100 books like Migrations

By Charlotte McConaghy,

Here are 100 books that Migrations fans have personally recommended if you like Migrations. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Euphoria

Pippa Goldschmidt Author Of Schrödinger's Wife (and Other Possibilities)

From my list on women doing science.

Why am I passionate about this?

Science is still assumed to be a ‘male’ subject in which women are a minority. I should know—I was one of those women when I worked as an astrophysicist. But there have always been women in science and their stories are fascinating, whether told in nonfiction or in fiction. Fiction is ideally placed to convey the emotions behind the scientific processes and the way in which human interactions and relationships influence what happens in the lab.

Pippa's book list on women doing science

Pippa Goldschmidt Why did Pippa love this book?

A novel that is partly based on the real-life anthropologist Margaret Mead and her work in New Guinea in the 1930s, this book had me gripped from the start as it evoked the complex dynamics between the three main characters and their very different approaches to studying Indigenous people.

I was in awe of the power of story-telling in this short book. It shows us how anthropologists might hope to be impartial observers of the people they study, but in reality, these encounters change everyone.

By Lily King,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The New York Times Top Ten Bestseller

From the author of Writers & Lovers, Euphoria is Lily King's gripping novel inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.

'Pretty much perfect' - Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Rodham

In 1933 three young, gifted anthropologists are thrown together in the jungle of New Guinea. They are Nell Stone, fascinating, magnetic and famous for her controversial work studying South Pacific tribes, her intelligent and aggressive husband Fen, and Andrew Bankson, who stumbles into the lives of this strange couple and becomes totally enthralled. Within months…


Book cover of A Children's Bible

Peter Friederici Author Of Beyond Climate Breakdown: Envisioning New Stories of Radical Hope

From my list on making it through climate breakdown.

Why am I passionate about this?

I consider myself a topologist of story, ever fascinated by the shapes stories take, and how those underlying forms—as much as their specific content—guide our reactions and our emotions. In a social-media-saturated age, it’s more important than ever that we practice the skills of comprehending story landscapes so that we can understand who benefits from them—and who doesn’t. Ditch the GPS: whether memoir, reportage, or fiction, these books showcase some of the map-and-compass skills we all need to navigate a complicated new era.

Peter's book list on making it through climate breakdown

Peter Friederici Why did Peter love this book?

During a group summer vacation on a beachy East Coast hideaway, the age-old dynamics of young vs. old—and the have-a-lots vs. the have-less—are in full play. The result sounds like any number of 20th-century American literary dramas, until it becomes clear that the disasters that loom are far larger than any single-family or community. Millet’s playful, snarky novel is a portrayal of what may come as the young realize how thoroughly older generations have sold out their future. The adults may be lost, but the kids are alright.

By Lydia Millet,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked A Children's Bible as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel-her first since the National Book Award-longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven- follows a group of eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their parents at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders, who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children are driven out into a chaotic landscape after a great storm descends. The story's narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the safety of her beloved little brother as events around them begin to mimic scenes from his cherished picture Bible.

Millet, praised as "unnervingly talented" (San Francisco Chronicle), has produced a…


Book cover of How Beautiful We Were

Sari Fordham Author Of Wait for God to Notice

From my list on by African women.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Sari's book list on by African women

Sari Fordham Why did Sari love this book?

What does environmental racism look like? Read How Beautiful We Were by 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.

By Imbolo Mbue,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked How Beautiful We Were as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST

'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…


Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

Book cover of Let Evening Come

Ad
Yvonne Osborne Author Of Let Evening Come

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Organic Gardener Environmentalist Reader Traveler Birder

Yvonne's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through young adulthood. Miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are displaced from their land by multinational energy companies. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie’s aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.

Stefan promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his story, has grown sympathetic to his cause and complicit in his pushback against prejudiced accusations. Their mutual attraction is…

Let Evening Come

By Yvonne Osborne,

What is this book about?

