Here are 100 books that OverLondon fans have personally recommended if you like
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When I was in high school, someone handed me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I haven’t been the same since. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was packed to the gills with action, adventure, wild ideas, and, above all, humor. Every sentence made me giggle. Every observation made my jaw drop. Plus, loving this book made me feel like I belonged to a weird little club. When I started to write The Dragon Squisher, my first thought was to do “a Douglas Adams thing” but for fantasy. Then I thought: Maybe I should see if someone’s done this already.
This was my introduction to Discworld, and I couldn’t have asked for a better entry point. Although it features a cameo from series-favorite Commander Vimes, this is an excellent standalone story. It’s Pratchett, so the writing, humor, observations, and world-building are god-tier.
But I love the humanity and the compassion and the quiet, seething anger that underlies this tale of a nation gone berserk. Humorous fantasy simply doesn’t get better than this.
A new stage adaptation of one of Pratchett's best-selling novels The Monstrous Regiment in question is made up of a vampire (reformed and off the blood, thank you), a troll, Igor (who is only too happy to sew you a new leg if you aren't too particular about previous ownership), a collection of misfits and a young woman discovers that a pair of socks shoved down her pants is a good way to open up doors in a man's army."One of the funniest English authors alive" (Independent)
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…
When I was in high school, someone handed me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I haven’t been the same since. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was packed to the gills with action, adventure, wild ideas, and, above all, humor. Every sentence made me giggle. Every observation made my jaw drop. Plus, loving this book made me feel like I belonged to a weird little club. When I started to write The Dragon Squisher, my first thought was to do “a Douglas Adams thing” but for fantasy. Then I thought: Maybe I should see if someone’s done this already.
I love oddball books that don’t quite fit into any of the standard categories. (Is this book YA or adult? Does it matter? What are questions?) This book reminded me of Pushing Daisies meets Harry Potter, and god I love it.
I love the deadpan humor and the flawed characters. But mostly, I just love the wacky audacity of the whole thing. This is one of those books where things start off slightly weird (the dead coming back to life) and gets progressively stranger until, about halfway through the book, I had to just laugh at how far from reality Ms. Painter had taken me, and had done so in such a seamless way that I would have applauded except I didn’t want to weird out the people sitting next to me on the plane.
Work at a funeral home can be mundane. Until you accidentally start bringing the dead back to life.
"...a clever, hilarious romp through a new magical universe" --Sarah Angleton, author of Gentleman of Misfortune
Cassie Black works at a funeral home. She's used to all manner of dead bodies. What she's not used to is them waking up. Which they seem to be doing on a disturbingly regular basis lately.
Just when Cassie believes she has the problem under control, the recently-deceased Busby Tenpenny insists he's been murdered and claims Cassie might be responsible thanks to a wicked brand of…
When I was in high school, someone handed me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I haven’t been the same since. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was packed to the gills with action, adventure, wild ideas, and, above all, humor. Every sentence made me giggle. Every observation made my jaw drop. Plus, loving this book made me feel like I belonged to a weird little club. When I started to write The Dragon Squisher, my first thought was to do “a Douglas Adams thing” but for fantasy. Then I thought: Maybe I should see if someone’s done this already.
I love an epic tale as much as the next nerd, but sometimes, I want my fantasy to be a little cozier. Such is the case with this lovely book (and series). It’s a classic Odd Couple story in which a foul-mouthed and vice-loving demon has been magically bonded to a goody-goody hero. Antics ensue.
The writing is perfect, and it’s filled with great lines like, "It was Chet, our next-door neighbor. The one that shared a bathroom with us and unknowingly let me clean my fingernails with his toothbrush." The whole series is great. I was nervous going into the last book because so many writers don’t stick to the landing. I needn’t have worried, though. The finale was everything I hoped it would be.
“…the subtlety and humor of an assassin’s stiletto inserted straight down into the funny bone.” Carl R. Jennings, author of Just About Anyone
What happens when good and evil collide?
They yell, Ouch!
When you’re a demon who’s recently (but accidentally) been magically bound to a human for eternity, life is bound to be annoying. But when that human is also an inept hero who tosses his lunch whenever he gets stressed out? Breaking the connection becomes priority one. Not knowing what else to do, our demon, Lord Malgon, and our hero, Sir Reginald, set off to see a wizard…
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…
When I was in high school, someone handed me a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I haven’t been the same since. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was packed to the gills with action, adventure, wild ideas, and, above all, humor. Every sentence made me giggle. Every observation made my jaw drop. Plus, loving this book made me feel like I belonged to a weird little club. When I started to write The Dragon Squisher, my first thought was to do “a Douglas Adams thing” but for fantasy. Then I thought: Maybe I should see if someone’s done this already.
