Here are 16 books that The Naked Light fans have personally recommended if you like
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'Helm' is one of those novels that's so phenomenally good it's difficult to know how to describe its excellence without reducing its power. Ambitious in its construct, breathtaking in its range, heartbreaking and hopeful in its message, 'Helm' had me captivated from the first page. The first sentence, in truth. Sarah Hall has somehow, by some magic, and her beautiful prose, brought a wind to life! A wind that has shaped humans and land alike through eons, a wind imbued with superstition, folklore, fear and timeless stories. Sarah Hall is basically a genius to be able to harness all this in her book. I am in awe.
'Vital, fierce and free.' Financial Times 'Incandescently good.' Sarah Perry 'Pulsing with life and lyricism.' Spectator 'Fiercely exuberant.' Observer 'Delightfully playful.' Andrew Miller 'A truly astonishing thing.' George Monbiot
A wondrous, elemental novel from 'a writer of show-stopping genius'. Guardian
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind - a subject of folklore and wonder - who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.
This is Helm's life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age…
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…
This is a rare book. A beautiful, heartbreaking, important book. It's a book that will stay with me for a very, very long time. The storyline follows Dawn in the 1980s, a young mother who falls in love with another woman, and her estranged daughter Maggie in the present day. Maggie has an unusually close relationship with her father Heron, who brought her up as a single father. But Heron has been keeping secrets from Maggie, and when the past comes back to haunt them, Maggie has to reckon with everything she thought she knew about her life. Utterly brilliant, I was captivated from page one.
Collins blends the boundaries between my love of writing, reading, and psychology. With mind blowing originality, she creates society where writing your story is an ominous form of social control and psychological dissociation. Only the bravest characters hold on to the human existential values and stand up for forbidden love. I was in awe of this book that leads me to experience the world of literacy in a totally new way, As a social tool which can be manipulated for good or ill.
LOSE YOURSELF IN THE BREAKOUT SENSATION OF THE YEAR
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019
'Brilliant' Joanna Cannon 'Spellbinding' Guardian 'Magic' Erin Kelly 'Immersive' Sunday Times 'Gorgeous' Stella Duffy 'Astounding' Anna Mazzola
Emmett Farmer is a binder's apprentice. His job is to hand-craft beautiful books and, within each, to capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory.
If you have something you want to forget, or a secret to hide, he can bind it - and you will never have to remember the pain it caused.
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
I’ve been interested in stories about power, exploitation, and female resilience for as long as I can remember. As a former professional dancer, I grew up in a world where the body was watched, judged, disciplined, and expected to perform, no matter the circumstance. My later experience as a physician scholar and as a mother has deepened my interest in the systems that shape girls’ and women’s ideas about their own lives. Finally, as a survivor, I also understand how these experiences can distort a girl’s sense of herself. I come to these books from the intersection of art, medicine, feminism, and lived experience.
For millennia, we’ve heard the stories in Greek mythology about gods who come down to earth to rape women (Zeus got around), women as seductive sirens who lure sailors to their doom, or goddesses and mortal women alike being exiled.
Because of that, I was intrigued to read this book, a retelling of the familiar narrative, but from the perspective of a woman. I found this book to be very empowering.
I identified with the main character, a woman named Circe (in actuality a goddess) who is exiled because of her powers of witchcraft. However, in her exile, she finds that leaning into her power without the judgment of others makes her stronger.
I loved reading classic Greek mythology, complete with all the familiar characters, told from a woman’s perspective.
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift…
I write and read fantasy that doesn’t play safe—where magic is messy, divine, rotten, or reborn in mud. I’m obsessed with stories that walk barefoot through forgotten folklore, eerie townships, and mythic detours. The Fallow Swallow grew from this exact craving: for fantasy that’s personal, poetic, and just a little unwell. I gravitate toward tales that embrace magical realism, morally grey characters, and dark humour—and these books helped shape my voice as a writer.
Reading this was like drinking tea with a ghost in a dusty library—charming, eerie, and wonderfully slow.
Clarke's ability to mix historical fiction with brooding, folkloric magic was inspiring. I admired how it builds tension not with battles, but with manners, contracts, and impossible choices. It taught me patience in worldbuilding and in life.
Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of…
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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…
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
I have always loved stories, and I love the clash of ideas – political and philosophical, religious and atheistic. And if you can put them together in a novel, so much the better. But I insist that it has to be a real story, with real characters, not ciphers. They must be inconsistent, their ideas half-formed and subject to change. And they must be allowed to put their point of view with their own voice, so I’m never entirely sure what the author thinks. The characters have to be people I can care about, people I can love or hate, people whose fate can cause me anxiety, sorrow, or joy.
It doesn’t patronise the reader as it weaves a history of Western philosophy into the narrative. The story is a semi-autobiographical motorcycle road trip undertaken by the writer as he recovers from a nervous breakdown caused by his obsession with philosophical questions.
I really enjoyed this book even though I didn’t agree with all the author’s ideas. And the first time I read it, the moment his alter ego first appears was one of the creepiest things I had ever read in a novel. It freaked me out.
Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.
I really enjoyed this book. I was interested in learning more about modern mysticism as a writing style or genre and this delivered. It was also a fascinating way to learn about India’s history during such defining years and events.
*WINNER OF THE BOOKER AND BEST OF THE BOOKER PRIZE*
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**
'A wonderful, rich and humane novel... a classic' Guardian
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most…
I don’t read much science fiction these days, but this (if it really is SciFi) drew me in and hooked me almost immediately with its alternate universe and truly original storyline.
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
I have always been interested in and captivated by horror and the darker genres, drawing and painting initially and later on as a writer. I am a full-time tattooist now but I still enjoy writing, and I produced several short stories as well as finished my vampire/Egyptian mythology novel Pharaoh during the coronavirus lockdown when I was unable to work in the tattoo studio. I still draw and paint, and it can be fun illustrating and producing artwork for my fiction, where sometimes one feeds off another.
A monstrous book in every sense and the one that first got me interested in writing. Metaphysical and repulsive in equal measure, it is an epic tale spanning many lives in midtown America, with the sequel Everville even better. Absolutely mind-bending from the master of beautiful and fantastical horror.
From master storyteller Clive Barker, comes this intricately woven and meticulously constructed epic where past and future meet.
In the little town of Palomo Grove, two great armies are amassing; forces shaped from the hearts and souls of America. In this New York Times bestseller, Barker unveils one of the most ambitious imaginative landscapes in modern fiction, creating a new vocabulary for the age-old battle between good and evil.
The Art, the greatest power known to humankind, is the focus of struggle between the evil spirit, Jaff, and a force for light, Fletcher. Jaffe hopes to…
