50 Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of
For Independent Bookstore Day on April 24th, I wanted to celebrate lesser known books that many people have never heard of!
Okay, let’s be honest, if you’re a book lover, you’ve probably heard of some of these books. But hopefully in this list of the 50 Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of, there will at least be some that are new to you. Or perhaps there’ll be some books you’ve heard of, but didn’t realize that you should give another glance to.
My purpose in making this list is that I know this blog tends to focus on big, flashy bestsellers, but I wanted to give some attention to lesser known books as well. I guess I probably should have called this “books more people should read” or something like that. Maybe I’ll retitle it, but anyway.
Mostly, I had a hard time finding a list like this, so I figured I needed to compile it myself. A lot of lists I saw were comprised of a ton of classics, which isn’t quite what I was looking for. Others had books that were a bit too obscure that were focused on very niche audiences.
For this list, I focused on great contemporary books that have less than 50K-ish ratings on Goodreads (as of April 2021), with a handful that don’t quite fit that criteria, but which I wanted to recommend anyway. In general, too, I also tried to stick to authors that don’t have another book that’s a huge bestseller to help introduce people to more books and more authors. I was looking for books that were lesser known but intended for a fairly general audience.
To really find books that people love but others haven’t heard of, I cast a wide net for these titles. While most of the books are general fiction, there’s a couple young adult titles, a touch of sci-fi/fantasy, etc. If you have a suggestion for this list, feel free to drop it in the comments!
Abi Daré What It’s About: The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams…Publication Date: February 4, 2020
4.47 out of 5 on Goodreads
botm contemporary book club
Helene Hanff What It’s About: This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books…Publication Date: October 1, 1990
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
books about books memoir classics
Jasper Fforde What It’s About: Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means…Publication Date: November 6, 2009
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
dystopia science fiction sci fi
Ken Liu What It’s About: A publishing event: Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his award-winning science fiction and fantasy tales for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie…Publication Date: March 8, 2016
4.38 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories fantasy science fiction
Natalie Haynes What It’s About: “With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”—Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous retelling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the many women involved in its causes and consequences—for fans of Madeline Miller…Publication Date: May 2, 2019
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mythology fantasy
P. Djèlí Clark What It’s About: A dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror.
D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth…Publication Date: October 13, 2020
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror historical fiction novella
Don Winslow What It’s About: From the bestselling author of Savages (now an Oliver Stone film).
This novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker…Publication Date: April 26, 2005
4.35 out of 5 on Goodreads
crime thriller mystery
Scott Hawkins What It’s About: A missing God.
A library with the secrets to the universe.
A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts…Publication Date: March 15, 2016
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror science fiction sci fi
Max Porter What It’s About: There’s a village sixty miles outside London. It’s no different from many other villages in England: one pub, one church, red-brick cottages, council cottages and a few bigger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might do anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs…Publication Date: March 5, 2019
4.05 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy magical realism literary fiction
Lily King What It’s About: Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan…Publication Date: March 3, 2020
4.08 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction romance
Christina Henry What It’s About: From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a familiar story with a dark hook—a tale about Peter Pan and the friend who became his nemesis, a nemesis who may not be the blackhearted villain Peter says he is…
There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth…Publication Date: July 4, 2017
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror retellings retelling
Jacqueline Woodson What It’s About: Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone…Publication Date: September 17, 2019
4.01 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction book club audiobook
Akwaeke Emezi What It’s About: An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities…Publication Date: February 13, 2018
4.03 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary magical realism africa
Heather Webber What It’s About: Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café.
It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about…Publication Date: July 16, 2019
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
magical realism romance fantasy
C. A. Fletcher What It’s About: My name’s Griz. My childhood wasn’t like yours. I’ve never had friends, and in my whole life I’ve not met enough people to play a game of football.
My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs.
Then the thief came…Publication Date: April 23, 2019
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction dystopian sci fi
Kent Haruf What It’s About: A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go…Publication Date: October 4, 1999
4.01 out of 5 on Goodreads
book club literary fiction books i own
J. Ryan Stradal What It’s About: A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer.
Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living…Publication Date: July 23, 2019
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
book club audiobook audiobooks
T. Greenwood What It’s About: Camden, NJ, 1948.
When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth’s, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says…Publication Date: August 7, 2018
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction true crime crime
Ashley Audrain What It’s About: A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared.
