Here are 100 books that The Witch of Matonge fans have personally recommended if you like
The Witch of Matonge.
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I was born and grew up in Seoul. My bestselling debut novel has been longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. My book is inspired by my great-aunt, one of the oldest women who had escaped alone from North Korea. It is available from Harper Perennial in the U.S. and Virago in the UK. The novel’s translations continue to meet readers worldwide, including in Italy, Romania, Greece, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, and South Korea.
Eileen is one of the most twisted and unconventional literary heroines I’ve ever read. Behind her quiet demeanor and dull face hides her mind, which is like a killer’s, always furious and seething.
While working at a juvenile correctional facility, Eileen meets Rebecca, another key character far removed from most women of their generation. Seductive and deceitful, Rebecca cajoles Eileen into joining her act of crime–a violent, underhanded plan to restore her idea of justice.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
Murder mysteries, thrillers, whodunnits, all in the context of the "Indian," or Native American, experience, that's my subject. But really I'm writing about family and friends. Love letters to a people and life. My mother's father was native, and I lived and worked near and on two reservations growing up, White Earth and Red Lake. My novel, for example, was written out of my experience of being a hunting/fishing guide for Sabaskong Bay Lodge. My current work, about the Indian Boarding School genocide, has been inspired by first-person witness to that atrocity.
Subversive, edifying, and laugh-out-loud funny, Yeatman’s satirical novel follows Victoria, a woman in a failing marriage, from her initial fantasies of dispatching her clueless husband to the act itself. And no less employing the necessary help of her too-sweet and clueless gal-pal, Holly.
A book about a bookworm, Victoria, it contains countless Easter Eggs and riffs on some of the greats while spinning out a wholly engaging and, by all means, original and captivating story.
“Imagine if Patricia Highsmith had written The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and instead of heroic daydreams she gave her protagonist murderous ones—that would be Bookworm. Robin Yeatman’s story is subversive, surprising, and satisfying in a way that only the best comic noir can be.”—Claire Oshetsky, author of Chouette
A wickedly funny debut novel—a black comedy with a generous heart that explores the power of imagination and reading—about a woman who tries to use fiction to find her way to happiness.
Victoria is unhappily married to an ambitious and controlling lawyer consumed with his career. Burdened with overbearing in-laws, a…
Murder mysteries, thrillers, whodunnits, all in the context of the "Indian," or Native American, experience, that's my subject. But really I'm writing about family and friends. Love letters to a people and life. My mother's father was native, and I lived and worked near and on two reservations growing up, White Earth and Red Lake. My novel, for example, was written out of my experience of being a hunting/fishing guide for Sabaskong Bay Lodge. My current work, about the Indian Boarding School genocide, has been inspired by first-person witness to that atrocity.
A sensation in France and elsewhere in Europe, David Vann is a writer of brutally unsparing narratives. This book, one of his best, surprises, shocks, and horrifies—and sometimes amuses, too—and all at once.
It is a story about a family on what should be nothing more than a hunting trip. Only after a senseless murder, it becomes a meditation on the power of myth. The story is as real as real gets, though it’s far larger than that. It becomes the stuff of revelatory—and prophetic—nightmares. It’s a big dark dream of a book, unforgettable.
A shocking, suspenseful and daring new novel from one of the greatest American writers at work today, whose previous books include Caribou Island, Dirt and Legend of a Suicide.
In David Vann's searing novel Goat Mountain, an eleven-year-old boy is eager to make his first kill at his family's annual deer hunt. But all is not as it should be. His father discovers a poacher on the land, a 640-acre ranch in Northern California, and shows him to the boy through the scope of his rifle. With this simple gesture, tragedy erupts, shattering lives irrevocably.
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
Murder mysteries, thrillers, whodunnits, all in the context of the "Indian," or Native American, experience, that's my subject. But really I'm writing about family and friends. Love letters to a people and life. My mother's father was native, and I lived and worked near and on two reservations growing up, White Earth and Red Lake. My novel, for example, was written out of my experience of being a hunting/fishing guide for Sabaskong Bay Lodge. My current work, about the Indian Boarding School genocide, has been inspired by first-person witness to that atrocity.