After her mother is killed in a rare Northern Michigan tornado, Sadie Wixom is left with only her father and grandfather to guide her through the pitfalls of young adulthood.
Hundreds of miles away in western Saskatchewan, Stefan Montegrand and his Indigenous family are forced off their land by multinational energy companies and flawed treaties. They are taken in temporarily by Sadie's aunt, a human rights activist who heads a cultural exchange program.
Stefan, whose own father died in prison while on a hunger strike, promptly runs afoul of local authority, but Sadie, intrigued by him and captivated by his…


Book cover of Gold Fame Citrus

Sandra K. Barnidge Author Of Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction

From my list on climate change that pull no punches.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a science communicator turned fiction writer with a special interest in the impact of environmental crises on small towns and overlooked places. My short fiction has appeared in various journals, including The Fiddlehead, Nimrod, Barren, and Reckon Review. I’m currently writing a novel about hurricane chasers along the Gulf Coast.

Sandra's book list on climate change that pull no punches

Sandra K. Barnidge Why did Sandra love this book?

This speculative dystopia about drought-ruined California is equal parts lyrical gut-punch and surrealist adventure story. Main characters Luz and Ray set up residence in an abandoned celebrity mansion, subsisting on whatever they can scavenge. Their precarious existence is upended when they cross paths with a toddler, and the trio sets off into the Dune Sea in search of a life that offers more than mere survival. A warning: this is not a cool breeze of a read. But if you’re curious about the psychic impact of prolonged heat, thirst, and desperation, Watkins offers a masterclass on the grimy reality of human resilience in a hostile world of our own making.

By Claire Vaye Watkins,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Gold Fame Citrus as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Haunting and beautifully written first novel by the award-winning author of Battleborn, set among a cult of survivors in a dystopian American desert

'A Mad Max world painted with a finer brush' Elle

'An unforgettable journey into a hauntingly imagined near-future' Ruth Ozeki

'Set in a drought-ravaged Southern California trolled by scavengers, Gold Fame Citrus burns with a dizzying, scorching genius' Vanity Fair

Desert sands have laid waste to the south-west of America. Las Vegas is buried. California - and anyone still there - is stranded. Any way out is severely restricted. But Luz and Ray are not leaving. They…


Book cover of Appleseed

Sandra K. Barnidge Author Of Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction

From my list on climate change that pull no punches.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a science communicator turned fiction writer with a special interest in the impact of environmental crises on small towns and overlooked places. My short fiction has appeared in various journals, including The Fiddlehead, Nimrod, Barren, and Reckon Review. I’m currently writing a novel about hurricane chasers along the Gulf Coast.

Sandra's book list on climate change that pull no punches

Sandra K. Barnidge Why did Sandra love this book?

This remixing of the American legend of Johnny Appleseed with climate science, ecoterrorism, and elements of Roman mythology results in a very big book — literally. At almost 500 pages, there’s a lot of, well, everything. But at its organic core, this is a story about the preservation of our most basic and necessary elements. As the story moves further into the distant future, the fight to protect the scraps and slivers of non-robotic life becomes more focused as it does urgent. By the end, what emerges is the gnawing sense that perhaps the mythology we’ve constructed around technology as our salvation is inhibiting the mysterious yet ultimately more powerful magic of a natural world quite capable of re-propagating itself if only we humans could bring ourselves to stand aside.

By Matt Bell,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK · A PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER BEST OF THE YEAR

“Woven together out of the strands of myth, science fiction, and ecological warning, Matt Bell’s Appleseed is as urgent as it is audacious.” —Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and national bestselling author of Get in Trouble

A “breathtaking novel of ideas unlike anything you’ve ever read” (Esquire) from Young Lions Fiction Award–finalist Matt Bell, a breakout book that explores climate change, manifest destiny, humanity’s unchecked exploitation of natural resources, and the small but powerful magic contained within every single apple. 

