Here are 66 books that Those Who Knew fans have personally recommended if you like
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I grew up in Uganda and Kenya, and when I moved to the United States, I felt separated from myself. Learning how to be American was exhausting and so I disappeared into books. I’m now more settled, but I still travel through fiction. These days, I am reading fiction by African women. You should be, too! There is so much stunning literature out there. These five books are just the beginning, but they are novels I can’t stop thinking about.
What does environmental racism look like? ReadHow Beautiful We Wereby Imobolo Mbue for a vital, searing answer. An American oil company is destroying the land and water of the fictional village of Kosawa. Children are dying. The company does this because they can, spouting only empty words about restitution. The novel narrates the village’s fight back, using alternating points of view to electric, pulsing effect.
'Sweeping and quietly devastating' New York Times 'A David and Goliath story for our times' O, the Oprah Magazine
Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made - and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price - one which generation after generation…
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…
As much as I enjoy traveling to real places in fiction, I find that authors who ask me to inhabit a world of their own making make me think more deeply, and these are also the novels I dream about when I’m not actually reading them, the pages I cannot wait to return to when I can pick up the book again. By exiting the world we inhabit, and occupying a world very much like our own, I end up reflecting more thoughtfully about the contemporary moment, and in a way, feel more connected. I tried to create such a world in The Stranger Game, and this is something I hope to do again in a future novel.
In conjuring a nation's refugees and writing in his typically austere style, the South African Nobelist JM Coetzee asks us to reflect on our current world with all of its harsh and maddening disparities. In three novels, Coetzee tells a fable-like story of one charismatic boy who can never be understood, never followed, never appreciated fully for his wisdom. Coetzee’s distillation of everyday suffering is haunting, yet ultimately cathartic.
From the Nobel Prize-winning author of Waiting for the Barbarians, The Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace.
Nobel laureate and two-time Booker Prize winner J. M. Coetzee returns with a haunting and surprising novel about childhood and destiny that is sure to rank with his classic novels.
Separated from his mother as a passenger on a boat bound for a new land, David is a boy who is quite literally adrift. The piece of paper explaining his situation is lost, but a fellow passenger, Simon, vows to look after the boy. When the boat docks, David and Simon…
As a creative writer, I think it is important for me to put myself into the bodies and minds of people, unlike myself, and imagine how they move about in the world. In my book, I write about Blind Tom, a person from the nineteenth century who has little in common with me. However, there are some affinities and connections between Tom and myself. Although I am not blind, I suffer from a disability. Also, I like writing about music and musicians. I chose to write about Tom in part because he was a great musician who has never received the proper credit he deserves from musicologists and historians.
I like this disturbing novel written by a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It was also adapted into a fine feature film with a stellar cast of actors. The book is a study of darkness as the driving force of human nature. Be prepared: this is not an easy read. I can tell you that you will find many unsettling scenes in the book. I think anyone who enjoys dystopian novels will like this book.
No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order.
Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe's greatest writers.
A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind. An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks. It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs. And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society…
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…
As much as I enjoy traveling to real places in fiction, I find that authors who ask me to inhabit a world of their own making make me think more deeply, and these are also the novels I dream about when I’m not actually reading them, the pages I cannot wait to return to when I can pick up the book again. By exiting the world we inhabit, and occupying a world very much like our own, I end up reflecting more thoughtfully about the contemporary moment, and in a way, feel more connected. I tried to create such a world in The Stranger Game, and this is something I hope to do again in a future novel.
Anyone who reads one Peter Cameron book will read them all. In his latest novel, a married couple ends up at a grand hotel in a strange European country of fading glory, amid guests who are both eccentric and troubling. At times it’s hard to know whether what is happening is really happening; at times it’s all too acid and real. I hesitate to call this book a comedy, because it’s unsettling. But it’s also magical and memorable, and you won’t want to check out and depart its pages.
A couple find themselves at a fading, grand European hotel full of eccentric and sometimes unsettling patrons in this "faultlessly elegant and quietly menacing" allegorical story that examines the significance of shifting desires and the uncertainty of reality (Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness).
An unnamed American couple travels to a strange, snowy European city to adopt a baby. It’s a difficult journey that leaves the wife, who is struggling with cancer, desperately weak, and her husband worries that her illness will prevent the orphanage from releasing their child.
On arrival, the couple checks into the cavernous and eerily deserted Borgarfjaroasysla…
I am a lifelong fan of all things post-apocalyptic. Books, movies, television, games – I have enjoyed all of it. I knew I wanted to write post-apocalyptic fiction before I was ten years old. I had to wait almost three decades before life gave me the opportunity to do it. I’ve always been fascinated by the many different ways people can survive these kinds of catastrophes. As dark and visceral as the genre can sometimes be, I will always look for the elements of hope.
This might be the ultimate post-apocalyptic road trip. I enjoyed the fast pacing and irreverent humor. The urgency of the task at hand is there from start to finish. I liked the plot and the pacing. This story made me appreciate the lighter side of the genre. Even though the world has gone to pot, people are still people, and fun is part of the human experience.
Hell Tanner isn't the sort of guy you'd mistake for a hero: he's a fast-driving car thief, a smuggler, and a stone-cold killer. Facing life in prison for his various crimes, he's given a choice: Rot away his remaining years in a tiny jail cell, or drive cross-country and deliver a case of antiserum to the plague-ridden people of Boston, Massachusetts. The chance of a full pardon does wonders for getting his attention. And don't mistake this mission of mercy for any kind of normal road trip-not when there are radioactive storms, hordes of carnivorous beasts, and giant, mutated scorpions…
In my own writing, the setting always is an important backdrop to the novel. Sometimes, it is the element that drives the plot forward. The seedy nature of Atlantic City, where most of my first mystery takes place, is essential to the story. I want my readers to be able to feel that they are witnessing a scene first-hand, whether on the Boardwalk, in a pawn shop on Atlantic Avenue, or in Damien’s favourite hangout. I also want them to identify with the characters. To root for the good guy in spite of his flaws–or for the bad guy if that is their preference.
