Here are 100 books that High-Rise fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve loved weird horror from a young age, and that passion only grew as the years went on. It all started when I was ten, and I got an anthology of classic horror for my birthday. Inside I read The White People by Machen, Cast the Runes by MR James, and The Colour Out of Space by Lovecraft, and I was hooked. Ever since then I chased that same thrill of the horror that is so out there and strange it just breaks your brain and changes you inside out. I have a feeling I’ll be chasing that obsession until the end of my days.
A very dark turn in my list, indeed. A hole opens up in their apartment, who knows who or why? It doesn’t matter. They dub it the funhole, and would do what any of us would do, and start sticking things inside of it. Things get dark, fast.
If you want to be up all night, unable to sleep, give this book a whirl.
Kathe Koja's classic, award-winning horror novel is finally available as an ebook.
Nicholas, a would-be poet, and Nakota, his feral lover, discover a strange hole in the storage room floor down the hall - "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." It begins with curiosity, a joke - the Funhole down the hall. But then the experiments begin. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says "We're not." But they're not in control, not from the first moment, as…
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…
Although I’m an academic by training, I secretly struggle with heavy nonfiction tomes (think: massive histories of long-ago countries). I start reading these with the best intentions but quickly get sleepy, bored, or both, setting them aside and instead picking up a novel, which I’ll immediately devour. That’s why I love memoiristic, hybrid work so much: writing that pairs the intimacy of fiction with the information buffet of nonfiction, where you learn without realizing you’re learning. These books feel like a conversation with a close friend who is intelligent, thought-provoking, and passionate about various subjects—what could be better than that?
I read Olivia Laing’s bookat the height of my own loneliness: isolated, in lockdown, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part memoir, part art history, part cultural criticism, the book managed to be both intimate and expansive—just what I needed as I sat by myself in front of a computer, anxiously refreshing virus graphs.
I became absorbed by the lives of Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper, Henry Darger, and David Wojnarowicz, artists I’d heard of but knew nothing about, and by the various aspects of loneliness I’d never previously considered. It’s the perfect example of the type of hybrid writing that I find truly magical.
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism
#1 Book of the Year from Brain Pickings
Named a best book of the year by NPR, Newsweek, Slate, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Elle, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub
A dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism on the subject of loneliness, told through the lives of iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring.
When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by the most shameful of experiences, she began…
I’ve always been preternaturally attentive to the way words work—as components of meaning, but also as visual, aural, and functional objects with their own erratic behaviors. Since joining the Oulipo in 2009, I’ve had even more occasion to think and talk about how those behaviors can be pointed in a literary direction, and to recognize successful experiments when I read them.
A bracing slap to the face, this book. Or maybe a punch to the gut. The conceit is the series of portraits of hoarders based on the reality show of the same name, and the recipe is to combine their testimonials—“I save old soda cans and turn the tin snips into flowers,” say, or “I want desperately to change”—with lists of objects, described as though in a slow camera pan across a filthy room. But the alchemy is the way Durbin mashes the two together, not quite at random but not correctlyeither. It’s a harrowing litany of fragments, so specific that the unspoken point is all too clear: what’s broken is much bigger than any of these individual people or things.
A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2021 An NPR Best Book of 2021 An Electric Literature Best Poetry Book of 2021 A Dennis Cooper Best Book of 2021
In Hoarders, Durbin deftly traces the associations between hoarding and collective US traumas rooted in consumerism and the environment. Each poem is a prismatic portrait of a person and the beloved objects they hoard, from Barbies to snow globes to vintage Las Vegas memorabilia to rotting fruit to plants. Using reality television as a medium, Durbin conjures an uncanny space of attachments that reflects a cultural moment back to the reader…
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…
I respond to the darkness and the darkness responds to me. Before writing anything creative, I was studying to be a sociologist. I didn’t get there but all those peculiarities that criminology, deviant behavior, and symbolic interactionism (don’t get me started on Foucault or else we’ll be here all day) stuck with me. I won’t say I don’t care about characters but I’m more interested in stories that examine a character in relation to their status and situation within society. So yeah, lots of poverty, loneliness, and identity issues.
