Here are 95 books that The Latecomer fans have personally recommended if you like
The Latecomer.
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I'm an American Christian author based in Austin, Texas. I’ve spent decades in contemplation and spiritual exercise seeking a deeper understanding of spiritual warfare in our “modern” world…inside institutions, families, and our hearts and minds—where pride, shame, and fear can function like prisons for the soul.
Writing Redemption Row and its companion field guide pushed me to look for books that don’t just talk about angels and demons in the abstract, but actually sharpen embodied discernment, stronger faith, and soul revival in people who feel trapped. I’m drawn to writers who take evil seriously without fear-mongering—and who insist that courage, divine love, and truth lead to God’s kingdom, power, and glory now and forever.
This is the book I reach for when I want the war for the soul told without shortcuts.
Dostoevsky takes me straight into the collision of faith and doubt, love and cruelty, repentance and self-justification—and he refuses to flatter any of it. The “Grand Inquisitor” sequence alone sharpened how I think about coercion dressed up as righteousness, which is a chillingly modern spiritual danger.
When I’m writing redemption, I want it to cost something—and this novel taught me how suffering, freely offered, can become a doorway instead of a sentence.
Winner of the Pen/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize
The award-winning translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's classic novel of psychological realism.
The Brothers Karamasov is a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and an exploration of erotic rivalry in a series of triangular love affairs involving the “wicked and sentimental” Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three sons―the impulsive and sensual Dmitri; the coldly rational Ivan; and the healthy, red-cheeked young novice Alyosha. Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in…
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 love books about good people who go through hard times and come out okay. Different, but okay. The books can be contemporary, historical, magical—I don’t care. I just want goodness to triumph—not falsely, but with truth. Nobody has a %100 easy life. I believe it’s how we make our way through our difficulties that ultimately determines who we are. When asked to give four words that describe The Fractal Melody, I say: "Families, friendship, challenges, hope." Those are the kinds of things that matter. The Rolling Stones sang, "You can’t always get what you want." I believe that you always get what you need to develop into a full-fledged human being.
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • “A gripping and poignant ode to a messy, loving family in all its glory.” —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of Circe
In this “rich, complex family saga” (USA Today) full of long-buried family secrets, Marilyn Connolly and David Sorenson fall in love in the 1970s, blithely ignorant of all that awaits them. By 2016, they have four radically different daughters, each in a state of unrest.
Wendy, widowed young, soothes herself with booze and younger men; Violet, a litigator turned stay-at-home-mom, battles anxiety and self-doubt; Liza, a neurotic and newly tenured professor, finds herself pregnant…
I’m a writer who grew up in the Midwest, moved away for a while, and has now raised my own kids here. I love reading other writers' takes on what kinds of stories they see unfolding here. As I get older, I realize that great stories can grow out of the ground anywhere, with the right amount of sunshine, darkness, and water.
I still remember reading this book, which takes place on a farm in Iowa. It was my first glimpse of the idea that something so epic could be set in a place that I thought of as so boring.
Smiley's retelling of King Lear is one for the ages and a good lesson that greatness is only limited by your imagination, not your geography.
This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm among his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will, which sets in motion a chain of events that brings dark truths to light. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, A Thousand Acres spins the most fundamental themes of truth, justice, love, and pride into a universally acclaimed masterpiece.
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…
I write about family, inspired by the exquisitely flawed one I dwell within. Loving my children is the easiest and hardest thing I have ever done in that it was easy to fall in love with them the moment they came into this world but the accountability to that love can be staggering. The same can be said for my siblings. I hope my novels and stories help readers examine the ways we are all tethered to one another. My writing is where I try to untangle all of that. It’s about the ties that bind and how we choose to wear those bindings, especially in times of crisis.
