77 Books Like The Secret Life of Houdini

I find great pleasure in learning a little bit about a lot of things, and this book scratches that itch in a great way. Touring through big scientific concepts, Bryson delivers the potentially overwhelming (and boring) information in a fun way that made me understand space-time way more than any middle school physics class did.

It’s not a book that needs to be read in order or even be read in its entirety to enjoy, so it’s fun to have around to pick up a chapter here and there or read it straight through. The other day I went back and referred to it while having a conversation about space time and found an explanation that we both understood—and enjoyed. 

This book has been a timeless source of wisdom for me. I love how Sun Tzu's insights on strategy, leadership, and adaptability transcend time and are incredibly applicable to modern business challenges.

This book has profoundly influenced how I approach competition and strategic planning in AI and technology sectors. It reminds me that understanding the landscape and being flexible is key to success.

What can you really say about this one—besides the obvious: it’s perfect. 

Chuck Palahniuk isn’t like the rest of us. He’s sharper, more cynical, funnier, more original. Calling myself a writer in his presence would be like hanging a finger-painting at the Louvre.

Fight Club digs straight into the restless undercurrent of modern life—that gnawing sense that comfort, convenience, and consumerism have carved a hollow right through your chest. We’re one Amazon delivery away from losing whatever’s left of our humanity. Or our masculinity. It reminds me of that line in Jurassic Park: “A T-rex doesn’t want to be fed, he wants to hunt.” More applicable to us now than we’d like to admit.

I love this book because it doesn’t let up where others might. It doesn’t edit its message to fit some form of Overton window. It laughs in your face while stripping everything down to bone. Less… show more.

I instinctively gravitate toward characters stricken with identity issues. It's one of the reasons I've spent years specialising in writing comics, where alternate personae and false realities are fundamental storytelling tools. Growing up, I first read the story of Robinson in a conjuring book, and it caught my imagination fiercely. Like Houdini, Robinson's commitment to maintaining his performance identity was full-blooded—to the point that the myths surrounding his death have virtually swallowed the story of his life. Steinmeyer navigates a complex tale of dual identities with the ease of a seasoned magician. Chung Ling Soo, one of the world's greatest vaudeville stars, died on stage in 1918 when a bullet catch trick went tragically wrong. William Robinson, however, had been fading away for many years by then.

As a model unreliable narrator, you couldn't pick a more disarming armed robber than Mark "Chopper" Read. He described his pseudo-autobiographical book series as "the truth, the half-truth and nothing like the truth," which may be the most honest statement he ever made. None of this is to suggest that Read wasn't every inch the ultra-violent toecutter he sketches out in his writing. It's just that every word in Chopper is working toward the same goal: building a larger-than-life self-caricature to outshine and outlast the man himself. The cover quote boldly declares, "I regret nothing." The final line of the book admits, "I regret everything." Chopper Read lived and died within that contradiction, and his story's all the more mesmerising for its gunsmoke and mirrors.

This book, for me, stands alongside The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a necessary stepping stone toward all modern 'dark double' fiction. I actually first encountered the book via one of its looser adaptations, The Man Who Haunted Himself, starring Roger Moore. I must have seen that some time in the 70s, and it stuck with me across five decades without losing its core power. The Armstrong original, written in 1940 then expanded later, is still a legitimately creepy tale, particularly in terms of the questions it refuses to answer. Watching Pelham's slow-motion collapse into paranoia and chaos is a genuinely uneasy experience, like seeing The Picture of Dorian Gray through the eyes of the portrait itself.

Blink is a book about how you already know what you don’t know. Malcolm Gladwell breaks down how our instincts and “gut feeling” are always emotional reactions. Those instincts are based on past experiences and knowledge built over time. However, these instincts, whether they are acted upon or not, can be extremely valid even though we have trouble articulating it more than a “sixth sense.”  

Explaining how these instincts are developed and (more importantly) learning how to break them down in a way to communicate them in a meaningful way is how many leaders develop emotional intelligence and business acumen. 

Deep Economy takes both macro- and micro-economics and breaks them down to their most simplest levels. Examining what we have learned over time from our expanding economy, McKibben examines all of the positive and negative impacts that have occurred during our country’s growth.

With a focus on understanding how groundbreaking innovations can disrupt numerous industries, Deep Economy takes the approach on what leaders can learn from the past and how breakthroughs can (and will) have unintended consequences whether they are positive or negative. Recognizing these patterns and incorporating them into our business decisions can only help us make better decisions.

Charles Joseph Carter, known as Carter the Great, was a real American magician whose career started in the late 1800s when he was just ten.

This book, which I’ve loved enough to read three times, takes place later in his career and postulates that one of the things he did (pure fiction) was to have President Warren G. Harding join him on stage and be cut into pieces, have his head sawed off, and then be restored to health. And then, shortly thereafter, Harding is dead. I am not going to give away the rest of the story because it’s way too good to spoil in any way.

Read it and enjoy historical fiction mystery at what I think is its finest.

This absolutely delightful duology from one of my absolute favorite authors is totally worth the read.

She has other series that I believe are more popular, but this particular book has a great mystery plot and memorable characters set against a Regency fantasy background.

If Jane Austen co-wrote a book with Agatha Christie (and added magic), they may have come up with A Matter of Magic.

One thing I really love about this book is the relationship between the two main characters, Kim and Mairelon. The progression of their relationship is fun, funny, and very real.

This is a book I tend to reread every year, that’s how much I love it!