This book is a compelling and, at times, shockingly revealing story of a love that cannot be, should not be, but is.
Seventeen-year-old Mari, after an altercation at the hotel where she works, becomes involved with the perpetrator of it, a much older man of, to all but Mari, unacceptable morals. Through its unsparingly graphic depiction of the lovers’ sometimes extreme but mutual intimacies, Ogawa’s novel navigates the rarely explored region between violence and impassioned love.
A tale of twisted love from Yoko Ogawa―author of The Diving Pool and The Housekeeper and the Professor.
In a crumbling seaside hotel on the coast of Japan, quiet seventeen-year-old Mari works the front desk as her mother tends to the off-season customers. When one night they are forced to expel a middle-aged man and a prostitute from their room, Mari finds herself drawn to the man's voice, in what will become the first gesture of a single long seduction. In spite of her provincial surroundings, and her cool but controlling mother, Mari is a sophisticated observer of human desire,…
The most important formative experiences of my life were contained in the years I spent living and traveling with Brenin, a wolfdog. I can safely say that just about every worthwhile idea I have had – I am a professor of philosophy and ideas are supposed to be my thing – stemmed from those years. I have written many books since Brenin died, all of them, in one way or another, concerned with the question of what it is to be human. I am convinced that we can only understand this if we begin with the idea that we are animals and work from there.
Commonly thought to be about death, and our fear thereof, what I find most striking about this book is its piercing and utterly haunting analysis of the role of memories in making us who we are. The most important memories are the ones that are lost, and then return in a new form, deeply woven into our bodies, emotions, and feelings – as blood, as glance and gesture, as Rilke puts it. Rilke was a poet; this was his only excursion into the art form of the novel. So, the book falls apart after a while. But if anyone has written anything better than the first fifty pages or so, I am unacquainted with it.
First published in 1910, Rilke's "Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" is one the first great modernist novels, the account of poet-aspirant Brigge in his exploration of poetic individuality and his reflections on the experience of time as death approaches. This new translation by Burton Pike is a reaction to overly stylized previous translations, and aims to capture not only the beauty but also the strangeness, the spirit, of Rilke's German.
I'm an author of more than twenty Christian fiction books. I write true romantic suspense with equal parts engaging romance and thrilling suspense. My debut novel was a semi-finalist in the Genesis contest, and many of my subsequent titles have reached bestseller status. I engage with readers through my blog, which is recognized as a top 25 Christian fiction blog on Feedspot, and my Facebook group, "Heartbeats and Hideaways."
I loved this book by Robin Patchen for its fast-paced action and compelling love story. The suspense grabbed me right from the start when the heroine fled Paris with her newborn, escaping her dangerous husband, a complex and well-developed villain if ever there was one.
The plot kept me on the edge of my seat as the heroine navigated the threats from her husband's crime family while seeking refuge in her childhood home. The reappearance of her first love added an emotional depth that enriched the story.
Patchen’s skillful writing and well-crafted characters made this book impossible to put down. Convenient Lies is a thrilling read that perfectly combines suspense and romance.
From a USA Today Bestselling novelist comes this edge-of-your-seat Christian romantic suspense story that'll keep you turning the pages all night long.
She married her enemy…
When investigative journalist Reagan McAdams discovers her new husband is part of an international crime family, she flees Paris with their newborn and returns to her childhood home in New Hampshire to gather enough money to disappear forever. She’ll do whatever it takes to protect her son from his criminal father.
He never quit loving her.
Rae’s first love, Brady Thomas, discovers she’s home and in trouble. She won't tell him what's going on,…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
In my late high school years and during college I was confronted with a question that has dogged many artists over the years who are in the church: should a Christian be in the arts or not? As it turns out, the first person to be described as filled by the Spirit in the Bible was an artist. I had to wait until my college years to find that out by reading Francis Schaeffer’s book Art and the Bible. This and Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water gave me a theology that valued art. Now I'm a full-time artist and curate a small art gallery, but I've never stopped looking for good books on Art and Faith.
