98 books like Iris Green, Unseen

This book is a quiet, understated masterpiece about quiet, understated lives and a critical counterpoint to Soseki’s earlier I Am a Cat. That novel was a cruelly comic parody of Nietzscheanism, its arrogant feline narrator portraying his owner, a small-town schoolteacher, as embodying everything wrong with miserable, mediocre, insignificant humanity. 

This book is more ambiguous and sympathetic, portraying a similarly humble, childless couple. Initially, we feel contempt for their uneventful, indecisive, dispassionate lives. But their troubled past reveals, beneath their failings, a deep undercurrent of authentic courage and love.

They may even achieve something like Nietzsche’s “love of fate,” hinted in the title’s reference to the gate between past and future, where Zarathustra wills the “eternal recurrence” of every detail of his existence, whether joyful or painful, exciting or dreary, beautiful or ugly.  

I read these short stories when I was twelve, reread them countless times as an adult, and was forever changed. Entering these pages is like journeying through the looking glass, only to enter a labyrinth of mystery, secrets, and chance. It may seem like an outlier from the books above. Yet Borges was a pioneer in speculative fiction and one of a kind. One of the stories has been called the greatest ever written. Just saying.

To say I had high expectations of this book would be an understatement and it certainly delivered!

Although quite niche, this book gives us a detailed look into professional women and women scientists, among other roles, in 1950s Science Fiction B movies. 

Although we often believe that more recent films are more progressive, Noonan shows how even gender limitations in the 1950s still provided room for qualified women to shine in different scientific fields, both in traditional and pioneering roles. She also studies how women could have important roles at the periphery of science like computer operators or darkroom technicians.

Unlike so many heroines of historical mysteries who had dangerous jobs in the Great War—usually a spy, courier, or battlefield nurse—I found Iris Cooper refreshingly average, but not boring. She’s sailing from England to America after a round-the-world tour with her aunt. When a man dies in a deck chair, Iris searches for answers about his identity. I especially liked the fact that Iris used her shorthand and typing skills to become part of the ship-board inquiry into the death and holds her own with the panel, which is basically an old boy’s club. The parade of suspects is catnip for a mystery reader like me and includes a voluptuous film star, a mysterious professor studying criminology, a handsome musician, and an enthusiastic newspaper reporter. I enjoyed watching Iris come into her own as a sleuth and find a little romance along the way.

I loved the uniqueness of this storyline and the combination of magic being an accepted everyday thing in a historical world. Think old-world 1940s newspaper era meets World War 2 and manipulative Gods, with threads of magic woven throughout.

I absolutely adored the idea of rare typewriters linked by magic that can send missives to each other and the beautiful and rich enemies-to-lovers trope that develops around the typewriters. Its cute You’ve Got Mail vibe was beautifully executed in a story and world that I loved to step into.

The twists at the end took me by surprise, though I sensed something wasn’t quite right throughout. I just couldn’t put my finger on what exactly. Iris and Gabriel return from a holiday and are surprised to find their friend Laure staying in their home.

What begins as an annoyance escalates to a threat as long-buried secrets start to surface. The tension kept me swiping the pages on my E-reader. It’s my favorite B. A. Paris thriller so far.

As one of four sisters, I appreciate a good sister story because there’s always something going on under the surface. House of Hollow is no different. There’s the complicated dynamic of the three sisters—the model and fashion designer, the grunge musician, and the loner high school student—revealed when the eldest goes missing and the two younger sisters search for her. And then there’s the twist of something otherworldly—the fact that the girls disappeared for a month as children, reappearing with black eyes, white hair, mysterious scars, and the ability to entrance others with their scent and touch. I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

Rebel Knot is set in 17th-century Ireland, torn apart by religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants. This is a war-ravaged Ireland, a land where hope is in short supply and peace is more of a dream than a possibility. And yet, in the midst of all that violence fragile love can flourish—even between people who belong on opposite sides of the religious fence. Ms. Bazos does a fantastic job of transporting the reader back in time, and her two main characters, Niall and Ainé, are wonderfully complex and relatable. The harshness of the times is vividly depicted—as is the growing attraction between the innocent and traumatised Ainé and her new protector, Niall. 

Grace O’Malley was my first pirate love and will forever hold a special place in my heart. This is the seminal biography of her by the woman who basically singlehandedly brought her whole story to the world. Anne Chambers is one of my women pirate researcher heroines and her depth of knowledge on Grace is unmatched. This book reads like a novel and is packed with amazing tales. I have read this one many times!

I love this book because it is a compilation of first-person accounts of major events throughout the history of Ireland. From St. Patrick to the raids of the Vikings, the rebellions of former rebels, and all the way to the civil war of 1923-24. Each selection is from extant works located in libraries and institutions around the country.

We hear the wild stories told with awe and wonder, with shock and abhorrence, as if we are sitting in a pub listening to the author whisper his witness in astonishment or regret. Suddenly, we understand the Irish rebels, the generations of rebels through the centuries, and we find ourselves full of admiration for those men and women who endured and fought and finally found freedom for their countrymen.