Here are 54 books that Our Share of Night fans have personally recommended if you like Our Share of Night. Book DNA is a community of 13,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Cloud Cuckoo Land

leah

From Leah's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Unknown Author Why Leah loves this book

Doerr weaves together stories from 1492 Babylon, modern day Idaho, and a space station on the far future. In each, the power of words and story are what get the characters through and help them find meaning and insight. The book is expectedly paced - I was never annoyed when switching from one storyline to another. A common “lost” book is a thread deeply woven into each story. I was immersed in the worlds, taken in by each perspective character, and fascinated by the common thread of the story of “Cloud Cuckoo Land”, and how it came to be lost and found. Loss, knowledge, change (big and small), and the nature of truth and power are key thematic elements. Even though this book is quite a tome, the writing style is actually quite spare. Each paragraph is so evocative. I drew out reading the last 50 pages because I didn’t…

By Anthony Doerr ,

Why should I read it?

22 authors picked Cloud Cuckoo Land as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more

“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New…


If you love Our Share of Night...

Book cover of December on 5C4

December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

Book cover of Washington Black

Sommer Schafer Author Of The Women

From Sommer's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Sommer's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Sommer Schafer Why Sommer loves this book

I loved this book because the writing is stunning and the plotline is fresh and sucked me in. Edugyan takes the typical slave narrative and opens it up, creating something new, enlightening, and, ultimately, beautiful.

By Esi Edugyan ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Washington Black as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018

WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020

FINALIST FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE ROGERS WRITERS TRUST FICTION PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2019
New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year 2018
Sunday Times Paperback of the Year 2019

'A masterpiece' Attica Locke
'Strong, beautiful and beguiling' Observer
'Destined to become a future classic ... that rare book that should appeal to every kind of reader' Guardian

When two English brothers take the helm of a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington Black - an…


Book cover of Glorious Exploits

Egor Mikhaylov

From Egor's 3 favorite reads in 2025.

Unknown Author Why Egor loves this book

Set after the disastrous Athenian campaign in Sicily, the novel follows two Syracusan layabouts who roam the stone quarries offering wine and food to Athenian prisoners able to recite Euripides by heart. Their half-drunken idea of staging “Medea” right in the quarries turns into a bittersweet tragicomedy about friendship, humiliation, and the stubborn need for art when everything else has been destroyed. With contemporary, rough language and very human characters, the book finds comedy in horror and then reveals the pain behind the laughter, asking what culture can still do in a world shattered by war.

By Ferdia Lennon ,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Glorious Exploits as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2024

'One of the most original and brilliant debuts in years' Irish Times

'Bold and totally unexpected ... I was hooked from the first page' Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain

'Brilliant ... Hilarious, moving, and profound' R. F. Kuang, author of Yellowface

***

Ancient Sicily. Enter GELON: visionary, dreamer, theatre lover. Enter LAMPO: lovesick, jobless, in need of a distraction.

Imprisoned in the quarries of Syracuse, thousands of defeated Athenians hang on by the thinnest of threads.

They're fading in the baking heat, but not everything is lost:…


If you love Mariana Enriquez...

Book cover of Katie’s Gamble

Katie’s Gamble by Kara O'Neal,

Katie's Gamble is an unexpected, unique story about a young woman who's trying to support her younger siblings by keeping her family's confectionery shop open.

In order to do that, she has to take on her older brother, who's a notorious gambler in Louisiana. Additionally, she has to outsmart Rowdy…

Book cover of It Won't Always Be Like This

Sommer Schafer Author Of The Women

From Sommer's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Sommer's 3 favorite reads in 2024

Sommer Schafer Why Sommer loves this book

I loved this graphic novel because it shows the complexities and beauties of women's relationships and explores ideas of what it means to be a truly free woman, all through a mixed-race, coming-of-age storyline.

By Malaka Gharib ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked It Won't Always Be Like This as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An intimate graphic memoir about an American girl growing up with her Egyptian father’s new family, forging unexpected bonds and navigating adolescence in an unfamiliar country—from the award-winning author of I Was Their American Dream.
 
“What a joy it is to read Malaka Gharib’s It Won’t Always Be Like This, to have your heart expertly broken and put back together within the space of a few panels, to have your wonder in the world restored by her electric mind.”—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations
 
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Book Riot

…


Book cover of Fever Dream

Todd Brown Author Of Anna So Knows ‘Ya

From my list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.

