norms, and climate change that we are all currently going through.

The lesson is ultimately about embracing change, caring for and trusting each other in community, and coming up with our own ways of being together. So many of our ancestors have survived periods of collapse by the same principles. These ancestral lessons still guide me, and I believe are critical to surviving AI dystopia.

Oh, Was, how I love your relentlessly bleak, depressing sadness.

This is a strangely inventive novel that twines reality and fantasy into a brutal, desolate, yet gorgeous story of pain and survival. Told from the points of view of numerous characters, each story is tethered in some way to The Wizard of Oz, that venerable fable about good versus evil in the search for home.

Ryman introduces us to a main trio of characters whose lives are all equally harrowing–Dorothy Gael (the imagined inspiration for The Wizard of Oz heroine and the victim of familial sexual abuse), Frances Gumm (who becomes the tragic Judy Garland), and Jonathan (an actor experiencing AIDS-related dementia)–whose stories he intricately weaves together like a master craftsman. And while the novel is not a “happy” read by any stretch of the imagination, what has stayed with me throughout the past thirty years is its… show more.

Atmospheric. A deep dive into human flaws and perfections, and a tough-to-read tale of those who found themselves struggling to survive—physically and emotionally—in the most extreme circumstances imaginable. Beauty and brutality, inseparable.

I was introduced to the beguiling novels of Jonathan Carroll by the owner of a bookstore where I worked when I was young. Thirty years on and I still greatly anticipate a new novel by this unclassifiable author. 

It follows the efforts of a teacher and his girlfriend to write the biography of a deceased children’s author whom they idolize. I love that Carroll’s books begin with familiar scenarios but soon take off into a very unique kind of magical realism.

Carroll always writes with a sure, sweet touch; his dialogue is whip-smart, his characters larger than life, and his stories always zip along with an easy conversational tone. You can start anywhere with his books, but there’s a special place in my heart for this one.

Tom Reamy’s first novel was also to be his last. Its carnival sideshow setting is reminiscent of Geek Love, Nightmare Alley, and much of Ray Bradbury, but with a poignancy and sense of place that set it apart. I can guarantee that you’ll never forget Angel, the mute, blind flying boy. Reamy was an active genre critic, editor, and convention organiser for at least two decades before he began submitting the fiction he’d been working on in private. Its impact was immediate but he saw little of its success, struck by a heart attack while working on a story at the age of 42. For me his legacy—this novel, and the collection San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories—equal that of many a more prolific author.

This book arrived in the avalanche of volumes that descended on my house the year I agreed to join the judging panel for the World Fantasy Awards, and for me it shone out. The story’s told by Hans Schneider, who kills a fellow student when a duel goes wrong and ends up working in a low-rent asylum. There he meets the mysterious Dr. Lavenza and joins him in a mission to locate Victor Frankenstein’s formula for eternal life. It’s written with style and wit and a great sense of period. I felt so strongly about the lack of a paperback edition that I later offered to create one for the Brooligan Press. And for the avoidance of doubt, I don’t make a penny from its sales!