Here are 100 books that The Will of the Many fans have personally recommended if you like
The Will of the Many.
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I love reading mysteries, ever since I started back in junior high with Hercule Poirot, I have loved an atmospheric murder and ensuing investigation. As I’ve gotten older and started writing my own books, though, I’ve gotten pickier about what kinds of detective novels I can stick with—I now require that they also be excellent on the sentence level, which isn’t always easy to find. I also find that I gravitate towards books that have pockets of dry humor from time to time and a unique investigator.
I am in awe of this book! I think it’s close to perfect, if not perfect. The detective here is Meyer Landsman, who “only has two moods: working and dead.” The novel is set in an alternate history that imagines Sitka, Alaska as a sprawling, Yiddish-speaking metropolis where all the Jews have fled after World War II.
The dead body is a mysterious young drug addict with connections to Sitka’s seedy underbelly. The story is a page-turner, but the sentences are truly incredible. It’s also very funny. I keep returning to this book year after year and every time it blows me away.
The brilliantly original new novel from Michael Chabon, author of THE ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.
What if, as Franklin Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska - and not Israel - had become the homeland for the Jews after the Second World War? In Michael Chabon's Yiddish-speaking 'Alyeska', Orthodox gangs in side-curls and knee breeches roam the streets of Sitka, where Detective Meyer Landsman discovers the corpse of a heroin-addled chess prodigy in the flophouse Meyer calls home. Marionette strings stretch back to the hands of charismatic Rebbe Gold, leader of a sect that seems to have drawn its…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if we could detect psychopaths? Like many of Sawyer’s novels (and there are a bunch I could’ve selected for this list), there is a question and then a lightning strike of answers. Not a single bolt, but many, branching off, colliding, bleaching the night. There is plenty of scientific realism here–a personal must for Sawyer–resulting in a far-reaching yet intimate story.
The title is not ‘Night of the Psychopaths’ because the book’s many forks take us deeper into the nature of the human mind and the quantum arena we all play in, whether we know it or not. Oh, and it is still fun, adventuresome, and easier to read than I may have made it sound with all that deep, introspective stuff.
With such compelling and provocative novels as Red Planet Blues, FlashForward and The WWW Trilogy, Robert J. Sawyer has proven himself to be “a writer of boundless confidence and bold scientific extrapolation” (New York Times). Now, the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author explores the thin line between good and evil that every human being is capable of crossing…
Experimental psychologist Jim Marchuk has developed a flawless technique for identifying the previously undetected psychopaths lurking everywhere in society. But while being cross-examined about his breakthrough in court, Jim is shocked to discover that he has lost his memories of six months…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if extinctions could be traded like carbon? There’s an idea that doesn’t come up too often over dinner. It’s odd, awful, and yet somewhat plausible, as our hyper-capitalistic world keeps thinking it can buy its way out of physics.
Beauman chooses not to hash out the details in the Journal of Political Economy. He chooses to have it read instead. As you should, because I found the novel that fully examines this terrible concept to be terribly interesting, terribly inventive, and terribly funny. Not in a LOL kind of funny (though there are moments) but in the smirking, wry, ‘of course’ realm of humor ruled by the line of succession that runs from Jonathan Swift to George Carlin.
I love jokes that last long enough for you to realize they were so much more than whimsy.
A dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.
The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt. For instance, the biobanks: secure archives of DNA samples, from which lost organisms might someday be resurrected . . . But then, one day, it’s all gone. A mysterious cyber-attack hits every biobank simultaneously, wiping out the last traces of the perished species. Now we’re never…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
Telescopes, microscopes, computer modeling–these exist because some things are easier to study when you change their shape. That’s how we learned about planets, germs, and the economy. Enlarging, shrinking, and filling in details lets us examine and understand. I think literature can do the same thing with ideas. Asking ‘what if?’ lets us probe things we can’t with our gadgets. Concepts. Hypotheticals. A story that pulls a big idea like taffy? That is a treat. I’ve got five in this dish.
What if elevator inspectors had their own influential guild? Not science fiction, not fantasy, and not even alternative history. Just a riveting, delightful, challenging ‘what if’ that does not fit in a box. In a shaft. In a skyscraper. When I first heard about this book, I thought elevator inspection might be, let’s say, resistant to novel-sized interrogation.
To this, I now say, behold the umbrella that fits in the purse or the king-sized mattress that arrives in a toddler-sized box. This book unfolds and puffs up deliberately and warmly, and eventually, you find yourself curled up, reading about the very nature of thought. In a person. In a society. You don’t want to turn out the light and stop.