In eighteenth-century Ohio, two brothers travel…


Book cover of The Milagro Beanfield War

Eva Silverfine Author Of How to Bury Your Dog

From my list on our connections with the natural environment.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I grew up in New York City, from a young age I was drawn to the natural world, particularly through gardening and camping trips. Eventually I studied biology in college and earned a Master’s researching stream ecology. I also always imagined myself a writer. For years my writing was solely in letters and journals, but during my Master’s I started a novel featuring an immature mayfly in the stream (it was somewhat autobiographical). Ecology is all about the connection of organisms to their environment and to one another, and I think this perspective of connectedness has embedded itself deeply in my writing and my life.

Eva's book list on our connections with the natural environment

Eva Silverfine Why did Eva love this book?

First of all, this sprawling novel is funny and entertaining, and those qualities would be reason enough that I would recommend it. Yet beyond those qualities, it created a strong sense of place and a real social and political conflict without ever becoming preachy or heavy handed—not an easy feat as I have learned.

The storyline, a conflict over land use and water rights, is repeated again and again throughout the West and Southwest in particular—in this case pitting real estate developers against impoverished locals. But the story is also about a conflict of cultures and how those cultures perceive and connect to the land. Exposing such conflicts is a boon of literature.

By John Nichols,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Milagro Beanfield War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The Milagro Beanfield War is the first book in John Nichols's New Mexico Trilogy (“Gentle, funny, transcendent.” ―The New York Times Book Review)

Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories.…


Book cover of Prodigal Summer

Rachael Treasure Author Of Milking Time

From my list on Earth lovers and rural regeneration.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on the wild island of Tasmania. I saw the Vietnam War on TV, then went to a farm my father was ‘developing.’ It felt like war. The natural beauty that I’d once played in was destroyed by machines, poisons, and fire. During agricultural college in mainland Australia, I recognized an absence of reverence for Mother Nature. Women were missing from the rural narrative that increasingly held an economics-only mindset when it came to food. I’m a co-founder of Ripple Farm Landscape Healing Hub–a 100-acre farm we’re restoring to natural beauty and producing loved meat and eggs for customers. And I’m a devoted mum, shepherd, and working dog trainer.

Rachael's book list on Earth lovers and rural regeneration

Rachael Treasure Why did Rachael love this book?

Divine, divine, divine! This novel taught me so much about the landscape in Appalachia. The female characters were rich and deep. Running throughout the story was the thread of women standing for farming systems that partner with nature versus male characters who want to dominate or decimate.

It was musical and mystical, and I just adored being transported to the cabin in the woods and the rich gardens of the women who knew how Mama Earth rolls. There was also a wonderful exploration of female desire. It was lush and leafy, and I’m so grateful to Barbara for writing this book

By Barbara Kingsolver,

Why should I read it?

10 authors picked Prodigal Summer as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It is summer in the Appalachian mountains and love, desire and attraction are in the air. Nature, too, it seems, is not immune. From her outpost in an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, watches a den of coyotes that have recently migrated into the region. She is caught off guard by a young hunter who invades her most private spaces and interrupts her self-assured, solitary life. On a farm several miles down the mountain, Lusa Maluf Landowski, a bookish city girl turned farmer's wife, finds herself marooned in a strange place where she must declare or…


Book cover of Greenwood

Eva Silverfine Author Of How to Bury Your Dog

From my list on our connections with the natural environment.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I grew up in New York City, from a young age I was drawn to the natural world, particularly through gardening and camping trips. Eventually I studied biology in college and earned a Master’s researching stream ecology. I also always imagined myself a writer. For years my writing was solely in letters and journals, but during my Master’s I started a novel featuring an immature mayfly in the stream (it was somewhat autobiographical). Ecology is all about the connection of organisms to their environment and to one another, and I think this perspective of connectedness has embedded itself deeply in my writing and my life.

Eva's book list on our connections with the natural environment

Eva Silverfine Why did Eva love this book?

I particularly love books that combine the trifecta of engaging story; interesting, complex characters; and good writing with real substance (as in, I stop to think about the content). Greenwood has all of these.

The writing is particularly lyrical—I could fill this space with beautiful quotes. The author takes the reader through four generations of a family, with each generation intimately connected to trees in different ways—from lumbermen to environmental activist to woodcraftsman to botanist.