Matthew Revert and I go way back. He’s a true polymath in that he’s a designer, musician, and also the author of multiple novels and collections. My favorite of his is Basal Ganglia, a novel about two lovers that live in this insane pillow fort. There’s a movie, I think it’s called Dave Builds a Maze, that kind of taps into the full-flung dive into implausibility to explore personal space and intimacies but of course, Revert’s just hits different.
Basal Ganglia casts an unsettling spell, but one that in its aphoristic intensity and lightning-flash insights into human loneliness and connection, achieves a genuine empathic wisdom." - SERGIO DE LA PAVA, author of A Naked Singularity
"Matthew Revert is one of the visionaries. What else can you say?" - SCOTT MCCLANAHAN, author of Hill William and Crapalachia
As teenagers, two lovers, Rollo and Ingrid, escape the world as it is known to live underground in a sprawling pillow fort that mirrors the structure of the human brain. Construction of the fort takes 25 years and once complete, their life exists…
After half a lifetime working all over the world as an environmental scientist, I am now a full-time writer of fiction and non-fiction. I’ve studied the effects of oil industry waste in Yemen, monitored groundwater contaminated with radioactive tritium from bomb-making sites in Europe, and remediated oil pits in the South American jungle. I ran Australia’s national climate adaptation program and was CEO of Australia’s national marine science agency, which does much of the research on the Great Barrier Reef. And everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve seen how environmental destruction hurts people, societies, and, inevitably, our future. Each of my six novels and my non-fiction examines this issue in different ways.
The Settlement describes a dystopian world set not in the future, but in the past. The 1830s, to be precise.
The misguided evangelist George Augustus Robinson sets himself the task of rounding up the last remaining original inhabitants of Van Diemen’s Land, now known as Tasmania, to save them from slaughter. Under his care, they are convinced to surrender and are relocated to desolate Flinders Island in the Bass Strait.
This is a finely-wrought historical novel of great compassion that brings to life the extinction of a race.
On the windswept point of an island at the edge of van Diemen’s Land, the Commandant huddles with a small force of white men and women.
He has gathered together, under varying degrees of coercion and duress, the last of the Tasmanians, or so he believes. His purpose is to save them—from a number of things, but most pressingly from the murderous intent of the pastoral settlers on their country.
The orphans Whelk and Pipi, fighting for their survival against the malevolent old man they know as the Catechist, watch as almost everything about this situation proves resistant to the…
After half a lifetime working all over the world as an environmental scientist, I am now a full-time writer of fiction and non-fiction. I’ve studied the effects of oil industry waste in Yemen, monitored groundwater contaminated with radioactive tritium from bomb-making sites in Europe, and remediated oil pits in the South American jungle. I ran Australia’s national climate adaptation program and was CEO of Australia’s national marine science agency, which does much of the research on the Great Barrier Reef. And everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve seen how environmental destruction hurts people, societies, and, inevitably, our future. Each of my six novels and my non-fiction examines this issue in different ways.
The only non-fiction book on my list, this prescient, chilling work examines the geopolitics of climate change.
Written in 2008 by an ex-naval officer turned journalist, this book works on two levels. First, cogent explanations of the science and interviews with senior military personnel from America and Great Britain. Then, eight scenarios that describe how the world might react as emissions rise.
Scenario One: 2045. The average global temperature is 2.8°C higher than in 1990. Prognosis: Awful.
And the scary thing is that’s pretty close to the trajectory we are currently on.
Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are just some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead - and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Bold, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research, "Climate Wars" grippingly reveals how world leaders are likely to react, and promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.
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…
I am passionate about words and reading, and I love books that examine and record the chaos and mayhem of human existence. When I think about why I don’t want to die, it’s mainly because I can't bear the thought of missing out on what happens next. I feel privileged to be alive during this strange, fraught time of epochal change and to be able to use my skills as a writer to record not just the facts of what happens but how it feels to witness it all, the sensibility of our time, the recording of which is, I believe, the essence of great literature.
I was surprised at how much I loved The Wizard of the Kremlin. I was sorry to reach the last page. Why? The central character is a fascinating post-modern Machiavellian political strategist whose machinations set the global standard for disinformation as a political tool in the post-modern, digital world.
Vadim Baranov is based on a real-life character, Russian President Putin’s long-time former PR man and advisor, Vladislav Sirkov. The book is an imagined one-night meeting with the now-retired former reality TV producer, an utterly cynical but simultaneously surprisingly morally aware man, who unwinds the story of his career.
THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION - a stunning work of political fiction about the rise to power of Putin's notorious spin doctor
'A great book, casting light on the creatures that crawl and slither behind the Kremlin's walls, on the mineral hardness of Putin, on the chaos engine that is his way of hurting us' John Sweeney
'An acute and timely dissection of Russian power, told through the eyes of a shadowy political advisor to Putin' Financial Times
'A fictional wandering through the dark corridors of the Kremlin' The Times, Biggest Books of the Season
As both a high school teacher and an activist, I am preoccupied by the world we are leaving to the next generation. And as a long-time Toronto resident, I also just love seeing my city get destroyed in fiction, which is far more cathartic than watching it get bungled up in real life. I am drawn to the type of story that exposes the wounds that run deep in our political, economic, and social structures. The best dystopian fiction shines a mirror on our history and our present, and brings the experiences of marginalized voices—for whom the apocalypse is not merely theoretical—to a broader audience.
Hopkinson’s stunning debut plunges the reader into a wildly inventive future Toronto. She seamlessly weaves together the politics of race, class, and gender, inflected with the rich culture and history of the Caribbean diaspora.
Despite the grim post-apocalyptic setting, the characters are part of a community, surviving through solidarity and mutual aid. There are no easy answers or neat resolutions to be found here—the fraught, tenuous connections between families and lovers are messy and grounded.
Sadly, many of the elements of this 1998 novel have proven prophetic, and this book is still a clarion call 25 years later.
The rich and the privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways -- farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.
I grew up in a small community surrounded by mountains and vast public land. I learned to ride a horse before riding a bike, and my dad taught me about recreating in remote areas. I didn’t think of those lessons as survival training, but in my novels, the skills I learned as a kid often save the characters’ lives. All the books on this list feature ordinary people doing extraordinary things to survive and, in some cases, protecting those they love. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have!
I love to be surprised. Poster Girl started a bit slow, but as the story unfolded, the web of connections made this dystopian book much more interesting than I thought it would be.
The story began after a revolution. Many considered patriots by the former government were either killed or imprisoned. As the new government tries to paint itself as the liberator from oppression, similarities between the new and old regimes are exposed.
As with any good dystopian story, it shows what people will do to survive in a dangerous and unfamiliar world and how they navigate relationships within a new set of social rules.
A fallen regime. A missing child. A chance at freedom.
Ten years ago, Sonya was the face of an oppressive regime. Then it was toppled by rebels and she was thrown into prison - where she has been locked up ever since.
When an old enemy comes to her with a deal, it seems too good to be true: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents, and earn her freedom.
But as Sonya hunts for the child, she is forced to dig deeper into the past - and her family's dark secrets - than she ever bargained…
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 have always loved fictional works that explore deep truths of humanity and existence. As a teen struggling to understand my purpose and beliefs, I grew fond of dystopian books with subtle, hope-filled messages pointing to God as our salvation amid chaos. I loved the genre so much that I began writing a Christian dystopian novel of my own and self-published it at 19, weaving pieces of my testimony throughout the main character's inner journey. For me, a book is only as good as its characters, no matter how gripping the plot is. So, the books on this list contain some of the genre's most authentic, intricately written souls.
The Choosing is close to my heart because it highlights how the lowest in society, the outcasts, the unchosen, are chosen by God. The main character’s ongoing battle to see her worth struck a chord with me when I first read it as a teen struggling with my identity.
The overarching theme of this book is that when the world says you are worthless, God says you are priceless. The intriguing plot reeled me in from the first chapter, and the characters were so well fleshed out that I wished I could befriend them in person.
The Choosing is a beautifully crafted YA Christian dystopia, and finishing the book made me feel like I was saying goodbye to family.
2016 Christy Award Winner! (Young Adult category) 2016 Christy Award Finalist (First novel category) Like all citizens since the Ruining, Carrington Hale knows the importance of this day. But she never expected the moment she’d spent a lifetime preparing for―her Choosing ceremony―to end in disaster. Ripped from her family, she’ll spend her days serving as a Lint, the lowest level of society. She knows it’s her duty to follow the true way of the Authority.
But as Carrington begins this nightmare, rumors of rebellion rattle her beliefs. Though the whispers contradict everything she’s been told, they resonate deep within.
