74 Books Like The Library at Mount Char

This book is unhinged in the best way. I love Gideon’s unique voice. Around her is a deadly-serious necromancer murder mystery with interplanetary stakes, and she cares more about cracking dirty jokes and finally eating some warm food. Her relationship with her arch-nemesis/only friend Harrow leaps off the page.

I love the scene where they get into a pool so Harrow can finally confess to Gideon her darkest secret—so hot and so disturbing all at the same time. While this book isn’t technically a romance and the genre feels more like a horror fantasy set in space, I couldn’t resist putting it on the list. As Gideon says to Harrow, “One flesh, one end, bitch.”

Charles de Lint is one of my favorite authors, and this book of short stories is set in Newford, his fictional city. It’s a fully-formed universe where there's always more to discover. You can read any of his books at any time; there’s no order they must be read in. I guarantee that the more you learn of his worlds—and especially Newford—the more you’ll want. I read Pixel Pixies (my favorite short story of all time) to my mom and dad when my mom was dying of cancer. I could barely read the last paragraph for wanting to cry; not because the story is sad, but because it's so beautiful, so hopeful, so abso-freaking-lutely wonderful. I still get teary-eyed thinking about that evening of reading that story to my mom and dad.

That’s what de Lint does. He transports you not only to a world, but indelibly marks the feelings… show more.

This steampunk sci-fi fantasy is exciting, hilarious, dangerous, full of twists, turns, break-neck action, daring escapes, and chock-a-block with outrageously fun and memorable characters in a fully realized and unique universe. Retribution Falls follows the crew of the airship Ketty Jay and its incredibly rag-tag crew captained by two-bit smuggler/cargo hauler/wanna-be pirate Darien Frey, and hoo boy! When presented with a job that Frey’s instincts tell him is too good to be true but offers riches, he plunges his crew into several worlds' worth of trouble. Their escapades as they try to dig themselves out are exciting, unpredictable, and laugh-out-loud funny.

If you like Firefly but want something original rather than a cheap knock-off, you’ll love this book. And if you don’t like Firefly, you’ve got more going on than I can help you with! ;-)

This book was a surprise to me in many ways. While I love Zombie Apocalypse books, they can become a bit samey after a while, and that’s why I’m always on the lookout for something fresh and unique. Boy, did I get that in spades with this book!

Not only was I introduced to the fascinating world of long-distance running, but I also loved the characters, especially the main character, Kate. She’s both strong and vulnerable. A woman who would fight to the death for her loved ones but cry in secret for her lost husband.

I became so engrossed in this story that I even contemplated taking up long-distance running, a feat of epic proportions, considering I’ve never run anywhere in my life. 

Tinker is an inventive, imaginative, and fun fantasy story. The eponymous main character—a girl genius who works at a scrap yard—is unconventional and incredibly sympathetic; I rooted for her from the start. The intersection of magic, elves, parallel worlds, the setting of the disrupted, and dying on the vine rust-belt city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (my hometown—yay!) is exceptionally well done. This story is original from start to finish. Spencer's writing is crisp, engaging, and there’s no filler. Every word in this book moves the story forward. If you like fantasy, read Tinker (and the entire Elfhome series). Don’t be put off by (in my humble opinion) the incredibly terrible cover.

My copy—a dog eared and read several times over paperback—has a much better one. The pages in between are what counts, and the story is amazing!

Naomi Novak could write anything, and I would read it, but I am a sucker for dark academia.

Well, this one takes the cake with a school that is actively trying to kill the students. While this book is pretty dark in parts, it was the instances of light that really kept me reading the entire series.

There were many times I wasn’t sure where it would lead, but I was never disappointed by what I discovered.

This book shares a similar theme to How to Stop Time in that the main character lives through time without aging, from 18th-century France to present-day Manhattan. Addie has made a pact with the devil–immortality, but the price is she’ll be forgotten by everyone she meets. That concept really struck me–what does it mean to be remembered? What does it mean to be forgotten?

I always wanted to be a writer, and part of the reason was that I’d be remembered at some level. There’s a lot of sadness in the book but also hope. In the end, Addie comes across a book with a name she recognizes. Inside is the following inscription: “I remember you.” My heart melted.

Let me emphasize how gorgeous this book is. Imagine a Tim Burton world filled with bones and two skeletons having a heart-wrenchingly beautiful love story. That is the landscape of The Bone Valley by Candace Robinson. This book gets quite gory and dark but is absolutely my favorite of her books for its sheer originality and incredibly unique world. Not to mention the horrible villain who literally takes over the underworld just so she can torture people. Yeah, it’s dark. Robinson is known for her incredible balance of romance and horror nestled within a beautiful world, and this book is the epitome of that.

Quite simply, Erin Morgenstern’s book is the finest example of urban fantasy I have ever read. Besides a plot rich in sorcery and romance, with a circus (think Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes) that appears mysteriously, vanishing just as suddenly and the shadowy game of two great sorcerers playing out their competitiveness through the lives of their young apprentices, this is a beautifully written book. The writing is elegant, rounded, and rich. What a writer! The imagery is transporting without clobbering the reader over the head. The characters are each fully drawn, but in slow increments as the story steams inexorably ahead like the mysterious train that carries the circus from locale to locale. 

This book showed me that you do not need blazing dragons or drooling werewolves to create menace, sinister characters, and mystery. Morgenstern places this world of circus magic just out of reach but so… show more.

A dystopian novella that seems confusing at first but makes sense as you continue along. It requires piecing together broken memories, broken friendships, and flashes of emotion that are rarely understood. Each glimpse lasts only eight minutes and thirty-two seconds. It’s quite an incredible feat of storytelling. I read this in one sitting with the sun setting outside and me barely even noticing that time existed. I was fortunate enough to know and work alongside Salomon before his recent passing and this was a book I was privileged to provide a blurb for. I was blown away by the story that unraveled before me. I promise you will be too.