“My brother was a cat. Currently, I mean, not usually. And I don't know the exact details, but he definitely asked for it. He always does.” I mean, how can you not love a book that starts off like this? I’ve been a fan of Kim Watt for some time, and I was tempted to choose one of her solo books. But this one, a collab with Amelia Ash, is just so fun, charming, hilarious, and wacky, I knew I had to include it.
I want to live in this world. And have a talking cat. Is that too much to ask?
Never let your brother date a witch, lest they get turned into a talking cat.
Morgan Winters wants an ordinary life:
A job at a bookstore, an apartment she can barely afford, and a healthy amount of existential dread. Her brother (AKA "The Ruiner") ruins that when he shows up on her bedroom windowsill, transformed into a talking cat.
He claims it's due to a date gone horribly wrong, but Morgan's not buying it. Still, when he begs her to take him to a witch who can change him back into a human, she reluctantly agrees. Family is family.
There was a time when women had to use pseudonyms or otherwise pretend to be men to get published. These days, especially in the urban fantasy genre, it seems like there are more female authors and female main characters than male ones! I love dynamic main characters, male or female, and every one of these books has stellar characters with a great story. I wanted to mention so many other authors, but I have narrowed it down to these five. I hope you enjoy my list.
At the heart of the Markhat series, there is always a mystery, and I love a good mystery. Markhat is a “Finder,” which really means he’s a private investigator set in a sort of war-torn medieval world with hints of steampunk now and then. There are some good pulp fiction aspects, lots of great fantasy, and definitely a habit of turning the trope on its head. Vampires aren’t typical; witches can be hags, but banshees, well, Tuttle does not deliver the ordinary banshee.
One of the things I love about Tuttle’s writing is that he isn’t afraid to define his own rules, his own world, and his own characters. He does atmosphere with a touch of grim, but always with a gem waiting to be dusted off to steal the show. Fast-paced urban fantasy that I loved enough to reread.
Welcome to Rannit, an ancient city awash in magic and mayhem. Wracked by war, but embracing the dubious wonders of steam and iron, Rannit is on the path to renewal – but old magics and older shadows won’t go easily into the light.
Markhat earns his living as a finder. On behalf of his clients, Markhat will find anyone, or anything, for a fee. In Three Mean Streets, his clients include a dead man’s ghost, a mighty Troll warrior seeking his cousin’s mounted head, and the true identity of the corpse allegedly stalking the grounds…
Steampunk has always been a fascinating genre to me, especially seeing how different creators play with historical elements. But the question that I’m always looking to answer is, “Why is this history different from our own?” What has allowed this alternate Victorian era to create fantastical technology? As I asked this question about my own steampunk books, I found great delight in how other authors have combined magic with their technology to create delightfully refreshing outcomes. I continue to search out these books as I am always surprised at their creativity and novelty.
In true Sanderson fashion, the worldbuilding in this book is unparalleled. I adore how he has blended both steampunk elements and an entirely unique magic system revolving around chalk drawings–it gives a sense of a much larger world beyond what the story shows.
The combination of art and math in the magic system is something that really fascinated me, and I love how the characters only succeeded when they combined their respective strengths. I always love a good mystery-adventure in a school setting!
The Rithmatist, Brandon Sanderson's New York Times bestselling epic teen adventure is now available in paperback.
More than anything, Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the power to infuse life into two-dimensional figures known as Chalklings. Rithmatists are humanity's only defense against the Wild Chalklings. Having nearly overrun the territory of Nebrask, the Wild Chalklings now threaten all of the American Isles.
As the son of a lowly chalkmaker at Armedius Academy, Joel can only watch as Rithmatist students learn the magical art that he would do anything to practice. Then students start disappearing―kidnapped from their rooms at…
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…
Growing up, I loved discovering how things work. That led me to a career in engineering, but I never left a certain quirkiness behind. Why else would I have raised llamas for thirty years? Or loved the stories I find in science fiction? Especially books that start in a real place occupied by believable people, then demand a leap of faith, a reach beyond what's known today. We have so much to learn – about planets and people – that possibilities spiral out into the universe. I hope you enjoy the books on my list as much as I have.
What if humanity rocketed to the moon in the 19th Century? Then surely Mark Twain, aka Sam Clemens, would have gone to seek his fortune. I've never found a more compelling image of travel over and under the moon's surface. These adventures let me discover technology that fits the place and the time. One of my favorites is steam power – not as anachronistic as you might guess. I'm excited by real-life discoveries of water ice in lunar craters, possible fuel for future astronauts.
Twain's style is captured wonderfully, something I hadn't expected. He must keep from blowing himself to kingdom come as science and human nature mix in a delightful stew of troubles. I'm happy to see Twain may solve some of NASA's upcoming problems too.
