Here are 100 books that The Life Impossible fans have personally recommended if you like
The Life Impossible.
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I find that Frankenstein transcends eras by posing critical questions about the ways we develop and use new technology.
I first read a comic-book version in elementary school and have returned to Shelly’s novel over the years because it stimulates my critical thinking about technology, particularly the current rise of AI and our response to it. Frankenstein raises a fundamental ethical question about technology in real life: just because humans can create something, should they actually create it?
For me, the novel also creates the opportunity to explore questions about how we engage technology once we choose to invent it. Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, and the creature becomes an angry monster. I ask myself, is this an allegory for our own response to technology?
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…
When sixteen-year-old Ashlee Sutton's home life falls apart, she is beset by a rare mental illness that makes her believe she's clairvoyant. While most people scoff at her, she begins demonstrating an uncanny knack for sometimes predicting the future, using what could either be pure luck or something more remarkable.
This book was recommended to me by a friend and I'm so pleased that it was. I couldn't put it down. The fact this book is all set in one day is so interesting and to journey with the characters through their different emotions is certainly what keeps the reader on the rollercoaster too. It's impossible not to fall in love with Mateo and Rufus. The author has crafted a superb read here, and the story will stay with you for a long time
From the author of the INTERNATIONAL NO. 1 BESTSELLER THEY BOTH DIE AT THE END comes an explosive examination of grief, mental illness, and the devastating consequences of refusing to let go of the past.
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You're still alive in alternate universes, Theo, but I live in the real world where this morning you're having an open casket funeral. I know you're out there, listening. And you should know I'm really pissed because you swore you would never die and yet here we are. It hurts even more because this isn't the first promise you've…
I thoroughly enjoyed this captivating tale. At first, I couldn't tell how the parallel stories were going to meet up. Trying to figure that out kept me turning the pages. I was able to suspend disbelief as the ghost-story unfolded, but had a harder time with Hogan's depiction of memory loss. Still, it was a beautifully written novel.
Full of character, wit, and wisdom, The Keeper of Lost Things is heartwarming tale that will enchant fans of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, Garden Spells, Mrs Queen Takes the Train, and The Silver Linings Playbook.
Lime green plastic flower-shaped hair bobbles—Found, on the playing field, Derrywood Park, 2nd September.
Bone china cup and saucer—Found, on a bench in Riveria Public Gardens, 31st October.
Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago, he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost…
When Syd Brixton was eleven years old, her identical twin vanished from a park and was never found.
Now twenty years later, Syd’s favorite customer, Morley, is killed in a horrific accident outside the pub where Syd works. Moments before Morley dies, he gives Syd an extraordinary gift: the power…
It was a wild-ride of a story! Wells really knows how to create tension in her storytelling. Also, Sallie, tough-as-nails, is an unforgettable character.
From Jeannette Walls, the bestselling author of The Glass Castle, a riveting new novel about an indomitable young woman in Prohibition-era Virginia
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who'd amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans.
Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid. Born at the turn of the twentieth century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother, who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had…
I love a book that dives deep into the psyche and at the same time has some nonordinary reality themes. It encouraged self-reflection without being preachy.
The #1 New York Times bestselling WORLDWIDE phenomenon
Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction | A Good Morning America Book Club Pick | Independent (London) Ten Best Books of the Year
"A feel-good book guaranteed to lift your spirits."-The Washington Post
The dazzling reader-favorite about the choices that go into a life well lived, from the acclaimed author of How To Stop Time and The Comfort Book.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells…
Absurdity gets a bad rap in fiction and storytelling, I think. “It’s too silly,” they say. But for those who can take a step back and appreciate how absurd our own world is—our everyday life—there’s nothing more real than absurdity. (I’m saying “absurd” an absurd amount of times. Let’s just say it’s purposeful.) It might be played for laughs at times, but if it’s done right, it gives you perspective. Sometimes we all need to look through a funhouse mirror to realize that we’re only human. These five books share that spirit and have made me laugh, think, and occasionally reevaluate my entire life in a spiral of existential dread—with a smile on my face.
It uses a familiar trope—an alien inhabiting a human body to see our species with fresh eyes—but it does it so well. Simple observations turn into existential truths, and each carries that mix of wonder and dread that is so inherently human.
It’s weird in my favorite way: hilarious, heartfelt, and surprisingly life-affirming.
After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, Professor Andrew Martin is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst an alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog.
Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race . . . ?
Liberty Bell and the Last American
by
James Stoddard,
Americans love their Constitution. In seventeen-year-old Liberty Bell’s era it has become a myth. Centuries after the Great Blackout obliterates the world's digitized information, America's history is forgotten. Only confused legends remain, written in "The Americana," a book depicting a golden age where famous Americans from different eras existed together.
I am a writer who was first a reader and am convinced that novels can speak profound truth. They’ve helped me too many times to believe otherwise. I write novels about how we unwind from painful pasts to create new and better lives. In my experience, that requires us to face difficult truths and choose to be different until we are. I write fiction because I can begin with something awful, cut out boring detours that didn’t matter, and get my honorable and well-intentioned characters to happy endings faster than I’ve gotten to mine. These books map similar journeys, and all have left me better off for having read them.