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had…Publication Date: January 5, 2021
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller read in 2021 mystery
Kiran Millwood Hargrave What It’s About: After a storm has killed off all the island’s men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft.
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm…Publication Date: February 6, 2020
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical lgbt
Tove Jansson What It’s About: An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. Gradually, the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings for independence, and a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the island itself, with its mossy rocks, windswept firs and unpredictable seas…Publication Date: April 30, 2003
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories classics finland
Alan Lightman What It’s About: A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over…Publication Date: November 9, 2004
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories science philosophy
Rachel Joyce What It’s About: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “A beautifully written, extraordinary quest in which two ordinary, overlooked women embark on an unlikely scientific expedition to the South Seas.”–Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an uplifting, irresistible novel about two women on a life-changing adventure, where they must risk everything, break all the rules, and discover their best selves–together…Publication Date: July 23, 2020
4.10 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction adventure book club
Jane Harper What It’s About: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Two brothers meet in the remote Australian outback when the third brother is found dead, in this stunning new standalone novel from Jane Harper
Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback…Publication Date: October 23, 2018
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
mystery thriller crime
Pip Williams What It’s About: In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary…Publication Date: March 31, 2020
4.23 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical books about books
Karen Connelly What It’s About: Beautifully written and taking us into an exotic land, Karen Connelly’s debut novel The Lizard Cage is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.
Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement…Publication Date: September 27, 2005
4.23 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction burma asia
Nnedi Okorafor What It’s About: Akata Witch transports the reader to a magical place where nothing is quite as it seems. Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All Sunny wants to do is be able to play football and get through another day of school without being bullied…Publication Date: April 14, 2011
4.06 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult middle grade africa
Ruta Sepetys What It’s About: A portrait of love, silence, and secrets under a Spanish dictatorship.
Madrid, 1957. Under the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, Spain is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, tourists and foreign businessmen flood into Spain under the welcoming promise of sunshine and wine. Among them is eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of an oil tycoon, who arrives in Madrid with his parents hoping to connect with the country of his mother’s birth through the lens of his camera…Publication Date: October 1, 2019
4.29 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction young adult historical
Melina Marchetta What It’s About: I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world…Publication Date: August 28, 2006
4.12 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult contemporary mystery
Kathryn Erskine What It’s About: In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how…Publication Date: April 15, 2010
4.20 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult realistic fiction middle grade
Robin Benway What It’s About: Being the middle child has its ups and downs.
But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—
Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties…Publication Date: October 3, 2017
4.28 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult contemporary realistic fiction
Marjan Kamali What It’s About: Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once…Publication Date: June 18, 2019
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction romance book club
Anne Youngson What It’s About: When Tina Hopgood writes a letter of regret to a man she has never met, she doesn’t expect a reply.
When Anders Larsen, a lonely museum curator, answers it, neither does he.
They’re both searching for something – they just don’t know it yet.
Anders has lost his wife, along with his hopes and dreams for the future…Publication Date: May 17, 2018
3.92 out of 5 on Goodreads
epistolary contemporary romance
John Connolly What It’s About: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own — populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things…Publication Date: November 7, 2006
3.93 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult horror books i own
Robert Graves What It’s About: Into the ‘autobiography’ of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, soon to culminate in the deified insanity of Caligula…Publication Date: October 23, 1989
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
classics history historical
Angela Carter What It’s About: Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.Publication Date: January 1, 1990
3.97 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy horror gothic
Elif Shafak What It’s About: An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour
‘In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila’s consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen…Publication Date: June 6, 2019
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction book club
Ayad Akhtar What It’s About: A deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home…Publication Date: September 15, 2020
4.22 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction contemporary literary fiction
David Wong What It’s About: John Dies at the End is a genre-bending, humorous account of two college drop-outs inadvertently charged with saving their small town–and the world–from a host of supernatural and paranormal invasions.
This edition is newly rewritten by the author with additional material and an even more epic epic of slackers versus the occult!