Todd's book list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong

Todd Brown Why Todd loves this book

I love this book because it feels like panic whispered directly into my ear.

Samanta Schweblin writes with such control that the smallest details start to feel radioactive. I admire how lean it is. There is no wasted space, no decorative wandering, just mounting dread.

It gave me the sensation of trying to solve a nightmare while still inside it, which is one of the hardest feelings for fiction to create well.

By Samanta Schweblin , Megan McDowell (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Fever Dream as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL PRIZE 2017

'The book I wish I had written' Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women and Animal

A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a remote Argentinian hospital. A boy named David sits beside her.

She's not his mother. He's not her child.

At David's ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past, a conversation that opens a chest of horrors. Together, they tell a haunting story of broken souls, toxins, and the power and desperation of family.

A…


Book cover of Things We Lost in the Fire: Stories

Anna Noyes Author Of The Blue Maiden

From my list on gothic fiction imbued with atmosphere and dread.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on a tiny peninsula in Downeast Maine, an evocative and rugged place, both lovely and haunting. As a girl, walking home late down gravel roads through an encompassing darkness I’ve found nowhere else, I sensed the world’s dangers long before I knew how to articulate them. Surrounded by woods, water, and unnerving quiet broken by the fox’s scream and rustling branches, I began to write. I sought out strange and unsettling books by Shirley Jackson and Stephen King (his home just a few towns away from mine) that left their mark. Storytelling became a way to process and explore what keeps me up at night. 

Anna's book list on gothic fiction imbued with atmosphere and dread

Anna Noyes Why Anna loves this book

Horrifying, brutal, sinuous, and uncanny, this one floored me. It evokes the peril of girlhood and womanhood with unwavering intensity.

Each story is fresh and unexpected, yet also timeless, rich with wisdom and mythology centuries old. Steeped in painful history, past atrocities twine with the present to nightmarish effect.

Mariana Enríquez is part of a new vanguard of Argentine and Latin American Gothic writers alongside Samanta Schweblin. Their writing, born from real-world horrors, is among the most thrilling discoveries I’ve made in years. 

By Mariana Enríquez , Megan McDowell (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Things We Lost in the Fire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A portrait of a world in fragments, a mirrorball made of razor blades' Guardian

Sleep-deprived fathers conjuring phantoms; sharp-toothed children and stolen skulls; persecuted young women drawn to self-immolation. Organized crime sits side-by-side with the occult in Buenos Aires - a place where reality and the preternatural fuse into strange, new shapes. These stories follow the wayward and downtrodden, revealing the scars of Argentina's dictatorship and the ghosts and traumas that have settled in the minds of its people. Provocative, brutal and uncanny, Things We Lost in the Fire is a paragon of contemporary Gothic from a writer of singular…


If you love Our Share of Night...

Book cover of The Delphi Agenda

The Delphi Agenda by Rob Swigart,

Papyrologist Lisa Emmer's world flips when the Sûreté detains her at her Metro station with news of the savage murder of the esteemed Paris historian Dr. Raimond Foix, her friend and mentor in the study of ancient documents.

Horrified, Lisa finds clues at the crime scene left behind for her…

Book cover of House of Leaves

Todd Brown Author Of Anna So Knows ‘Ya

From my list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.

Todd's book list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong

Todd Brown Why Todd loves this book

I love this book because it turns reading itself into a haunted space.

House of Leaves doesn’t just tell me something is wrong; it makes me physically experience disorientation on the page. I admire books that take big formal risks and still keep a human pulse underneath the invention.

This one made me feel trapped in a maze made of rooms, footnotes, fear, and obsession, and I mean that as high praise.

By Mark Z. Danielewski ,

Why should I read it?

29 authors picked House of Leaves as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times

Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations,…


Book cover of The Haunting of Hill House

Todd Brown Author Of Anna So Knows ‘Ya

From my list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a computational sociologist, I’m fascinated by the patterns people create, the signals they miss, and the stories they build when the world doesn’t make sense. That’s also why I’ve always been drawn to grounded horror: not monsters crashing through windows, but the quiet dread of a room, a street, a sound, or a thought that won’t behave. As a writer, I love books that make fear feel intimate and human, the kind that crawls under your skin because it’s real. These are the stories that stay with me: books where reality tilts, trust gets shaky, and everyday life becomes the scariest place imaginable.