Siblings tend to circle the wagon around one another. Sure, we squabble amongst ourselves, but when the outside world comes at one of us, it might as well have come for all of us. At least that’s been my experience. But honestly, this constant rescuing can be tiresome and perhaps it asks too much of us—especially if we’re dealing with our own unresolved heartache. This novel is so honest in its portrayal of three sisters, frantic to save a sister and finally forced to share in the grief and blame. I also loved that the main character, a former college professor, turns to literature to help her find her moral way.
A Time Magazine Must-Read Book of 2020 A Most-Anticipated Book of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine * The New York Times * The Washington Post *Vogue * Bustle * BuzzFeed * Ms. magazine * The Millions * Huffington Post * PopSugar * The Lily * Goodreads * Library Journal * LitHub * Electric Literature
The first adult novel in almost fifteen years by the internationally bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
“A stunning work of art that reminds readers Alvarez is, and always has been, in a class…
I love to tell stories, a love I discovered ever since I was a kid listening to my family who love to tell stories. Mine defy genres because the voice and characters guide me into how their tales should be told. I've written mysteries, YA and middle-grade books, a graphic novel, and courtroom drama. My newest book is driven by the character of Margaret Adams, who's seeking a new life after years of being buried alive with sometimes hilarious results. I just had to listen...
Maggie and Ira Moran's daylong trip to a funeral becomes a journey into and through their lives, family, marriage, and, yes, love.
The story is so deceptively simple that you think nothing is going on, but by the end, it left me floored with its humanity. The characters are supremely relatable, so much so that you're in the car with Maggie and Ira for every mile of the trip. When it won the Pulitzer Prize, I applauded.
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Evoking Jane Austen, Emma Straub, and other masters of the literary marriage, Breathing Lessons celebrates the small miracles and magic of truly knowing someone.
Unfolding over the course of a single emotionally fraught day, this stunning novel encompasses a lifetime of dreams, regrets and reckonings—and is oftern regarded as Tyler's seminal work. Maggie and Ira Moran are on a road trip from Baltimore, Maryland to Deer Lick, Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of a friend. Along the way, they reflect on the state of their marriage, its trials and…
I’ve always been drawn to family stories, from King Lear to Anna Karenina. The ties that bind us to family—however strained or frayed those ties might be—contain within their fibers the entire spectrum of human emotion. For a writer, this is fertile territory. I could contemplate endlessly the rivalry that exists between a pair of siblings, or the expectations a child has for their parent. Family dynamics are often kept private, which makes encountering them on the page even more thrilling. To be let in on the life of another, granted permission to bear witness to their secrets and innermost longings, is the rare gift that literature brings us.
Here we see Jonathan Franzen, the master of the family novel, at it again. Like all of Franzen’s books, this one is both hilarious and poignant. Though it tips the scale at nearly 600 pages, I blew through it in a day or two, amazed by Franzen’s plot-making abilities and his keen insights into the human condition.
Bonus points for The Corrections and Freedom, either of which could easily have made this list, too.
Jonathan Franzen’s gift for wedding depth and vividness of character with breadth of social vision has never been more dazzlingly evident than in Crossroads.
It’s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless—unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem’s sister, Becky, long the social…
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…
I’ve always been drawn to family stories, from King Lear to Anna Karenina. The ties that bind us to family—however strained or frayed those ties might be—contain within their fibers the entire spectrum of human emotion. For a writer, this is fertile territory. I could contemplate endlessly the rivalry that exists between a pair of siblings, or the expectations a child has for their parent. Family dynamics are often kept private, which makes encountering them on the page even more thrilling. To be let in on the life of another, granted permission to bear witness to their secrets and innermost longings, is the rare gift that literature brings us.
I picked up this book because of its haunting cover—a black-and-white photograph of a girl staring directly into the camera’s lens. From the very first line, I knew I’d encountered something special. Without giving too much away, this book follows a South African family—the Swarts—throughout their lives. What most stuck with me was Galgut’s narration: a slippery voice that fluidly moves between the first and third person. This novel is a masterclass in narrative deftness and possibility. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
WINNER OF THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE
On her deathbed, Rachel Swart makes a promise to Salome, the family’s Black maid. This promise will divide the family—especially her children: Anton, the golden boy; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by feelings of guilt.