David Wong has updated the Lovecraft tradition and infused it with humor that rather than lessening the horror, increases it dramatically…Publication Date: January 14, 2020
3.89 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror humor fantasy
Glen David Gold What It’s About: Charles Carter—a.k.a. Carter the Great—is a young master performer whose skill as an illusionist exceeds even that of the great Houdini. But nothing in his career has prepared Carter for the greatest stunt of all, which stars none other than President Warren G. Harding and which could end up costing Carter the reputation he has worked so hard to create…Publication Date: September 5, 2001
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mystery historical
Charles Yu What It’s About: From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man…Publication Date: January 28, 2020
4.05 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction audiobook
Adam Johnson What It’s About: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER – WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE -“LOS ANGELES TIMES “BOOK PRIZE FINALIST -A “NEW YORK TIMES” NOTABLE BOOK -NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY “SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, “AND “MIAMI HERALD “- NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY “The Washington Post “NPR “Marie Claire St…Publication Date: August 18, 2015
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories national book award contemporary
Tan Twan Eng What It’s About: The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng’s debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.
Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits…Publication Date: May 5, 2009
4.25 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction asia malaysia
Louise Erdrich What It’s About: Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman…Publication Date: March 3, 2020
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction native american book club
For Independent Bookstore Day on April 24th, I wanted to celebrate lesser known books that many people have never heard of!
Okay, let’s be honest, if you’re a book lover, you’ve probably heard of some of these books. But hopefully in this list of the 50 Best Books You’ve Never Heard Of, there will at least be some that are new to you. Or perhaps there’ll be some books you’ve heard of, but didn’t realize that you should give another glance to.
My purpose in making this list is that I know this blog tends to focus on big, flashy bestsellers, but I wanted to give some attention to lesser known books as well. I guess I probably should have called this “books more people should read” or something like that. Maybe I’ll retitle it, but anyway.
Mostly, I had a hard time finding a list like this, so I figured I needed to compile it myself. A lot of lists I saw were comprised of a ton of classics, which isn’t quite what I was looking for. Others had books that were a bit too obscure that were focused on very niche audiences.
For this list, I focused on great contemporary books that have less than 50K-ish ratings on Goodreads (as of April 2021), with a handful that don’t quite fit that criteria, but which I wanted to recommend anyway. In general, too, I also tried to stick to authors that don’t have another book that’s a huge bestseller to help introduce people to more books and more authors. I was looking for books that were lesser known but intended for a fairly general audience.
To really find books that people love but others haven’t heard of, I cast a wide net for these titles. While most of the books are general fiction, there’s a couple young adult titles, a touch of sci-fi/fantasy, etc. If you have a suggestion for this list, feel free to drop it in the comments!
Abi Daré What It’s About: The unforgettable, inspiring story of a teenage girl growing up in a rural Nigerian village who longs to get an education so that she can find her “louding voice” and speak up for herself, The Girl with the Louding Voice is a simultaneously heartbreaking and triumphant tale about the power of fighting for your dreams…Publication Date: February 4, 2020
4.47 out of 5 on Goodreads
botm contemporary book club
Helene Hanff What It’s About: This charming classic, first published in 1970, brings together twenty years of correspondence between Helene Hanff, a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London. Through the years, though never meeting and separated both geographically and culturally, they share a winsome, sentimental friendship based on their common love for books…Publication Date: October 1, 1990
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
books about books memoir classics
Jasper Fforde What It’s About: Shades of Grey tells of a battle against overwhelming odds. In a society where the ability to see the higher end of the color spectrum denotes a better social standing, Eddie Russet belongs to the low-level House of Red and can see his own color—but no other. The sky, the grass, and everything in between are all just shades of grey, and must be colorized by artificial means…Publication Date: November 6, 2009
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
dystopia science fiction sci fi
Ken Liu What It’s About: A publishing event: Bestselling author Ken Liu selects his award-winning science fiction and fantasy tales for a groundbreaking collection—including a brand-new piece exclusive to this volume.
With his debut novel, The Grace of Kings, taking the literary world by storm, Ken Liu now shares his finest short fiction in The Paper Menagerie…Publication Date: March 8, 2016
4.38 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories fantasy science fiction
Natalie Haynes What It’s About: “With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”—Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, a gorgeous retelling of the Trojan War from the perspectives of the many women involved in its causes and consequences—for fans of Madeline Miller…Publication Date: May 2, 2019
4.15 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mythology fantasy
P. Djèlí Clark What It’s About: A dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan’s reign of terror.
D. W. Griffith is a sorcerer, and The Birth of a Nation is a spell that drew upon the darkest thoughts and wishes from the heart of America. Now, rising in power and prominence, the Klan has a plot to unleash Hell on Earth…Publication Date: October 13, 2020
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror historical fiction novella
Don Winslow What It’s About: From the bestselling author of Savages (now an Oliver Stone film).
