Books like The Solitude of Thomas Cave — picked by fans

I shared a love of ghost stories with my mother and we often recommended them to each other.

But Mum had a thing for ghost stories set in the Arctic winter, with its killing cold and six months of darkness. She reckoned that, as a setting for ghostly goings-on, it couldn’t be beaten.

I wish I could still give her a copy of Dark Matter. She would have read it in a sitting. A wonderful evocation of the disturbing power of darkness, cold, and isolation.

Like Brockmeier’s book, this book is in my top-five all-time novels. I can fall in love with a novel purely for its language, and Barrett’s ability to describe the settings her characters encounter is unparalleled. It, too, has a rare polar setting, this time aboard the ship the Narwhal bound for the Arctic in 1855 to find the remains of a previous, lost expedition. So visceral are her descriptions that they put me right back in the Arctic.

She’s also masterful at interleaving science and history with her characters’ desires without becoming didactic. One of her protagonists, the scholar-naturalist Erasmus Darwin Wells, screens the world and his philosophical musings through the lens of his scientific inclinations. I admire novels that manage to teach me something while not feeling as if the author is desperate to cram all the research s/he has acquired into the book. Barrett succeeds in avoiding this… show more.

I’d rank this novel in my top five of all time, not just as a great survival story.

This book is a post-apocalyptic fantasy novel set partly in Antarctica, a meditation on human existence, and a page-turner with keen attention to beautiful writing. Its characters grapple with essential, existential questions such as: How are we connected to the world? What happens when those last connections are broken? What is the nature of loneliness, of love? Is survival alone enough reason for living? 

I’ve read this novel several times, and though I know the arc of the story and the fate of its characters, I come away each time with insights into what it means to be alive. A bonus: it’s one of the few novels I know of set in Antarctica. 

I’m obsessed with the story of S. A. Andrée and his ill-fated attempt to sail over the North Pole in the balloon Eagle in 1897. My bookshelf is jammed with non-fictional accounts of this flight—and the tragedy that befell the three men aboard.

Because much is unknown about exactly what happened to these men, Sundman created this fictional story of the flight, from its takeoff on Danes Island on the western side of Svalbard to the balloon’s crash onto the ice near the North Pole to the men’s perilous journey over ice ending on Kvitøya (White Island) on the eastern side of Svalbard. Doubly tragic: they were so painfully close to salvation but unable to cross the sea to a more hospitable landing site on Svalbard.

I’m also incredibly curious about why explorers risk their lives for uncertain gain. This novel helps reveal the daring but also narcissistic motivations of… show more.

Teens, monsters, mind control, conspiracies. Dashner’s YA book packs a punch and forms a fantastic conclusion to the Maze Runner trilogy. I personally loved that while the world’s biggest crisis is a zombie outbreak, the character’s struggle for survival began at a far more basic level – the teens’ need to know what lies beyond their clinical artificial reality.  

Each character is faced with enemies from without – monster and man, but they also need to come to terms with themselves. Do they embrace the old shadow of their former selves? Or do they find out who they can become in a new more dangerous world? Each character is faced with a myriad of moral dilemmas that outweigh the threat of the monsters created by the flare, and it makes for a fantastic read.

I was intrigued by this book from the first page when Boy wakes up all alone on an island with no memory of who he is or how he got there. From there, Boy must piece together his identity while figuring out how to escape from the island and get back home – wherever that may be. The tone of the story is unsettling and mysterious, leading to a conclusion that is surprising, heartbreaking, and rewarding.

I first heard of The Disaster Diaries from an interview with author Sam Sheridan. While not a book strictly related to a grid failure, it was still about disaster and surviving the breakdown of societal norms. 

What was so amazing about the book—and something that endeared the author to me, was his humility regarding his own lack of preparedness. Here was a man who had been an EMT, a mixed martial arts fighter, a fire-fighter, and a cowboy, and yet he still didn’t feel prepared enough to survive a disaster!

What follows is a unique journey as he learns stunt driving, knife fighting, even how to steal a car, all to help him prepare for “The Big One.” 

A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes of The Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I read Mr. Burns and saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.

Purists might raise their brows at seeing this series included, but I would argue this manga is so deeply queer-coded it could not be omitted. Following a horrific epidemic, vampires rise from the shadows to enslave the remains of humanity. Reckless and stubborn, Yuichiro has made a home with his fellow orphans, led by sensitive and intelligent Mikaela. When their daring escape from the vampires ends in disaster, Yuichiro's dream of ridding the world of vampires is kept alive at a devastating price. The dynamic between Yu and Mika is perfectly balanced, infused with yearning almosts and bittersweet if-onlys. At the heart of the series, you’ll find a fierce determination to protect one’s chosen family, and an unapologetic commitment to sacrifice everything – even humanity – for the sake of love. 

The new version of Maximum Ride is fantastic!! I ate this book up in one weekend. I haven't read like this since I read the Maximum Ride series. I think there were some parallels drawn from real life into the book. With everything over the last few years, a lot of things seem hopeless and lost, just like in Hawk. I can’t wait for the next book!