And as the author “takes a core” through a family tree, the story captures both the characters’ relationships to one another as well as to the world in which they live. I cannot recommend this book enough!

By Michael Christie,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'The truth is that all family lines, from the highest to the lowest, originate somewhere, on some particular day. Even the grandest trees must've once been seeds spun helpless on the wind, and then just meek saplings nosing up from the soil.'

2038. On a remote island off the Pacific coast of British Columbia stands the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral, one of the world's last forests. Wealthy tourists flock from all corners of the dust-choked globe to see the spectacle and remember what once was. But even as they breathe in the fresh air and pose for photographs amidst the greenery,…


Book cover of Barkskins

Steve Tomasula Author Of Ascension

From my list on the invention of nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

I know a book can change a person’s life because one of my early life-changing events was reading Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. From it, I took away the idea of how a fact is made, not discovered, and how facts, even those as “objective” as those in science, are different in different ages. It’s less a matter of one age being wrong about “Nature,” for example, than it is that a concept like “Nature” emerges out of a scrum of attitudes, technologies, conventions, etc. 

Steve's book list on the invention of nature

Steve Tomasula Why did Steve love this book?

Only separated by two years, I think Proulx’s Barkskins and Powers’s Overstory can be thought of as companions to one another. I like how the pun of Powers’s title refers to both the tree canopy that towers over the landscape and the overarching story that all of his sub-stories form as they come together, while I think of Proulx’s Barkskins as the meaty understory.

It opens in Canada’s colonial past when the continent was a vast carpet of old-growth forest. Explorers arrived, shortly followed by French settlers and indentured servants contracted into a kind of slavery to clear-cut the forests. I like how she leads us from this pristine beginning, through the exploitation of the forest and its indigenous dwellers, to the global distribution of lumber. In some ways Overstory picks up where the epic that is Barkskins leaves off.

By Annie Proulx,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

NOW A MAJOR TELEVISION SERIES

From Annie Proulx, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain, comes her masterwork: an epic, dazzling, violent, magnificently dramatic novel about the taking down of the world's forests.

In the late seventeenth century two penniless young Frenchmen, Rene Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord, a "seigneur," for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters - barkskins. Rene suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to…


Book cover of Memory Wall: Stories

Norrin M. Ripsman Author Of Song Book

From my list on short stories for a cottage trip.

Why am I passionate about this?

I love a good short story that can convey character, emotion, and complexity. While a novel allows the writer (and the reader) to delve into the chaotic complexity of a single set of characters, a good short story collection can explore a range of humanity and a diversity of moods or feelings.  This was my motivation in writing my book. I believe a good short story collection on a well-grounded theme (such as the contributions to this list by Doerr, Kundera, and Munro) can often reveal more about human nature than an excellent novel.

Norrin's book list on short stories for a cottage trip

Norrin M. Ripsman Why did Norrin love this book?

This book is a great short story collection focused on a theme, as I try to do in my book. For Doerr, it’s memory and impermanence–what will be left of us, of all that we’ve experienced, all that we’ve struggled to achieve, all that we’ve loved after the passage of time?

Through six exceptionally creative, unforgettable stories (pun intended), Doerr explores the melancholy ephemerality of human existence. I love how the settings, from Cape Town, South Africa, to a soon-to-be submerged Chinese village, are integral, tangible parts of his stories. This is a truly wonderful book!

By Anthony Doerr,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Memory Wall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set on four continents, Anthony Doerr's new collection of stories is about memory: the source of meaning and coherence in our lives, the fragile thread that connects us to ourselves and to others. In the luminous and beautiful title story, a young boy in South Africa comes to possess an old woman's secret, a piece of the past with the power to redeem a life. In 'The River Nemunas', a teenaged orphan moves from Kansas to Lithuania to live with her grandfather, and discovers a world in which myth becomes real. 'Village 113' is about the building of the Three…


Book cover of Euphoria
Book cover of A Children's Bible
Book cover of How Beautiful We Were

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,472

readers submitted
so far, will you?

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in environmental degradation, secrets, and maritime?

Secrets 276 books
Maritime 24 books