Here are 100 books that O Caledonia fans have personally recommended if you like
O Caledonia.
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As a writer, I love watching people, imagining their worlds and lives. Aside from the outdoor cafés of Paris (which are hard to get to), one of the best places for people-watching is a good bar. All five of the characters I’ve listed would make wonderful conversation companions for a bar evening, because of their energy, quirkiness, intelligence, and/or observational skills. (Also, I’d just want to get to know them better.) And as a recovering alcoholic with enough sobriety that sitting at a bar all night, sipping seltzer would not be a problem, I could watch what these characters reveal about themselves once alcohol lowers their ordinary defenses.
I turn to Mrs. Ramsay, the wife, mother, and hostess of this book, whenever I question my value in the world. By Victorian standards, she “has it all”: a doting (if difficult) husband, eight loving children (with whom, amazingly, she seems to have no problems), and a comfortable way of life. She alone, not her renowned philosopher spouse, not the young poet nor the dedicated artist who comes for a visit, brings meaning and harmony to a group of guests over one holiday weekend.
Mrs. Ramsay reminds me that nurturing and feeding (in all the meanings of that word) other people is a sacred task, even if our society doesn’t recognize it as such. Even a simple dinner party can partake of spiritual eternity: “Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that endures.”
When I spend too much of my own day on seemingly mindless chores or…
“Radiant as [To the Lighthouse] is in its beauty, there could never be a mistake about it: here is a novel to the last degree severe and uncompromising. I think that beyond being about the very nature of reality, it is itself a vision of reality.”—Eudora Welty, from the Introduction.The serene and maternal Mrs. Ramsay, the tragic yet absurd Mr. Ramsay, and their children and assorted guests are on holiday on the Isle of Skye. From the seemingly trivial postponement of a visit to a nearby lighthouse, Woolf constructs a remarkable, moving examination of the complex tensions and allegiances of…
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 started keeping a daily journal when I received one for my ninth birthday, and, as they say, the rest is history. Into my twenties, there was nothing I loved more than sitting down to write and write`. It was a way to understand my feelings, and it was also a way to make sense of the world in all its beauty and bewilderment. There seemed to be magic and attempted connection everywhere! And so I became a lover of writing that focused on humans playing out their lives in a world at once surreal and real in an attempt to make sense of the extraordinary.
Entering this marvelous novel is like entering a luxury train and sitting down for a long, wild, and highly entertaining adventure. Yes, it is a very long novel, and yes, it is composed of a single sentence, but once I started reading, none of that mattered—I was ecstatically along for the ride.
What I love most about this novel is that we fully enter the thoughts and feelings of the middle-aged mother protagonist in a stream of consciousness, and she is, quite frankly, all of us with our neuroses, observations, frustrations, and loves. Incredibly, there is a definite form to this novel and a propulsive plot that gets downright harrowing at the end. A brilliant, brilliant read.
WINNER OF THE 2019 GOLDSMITHS PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2019 • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2019 • A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2019
"This book has its face pressed up against the pane of the present; its form mimics the way our minds move now toggling between tabs, between the needs of small children and aging parents, between news of ecological collapse and school shootings while somehow remembering to pay taxes and fold the laundry."―Parul Sehgal, New York Times
I started keeping a daily journal when I received one for my ninth birthday, and, as they say, the rest is history. Into my twenties, there was nothing I loved more than sitting down to write and write`. It was a way to understand my feelings, and it was also a way to make sense of the world in all its beauty and bewilderment. There seemed to be magic and attempted connection everywhere! And so I became a lover of writing that focused on humans playing out their lives in a world at once surreal and real in an attempt to make sense of the extraordinary.
I love the mixture of realism and creepy surrealism in this collection of short stories. I especially admire how Enriquez ties these together so that the surreal elements feel linked to the reality and current events of the protagonists’ lives.
I love that each story centers on complete women with all their obsessions, compulsions, fears, wild senses of humor, and sometimes unusual desires. For me, it is exhilarating, entertaining, and impactful. One of my favorite stories is about a woman who repurposes her uterine fibroid in a one-of-a-kind way—just imagine!
Mariana Enriquez's A Sunny Place for Shady People is her first story collection since the International Booker Prize-shortlisted The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Featuring achingly human characters whose lives intertwine with ghosts, the occult and the macabre, the stories explore love, womanhood, LGBTQ counterculture, parenthood and Argentina's brutal past.