'A thrilling blend of noir and fantasy.'Guardian. In an unnamed city - a hardboiled pre-Civil Rights New York sort of city -heroine Lila Mae has succeeded in becoming the very first Black female elevator inspector. In Whitehead's darkly comic otherworld, this is a job imbued with an almost mystical significance. But the illustrious Department of Elevator Inspectors is in crisis, bitterly divided between the Empiricists (check the machinery) and the Intuitionists (tune in to the vibes). Lila is an Intuitionist and so much better at her job than anyone else that surely it must be those 'good-old-boy' Empiricists who have…
I’ve always loved books, movies, and shows that feature swoony, satisfying romances. As a middle school teacher and upper middle-grade author, I know it can be tricky to find novels with romance for the middle-grade set. But I also know firsthand that there are many kids who crave these kinds of stories–and that there are major benefits to giving kids a chance to read and hopefully talk about crushes and relationships in all their complexity. I’m always on the lookout for realistic stories with just the right amount of romance to delight middle-grade readers, and these five are some of my favorites.
It isn’t easy to find middle-grade rom-coms, but this book checks all the boxes!
I love the concept–an intensely driven eighth grader who scorns the idea of romance and finds out she’s a Cupid–and Nashae Jones delivers with a laugh-out-loud enemies-to-crushes tale. A bit of magic and plenty of hilarious shenanigans make this one a winner.
In this funny and romantic story sprinkled with a dash of magic, a thirteen-year-old girl uses her newfound ability to make people fall in love to sabotage her rival.
Erin Johnson’s thirteenth birthday unfolds like any other day, from her mom’s quirky and embarrassing choice of outfit to racing her nemesis, Trevor Jin, to the best seat in class—front row, center. But her gifts this year include something very out of the ordinary: magical powers.
Erin discovers her mysterious father is actually the love god Cupid and she’s inherited his knack for romance. It’s not the most useful ability for…
Have you noticed the scarcity of YA novels told solely from a guy’s point of view? If you aren’t a boy, the parent of one, or maybe a savvy librarian, you probably haven’t. I’m two out of three. I have two awesome sons. They’re avid readers and burned through the YA section and into adult fantasy and sci-fi long before I was ready for them to. Boys read! There’s a need for protagonists who identify as male. No surprise, my YA novels often feature ordinary boys doing heroic things. Thanks to years of spying on my sons and their friends, I have plenty of fodder to feed my muse.
I love an urban fantasy brimming with music, magic, deadly secrets, and unimaginable power.
High school junior Mateo’s life revolves around the piano. He’s a musical prodigy who completely underestimates his potential as a demon-fighting, curse-breaking hero.
His humor and yearning to find himself hooked me from the beginning. I loved his exotic diaspora community with its quirky, endearing-to-dangerous denizens. None of his neighbors bat an eye at him living with his two doting aunts, one alive, one dead.
It made me want to fly to New York, comb Brooklyn in search of Mateo’s neighborhood, and join the party!
Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents Daniel José Older's extraordinary YA urban fantasy about two teens who discover each other while fighting for their diaspora community.
Almost sixteen years ago, Mateo Matisse's island homeland disappeared into the sea. Weary and hopeless, the survivors of San Madrigal's sinking escaped to New York.
While the rest of his tight-knit Brooklyn diaspora community dreams of someday finding a way back home, Mateo--now a high school junior and piano prodigy living with his two aunts (one who's alive, the other not so much)--is focused on one thing: getting the attention of locally-grown musical legend Gerval.…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Growing up, I've always been attracted to the fantasy genre; I've been obsessed ever since my teacher introduced me to it in the first grade. What started as innocent fairy books evolved to dark, spicy fantasy romance/romantasy. Now, in addition to staying up way past my bedtime reading, I'm a teenage author of my own YA fantasy romance book, Masks of Faded Dreams. This genre has truly changed my life. As cliche as that sounds, it's true; it's both my form of escapism and an eye-opening experience into worlds I'd never known existed.
One day, I was simply scrolling on TikTok…though my life was changed when I stumbled across one of Lauren’s TikToks. She shared her writing journey, and I was immediately hooked.
This book is everything I could’ve wished for in a fantasy romance and so much more. I’ll admit my expectations weren’t that high, but wow, was I blown away. The writing was easy to get into and flowed nicely, the characters were the type to stick with you long after you finished, and it included some of my favorite tropes: "Who did this to you?", royalty, forbidden love, and a fierce assassin who stops at nothing to avenge her family.
