Here are 76 books that The Binding fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am an American citizen who taught Classical Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. I have taught Homer (in translation and in Greek), ancient myth, and “reception” of ancient myth. All the books that I discuss below I have taught many times in a first-year seminar about creative “reception” of the Odyssey. Other topics include comparable stories (like The Tempest by Shakespeare) and other great works of reception (like Derek Walcott’s stage version of the Odyssey and his epic poem "Omeros"). Every time I’ve taught the class, I’ve learned the most from free-wheeling discussions with students.
I thought it was great to have Circe herself narrate her love affair with Odysseus.
The first half of the novel interestingly shares her tribulations growing up as a child in a family of gods. I found that this establishes a theme of immortality vs. mortality that the book explores in profound ways. Especially fascinating was Circe’s personal story of her love affair with Odysseus.
I was surprised and delighted that Miller included the resulting child, Telegonus, who is not in Homer but is in ancient myth. Even more surprising to me was Circe falling in love with Telemachus, Odysseus’ son by Penelope (also not in Homer!). This relationship allows the novel to end on a positive note as Circe learns to live like a mortal in her new life with Telemachus.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens…
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 write and read fantasy that doesn’t play safe—where magic is messy, divine, rotten, or reborn in mud. I’m obsessed with stories that walk barefoot through forgotten folklore, eerie townships, and mythic detours. The Fallow Swallow grew from this exact craving: for fantasy that’s personal, poetic, and just a little unwell. I gravitate toward tales that embrace magical realism, morally grey characters, and dark humour—and these books helped shape my voice as a writer.
Reading this was like drinking tea with a ghost in a dusty library—charming, eerie, and wonderfully slow.
Clarke's ability to mix historical fiction with brooding, folkloric magic was inspiring. I admired how it builds tension not with battles, but with manners, contracts, and impossible choices. It taught me patience in worldbuilding and in life.
Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of…
The concept of whether a woman can truly be the subject of her own life has always fascinated me. It was an invisible struggle I didn’t know I had. Until I set out to finish the 54 unmet dreams of my late father, whose life had been cut short in a car crash. It wasn’t until I looked at the world through main character lenses, the kind that just seem to come more naturally to men, that I was able to see myself truly. This is just one lesson from my book. If you’ve ever felt different, remember: you’re not. You just haven’t seen yourself as the main character yet. These books will guide you.
I read this during a confusing time—when I was seeking treatment for depression, from age 16 through 24.
Here was the third-most adapted book in history, and yet with each adaptation, the story grew further from the author’s true voice, which was that of an 18-year-old girl. How odd that this could happen, given that Frankenstein revolves around the creature finding his identity.
He only wants to do good, but when he learns how to read, he also learns how to label himself—as separate from God, and separate from man. He believes he must be bad because he’s different. The whole town agrees.
When I read this, I also felt different. This feeling didn’t go away until I finished my dad’s bucket list and saw the beauty and wonder he’d seen in me. I was different. But this was a good thing. I pray Mary Shelley found the same peace,…
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
Dr. Power is promoted to a chair of forensic psychiatry at Allminster University and selected by the Vice Chancellor for a key task which stokes the jealousy of the Deans, and he is plunged into a precariously dangerous situation when there is a series of deaths and the deputy Vice…
We’re Neil and Ruchin Kansal—builders, innovators, car lovers, and travelers at heart. In 2020, during the pandemic, we chased a dream: we bought a battered 1998 Acura Integra and, working in our garage, transformed it into a striking lime green showpiece. To celebrate Ruchin’s 50th birthday and Neil’s high school graduation in 2021, we drove it 5,000 miles to the summit of Mt. Evans, Colorado—the highest paved road in North America—learning along the way that, like life, the road demands resilience, adaptability, and courage to act. Our adventures are about more than cars—they’re about pushing boundaries, embracing challenges, and discovering what’s possible together.
I, Ruchin, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for multiple reasons.