Reunited by four funerals over thirty years, the dwindling Swart family remains haunted by the unmet promise, just as their country is haunted by its own failures. The Promise is an epic South African drama that unfurls against the unrelenting march of history, sure…
I’ve always been drawn to family stories, from King Lear to Anna Karenina. The ties that bind us to family—however strained or frayed those ties might be—contain within their fibers the entire spectrum of human emotion. For a writer, this is fertile territory. I could contemplate endlessly the rivalry that exists between a pair of siblings, or the expectations a child has for their parent. Family dynamics are often kept private, which makes encountering them on the page even more thrilling. To be let in on the life of another, granted permission to bear witness to their secrets and innermost longings, is the rare gift that literature brings us.
Paul Murray immediately sucked me in with this story about the Barneses, an Irish family who has been hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. Murray’s writing is propulsive and gripping, as well as hilarious.
I laughed through much of the book and was blown away by the ending. This novel is one I’ve recommended several times since I first encountered it.
WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023 WINNER OF AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS' PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024 SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024 ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times, New Yorker, The Sunday Times, The Economist, Observer, Guardian, Washington Post, Lit Hub, TIME magazine, Irish Times, The Oldie, Daily Mail, i Paper, Independent, The Standard, The Times, Kirkus, Daily Express, City A.M.
I am a Child Psychologist and Author turned Parent Coach who often hears about the bickering, put-downs, jealousy, and conflict sapping families with multiple children. Telling them to “cut it out” clearly does nothing. Kids need not only the skills (how to talk, how to listen, how to manage feelings and resolve conflict) but also the motivation to use them, a combination I have spent my career thinking about, writing about, and teaching. All of the books I have written, and all that I recommend, include this winning combination of skills and motivation with the aim of helping children live happier lives.
This was one of the first books targeting not preschoolers adjusting to a new baby but older kids struggling to get along. It is perfectly pitched to middle-grade readers, with just the right balance of direct talk and humor. The book normalizes sibling conflict while providing solutions 8-13-year-olds can implement on their own or with the help of a parent. Written in 2010, this book stands the test of time.
Humorous yet practical advice for building positive sibling relationships. Turn sibling rivalry into positive sibling relationships with this fun, humorous pocket guide for kids. Siblings can make for great friends, and it s nice to have someone who ll love you no matter what. But kids know that sibling relationships can be hard when problems of fairness, jealousy, conflict, tattling, privacy, and other things come up and they usually do. Siblings teaches kids how to deal with sibling rivalry and more, including special situations such as siblings with special needs, step-siblings, and adopted siblings, and it focuses on building positive…
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…
Nothing gives me more joy than painting stories in the colors of every human emotion in our spectrum. And combining laughter and tears on the same page elicits a delicious thrill that keeps me sitting in the chair. It doesn’t happen to me on every page, (I’d be lying to say it did.) When it does, I don’t want to let it go. A former theater major (probably “a bad actor”) I started my novel-writing journey when I sent a resignation email to a few thousand employees I was managing at the time. “Hey girl, you made me laugh and cry in that email. Maybe you might think about writing.”
I love the magical realism aspect of this novel, which Benjamin handles with such a deft hand you don’t question whether or not the impossible is possible. A fortune teller’s prediction and old-world superstition create a heavy weight that exquisitely-drawn characters must navigate. The power of belief and its effect on destiny is a complex topic. Is it good or bad to know our future? Should we act on what we’ve been told? Should we ignore it? If we believe something does that make it happen? If we disbelieve does it not happen? Every character is a gem, including Klara: an extraordinary magician who convinced me we must embrace the mysteries of the world even if we can’t comprehend them.
It's 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes.
Such prophecies could be dismissed as trickery and nonsense, yet the Golds bury theirs deep. Over the years that follow they attempt to ignore, embrace, cheat…