Todd's book list on making ordinary life feel terrifyingly wrong

Todd Brown Why Todd loves this book

I love this book because it proves fear does not have to shout to own the room.

Shirley Jackson makes dread feel elegant, patient, and almost polite, which somehow makes it worse. I admire how much she trusts atmosphere, silence, suggestion, and character discomfort.

That is the kind of horror I respect most: not just “what is happening?” but “why does everything suddenly feel wrong?”

By Shirley Jackson ,

Why should I read it?

40 authors picked The Haunting of Hill House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro

Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and…


Book cover of Little Eyes

Richard Polt Author Of The Typewriter Revolution

From my list on tech skeptics with an imagination.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a lifelong typewriter lover. That passion has taken me down some deep and wonderful rabbit holes, including critiques of digital tech. I’m just as hooked on tech as the average person today, and of course, it has real benefits, but I’m painfully aware of how my addiction damages my attention, privacy, and self-reliance. The books I’ve picked help me articulate the problems, imagine just how bad things can get, and see alternatives. In my day job as a philosophy professor, I think about topics like memory, time, and technology, and specialize in controversial thinker Martin Heidegger (I own his typewriter!). 

Richard's book list on tech skeptics with an imagination

Richard Polt Why Richard loves this book

I devoured this book in a day, and it has kept me thinking for years. Say you can buy a stuffed animal equipped with a camera, and an anonymous user somewhere on the planet can see through that camera, move the toy, and make a rudimentary noise. What could possibly go wrong?

I was fascinated by the range of stories Schweblin imagines: fun, sweet, silly, and absolutely awful. Why can’t people in Silicon Valley think outside the box like this before they release the latest gadget that’s supposed to make our lives better? 

By Samanta Schweblin , Megan McDowell (translator) ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Little Eyes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A visionary novel about our interconnected world, about the collision of horror and humanity, from the Man Booker-shortlisted master of the spine-tingling tale

A Guardian & Observer Best Fiction Book of 2020 * A Sunday Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year * The Times Best Science Fiction Books of the Year * NPR Best Books of the Year

World Literature Today's 75 Notable Translations of 2020 * Ebook Travel Guides Best 5 Books of 2020 * A New York Times Notable Book of 2020

They're not pets. Not ghosts or robots. These are kentukis, and…


If you love Mariana Enriquez...

Book cover of The Tao of Poison

The Tao of Poison by Isham Cook,

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…

Book cover of Rendezvous with Rama

Bernd L. Bergmann Author Of Midrash Whispered By Stars

From my list on whispering ancient truths into the modern world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always been drawn to the quiet mystery behind ordinary lives, the sense that something sacred hides in the margins. As a caregiver, teacher, and author, I’ve seen how small moments carry enormous weight. That’s why I created this book list: each title touched me deeply and helped shape my own writing, especially Midrash Whispered By Stars. I write to honor forgotten souls, overlooked stories, and the quiet transformations that happen when no one’s watching. These books aren’t just favorites, they’re part of the emotional and spiritual DNA behind everything I create.

Bernd's book list on whispering ancient truths into the modern world

Bernd L. Bergmann Why Bernd loves this book

I recommend this book because it captures everything I love about Arthur C. Clarke, that sense of vast, quiet wonder, where the universe feels enormous and ancient and full of secrets we may never fully understand.

This story of a massive alien craft drifting through our solar system pulled me in with its scale alone, but what stayed with me was the mystery. Clarke never shows you the aliens, just like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, only the technology, the structures, the hints of something far beyond us. I loved that restraint, that feeling of standing at the edge of something we can sense but not grasp.

Readers who enjoy epic, contemplative science fiction will feel right at home here. And it fits my theme because it honors the unknown, the same quiet mystery I explore in my own writing.

By Arthur C. Clarke ,

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked Rendezvous with Rama as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the year 2130, a mysterious and apparently untenanted alien spaceship, Rama, enters our solar system. The first product of an alien civilisation to be encountered by man, it reveals a world of technological marvels and an unparalleled artificial ecology.

But what is its purpose in 2131?

Who is inside it?

And why?


Book cover of Cloud Cuckoo Land
Book cover of Washington Black
Book cover of Glorious Exploits

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