Here are 100 books that The Peculiarities fans have personally recommended if you like
The Peculiarities.
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I’m a pragmatist and a problem-solver. As a student of innovation, I draw inspiration from a risk-taker’s approach to attacking a problem. I’ve changed my life drastically from a farmland kid to a global technology CEO and then author. Along the way, I’ve had opportunities to struggle. I’ve found conventional wisdom seldom fixes the problem, so I’ve refined the ability to look for unique paths. I believe women provide the best examples to learn from because they don’t walk into the room bluffing their way to the solution. They credit the resources they tapped for their solution and bring others along in the journey to raise the education level.
I haven’t read many stories with witches, but that changed when I read the story of these women facing real problems, sadly still resonating today. Before reading this book, I certainly wouldn’t have considered witches to be important on a list of strong women solving problems.
I was sucked into this story of three sisters living in a world that forbids witchcraft. I wanted to fight alongside these sisters as they called upon the bond between women and our common wisdom. I wanted to fight the evil suppressors of women’s right to vote and rights to exist and thrive as women. I still want to lend my voice and privilege to protect their library. They find their ways, not without sacrifices, but always with flair.
'Glorious . . . a tale that will sweep you away' Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger
'A gorgeous and thrilling paean to the ferocious power of women' Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer
In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I made the mistake of reading Dracula as an eight-year-old (thanks, Mom and Dad, for paying attention to what I brought home from school book fairs). Beyond disrupting my sleep pattern, there were two significant consequences to this decision: 1) I became enthralled with the intersection of historical detail, mystery, and magic, an enchantment that continues to this day; and 2) I ultimately majored in English literature, with a concentration in Victorian literature. To my professors’ chagrin, I put that education to use in concocting my own historically-based magical mysteries (sorry, Dr. Steinitz). But hey—I’ve always got good recommendations in this milieu.
You can reasonably infer that a book whose title nods toward a touchstone of the French Revolution and a landmark civil rights document will provide a treasure trove of historical references. It does indeed, but it’s history as accoutrement, with characterization at the forefront even as the mystery deepens in the background and the inexorable pull of monumental events inextricably entwines the fates of our heroes and villains. Declaration is ultimately about the flawed individuals who drive, and then become caught up in, sweeping change. Also, vampires. And necromancers. Not to mention weather mages, slaves in revolt, legendary politicians, religious converts, and the undeniable pleasure of being held in the thrall of an author who reveres the power of stories and words and excels at putting them to good use.
'A rich, sprawling epic full of history and magic.' Alix E. Harrow, Hugo award-winning author
A sweeping tale of revolution and wonder in a world not quite like our own, A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians is a genre-defying story of magic, war, and the struggle for freedom.
It is the Age of Enlightenment -- of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France to the weather mage Toussaint L'Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic…
I learned early that information doesn’t change people’s minds and that we can’t lecture our way into people’s hearts. Real change comes through building empathy, and we do that through compelling, personal storytelling. I’ve been working on disrupting bias and building empathy my whole life. It’s why I write, and why I teach, and why I travel to speak with different groups. It’s my theory of change in the world—the first step towards moving us to a more caring, kinder global society.
I have never read a book like Babel, that is so deeply entrenched in histories of colonialism, and also sheds so much light on the inequities of our world today.
We see how well-meaning people get sucked into power, and it causes each reader to reflect on how the decisions we make daily can put us on different trajectories.
Babel is such a forceful vision, with beautiful writing and inspiring imagination.
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I made the mistake of reading Dracula as an eight-year-old (thanks, Mom and Dad, for paying attention to what I brought home from school book fairs). Beyond disrupting my sleep pattern, there were two significant consequences to this decision: 1) I became enthralled with the intersection of historical detail, mystery, and magic, an enchantment that continues to this day; and 2) I ultimately majored in English literature, with a concentration in Victorian literature. To my professors’ chagrin, I put that education to use in concocting my own historically-based magical mysteries (sorry, Dr. Steinitz). But hey—I’ve always got good recommendations in this milieu.
While Sherlock Holmes famously debunked anything that had even a vague whiff of the supernatural (looking at you, Hound of the Baskervilles), the same can’t be said for his creator. Entwistle offers a brilliantly imaginative take on what might have happened if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Oscar Wilde teamed up to solve mysteries in a world where the supernatural was very, very real. Atmospheric touches ranging from fog-shrouded, gaslit streets to mysterious moors are the perfect complement to witty dialogue, and Entwistle manages to weave in a fair bit of historical detail despite the rip-roaring pace of the story.