This novel of the drug trade takes you deep inside a world riddled with corruption, betrayal, and bloody revenge. Art Montana is an obsessive DEA agent. The Barrera brothers are heirs to a drug empire. Nora Hayden is a jaded teenager who becomes a high-class hooker…Publication Date: April 26, 2005
4.35 out of 5 on Goodreads
crime thriller mystery
Scott Hawkins What It’s About: A missing God.
A library with the secrets to the universe.
A woman too busy to notice her heart slipping away.
Carolyn’s not so different from the other people around her. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. Clothes are a bit tricky, but everyone says nice things about her outfit with the Christmas sweater over the gold bicycle shorts…Publication Date: March 15, 2016
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror science fiction sci fi
Max Porter What It’s About: There’s a village sixty miles outside London. It’s no different from many other villages in England: one pub, one church, red-brick cottages, council cottages and a few bigger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might do anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs…Publication Date: March 5, 2019
4.05 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy magical realism literary fiction
Lily King What It’s About: Following the breakout success of her critically acclaimed and award-winning novel Euphoria, Lily King returns with an unforgettable portrait of an artist as a young woman.
Blindsided by her mother’s sudden death, and wrecked by a recent love affair, Casey Peabody has arrived in Massachusetts in the summer of 1997 without a plan…Publication Date: March 3, 2020
4.08 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction romance
Christina Henry What It’s About: From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a familiar story with a dark hook—a tale about Peter Pan and the friend who became his nemesis, a nemesis who may not be the blackhearted villain Peter says he is…
There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth…Publication Date: July 4, 2017
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror retellings retelling
Jacqueline Woodson What It’s About: Moving forward and backward in time, Jacqueline Woodson’s taut and powerful new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of the new child.
As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone…Publication Date: September 17, 2019
4.01 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction book club audiobook
Akwaeke Emezi What It’s About: An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities…Publication Date: February 13, 2018
4.03 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary magical realism africa
Heather Webber What It’s About: Nestled in the mountain shadows of Alabama lies the little town of Wicklow. It is here that Anna Kate has returned to bury her beloved Granny Zee, owner of the Blackbird Café.
It was supposed to be a quick trip to close the café and settle her grandmother’s estate, but despite her best intentions to avoid forming ties or even getting to know her father’s side of the family, Anna Kate finds herself inexplicably drawn to the quirky Southern town her mother ran away from so many years ago, and the mysterious blackbird pie everybody can’t stop talking about…Publication Date: July 16, 2019
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
magical realism romance fantasy
C. A. Fletcher What It’s About: My name’s Griz. My childhood wasn’t like yours. I’ve never had friends, and in my whole life I’ve not met enough people to play a game of football.
My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs.
Then the thief came…Publication Date: April 23, 2019
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
science fiction dystopian sci fi
Kent Haruf What It’s About: A heartstrong story of family and romance, tribulation and tenacity, set on the High Plains east of Denver.
In the small town of Holt, Colorado, a high school teacher is confronted with raising his two boys alone after their mother retreats first to the bedroom, then altogether. A teenage girl—her father long since disappeared, her mother unwilling to have her in the house—is pregnant, alone herself, with nowhere to go…Publication Date: October 4, 1999
4.01 out of 5 on Goodreads
book club literary fiction books i own
J. Ryan Stradal What It’s About: A novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate and the secrets of making a world-class beer.
Two sisters, one farm. A family is split when their father leaves their shared inheritance entirely to Helen, his younger daughter. Despite baking award-winning pies at the local nursing home, her older sister, Edith, struggles to make what most people would call a living…Publication Date: July 23, 2019
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
book club audiobook audiobooks
T. Greenwood What It’s About: Camden, NJ, 1948.
When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth’s, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says…Publication Date: August 7, 2018
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction true crime crime
Ashley Audrain What It’s About: A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family–and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for–and everything she feared.
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had…Publication Date: January 5, 2021
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
thriller read in 2021 mystery
Kiran Millwood Hargrave What It’s About: After a storm has killed off all the island’s men, two women in a 1600s Norwegian coastal village struggle to survive against both natural forces and the men who have been sent to rid the community of alleged witchcraft.