Overall, it was such an inspiring and addicting read.
'Nothing short of epic' Rosie Talbot, bestselling author of Sixteen Souls 'A thrilling fantasy with the most delicious slow-burn romance' M.A. Kuzniar, bestselling author of Midnight in Everwood '[A] titillating debut' Publishers Weekly 'A masterpiece' Goodreads Reader Review 'Everyone needs to read it' TikTok Review 'The BEST book I've read' NetGalley Reader Review 'A sizzling slice of fantasy romance' Booksellers Review
Fourth Wing meets The Hunger Games in this epic and sizzling fantasy romance not to be missed.
Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya . . . The exceptional. The Elites.…
As someone who was both a funny kid and a lover of superheroes, it was
always exciting to find a book where those two things crossed paths.
In the young readers' books I’ve written for Marvel and DC Comics, I
always try to inject humor where I can. Humor can be healing. If I
couldn’t laugh, especially about things that have caused me pain, I
don’t know that I would be around today. I love books about funny,
sensitive kids with big hearts. The world is a cold place sometimes,
but whenever I see a young person making positive change and having
fun along the way, it reminds me that anything is possible.
I’m a huge fan of the rivalry between Superman and Lex Luthor, so I was excited to check out this new story set during their middle school years–possibly the most dramatic time in a kid’s life.
This Clark is a little spicy, which I enjoyed. I like that he doesn’t always make good choices. In Lex, he finds a brainy outsider searching for a confidant. Brendan Reichs gives us a friendship between boys that feels honest, and Jerry Gaylord’s delightfully expressive art captures their emotions nicely.
There were laughs but also a simmering tension that kept my attention, especially as it related to a little lie that became a big problem. This story is a nice reminder that heroes and villains aren’t born; they’re made.
Being the only kid with powers is tough not being able to use them is even worse! Struggling with understanding why his parents demand he hide his amazing superpowers, Clark has no problem using a bit of super-speed or super-strength to give himself that extra edge as quarterback of the football team or while doing his chores around the farm. And when LuthorCorp holds a competition to find the best and brightest for a summer internship in Metropolis, Clark has no problem using his X-ray vision to cheat his way in if it means getting out of Smallville. Amazingly, Clark…
Coming-of-age stories fascinate me because they are all so different. While we each experience many of the same events, each person’s story is unique. I like to read about how they first understood love or how they met their best friend. I like to try on their life for a bit, walk around in their shoes, and then return to my reality with the person I’ve worked so hard to become. The more I read other people’s stories of growing up, the more I feel we all harbor the same worries about ourselves and our future. We all struggle with similar problems while becoming who we’re meant to be.
I relate so much to how Alina initially feels about the claim that she’s the sun summoner. How can I be special? I’m no one. And her connection to Mal is so intense. It reminds me of my connection to my childhood friend, who was my everything.
When we were separated, I was so unsettled. I wrote letters constantly, just like Alina, and I doubted we would ever be together again. When Alina takes control of her powers, I understand her reluctance to embrace her new life and her resistance to becoming a Grisha. After all, why would any of that matter if she couldn’t be with Mal anymore?
See the Grishaverse come to life on screen with Shadow and Bone, now a Netflix series.
Enter the Grishaverse with Book One of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold—a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.
Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
As a mom who loves to read (and write!), I’ve always hoped and prayed my kids would fall in love with reading, too. That said, I’ve always been careful not to force them into it, not to somehow make them feel like my hobbies had to be theirs. When my twelve-year-old devoured Harry Potter in mere weeks, I was practically ecstatic. And when I heard her tell her brothers at the height of the pandemic, “Books get you out of the house and let you go somewhere new,” I knew that they’d become for her what they’ve always been for me: a window to another world.
I’ll be honest and admit that I gave up on this series after the second or third book, and yet I strongly suspected that my daughter would enjoy them—and she absolutely did. She loves the elvish cities and how keenly they’re described, and the idea that they’re here, somehow hidden on our world, captured her imagination. Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you that Keefe is hilarious.
A New York Times bestselling series A USA TODAY bestselling series A California Young Reader Medal-winning series
In this riveting series opener, a telepathic girl must figure out why she is the key to her brand-new world before the wrong person finds the answer first.
Twelve-year-old Sophie has never quite fit into her life. She's skipped multiple grades and doesn't really connect with the older kids at school, but she's not comfortable with her family, either. The reason? Sophie's a Telepath, someone who can read minds. No one knows her secret-at least, that's what she thinks...
