Here are 100 books that Shark Heart fans have personally recommended if you like
Shark Heart.
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My first true religion was being a boy alone in the woods and feeling a deep connection to nature in all its aspects. I felt a connection with all life and knew myself to be an animal—and gloried in it. Since then, I've learned how vigorously humans fight our animal nature, estranging us from ourselves and the planet. Each of these books invites us to get over ourselves and connect with all life on Earth.
What a weird and wonderful book. I've read and reread it several times now, and it always casts its spell. I've never been so willing—so eager—to suspend disbelief. It's Murakami's special gift.
The novel creates its own wondrous world out of what seems to be the stuff of this one—a young runaway, Colonel Sanders, alley cats, a beautiful librarian, a seashore painting, a demented old man—but the result is more magical than any fairy kingdom. I was completely carried along by the experience of an understanding beyond sense.
"A stunning work of art that bears no comparisons" the New York Observer wrote of Haruki Murakami's masterpiece, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. In its playful stretching of the limits of the real world, his magnificent new novel, Kafka on the Shore is every bit as bewitching and ambitious. The narrative follows the fortunes of two remarkable characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his highly simplified life suddenly overturned. Their parallel odysseys - as…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
In this claustrophobic modern classic, a grieving father and Ted Hughes scholar finds himself haunted by an oily, unnerving, anthropomorphic crow.
I’m a fan of anything Porter writes, but his debut is deserving of the indelible mark it’s made upon the modern literary landscape. The crow is a character like no other, and Porter’s poetry brings this strange and beautiful bird to life.
A SUNDAY TIMES TOP 100 NOVEL OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Winner of the 2016 International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Sunday Times/Peter, Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year award and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Goldsmiths Prize.
In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.
In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow - antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family…
When I emigrated from the UK to Western Australia as a child, one of my first big moments was learning about sharks and realising swimming in the ocean was not the same as in the sea. Ever since writing my thriller The Shark, I’ve been on the lookout for novels with sharks in the title or on the page. Real sharks, human sharks, property sharks, sharks of the mind and the heart, these are stories that have influenced me, entertained me, beguiled, terrified, and at times utterly blindsided me.
The backpacker word-of-mouth bestseller I read in my twenties in a hostel in Rome or Siena rather than Bangkok.
The story of Richard, a backpacker in search of paradise in Thailand who discovers it, along with the darker aspects of himself and the others he meets there. A dark desert island classic, submerged in tension and foreboding, it takes utopia and smashes it apart on a razor-sharp coral reef.
Yes, bad shit happens. Both escapist and terrifying.
On Richard's first night in Bangkok, a fellow traveller slits his wrists, leaving Richard a map to "the Beach", where white sands circle a lagoon hidden from the sea, coral gardens and freshwater falls are surrounded by jungle. Richard was looking for adventure, and now he has found it.
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
When I emigrated from the UK to Western Australia as a child, one of my first big moments was learning about sharks and realising swimming in the ocean was not the same as in the sea. Ever since writing my thriller The Shark, I’ve been on the lookout for novels with sharks in the title or on the page. Real sharks, human sharks, property sharks, sharks of the mind and the heart, these are stories that have influenced me, entertained me, beguiled, terrified, and at times utterly blindsided me.
At the beginning of my The Raw Shark Texts hardback, a Mark Haddon quote on a post-it note calls it "The bastard love-child of The Matrix, Jaws, and The Da Vinci Code," which is a pretty accurate summary of what you’re getting into with this one.
It’s a substantial novel, and you have to pay attention, but it’s well worth the investment. Epic, inventive, oceanic in scope and wryly funny, with the best cat in a book since The Last House on Needless Street.
Eric Sanderson wakes up in a place he doesn't recognise, unable to remember who he is. All he has left are journal entries recalling Clio, a perfect love now gone. As he begins to piece his memories back together, Eric finds that he is being hunted by a creature that moves in language, that swims through the currents of human interaction.
With the help of his cynical cat Ian, Eric must search for the Ludovician, the force that is threatening his life, and Dr Trey Fidorus, the only man who knows the truth.
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
Natsuki is an outsider to polite Japanese society. She is content with an asexual-by-design marriage and comfortable questioning the norms and expectations of marriage and babies. She also has an alien called Piyyut living in her backpack, which happens to be a talking plush hedgehog.
Wherever you think this bizarre, bonkers novel is going, it goes even further–I read the final pages with my jaw basically detached.
Natsuki isn't like the other girls. As youths, she and her cousin Yuu spent the summers in the wild Nagano mountains, hoping for a spaceship to transport her home. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the cousins for ever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.
Now, Natsuki is grown. She lives quietly in an asexual marriage, pretending to be normal, and hiding the horrors of her childhood from her family and friends. But dark shadows from Natsuki's past are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains, Natsuki prepares for a reunion with Yuu. Will…
I’m a British author who has always had a fascination with magical realism and novels that blend the serious with the strange. For that reason, though I write literary fiction for adults, I take so much of my inspiration from children’s literature. There’s something so simple about how kids’ books stitch the extraordinary into the every day without having to overexplain things. I now live not far from the forest that inspired A. A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood, and my latest novel is set in and inspired by this part of rural England–with all the mystery and magic that a trip into the woods entails.
One of the most inventive novels I’ve read in recent years, this beautiful Pyrenean patchwork is supposed to evoke the orchestra of voices of the mountain region in which the book takes place.
Thus, you have the points of view of local farmers and their families, but also of the mountains themselves, of storm clouds and baskets of mushrooms and plenty of animals, wild and domesticated. The Deer takes us on a delightful tangent, but the most memorable chapter might be the one from the point of view of the spirited, breathlessly energetic dog.