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm…Publication Date: February 6, 2020
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical lgbt
Tove Jansson What It’s About: An elderly artist and her six-year-old granddaughter while away a summer together on a tiny island in the gulf of Finland. Gradually, the two learn to adjust to each other’s fears, whims and yearnings for independence, and a fierce yet understated love emerges – one that encompasses not only the summer inhabitants but the island itself, with its mossy rocks, windswept firs and unpredictable seas…Publication Date: April 30, 2003
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories classics finland
Alan Lightman What It’s About: A modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over…Publication Date: November 9, 2004
4.07 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories science philosophy
Rachel Joyce What It’s About: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “A beautifully written, extraordinary quest in which two ordinary, overlooked women embark on an unlikely scientific expedition to the South Seas.”–Helen Simonson, author of Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand
From the bestselling author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry comes an uplifting, irresistible novel about two women on a life-changing adventure, where they must risk everything, break all the rules, and discover their best selves–together…Publication Date: July 23, 2020
4.10 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction adventure book club
Jane Harper What It’s About: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Two brothers meet in the remote Australian outback when the third brother is found dead, in this stunning new standalone novel from Jane Harper
Brothers Nathan and Bub Bright meet for the first time in months at the remote fence line separating their cattle ranches in the lonely outback…Publication Date: October 23, 2018
4.16 out of 5 on Goodreads
mystery thriller crime
Pip Williams What It’s About: In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.
Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary…Publication Date: March 31, 2020
4.23 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction historical books about books
Karen Connelly What It’s About: Beautifully written and taking us into an exotic land, Karen Connelly’s debut novel The Lizard Cage is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.
Teza once electrified the people of Burma with his protest songs against the dictatorship. Arrested by the Burmese secret police in the days of mass protest, he is seven years into a twenty-year sentence in solitary confinement…Publication Date: September 27, 2005
4.23 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction burma asia
Nnedi Okorafor What It’s About: Akata Witch transports the reader to a magical place where nothing is quite as it seems. Born in New York, but living in Aba, Nigeria, twelve-year old Sunny is understandably a little lost. She is albino and thus, incredibly sensitive to the sun. All Sunny wants to do is be able to play football and get through another day of school without being bullied…Publication Date: April 14, 2011
4.06 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult middle grade africa
Ruta Sepetys What It’s About: A portrait of love, silence, and secrets under a Spanish dictatorship.
Madrid, 1957. Under the fascist dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, Spain is hiding a dark secret. Meanwhile, tourists and foreign businessmen flood into Spain under the welcoming promise of sunshine and wine. Among them is eighteen-year-old Daniel Matheson, the son of an oil tycoon, who arrives in Madrid with his parents hoping to connect with the country of his mother’s birth through the lens of his camera…Publication Date: October 1, 2019
4.29 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction young adult historical
Melina Marchetta What It’s About: I’m dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world…Publication Date: August 28, 2006
4.12 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult contemporary mystery
Kathryn Erskine What It’s About: In Caitlin’s world, everything is black or white. Things are good or bad. Anything in between is confusing. That’s the stuff Caitlin’s older brother, Devon, has always explained. But now Devon’s dead and Dad is no help at all. Caitlin wants to get over it, but as an eleven-year-old girl with Asperger’s, she doesn’t know how…Publication Date: April 15, 2010
4.20 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult realistic fiction middle grade
Robin Benway What It’s About: Being the middle child has its ups and downs.
But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—
Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties…Publication Date: October 3, 2017
4.28 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult contemporary realistic fiction
Marjan Kamali What It’s About: Roya, a dreamy, idealistic teenager living amid the political upheaval of 1953 Tehran, finds a literary oasis in kindly Mr. Fakhri’s neighborhood stationery shop, stocked with books and pens and bottles of jewel-colored ink.
Then Mr. Fakhri, with a keen instinct for a budding romance, introduces Roya to his other favorite customer—handsome Bahman, who has a burning passion for justice and a love for Rumi’s poetry—and she loses her heart at once…Publication Date: June 18, 2019
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction romance book club
Anne Youngson What It’s About: When Tina Hopgood writes a letter of regret to a man she has never met, she doesn’t expect a reply.
When Anders Larsen, a lonely museum curator, answers it, neither does he.
They’re both searching for something – they just don’t know it yet.
