Books like The Killer Question — picked by fans

This book felt like an immersive adult fairy tale, a tender classic for modern times that transported me to the English countryside. Quite the experience.

I missed this story when I finished it and would happily read Chloe Dalton muse about Hare forever. Moving, descriptive, lyrical writing about the intricacies of nature is always a drawcard for me. I kept running my hand over the illustrations throughout, too exquisite not to touch; the peace and beauty in the prose just as palpable.

This life pivot, where less truly is more, reassured me that we can change and still be successful. The close-to-home themes of slower living, embracing nature while healing, simplicity, and presence have etched this soulful work of art into my memory. I’m grateful.

We all have that moment in our lives where we didn't make the best decisions.

This is about that moment for Billy (real name Josephine) and Francis who love their spouses but still embark on a passionate affair. She is young and boyish and serious; he is older and this is not his first affair.

So we shouldn't be rooting for this funny, wry, witty and guilty couple, but we do because Laurie Colwin's wonderful writing makes us.

This book was such fun to read! It's really unusual in that it's told entirely by letters, emails, and text messages. It has no chapters and invites lots of flicking pages back and forth to go back and check things, so it's super interactive (I was glad I got the paperback!). I really liked that most of the characters are unlikeable, and none of them seem to like each other very much, either. I LOVE unlikeable characters.

On top of that, much of the information they give in the letters is unreliable at best or completely untrue at worst. This book is a murder mystery, but it takes ages to find out who's dead, and by the time I found out, I'd wanted most of the characters to have been killed off–they really are a nasty lot! This book was totally original and very clever, and I adored it from… show more.

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Expensive restaurants have bigger gaps between… show more.

I’m a fan of Dune because it feels larger than science fiction and more enduring than almost any genre label can contain.

I admire the depth of Frank Herbert’s worldbuilding, the strength of his prose, and the narrative weight carried by his characters and ideas. I return to books like this because they helped define what speculative fiction could become.

I also value Dune as a work of its own time. I do not want foundational novels rewritten to imitate modern language or contemporary storytelling habits. I want them preserved, studied, and experienced as they were written. To me, the best way to keep a genre alive is not to alter its past, but to let new authors build upon it with voices of their own.

The classic tale that everyone knows but there is a lot more depth to the novel than in the many adaptions. There is high Victorian melodrama here but also interesting social details and an ingenious writing style combining diary entries, letters and newspaper reports. A real page turner but with psychological depth.

Okay, so this book is predominantly about the struggles of a boy going through puberty but its depiction of the magnetic older characters of Bert and Queenie in the Alderman Cooper Sunshine Home are among the funniest scenes in the book. 

Of every book I’ve ever read, it remains one of the most hilarious and if you’ve read it previously, it’s well worth another visit.

It is a profound and unsettling dive into societal decay that feels terrifyingly prescient. Atwood’s brilliance lies in the details—how she exposes the weaponization of language and the stripping of individual identity until even a birth name becomes a forbidden memory. Offred’s internal act of storytelling is a breathtaking form of rebellion; it’s a reminder that even when we are silenced, our internal narratives and small acts of defiance are what keep us human. It isn’t a "feel-good" read, but it is an essential one.

I’m not a fan of novels that are paced like greased rockets, as if the author’s afraid you’ll suddenly throw the book across the room, turn on Netflix, and order a pizza. Which is a key reason I love this book. Precious Ramotswe is a “traditionally built” woman who solves crimes in a superbly witty yet unhurried fashion and with deep compassion that stops short of sentimentality.

Her heart (huge) and brain (gently incisive) work in perfect tandem in this book. The plot is simple, which will frustrate readers who prefer intricate puzzles in their crime fiction. But for me, the pleasure lies in leisurely getting to know this wise, ingenious detective and her humble neighborhood in Botswana’s capital city.

A gorgeous, extravagant dual-timeline historical mystery about late-20th-century academics researching a pair of (fictional) Victorian poets – did they or didn’t they?

If you like library settings, fictional documents (letters, poems – lots of poems), and a good dose of poking-fun-at-academia, you’ll love it. Yes, it is also a movie (though I can’t speak to it).