"Sola pushes past the limits of human experience to tell a story of instinct and earth-time that is irresistible in its jagged glory." - C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills is Gold
When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war.
But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the…
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
When I emigrated from the UK to Western Australia as a child, one of my first big moments was learning about sharks and realising swimming in the ocean was not the same as in the sea. Ever since writing my thriller The Shark, I’ve been on the lookout for novels with sharks in the title or on the page. Real sharks, human sharks, property sharks, sharks of the mind and the heart, these are stories that have influenced me, entertained me, beguiled, terrified, and at times utterly blindsided me.
I read Jaws, aged twelve, when I was scouring my parents’ bookshelves in search of sex scenes.
It didn’t deliver on that front, but was, as was the movie, a blockbuster summer thriller that terrified and captivated me in equal measure. Swimming in the Indian Ocean was never the same again.
First published in 1974, Jaws is of its time but worth a revisit for the iconic, flawed protagonist, Police Chief Brody, the vivid setting, and hero’s journey plot.
Peter Benchley's Jaws first appeared in 1974. As well as Steven Spielberg's film adaptation, the novel has sold over twenty million copies around the world, creating a legend that refuses to die.
It's never safe to go back in the water . . .
It was just another day in the life of a small Atlantic resort until the terror from the deep came to prey on unwary holiday makers. The first sign of trouble - a warning of what was to come - took the form of a young woman's body, or what was left of it, washed up…
When I emigrated from the UK to Western Australia as a child, one of my first big moments was learning about sharks and realising swimming in the ocean was not the same as in the sea. Ever since writing my thriller The Shark, I’ve been on the lookout for novels with sharks in the title or on the page. Real sharks, human sharks, property sharks, sharks of the mind and the heart, these are stories that have influenced me, entertained me, beguiled, terrified, and at times utterly blindsided me.
Third in the award-winning Chastity Reloaded series about State Prosecutor Chastity Riley.
A brutal double murder, a cover-up, and investigating team shenanigans ensue in this razor-sharp noir with a gentrification theme. Buchholz’s Riley is a singular, flawed detective, wearing her home city of Hamburg like a second skin as she exposes city-sanctioned corruption against all odds.
A must for fans of crime fiction with conscience and teeth.
In Hamburg's troubled Wilhelmsburg district, Prosecutor Chastity Riley investigates a brutal double murder amid corruption and gentrification. Battling personal demons and powerful foes, she fights to expose a city's dark secrets. Germany's Queen of Krimi returns with the caustically funny, breathtakingly dark next instalment in an addictive series...
'As much a character study as the story of a crime ... like a flipbook, full of startling images and sudden movements, that will thrill cynics and romantics alike' Sunday Times
'For the first time in a long time, I found a book I simply couldn't put down - and I didn't…
The stars aligned to ignite my passion for magic-realism romance after a few things had happened. 1) I got heavily into the idea of the multiverse and alternate realities in high school, having been inspired by my physics teacher. 2) I read and fell in love with The Time Traveler’s Wife (see list!). 3) I binge-watched the incredible sci-fi show Fringe, which deals with parallel universes and time jumps. 4) I decided to write my first multiverse romance, inspired by all the above factors and more besides. Since then, I’ve focused most of my reading on romantic novels, with those that share a magic realism twist being auto-reads—of course!
I loved everything about this book: the dreamy New York co-op apartment setting, the relatable main female character Clementine (a book publicist!), the lovable main male character Iwan (a chef!), and the fact that they lived seven years apart. I found it had the perfect balance of witty banter, romantic yearning, depth of feeling, and a sense of place. It also deals with tougher issues, such as grief in Clementine’s loss of her beloved aunt and a sense of self in Clementine’s search for her future path and the aunt’s own background.
And, like every true romance novel should have, that incandescently happy ending! This is my favorite book I’ve read so far this year.
"A gorgeous love story from one of the finest romance writers out there." —Carley Fortune, New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After
A Most Anticipated Book by Entertainment Weekly ∙ Harper's Bazaar ∙ PopSugar ∙ Real Simple ∙ BookRiot ∙ and more!
An overworked book publicist with a perfectly planned future hits a snag when she falls in love with her temporary roommate…only to discover he lives seven years in the past, in this witty and wise new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dead Romantics.
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
I’ve been passionate about the natural world since I was a child. This passion took me to many remote corners of the globe, and I always returned with a desire to share what I observed. As a science writer and journalist, I’ve been fortunate to tell multidisciplinary stories from the tops of the Andes to the reefs of Papua New Guinea and many places in between. As a writer, I know the importance of reading, and I’m constantly seeking out books by journalists and authors obsessed with topics that are often obscure but always fascinating—topics that have led them on journeys of exploration they share through their books.
I love how journalist Susan Casey takes us inside this story and ultimately becomes part of it while revealing remarkable facts about white sharks and the scientists who study them. As a journalist, I can relate to how her obsession almost drew her too deep into a largely unknown and dangerous place inhabited by an animal that was as much myth as reality to her before she came face to face with it.
There is a lot to like about this book, but for me, ultimately, the immediacy, honesty, and vividness of her writing made me unable to put it down.
Since "Jaws" scared a nation of moviegoers out of the water three decades ago, great white sharks have attained a mythical status as the most frightening and mysterious monsters to still live among us. Each fall, just twenty-seven miles off the San Francisco coast, in the waters surrounding a desolate rocky island chain, the world's largest congregation of these fearsome predators gathers to feed. Journalist Susan Casey first saw the great whites of the Farallones in a television documentary. Within months, she was sitting with the program's two scientists in a small motorboat as the sharks - some as long…