Keyes was a journalist (she died in 1970), and her background informed every novel she wrote.
Joy Street is set primarily in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s. At the time I read this book, I had never been to Boston. When I finally visited that city several years later, her descriptions of the area in and around Beacon Hill still were so vivid in my mind that I felt as though I already knew the neighbourhood intimately.
Keyes had an equally deft hand with character development and plot. Joy Street is a book populated with characters that seem real and a story that moves forward at a satisfying pace.
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…
Whenever I take on a new short story project, I read other writers to admire them, study them, and be inspired by them; it’s like talking with old friends. These five books took me through the heart and soul of what it is to be or to have a mother, to be or to have children, to love or to lose love, to maintain the rituals and magic of family or let them go. Although I believe men can write female characters and women can write males, I really appreciate the fine-tuned ear for the nuances of motherhood, womanhood, and relationships I find in collections written by women about women.
McCracken was a librarian at my local library before she was a New York Times bestseller, so I’ve always eagerly read her books, beginning with The Giant’s House. I love Thunderstruckbecause it’s typical McCracken – unique, funny, tragic, and smart. In spite of the fact that accidents and death are ubiquitous, that wounds don’t magically heal, and that grief haunts many of the stories, this is not a maudlin book. McCracken can make you laugh out loud. Irony, wry humor, and joy live right next to cruel tragedy throughout the book. Best of all, compassion and tenderness abound.
WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NEWSDAY
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Miami Herald • Publishers Weekly • Kirkus Reviews
Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader’s Circle for author chats and more.
From the author of the beloved novel The Giant’s House—finalist for the National Book Award—comes a beautiful new story collection, her first in twenty years. Laced through…
I was born and raised in Minnesota, and attended college in Illinois, and even though I’ve spent the last two decades in California, I feel like a Midwesterner to my core, and it will always be my home. As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, and while I especially craved novels set in my home state, I had a difficult time finding ones that described the settings I knew and the kinds of people I recognized and loved. I write for that reader now, and I adore any novel that has an unmistakable sense of place.
Los Angeles is perhaps too large and varied for any one novel to describe well, but specific neighborhoods are easier, and Lou Mathews captures the mythic “Shaky Town” (the real-life LA neighborhoods of Frogtown and Glassell Park) with the loving and honest perspective of a native son. One of the best and most underrated novels of 2022, Mathews’ hypnotic and empathetic writing brings to life the down-and-out alcoholics, gangbangers, bored teens, and local characters that give Shaky Town its inimitable verve.
In Shaky Town, Lou Mathews has written a timeless novel of working-class Los Angeles. A former mechanic and street racer, he tells his story in cool and panoramic style, weaving together the tragedies and glories of one of L.A.’s eastside neighborhoods. From a teenage girl caught in the middle of a gang war to a priest who has lost his faith and hit bottom, the characters in Shaky Town live on a dangerous faultline but remain unshakable in their connections to one another.
Like Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, Katherine Ann Porter’s Ship of Fools, Gloria Naylor’s…
I love history and I love to laugh. That’s why I brand myself as a writer of Victorian Whodunits with a touch of humor. I’ve spent decades learning about 1800s America. I began sharing that knowledge by performing in costume as real women of history. But I couldn’t be on stage all the time so I began writing the books I want to read, books that entertain while sticking to the basic facts of history and giving the flavor of an earlier time. I seek that great marriage of words that brings readers to a new understanding. As Albert Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
This book is laugh-out-loud funny. The rich socialite heroine is quite
intelligent in some things and ridiculously stupid in others. The whole
book is absolutely unbelievable, but utterly delightful – and way beyond
society's terms of approval for women in 1907 Los Angeles. Sometimes a
book doesn’t have to be anything but a joy to read. This one delivers.
It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise them behind covers of more domestically-appropriate reading. She could match wits with Sherlock Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals.
Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles, Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department. There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling to investigate. Seizing her…
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…
Years ago in a psycholinguistics class, I discovered that a person’s primary language—not just their vocabulary but the structure of the language itself—shapes the way that person perceives the world and relationships around them. Ever since, I’ve been fascinated with perspective and how perceptions of an event are shaped by who is experiencing them, what stage of life they’re in, the language they speak, and so on. As a full-time marketer in addition to an author, I have to consider every angle of a project before I can begin, whether I’m designing an ad or writing dialogue between characters.
The Alvarados are an unhealthy family with a very big communication problem. The patriarch turns into a shell of himself obsessed only with rainfall, the matriarch is hiding her own secrets, and their adult children are all in varying stages of trouble in their own relationships.
I loved that this book was set in 2016, in California, centered around a Mexican-American family, and did not explicitly address immigration issues or Donald Trump—even if that was very much hinted at towards the end of the novel.
Aside from the family’s journey to healthier relationships with themselves and each other, it was refreshing to see another perspective of that moment in time. It was a good reminder to me that we all contain multitudes, and that no single story is the whole story.
FORECAST: Storm clouds are on the horizon in L.A. Weather, a fun, fast-paced novel of a Mexican-American family from the author of the #1 Los Angeles Times bestseller Esperanza's Box of Saints
L.A. is parched, dry as a bone, and all Oscar, the weather-obsessed patriarch of the Alvarado family, desperately wants is a little rain. He's harboring a costly secret that distracts him from everything else. His wife, Keila, desperate for a life with a little more intimacy and a little less Weather Channel, feels she has no choice but to end their marriage. Their three daughters-Claudia, a television chef…