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 started keeping a daily journal when I received one for my ninth birthday, and, as they say, the rest is history. Into my twenties, there was nothing I loved more than sitting down to write and write`. It was a way to understand my feelings, and it was also a way to make sense of the world in all its beauty and bewilderment. There seemed to be magic and attempted connection everywhere! And so I became a lover of writing that focused on humans playing out their lives in a world at once surreal and real in an attempt to make sense of the extraordinary.
I feel that we live in a society that puts too much time and attention on women’s bodies. One way that women writers can take the female body back, I think, is to show how women’s bodies often become reflective of what they are experiencing emotionally and mentally.
I love this novel because it doesn’t shy away from showing a protagonist who obsesses about cleaning and managing her body as a way to deal with the trauma of losing her parents while living in Palestine and subsequently immigrating to the U.S. I also love the prose—the sentences are short and sharp and have great momentum so that I felt compelled to keep reading. The sentences occasionally become long and fluid so that there is a nice bouncing between short and long lines, which creates prose and a plotline that has great rhythm.
'Chipping away at Western hegemony one scalped it-bag at a time' New York Times
'A brilliant, audacious, powerhouse of a novel ... deliciously unruly' Katie Kitamura
A bold and unabashed novel about a young Palestinian woman's unraveling as she teaches at a New York City middle school, gets caught up in a scheme reselling Birkin bags, and strives to gain control over her body and mind.
The Coin's narrator is a wealthy Palestinian woman with impeccable style and meticulous hygiene. And yet the ideal self,…
I used to get in trouble (nightly) for eating with my book propped against my plate. Yet with all the books I devoured, there was never one about a kid that looked like me with a family like mine. The single anomaly was Blubber, which absolutely thrilled me to see a supporting character named Tracy Wu. And while the YA world has thankfully become more diverse, BIPOC authors and protagonists are still the exception in adult literature. I’m excited to share this list of badass female AAPI authors who write equally strong protagonists because, though we’ve come a long way since Tracy Wu, we still have further to go.
I started this book on a plane, continued to read in my seat after the plane landed, and was seriously annoyed at the flight attendant when forced to deplane. This is one of those books with a simple twist on the fantasy genre I wish I’d thought of—a race of beings who subsist on eating books.
Dean’s world building is superb, the protagonist is a badass, and the portrayal of the fractured relationships among characters—especially with her son—complicated and relatable. I finished it (in a chair at the airport) in one sitting, and it was worth it.
THE NO. 2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
'I devoured this' V.E. Schwab
'A vampire-themed Handmaid's Tale, with effective thrills that are intensified by social commentary' Guardian
A gorgeous new fantasy horror - a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart...
A gorgeous new fantasy horror - a book about stories and fairy tales with family and love at its dark heart...
Hidden across England and Scotland live six old Book Eater families.
The last of their lines, they exist on the fringes of society and subsist on a diet of stories and legends.
I’m the author of 26 twisty psychological thrillers, many of which are Amazon bestsellers. I’ve sold over three-quarters of a million books and particularly enjoy writing about dysfunctional families and unpleasant neighbours! Several of my novels touch upon the theme of creepy obsessions, including Violets Are Blue, Deserve To Die, and The Godchild, to name just three. In case you’re wondering I have drawn upon some creepy obsessions I’ve experienced in real life... I’m a full-time author and I’m also an avid reader of thrillers and enjoy nothing more than reading a book with an ending that makes me gasp!
I was completely absorbed by Beautiful Ugly, where nothing is quite what it seems.
I love stories that play with perception, and this one does it so elegantly, weaving grief and obsession into something hauntingly beautiful. The isolated Scottish island provides a fabulously claustrophobic and creepy backdrop that I couldn’t get enough of.
It’s dark, atmospheric, and exquisitely written—I raced through it.
'I was consumed by this book, it's her best ever, a work of genius' - Lisa Jewell
'Brilliant and chilling, with an inspired setting, characters that jump off the page and twists to give you whiplash. I loved every word' - Claire Douglas
The million-copy bestselling author of His and Hers, Alice Feeney, returns with a gripping and deliciously dark thriller about marriage . . . and revenge.
* * *
Author Grady Green is having the worst best day of his life.
Grady calls his wife as she's driving home to share some exciting news. He hears Abby slam…
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’m an animal person. A lot of my writing, for readers ages 10 and up, features animals. I am intrigued by the intersection of research-based reality and fiction. When I speak at schools, I love sharing ways students can make their voices and actions count. They can make the world better. I believe some of our best human traits are brought out when we interact with animals. They connect us to the natural world while sharing so many human qualities. Between the lines in these books about animals, we can discover strength and the inspiration to be the best humans we can be.