The Paranormal Casebooks of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle read like a volatile cocktail of Sherlock Holmes-meets-the-X-Files with a dash of steam punk and a whiff of London fog. Conan Doyle assumes the mantle of his fictional consulting detective and recruits a redoubtable Watson in the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde, who brings to the sleuthing duo a razor-keen mind, an effervescent wit, and an outrageous sense of fashion. Together, two of the greatest minds in Victorian England solve bizarre murders, unravel diabolical plots and unearth long-buried mysteries—each with a paranormal twist.“My murder will take place in a darkened séance room—shot twice…
I’m a novelist, essayist, and journalist who’s written extensively about the problems and consolations of faith, about belonging in and out of faith, and about the tribes of what I think of as the In Between. When you’re in between, you’re neither in it nor out of it, whatever “it” might be for you. You bear an “infinity of traces,” as the writer Antonio Gramsci called these formative influences. My first novel looks at these influences directly, while my second one looks at them indirectly. I’m late in the game with a third novel now—a detective story that investigates a murder along with these same themes.
Indispensable. And the scandal of this autobiographical novel hasn’t worn off in a hundred-plus years. Stephen Dedalus is our young man, the self-appointed artist-priest. We see turn-of-the-century Ireland through his eyes and Irish Catholicism, too, each with its special richness and oppressiveness. Ultimately, it’s Stephen’s desire to escape "these nets" that drives his story. He’ll find God in his own way or, failing that, replace him with Art.
A masterpiece of modern fiction, James Joyce's semiautobiographical first novel follows Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive and creative youth who rebels against his family, his education, and his country by committing himself to the artist's life.
"I will not serve," vows Dedalus, "that in which I no longer believe...and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can." Likening himself to God, Dedalus notes that the artist "remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." Joyce's rendering of the impressions of…
I’ve been drawn to thought-provoking novels from my early days as a reader, and especially later when my own work took shape. My books tend to deal with life’s big topics––love, loss, creativity, self-discovery, aging, forgiveness, what it means to be a good man, and the climate crisis––so I tend to gravitate to ambitious novels focused on how we humans might evolve in a healthy way. My characters do have flaws, many of them, but in the end, they are resilient and figure out a way to take a step forward. All of the books I mentioned are similar in scope and approach.
The Moviegoer was the first novel I read which had little plot and a great deal of meaning. Basically, it’s about one man’s search for meaning in a world which values shallowness and consumerism above all else. It’s as relevant today as it was when written and the prose is amazing!
Winner of the 1962 National Book Award and one of Time magazine’s 100 Best English-Language Novels, Walker Percy’s debut The Moviegoer is an American masterpiece and a classic of Southern literature. Insightful, romantic, and humorous, it is the story of a young man’s search for meaning amid a shallow consumerist landscape.
Binx Bolling, a young New Orleans stockbroker, fills his days with movies and casual sex. His life offers him nothing worth retaining; what he treasures are scenes from The Third Man or Stagecoach, not the personal experiences he knows other people hold dear. On the cusp of turning thirty,…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I have been a pioneer in both the women’s and men’s movement. I was elected three times to the Board of the National Organization for Women in NYC and was called by GQ “The Martin Luther King of the men’s movement”. I advocate for a “Gender Liberation Movement, freeing both sexes from the rigid roles of the past toward more flexible roles for their future”. I realized that boys worldwide are struggling in ways we’ve barely begun to address. I’ve presented my research for The Boy Crisis worldwide, from the White House to the Norwegian Parliament, and it has inspired bipartisan fatherhood legislation in Florida.
I’m recommending this book because it powerfully explains why so many boys today seem unmotivated, disengaged, and struggling to find their way. As I read, I found myself constantly thinking, “Yes, this is exactly what’s happening!” Sax connects the dots between factors like changes in education, video games, and even environmental influences that are leaving boys adrift.
What I love most about this book is how Sax doesn’t just diagnose the problem—he offers real solutions that parents and educators can apply immediately. His insights made me rethink the ways we’re unintentionally holding boys back and gave me a renewed sense of urgency to help them find purpose and direction. If you’re worried about the boys in your life, this book is a must-read.