It is a father-son story, yet it includes how their family and friends shape their experiences. I like it because the motorcycle itself transforms into a human-like character, adding depth to the dialogue.
I also like the storytelling style; it is vivid. You can see each scene unfolding before you. And lastly, I appreciate how it draws on the Hindu and Buddhist values I grew up with, making the book even more relatable.
At the same time, I find the book a little dated in its voice and perhaps too long for readers today.
Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.
I’m the child of immigrants and grew up imagining a second self—me, if my parents had never left India. Then, when I became a writer, doubles kept showing up in odd ways in my work. In my first play, House of Sacred Cows, I had identical twins played, farcically, by the same actor. My latest novel features two South Asian women: one, slightly wimpy, married to an unsympathetic guy called Mac, and another, in a permanent state of outrage, married to a nice man called Mat. My current project is a novel about mixed-race twins born in India but separated at birth.
My mother is a member of the exact same generation as Rushdie, kids born at the moment when India gained independence, so I grew up in the shadow of that legacy—the optimism, the violence, the huge historical question mark. But when I picked up Rushdie’s magical-realist novel, it was the prose that spoke to me first: vivid, exaggerated, a cacophony, evoking India itself.
Our narrator, Saleem Sinai, was switched at birth with another child, and throughout the novel, images and phrases recur in different contexts. Often, these are puns that, by the second or third time they appear, have accumulated the weight of metaphor. I’ve read this book half a dozen times, and find more to enjoy with each reading.
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE*
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most…
I learned early that information doesn’t change people’s minds and that we can’t lecture our way into people’s hearts. Real change comes through building empathy, and we do that through compelling, personal storytelling. I’ve been working on disrupting bias and building empathy my whole life. It’s why I write, and why I teach, and why I travel to speak with different groups. It’s my theory of change in the world—the first step towards moving us to a more caring, kinder global society.
I have never read a book like Babel, that is so deeply entrenched in histories of colonialism, and also sheds so much light on the inequities of our world today.
We see how well-meaning people get sucked into power, and it causes each reader to reflect on how the decisions we make daily can put us on different trajectories.
Babel is such a forceful vision, with beautiful writing and inspiring imagination.
The Whale Surfaces follows a daughter of Holocaust survivors who tries to deal with trans-generational trauma.
From the age of eleven to 22, she struggles to be ‘normal’ and to conceal the demons haunting her. Her sensitivity to her parents’ past and to injustices everywhere prevents her from enjoying life.…
I have always been interested in and captivated by horror and the darker genres, drawing and painting initially and later on as a writer. I am a full-time tattooist now but I still enjoy writing, and I produced several short stories as well as finished my vampire/Egyptian mythology novel Pharaoh during the coronavirus lockdown when I was unable to work in the tattoo studio. I still draw and paint, and it can be fun illustrating and producing artwork for my fiction, where sometimes one feeds off another.
A monstrous book in every sense and the one that first got me interested in writing. Metaphysical and repulsive in equal measure, it is an epic tale spanning many lives in midtown America, with the sequel Everville even better. Absolutely mind-bending from the master of beautiful and fantastical horror.
From master storyteller Clive Barker, comes this intricately woven and meticulously constructed epic where past and future meet.
In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil.
The Art, the greatest power known to humankind, is the focus of struggle between the evil spirit, Jaff, and a force for light, Fletcher. Jaffe hopes to…
I have always been interested in and captivated by horror and the darker genres, drawing and painting initially and later on as a writer. I am a full-time tattooist now but I still enjoy writing, and I produced several short stories as well as finished my vampire/Egyptian mythology novel Pharaoh during the coronavirus lockdown when I was unable to work in the tattoo studio. I still draw and paint, and it can be fun illustrating and producing artwork for my fiction, where sometimes one feeds off another.
An amazing and surprising read. When a madman is buried alive by five teenagers who take the law into their own hands, it is hardly a new idea for him to come back for revenge upon them. But Jim Brown takes it several stages further with more dark twists than you could possibly think of.