What if creativity was not a talent given to a chosen few, but an invitation extended to us all? What if the desire for beauty was not gratuitous in life, but central to our faith? Drawing upon the biblical account of Creation and the witness of a myriad of creative thinkers, this book asserts that all of us—from plumbers to painters and meteorologists to musicians—were made in the image of an imaginative God. In that light, Naming the Animals encourages us to see creativity as an essential part of God’s design for partnership with humanity. This is a great introduction to the Art and Faith conversation.
A brief invitation to all people to live creative lives. Stephen Roach is host of the Makers and Mystics podcast and founder of The Breath & the Clay creative arts movement takes the reader back to the initial creative acts of God at Creation and explores the implications of Adam naming the animals, drawing out applications on how that merciful gift informs creative acts today of all kinds.
I am a french writer, I like to write satires and tongue-in-cheek books about society. Work, children, France, social classes... When you find the right angle almost everything can be funny. With my writing I want to entertain, but give the reader something to think about. I hope this list will make you laugh as much I did.
A. J. Jacobs, a journalist, decides to read the Bible and try to follow it literally for a whole year, to the point of eating locusts, throwing small pebbles at couples he suspects of adultery, slaying idolatry, and speaking the naked truth… Struggling to follow archaic rules, he lives a disconcerting experience under the perplexed eyes of his family and becomes quickly out of step with the present time. The Year of Living Biblically depicts a clash of worlds with a caustic humor and I’ve burst out laughing a couple of times. I recommend it to believers and non-believers, both will be amused by this witty book that gives us food for thought.
From the bestselling author of The Know-It-All comes a fascinating and timely exploration of religion and the Bible.
Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.
For four decades, I have written about art for publications in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. I have interviewed, among other artists, Frank Stella, Mary Ellen Mark, Dale Chihuly, Deng Lin (the daughter of Deng Xiaoping), the most celebrated Vietnamese contemporary painters, and the leading Japanese ceramicists. My ideal vacation is to wander the cobblestone streets of Italy, walking into a church to see the art of Caravaggio, Raphael, and Bernini. On a trip to Venice, I saw the immense illusionist ceiling painting by Giovanni Fumiani in the church of San Pantalon. Looking up at angels swirling in heaven, the idea for my second novel was born.
I have never been able to look at Renaissance paintings of the Madonna and child the same after reading this brilliant and controversial book. I promise your eyes will be opened as well. These paintings were not simple religious decoration. Christ’s genitalia, exposed or covered, was a visible element in theological arguments in the Renaissance about the humanity of Christ. In our secular world, Steinberg argues, we have lost sight of the sexual component of these images. Steinberg’s breadth of learning is astounding, and the extensive footnotes are as stimulating as the text.
Steinberg argues in this work that the artists regarded the deliberate exposure of Christ's genitalia as an affirmation of kinship with the human condition. Christ's lifelong virginity, understood as potency under check, and the first offer of blood in the circumcision, both required acknowledgment of the genital organ. More than exercises in realism, these unabashed images underscore the crucial theological import of the Incarnation.
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I’m the founder of PreachersNSneakers, a network of social media accounts and books of the same title, which looks to get others to question the state of the modern church and our obsession with wealth, entertainment and fame. Going through the process of curating the accounts and writing the book has helped me develop expertise on mega churches, celebrity pastors, social media and the prosperity gospel. My goal is to get all people to laugh, think and live more authentically.
This book was perspective shifting for me because it brings together four experts on the bible and contrasts their very different views on one of the most important topics of our faith, eternity. As someone that grew up never thinking critically about hell, this book made me realize that there were still a lot of elements of my faith that I needed to investigate.
Recent years have seen much controversy regarding a unified Christian doctrine of hell: Do we go to heaven or hell when we die? Or do we cease to exist? Are believers and unbelievers ultimately saved by grace in the end?
By focusing on recent theological arguments, Four Views on Hell: Second Edition highlights why the church still needs to wrestle with the doctrine of hell.
In the fair-minded and engaging Counterpoints format, four leading scholars introduce us to the current views on eternal judgment, with particular attention given to the new voices that have entered the debate.