Something scary is happening to boys today. From kindergarten to college, American boys are, on average, less resilient and less ambitious than they were a mere twenty years ago. The gender gap in college attendance and graduation rates has widened dramatically. While Emily is working hard at school and getting A's, her brother Justin is goofing off. He's more concerned about getting to the next level in his videogame than about finishing his homework. Now, Dr. Leonard Sax delves into the scientific literature and draws on more than twenty years of clinical experience to explain why boys and young men…
From my days as a student in India in the early 1970s through my years in the U.S. Foreign Service with postings in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Kenya, as well as assignments to the India, Kenya, and Uganda desks at the Department of State, I learned something of the cultures of South Asia and East Africa and gained an appreciation for the peoples of those countries. During the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, I had the time to write. I developed a novel that was part autobiography and part fiction, and most of which was set in South Asia and East Africa. The result is Danger and Romance in Foreign Lands.
In the early 1980s, when I lived in Lahore, Pakistan, and served on the board of the Lahore American School—an institution that catered to rich Pakistanis and expats whose commercial companies paid the high tuition—I talked to a fourth-grade class whose Pakistani teacher was a close friend. She alerted me twenty years later that one of those students had just published his first novel, describing the fast life of the affluent and often decadent Pakistanis who lived in mansions, partied till dawn, drank heavily, and engaged, it was rumored, in romantic liaisons with each other’s spouses.
Moth Smoke describes this life, with a main character who falls in love with a friend’s wife while losing his job and turning to the sale of heroin and hashish to survive. Mohsin takes the reader through a bittersweet recounting of life in the fast lane in modern Pakistan, a life I observed for…
The debut novel from the internationally bestselling author of Exit West and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, both shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Moth Smoke, Mohsin Hamid’s deftly conceived first novel, immediately marked him as an uncommonly gifted and ambitious young literary talent to watch when it was published in 2000. It tells the story of Daru Shezad, who, fired from his banking job in Lahore, begins a decline that plummets the length of Hamid’s sharply drawn, subversive tale.
Fast-paced and unexpected, Moth Smoke was ahead of its time in portraying a contemporary Pakistan far more vivid and complex than the…
As a kid I found myself watching cop shows and wondering “These cops seem to be on duty all day and all night. Don’t they have families?” And when I’d read dramas in which characters took lavish vacations and bought expensive cars, I’d think “Doesn’t anyone worry about money?” While I certainly don’t believe that fiction should always strive toward perfect realism (I love fantasy and sci-fi stories!) I do think that adding everyday problems and concerns makes a character much more relatable and interesting. A detective chasing a serial killer is exciting. A detective suffering from an excruciating toothache while chasing a serial killer adds another layer of delicious tension.
I disagreed with almost every action by every character in
this book. I’d find myself saying to them: “Don’t do that!” But
they did
do that. And it kept me reading nonstop.
It’s a strange feeling, to
watch
characters spin out of control, yet be unable to look away. It's also
the mark of terrific storytelling, and writing that I greatly admire.
“Spectacular. . . . Ten shades blacker and several corpses grimmer than the novels of John Grisham. . . . Do yourself a favor. Read this book.” —Entertainment Weekly
Two brothers and their friend stumble upon the wreckage of a plane–the pilot is dead and his duffle bag contains four million dollars in cash. In order to hide, keep, and share the fortune, these ordinary men all agree to a simple plan.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I’ve been writing for a long time and reading even longer. I enjoy intelligent books that are well written—not overwritten or over punctuated—and as we all do both of those, I mean that it’s been well edited. And I understand the struggle which is why four of my five choices are from indie authors like myself.
Winner of the Spotlight First Novel Prize. The first thing to mention is that this is a debut novel. I tend to avoid them, the writing is usually sloppy, and it takes a few books for authors to learn the craft and get a feel for their style and voice.
That is not the case with this book. The writing is excellent. This writing is up there at bestseller standard. I didn’t find a single typo or error in the book, not something I can say for most of the top names. I found half a dozen in the last King book I read. Browne is already at the top of his game. The story is sweet, the central character is an absolute tool, but you can’t help but love him, and you want the book to end well for him. He’s a character to root for.
Winner of the Spotlight First Novel prize, Philip Bowne's debut novel is an explosive coming-of-age odyssey. 18-year-old Billy is desperate to leave home. He's working the ultimate dead-end job as a grave-digger. His Grandad's engaged to a woman half his age, his Dad's become obsessed with boxing, and his Mum's certainly having an affair. Everything is changing, and Billy hates it.
Meeting the older, mysterious Eva, though, changes everything. She's passionate about Russian literature, Gary Numan, windfarms and chai tea, and Billy gambles everything for a chance to be with her. His scramble…
