The best fantasy books that show that our own world, too, is a wildly different place than you think

Why am I passionate about this?

My favorite books all show me that reality is much, much richer and stranger than it seems. And that is exactly what makes me write myself. Already as a child, I wanted the world to be different. I longed for the other, richer realities that were, I felt, just around the corner. So I started to travel, to Senegal and beyond, and learn about other people’s life experiences. When I became a researcher of world literature, it truly came home to me how one-sided my view of the world was. Ouch. Fortunately, there is a wealth of stories out there to tell us about everything we have been blind to. 


I wrote...

Book cover of The Dream Merchant

What is my book about?

Josh Cope is a bit of a dreamer... who sometimes steals things. Otherwise, he's just your average boy. So why is an international corporation calling him in the middle of the night, insisting that he come and work for them? Why would they be so convinced that Josh is the key to conquering their new market—the past? Drawn into this astonishing, whirlwind adventure, Josh soon finds himself in the middle of a nightmare, caught in a place between dreams and reality. For Josh and his friends to find their way back, they must follow a trail that takes them right into the very heart of the human imagination—and to the furthest ends of time itself.

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Pet

Isabel Hoving Why did I love this book?

Akwaeke Emezi’s Pet is an emotional wave that will engulf you. When a nation has freed itself of the monsters that terrorized it, an angel appears: there is still one monster left. The novel’s young hero has to help track it down and destroy it. I have never encountered a more breathtaking expression of the rage and pain caused by abuse. Pets avenging angel is sublime. It says—in its sheer force alone—what we, in our world, often cannot put into words.

By Akwaeke Emezi,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Pet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

She stumbled backwards, her eyes wide, as the figure started coming out of the canvas
...
She tried to be brave. Well, she said, her hands only a little shaky, at least tell me what I should call you.
...
Well, little girl, it replied, I suppose you can call me Pet.

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson…


Book cover of The Order of Time

Isabel Hoving Why did I love this book?

Carlos Rovelli’s The Order of Time is not at all a fantasy book—it is science—but nevertheless the most inspiring, life changing fantasy I’ve ever read. If I look around me with scientist Rovelli’s eyes, I too see that “the world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones.” Beautiful, weird, and scientifically accurate. True fantasy! 

By Carlo Rovelli,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Order of Time as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

One of TIME's Ten Best Nonfiction Books of the Decade

'Captivating, fascinating, profoundly beautiful. . . Rovelli is a wonderfully humane, gentle and witty guide for he is as much philosopher and poet as he is a scientist' John Banville

'We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come'

Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored…


Book cover of Dawn

Isabel Hoving Why did I love this book?

Octavia Butler’s classic trilogy Lilith’s Brood is shocking and sad and strangely funny too. Humanity has all but destroyed itself, but a wise, benevolent alien race saves a few survivors—and tells them that they would be happy to help humanity survive by making babies with them. Very generous, indeed; but unfortunately, the aliens are horrendous monsters. This made me realize with a shock how much we, too, see newness and change often as monstrous, even if we know that clinging to the old will lead to self-destruction. I cannot think of a more topical story.

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Dawn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'One of the most significant literary artists of the twentieth century' JUNOT DIAZ

'Octavia Butler was playing out our very real possibilities as humans. I think she can help each of us to do the same' GLORIA STEINEM

One woman is called upon to reconstruct humanity in this hopeful, thought-provoking novel by the bestselling, award-winning author. For readers of Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison and Ursula K. Le Guin.

When Lilith lyapo wakes in a small white room with no doors or windows, she remembers a devastating war, and a husband and child long lost to her.

She finds herself living…


Book cover of The Cloud Roads

Isabel Hoving Why did I love this book?

This series—just start with The Cloud Roadsbrings you to The Three Worlds, a world brimming with intelligent life in all possible forms and sizes. Our heroes, the Raksura, are shapeshifters that seem a fantastic cross between bees and proud vultures, living happily in their unusual, close-knit families, in colonies ruled by warrior-queens. Read the series, and you will look at your non-human fellow beings with new eyes: aren’t they, too, sensitive and intelligent people? And you may wonder if there aren’t, in our world too, unusual family arrangements like those of the Raksura—don’t we stick too much to our own notion of family as the only one possible, perhaps?  

By Martha Wells,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Cloud Roads as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Series. "Wells...merrily ignores genre conventions as she spins an exciting adventure around an alien hero who anyone can identify with."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Moon has spent his life hiding what he is - a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight.

An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon is once again cast out by his adopted tribe, he discovers a shape-shifter like himself . . . someone…


Book cover of Fool's Fate

Isabel Hoving Why did I love this book?

There is so much to love, perhaps in the first place, the bond between tragic hero Fitz and the irresistible Fool. But even more moving is that the series shows you how deeply human beings can be bonded to non-human beings. The world is so much alive that even wood harbours intelligence; and even if human beings arrogantly fail to acknowledge it, there are more magnificent intelligent creatures around than human beings. This series makes me all the more aware of the broken beauty of our own nature, and the need to take good care of it.

By Robin Hobb,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fool's Fate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The triumphant conclusion to our three thrilling fantasy series, from the author of the bestselling Farseer and Liveship traders trilogies.

The triumphant conclusion to the tale of the Farseers, in which kingdoms must stand or fall on the beat of a dragon's wings, or a Fool's heart.

A small and sadly untried coterie - the old assassin Chade, the serving-boy Thick, Prince Dutiful, and his reluctant Skillmaster, Fitz - sail towards the distant island of Aslevjal. There they must fulfil the Narcheska's challenge to her betrothed: to lay the head of the dragon Icefyre, whom legends tell is buried there…


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A House on Liberty Street

By Neil Turner,

Book cover of A House on Liberty Street

Neil Turner Author Of A House on Liberty Street

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Reader Traveler Inquisitive Family guy Writer

Neil's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards.

Tony's elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff's deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn't talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.

With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend his father and take to city hall, and quickly finds himself in peril when he unearths sinister connections between the cases. The audacity of the plot against them fuels a gritty determination to get to the bottom of what really happened—regardless of the risks and ultimate cost to himself. To win, Tony must earn his father's trust and outwit his wily opponents.

A House on Liberty Street

By Neil Turner,

What is this book about?

A father. A son. A murder.

Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He’s returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn’t in the cards.

Tony’s elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff’s deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn’t talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.

With money and hope dwindling, Tony steps up to defend…


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