In an alternate 19th century, young Samuel Clemens sets out for the mining camps of America’s wildest frontier: the Moon. Travel with Sam and his partner Calvin as they venture into the desolate, deadly wastes of the Mare Imbrium and the Montes Caucasus, in search of wonders, adventure, and a fortune in precious water ice. This is Prospectors!, the opening salvo in the epic saga of Mark Twain on the Moon, as told by the alternate Mark Twain himself.
"You will soon forget that it isn't Mr. Twain" -Melvin H. Wilson, Jr.
My passion for whimsy is assuredly the result of my mama’s efforts to cultivate an environment where imaginative play and creativity were nurtured. I was raised on a steady diet of whimsical children’s literature—green eggs and ham in a box with a fox, pots of hunny with a silly old bear, and forbidden radishes with a naughty rabbit. As I grew up, I drank raspberry cordial with bosom friends and sipped tea with a fawn I met by a lamppost. Now, I’m still drawn to whimsy of all sorts because along with imaginative scope, I find it also broadens one’s joy. May these books bring you much joy, dear reader!
This book was an innovative read I never wanted to end!
The book features a harrowing quest, endearing characters, and an array of fascinating puzzles, but what I enjoyed most about this novel was exploring the whimsical setting. With lyrical prose and poetry, Schroeder blends vibrant hues of Indian and Hebraic culture, elegant lines of Victorian sensibilities, and sweeping strokes of steampunk technology to craft a unique story world that celebrates the arts, misfits, and creativity.
I’m a sucker for a story with gadgets and gizmos, so this book had me at eccentric inventor, and as a lover of 19th-century literature, it kept me with its clever head nods to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic tale A Little Princess.
Glimpse the past, illuminate the future. Yosarai Patican dreams of becoming an illuminator in a country that values art above all else. A lofty goal that finally seems within reach when she earns a position at the prestigious Academy of the Seven Arts. Although Yosarai loathes to leave behind her quiet country life, she travels to the capital, determined to live up to her mother's fame as one of Indel's greatest artists. Prince Xander never planned to become king. Indeed, he never wanted to become king. But when his father dies suddenly, he is thrust into the middle of coronation…
I’m fascinated by the Victorians – and I’ve spent most of my career trying to understand them – because they’re so like us and so unlike us in many ways. They’re familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I’m a historian of science, and I’m passionate about trying to understand why we think about the world – and about science – the way we do. I think it started with the Victorians, so understanding them really matters and getting it right rather than repeating the same old stories. I hope these books will help you put the Victorians in their place the way they helped me.
OK, yes, I know. It’s fiction, and the first steampunk novel too. But I think that sometimes fiction can tell us (almost) as much as factual history about the past, if the authors have done their research – and Gibson and Sterling absolutely have. I can even tell just what academic papers they’d been reading!
It’s alternative history Victorian, But I think it tells us a lot about the real Victorians too, because it shows just how much technology mattered to their sense of who they were and what made them different from their parents. And, obviously, it’s a great story.
In 1855, London swelters in a poisonous heatwave. The computer age has arrived a century ahead of time and the Industrial Revolution is in full swing. However, there is a conspiracy afoot, linking Britain with the France of Louis Napoleon and the Manhattan commune of Karl Marx.
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…
Is there any genre so purely escapist as a portal fantasy adventure? I grew up on stories like these, devouring any book I could find that had a portal in it, from Alice in Wonderlandto The Chronicles of Narnia to Tunnel in the Sky. Books, in a way, are portals to other places and times, and as a child I wandered through the stacks of the local library, plumbing the depths of every strange world I could get my hands on. If you want to experience the long-lost thrill of falling into a story, few do it like those that take their characters through portals to other worlds.
Have you ever read a sequel that was betterthan the first novel?
The Subtle Knife is that book for me.
While it falls in the middle of the complete trilogy known asHis Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife takes the story in a new direction by centering it on a knife with the power to cut a path between worlds.
The series follows young Lyra, her daemon Pantalaimon, and Will, a boy she meets who happens to be from a parallel universe. The worldbuilding of this series is some of the best I’ve ever seen, and it truly sets these books apart.
The concept revolves around how Lyra and Pantalaimon are connected. They are two creatures who share a soul. Lyra’s a person, and Pantalaimon is her daemon (think “soul made manifest”) with the power to transform into a fox, hawk, lizard—or any animal he so…
From the world of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials - now a major critically acclaimed BBC series.
She had asked: What is he? A friend or an enemy? The alethiometer answered: He is a murderer. When she saw the answer, she relaxed at once.
Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld - Cittagazze, where soul-eating Spectres stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky.
But she is not without allies: twelve-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another's, has also stumbled into this strange new realm.