On the night of a raging electrical storm, a group of teenage boys gather on a secluded hill in Oregon to bury one of their own...alive. It isn't murder, because the "victim" is a willing participant. For sneering, knife-wielding punk Whitey Dobbs it's just a gang-initiation stunt. For the others, however, it's a carefully planned act of revenge – designed to give Whitey Dobbs the fright of his life. But even the best-laid plans can go wrong. And when this joke is over, nobody will be laughing...except maybe Whitey Dobbs.
Twenty-two years later, the events of that stormy night are…
As a child, growing up in New York as a first generation Greek-American, my family believed in the power of storytelling. My family embraced both classic Greek mythology and village folklore as words to live by. I learned how transformative storytelling can be. It transformed me as a child, finding solace in freedom in reading, and formed the foundation for my career as an actress and writer.
My new book, The House in the Middle of the Street, is my winter Gothic tale about a house, its occupants, and a yearly visit made by a boy and a girl on New Year’s Eve. It's a setting where magic and myth rule. The stories below spoke to me about the mystery that surrounds us all.
This is one of my favorite stories from Gaiman who I absolutely revere.
His style is a perfect whimsical blend of mythological fairy tales with the insightful science fiction grit and truth-telling of Rod Sterling’s "Twilight Zone” tales.
This particular story of Gaiman’s ushered me into this world with its poetic rhythm. A man returns to his childhood home and meets a girl named Lettie and her family. It felt like I stepped into a world where all things are possible, a homecoming is at hand, filled with the threat of danger and the loss of self. As the man remembers his past, he travels through time and crosses between our world and a darker one that brings terror as well as an understanding and protection.
It’s a beautiful story that informs my writing and deepens my love for a modern fairy tale.
A brilliantly imaginative and poignant fairy tale from the modern master of wonder and terror, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is Neil Gaiman's first new novel for adults since his #1 New York Times bestseller Anansi Boys.
This bewitching and harrowing tale of mystery and survival, and memory and magic, makes the impossible all too real...
The Year Mrs. Cooper Got Out More
by
Meredith Marple,
The coastal tourist town of Great Wharf, Maine, boasts a crime rate so low you might suspect someone’s lying.
Nevertheless, jobless empty nester Mallory Cooper has become increasingly reclusive and fearful. Careful to keep the red wine handy and loath to leave the house, Mallory misses her happier self—and so…
I am a fantasy and science-fiction author with a soft spot for books cut with a sharp sense of humour, impaled on the absurd, or littered with the brutal slaughter of conventions and tropes. I love crisp one-liners and surreal worlds, awkward anti-heroes, and kick-ass heroines who bring their own ruthless horde to the fight. If I were to pick out one feature of a book, film, or television show that really catches my attention it would be “Wow. Didn’t see that one coming.”
How could I not love a book that sets its tone with “My name is Bond, Shaman Bond”?
Bond, aka Eddie Drood, has all the latest magical gadgets to help suppress the forces of magical mayhem on behalf of the ancient and powerful Drood family (and yes there’s a pun there on Druid). This is what James Bond would have been if Ian Fleming had gone easy on the Martinis and tried a few magic mushrooms instead.
The book, and in fact the whole series, is inventive, witty, and in places outright insane, with every book title a parody of a Bond book or film.
(Also, Mr Green is a very nice man – we met him once over pizza at EasterCon several decades ago.)
New York Times bestselling author Simon Green introduces a new kind of hero, one who fights the good fight against some very old foes in the first novel in the Secret Histories series.
The name’s Bond. Shaman Bond. Actually, that's just his cover. His real name is Eddie Drood, but when your job includes a license to kick supernatural arse on a regular basis, you find your laughs where you can.
For centuries, his family has been the secret guardian of Humanity, all that stands between all of you and all of the really nasty things that go bump in…