Anders has lost his wife, along with his hopes and dreams for the future…Publication Date: May 17, 2018
3.92 out of 5 on Goodreads
epistolary contemporary romance
John Connolly What It’s About: High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only the books on his shelf for company. But those books have begun to whisper to him in the darkness. Angry and alone, he takes refuge in his imagination and soon finds that reality and fantasy have begun to meld. While his family falls apart around him, David is violently propelled into a world that is a strange reflection of his own — populated by heroes and monsters and ruled by a faded king who keeps his secrets in a mysterious book, The Book of Lost Things…Publication Date: November 7, 2006
3.93 out of 5 on Goodreads
young adult horror books i own
Robert Graves What It’s About: Into the ‘autobiography’ of Clau-Clau-Claudius, the pitiful stammerer who was destined to become Emperor in spite of himself, Graves packs the everlasting intrigues, the depravity, the bloody purges and mounting cruelty of the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, soon to culminate in the deified insanity of Caligula…Publication Date: October 23, 1989
4.21 out of 5 on Goodreads
classics history historical
Angela Carter What It’s About: Angela Carter was a storytelling sorceress, the literary godmother of Neil Gaiman, David Mitchell, Audrey Niffenegger, J. K. Rowling, Kelly Link, and other contemporary masters of supernatural fiction. In her masterpiece, The Bloody Chamber—which includes the story that is the basis of Neil Jordan’s 1984 movie The Company of Wolves—she spins subversively dark and sensual versions of familiar fairy tales and legends like “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” giving them exhilarating new life in a style steeped in the romantic trappings of the gothic tradition.Publication Date: January 1, 1990
3.97 out of 5 on Goodreads
fantasy horror gothic
Elif Shafak What It’s About: An intensely powerful new novel from the best-selling author of The Bastard of Istanbul and Honour
‘In the first minute following her death, Tequila Leila’s consciousness began to ebb, slowly and steadily, like a tide receding from the shore. Her brain cells, having run out of blood, were now completely deprived of oxygen…Publication Date: June 6, 2019
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction book club
Ayad Akhtar What It’s About: A deeply personal work about hope and identity in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of belonging and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque adventure — at its heart, it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home…Publication Date: September 15, 2020
4.22 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction contemporary literary fiction
David Wong What It’s About: John Dies at the End is a genre-bending, humorous account of two college drop-outs inadvertently charged with saving their small town–and the world–from a host of supernatural and paranormal invasions.
This edition is newly rewritten by the author with additional material and an even more epic epic of slackers versus the occult!
David Wong has updated the Lovecraft tradition and infused it with humor that rather than lessening the horror, increases it dramatically…Publication Date: January 14, 2020
3.89 out of 5 on Goodreads
horror humor fantasy
Glen David Gold What It’s About: Charles Carter—a.k.a. Carter the Great—is a young master performer whose skill as an illusionist exceeds even that of the great Houdini. But nothing in his career has prepared Carter for the greatest stunt of all, which stars none other than President Warren G. Harding and which could end up costing Carter the reputation he has worked so hard to create…Publication Date: September 5, 2001
4.09 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction mystery historical
Charles Yu What It’s About: From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man…Publication Date: January 28, 2020
4.05 out of 5 on Goodreads
contemporary literary fiction audiobook
Adam Johnson What It’s About: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER – WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE -“LOS ANGELES TIMES “BOOK PRIZE FINALIST -A “NEW YORK TIMES” NOTABLE BOOK -NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY “SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, “AND “MIAMI HERALD “- NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY “The Washington Post “NPR “Marie Claire St…Publication Date: August 18, 2015
4.02 out of 5 on Goodreads
short stories national book award contemporary
Tan Twan Eng What It’s About: The recipient of extraordinary acclaim from critics and the bookselling community, Tan Twan Eng’s debut novel casts a powerful spell and has garnered comparisons to celebrated wartime storytellers Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene.
Set during the tumult of World War II, on the lush Malayan island of Penang, The Gift of Rain tells a riveting and poignant tale about a young man caught in the tangle of wartime loyalties and deceits…Publication Date: May 5, 2009
4.25 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction asia malaysia
Louise Erdrich What It’s About: Based on the extraordinary life of National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich’s grandfather who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, D.C., this powerful novel explores themes of love and death with lightness and gravity and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a master craftsman…Publication Date: March 3, 2020
4.13 out of 5 on Goodreads
historical fiction native american book club
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