How often do I get to learn about preparing skeletons for museum displays, Civil War history, one of the greatest racehorses ever, and the legacy of racism in the U.S.? I love this novel because Brooks intertwines modern and historic times, horse racing, art, and science in the story of a majestic horse and the people who dedicated their lives to him.
I loved learning more about the legendary Thoroughbred, Lexington. I admire the way this book echoes and reflects how racism is still embedded in our culture. It entertained me but also left me with a lot to think about. A great read.
"Brooks' chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling." -The New York Times Book Review
"Horse isn't just an animal story-it's a moving narrative about race and art." -TIME
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an…
I bought a bookstore when I was twenty-five, knowing nothing about business but knowing I loved books. It was the happiest I’ve ever been, professionally, and also the most broke. At some point, I came to my senses, sold my store, and got a job working in a library. I’m a library director now, and I don’t get to recommend books as much as I used to when I didn’t have to do things like think about the budget and remove dead mice from the cellar. Still, I get to work around books, and I overhear and occasionally insert myself into a fair number of book-related conversations.
Talk about a complicated mother-daughter relationship! Almost as soon as her daughter is born, Blythe suspects something is…off. And no kidding, is it ever? This book takes the idea of not being able to connect with your kid to a whole other, really terrifying level.
What I particularly love about this book is how much it challenges the idea of who is in charge in the mother-daughter relationship, and what it means if your kid is really, truly, bad. This book actually made me gasp. The title refers to the central incident of the book, but I like it because the book also pushes against all kinds of societal norms.
A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | A New York Times bestseller!
"Utterly addictive." -Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
"Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end."-Good Morning America
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family-and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for-and everything she feared
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had.
Maybe it was too much reality TV growing up, especially being raised on figures like Tiffany "New York" Pollard or A Different World's Whitley Gilbert, but bad girl protagonists are insta-buys for me. I love them, and I have a particular fondness for when they're black girls. We're already seen as so angry, but bad girl books show you not only why a girl could get to be so angry but also that you ain't seen nothing yet. I need more people to see how much joy there is in rage, and I chose to explain it with YA horror because it's a genre so driven by catharsis and mood that it's a perfect fit.
This book was Beautiful Gowns but make it horror—and I loved every second of it. While more of a thriller than horror, the kills in this one stick with me like its comparative film, Ready or Not did.
Our main character is the resident bad girl of her private school, and once she's lost everything she worked for, she's not afraid to be the villain for the bag. I love reading about ambitious girls who leave scratch marks behind them, and Adina practically plows through the book, telling everyone, "This is not America's Next Top Best Friend." Not afraid to lie, cheat, or steal your man, I’m still glad she got everything she wanted - especially because she took it for herself.
“A brutally honest and haunting cautionary tale…exposing the lie that is meritocracy and the unrelenting toll that being a final girl takes. A bloody tale spun masterfully…a dark delight.” —Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, New York Times bestselling author of Ace of Spades
A Black teen desperate to regain her Ivy League acceptance enters an elite competition only to discover the stakes aren’t just high, they’re deadly, in this “spine-chilling thriller” (Publishers Weekly).
You must work twice as hard to get half as much.
Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for…
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’ve always been drawn to stories about daughters coming home to complicated mothers and the unfinished versions of themselves they left behind. As an immigrant who moved from India to the U.S. at thirteen, and now as a physician and mother, I live in that in-between space where past and present, duty and desire constantly collide. Reading great novels that explored these tensions was the spark that pushed me to start writing my own. I gravitate toward books where family love is real but messy, home is both refuge and trigger, and women are allowed to be imperfect, angry, tender, and still deeply human.
This novel dives headfirst into the most uncomfortable corners of a mother–daughter relationship.
I love how Doshi refuses to make either woman simply "good" or "bad" and instead sits in the murky space of resentment, obligation, and love. It's a book that made me feel complicit, unsettled, and oddly seen—as both a daughter and a mother.
Shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, Avni Doshi's Burnt Sugar is a searing literary debut novel set in India about mothers and daughters, obsession, and betrayal.
NPR Best Book of 2020
A Pen America Literary Award Finalist
“I would be lying if I say my mother's misery has never given me pleasure,” says Antara, Tara's now-adult daughter.
In her youth, Tara was wild. She abandoned her marriage to join an ashram, and while Tara is busy as a partner to the ashram's spiritual leader, Baba, little Antara is cared for by an older devotee, Kali Mata, an American who came…
