100 Books Like The Copper Egg

Friendly tip: I do not recommend reading this novel while isolated from your family due to travel and illness, because this book hits hard in all the right ways.

It invites both the protagonist and the reader to explore the deepest wells of regret and the branching infinities that our life choices produce. In doing so, the novel beautifully confronts the seductive lure of “what could have been” while reminding us of the quiet beauty in what is.

As someone whose mind is often lost in the past or gazing into the future, this ultimate lesson of the book provided a much-needed sense of clarity.

Looking to move past the social shame of her suicide attempt, Margaret Prior begins visiting a woman’s prison to conduct rehabilitative charity work. But when she meets the young spiritualist Selina Dawes, she finds herself pulled into a world of smouldering passion and the realisation the world may be more than she ever realised. 

In this book, Sarah Waters takes Victorian gothic romance and brings it into the modern age. Reading this book involves peeling away the layers and interpreting the unspoken. Nothing is spelt out, as none of the characters would ever deign to say such things out loud. But by looking at what isn’t said, we gradually learn the hidden truth.

One of the characters of my novel goes to a Dutch colony, and I found this look at what that might be like particularly fascinating.

Rajaram gives us the intensely personal perspective of two young women, Jana and Sontje, who in 1620 Amsterdam have no way to make a living. They sign on to become “Company Daughters,” the company being the Dutch East India Company. Agreeing to travel to the other side of the world and marry men they have never met, the two women land in a place they had not imagined, and find a way to survive with one another’s care.

All Adults Here is a summer read—when you just want something light. It’s a family drama, which I always enjoy, and always seem to write about myself. Plus, its protagonist, Astrid Strick, who, at sixty-eight, comes out to her family as bisexual, makes me really happy. I mean, older people have sexual needs too! There’s also a lovely transgendered character, her son. Really, the book is about inclusivity, and that’s a theme that always sings for me. And Emma Straub is just a beautiful writer.

Few scholars possess the ability to take complex historical situations and present them in a manner that is equal parts educational, palatable, and engaging. Brooke Larson is one of those rare talents. When I was in graduate school, I devoured Larson’s Cochabamba, and soon found myself looking to get my hands on anything authored by her. Needless to say, I was eager to read Trials of Nation Making when it was released. I was not disappointed. This wonderfully engaging history examines the role that race and ethnicity played in the framing, founding, and forming of Andean republics, where Creole elites sought to solve the so-called “Indian Problem.” But this is no top-down history. As Larson masterfully illustrates, Indigenous historical actors employed a range of strategies—from legal action to open rebellion—to demand participation in nation-making processes.  

A Parrot Without a Name is the tale of a quest as primitive and compelling as any grail search from medieval legend. It’s the story of John O’Neill and Theodore Parker, two of the 20th century’s most accomplished birders and ornithologists, and their pursuit of the least known and most elusive birds in the whole of South America. Parker, whose death in a small plane crash in the Ecuadorian mountains cut off one of the most famous and unique escapades in birding – he ended up knowing and recording the calls of more than 4000 bird species – shows up as a colorful character with all the quirks of other great scientific iconoclasts such as Alan Turing and Robert Oppenheimer. 

María Elena Moyano is perhaps the most fascinating Latin American historical figure you haven’t heard of. A Black activist, feminist, and community organizer, Moyano led a brave and suicidal campaign for peace against the Shining Path, a fearsome guerrilla group that brought Peru to its knees in the 1980s and early 90s. Moyano describes, in her own beautiful prose, her meteoric rise as a champion of the urban poor, political leader, and women’s rights warrior. She speaks candidly of her repudiation of the “terror of the Shining Path,” and of the group’s obsession with smearing her good name. Diana Miloslavic’s illustrative annotations help further humanize Moyano and contextualize her sacrifice, offering a moving portrait of the woman popularly known as “Mother Courage.”

Any understanding of transport networks across the Isthmus (road, river, railroad, and Canal) must consider the conquest of the Inca Empire.

MacQuarrie’s book illustrates how Panama was the staging ground for Pizarro’s small band of entrepreneurs who conquered the largest empire ever in the Americas. And, later, how the gold and silver from Peru was transported back to Spain across Panama.

Moreover, the book details how a bloody civil war between the conquerors almost cost them the fruits of their original victory. All of this set the stage for what would later come to much of Latin America.

I first read this one in high school, and to say it blew me away is an understatement. Five people in sixteenth-century Peru die in a bridge collapse, and a devout Catholic priest sets out to see why—what about God’s plan for the world can be discerned from an examination of why these five, and no others, died that day.

This book's impact on my worldview was enormous: how we take what we experience and use it to make sense of our world. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve reread it, and it still strikes me to the heart every time.

The classic account of this fascinating, historic, and tragic event, unfortunately little known by western readers, is here masterfully told by the former Director of the Royal Geographical Society in London.  His amazing story of the once-great Inca Empire and its destruction by Francisco Pizzaro's ruthless Spanish Coquistadores captured my imagination in 1982 and sent me on a 40-year Odyssey of travel, discovery, and adventure still as vivid today as it was back then. It will do no less for any reader with a curious mind and a love of history.