The most beautifully-written books to light up your imagination - and your soul

This novel is a creative tour de force. I was wholly immersed in the worlds it created and bereft when I finished it. Thank goodness – and the brilliant Helene Wecker - for its sequel, The Hidden Palace – just as brilliant.
Not a promising premise – a female Golem made of clay, and a Djinni, all fire and elemental passion, encounter each other in 1899 New York. Chava, as she is named, and Ahmad, as he is known, find ways to live and work in immigrant communities, while bound to each other in secret, in ways even their unsuspecting human lovers can’t imagine.

Achingly human, yet mesmerisingly ‘other’, these magical creatures weave and forge a truly unforgettable story – in any world.

The Mermaid of Black Conch takes a mythological creature and gives her extraordinary life, as a very real, young woman, called Aycayia.

She is caught – hooked like a prize fish - by greedy anglers, and hauled from the sea, bringing with her an already fascinating and tragic history of injustice and misunderstanding. But, she is also an object of love.

Not all fishermen are commercial opportunists… Not all men are eager to exploit beautiful and unusual women, and so begins an extraordinary rescue, and a life-affirming relationship, with many unpredictable, literally magical, and truly remarkable twists.

This enchanting book, written with breath-taking originality, is likely to spell-bind you – permanently. You’ll never again think of mermaids in the same way.

How to explain the appeal of this compellingly original novel? A man who no longer knows himself, exists in a place no longer known to the world; a series of halls flooded by tidal waters and populated by extraordinary statues and flocks of birds.

Narnia for grownups, Piranesi enthralled me from the start. The need to unravel the book’s mystery became an obsession, so that the story occupied my thoughts on and off all day, and I couldn’t wait to get back to it. The ‘reveal’ is as satisfying as it is unpredictable, and the writing is flawless.

Clarke had already asserted her narrative mastery with Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but it is honed with Piranesi. World-class stuff.

This astonishing novel from literary Nobel-prize-winning author, Kazuo Ishiguru, gripped me from page 1 and kept me in thrall, to the end.

It bloomed, slowly, but steadily, into a panoramic narrative, artfully focalised from a unique perspective. In a society growing resentful of the androids it has created, to be ‘friends’ to its neurally ‘uplifted’ children, one android, Klara, speaks with a voice - and evident ‘soul’.

Truly innocent, and movingly vulnerable, Klara trusts the sun - on whose energy she relies for life - to help her meet the needs of those she learns to love. But, can they love Klara? A beautiful, extraordinary story, written by an author unsurpassed in his narrative skill.

A startling kaleidoscope of a novel – indicated by the arresting cover.

Mas’ book whirled me into the heart of its narrative with fast-moving stories of women whose lives are radically changed by supernatural encounters – which, in 19th century Paris, invite diagnoses of mental illness. What follows is a disorienting but compulsive account of 'madness', ‘other-world-ness’ - and the dangers of being different.

Beautifully imagined and expertly crafted, this novel engrossed me – and I learned a lot about mental asylums, and attitudes to women, in rather unenlightened times. A fabulous book.