Humor wielded with ill intention is a cruel weapon. Yet in thoughtful and caring hands, laughter is such a balm.
This is a hard story, yet I’m not sure I can count how often I laughed out loud while reading—not at someone’s expense but at Gail Honeyman’s ability to adeptly portray so many of the odd moments that come along with being a human on this earth.
Most importantly, this story beautifully illustrates how one person with more emotional baggage than anyone should have to carry is able to walk herself into a peaceful life so different than the one that nearly crippled her. And of the help she gets along the way.
"Beautifully written and incredibly funny, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is about the importance of friendship and human connection. I fell in love with Eleanor, an eccentric and regimented loner whose life beautifully unfolds after a chance encounter with a stranger; I think you will fall in love, too!" -Reese Witherspoon
No one's ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she's thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of…
Stephen King is such an amazing writer, but if, like me, you don't read horror, your selection is limited. This incredibly inventive, incredibly researched, incredibly compelling book was one I couldn't stop talking about. My book club loved it too! And the ending--I couldn't guess how he was going to land that plane, but he did. Amazing.
Now a major TV series from JJ Abrams and Stephen King, starring James Franco (Hulu US, Fox UK and Europe, Stan Australia, SKY New Zealand).
WHAT IF you could go back in time and change the course of history? WHAT IF the watershed moment you could change was the JFK assassination? 11.22.63, the date that Kennedy was shot - unless . . .
King takes his protagonist Jake Epping, a high school English teacher from Lisbon Falls, Maine, 2011, on a fascinating journey back to 1958 - from a world of mobile phones and iPods to a new world of…
The stars aligned to ignite my passion for magic-realism romance after a few things had happened. 1) I got heavily into the idea of the multiverse and alternate realities in high school, having been inspired by my physics teacher. 2) I read and fell in love with The Time Traveler’s Wife (see list!). 3) I binge-watched the incredible sci-fi show Fringe, which deals with parallel universes and time jumps. 4) I decided to write my first multiverse romance, inspired by all the above factors and more besides. Since then, I’ve focused most of my reading on romantic novels, with those that share a magic realism twist being auto-reads—of course!
While not perhaps a “romance” novel in the established-formula sense, this book is achingly romantic. This epic story truly focuses on the gradual development of the two protagonists’ relationship and how time travel both created and challenged their love. This book ignited my passion for magic-realism romantic novels and remains one of my top books of all time.
I adore the contrast of romantic love between two seemingly destined souls and the brutality of some events caused by Henry’s uncontrolled time travel. There’s also the tricky angle of the age gap (only sometimes, depending on where Henry and Clare are in their lives, but it is occasionally extreme), which the author doesn’t shy away from. And I confess this is probably the book that made me sob the most!
Now a series on HBO starring Rose Leslie and Theo James!
The iconic time travel love story and mega-bestselling first novel from Audrey Niffenegger is "a soaring celebration of the victory of love over time" (Chicago Tribune).
Henry DeTamble is a dashing, adventurous librarian who is at the mercy of his random time time-traveling abilities. Clare Abshire is an artist whose life moves through a natural sequential course. This is the celebrated and timeless tale of their love. Henry and Clare's passionate affair is built and endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trap…
Jera Fowler is hardly excited about having to keep a journal for ninth-grade English class. “What can happen in a day?” she grumps as she chronicles the 1984-85 school year. She doesn’t realize that a single day can be the dividing line between life and death. Forty years later, while…
I’ve always loved the idea of time travel. I was born in a Northern mill town where King Cotton ruled. By the time I was a teenager, all the mills had shut, leaving behind empty hulks. I desperately wanted to experience the town in its heyday. I devoured the Blackburn-set memoir The Road to Nab End, by William Woodruff: I could hear the clogs strike the cobbles, picture the waves of workers, smell the belching chimneys. While I couldn’t travel back in time for real, I could in my imagination. My debut children’s novel, out in Spring 2026, is about a time-travelling seventh son.
Matt Haig is one of those rare writers whose every book is great. And this is no exception. It’s the story of Tom Hazard, a nondescript English teacher–except he’s actually 400 years old and has lived many lives. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what I would do if I could live my life over. Mind you, it’s not all fun.
Tom has to keep moving, as his non-ageing appearance would become a red flag to others. So he’s not able to fall in love either. There’s a lot of sadness and loneliness in the book, and many times, I found myself asking what I’d do in that situation. It's a beautiful read.
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library.
"A quirky romcom dusted with philosophical observations....A delightfully witty...poignant novel." -The Washington Post
How many lifetimes does it take to learn how to live?
Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old history teacher, but he's been alive for centuries. From Elizabethan England to Jazz-Age Paris, from New York to the South Seas, Tom has seen it all. As long as he keeps changing his identity he can keep one step ahead of his past - and stay alive. The only thing…
