72 books like The Inheritance

This is a book about the power of dreams. What would you do if you realized that whatever you dreamt became reality when you woke up? And what would you do if you had the power to control that dreamer? Like so many of LeGuin’s amazing novels, this one is both pure entertainment and a deeply thoughtful exploration of the consequences of power (as well as some fascinating thoughts about what an ideal world might look like). I find the concept of responsibility as it relates to power super intriguing, and I appreciate how using “magical” elements to explore the concept adds a purity to a conversation that could otherwise get bogged down in politics. (Plus it’s way more fun.)

I hesitate to choose Hardy, not just because he is well known enough not to need my endorsement, but because he comes close to misanthropy, practices a fatalistic belief in destiny, and punishes his characters often needlessly, to satiate his enormous anger at the unfairness of the world. All this turned me off him. But on coming to live in the country I finally clicked with aspects of his vision, and was inspired by his sensuous and near-religious immersion in nature to endow my own book with a natural vividity and realism, that I hope grounds the more fanciful and inventive elements in the story.    

Once I began my reading journey in high school, I naturally gravitated to this book series.

It was recommended by a friend I played Dungeons and Dragons with from school. This was the mid to late 80s and Dungeons and Dragons was a bit controversial, but we knew it was harmless fun. My friend knew I loved magic, and he told me of Raistlin the magic user and his twin brother Caramon and how they were central to the plot. I was hooked.

This was another fantasy series I just couldn’t put down. I remember getting my younger brother hooked on these same fantasy books and being angry with him because he was a faster reader and he read ahead of me! These novels were easy to read and were a wonderful part of my teen reading journey. They take the reader away to another realm and you find yourself… show more.

Thomas Ligotti writes dark magical realism short stories. The Shadow at the Bottom of the World is an unforgettable collection written by a modern master of atmosphere. His stories rarely have complicated plots, but the feeling they leave you with is the whole point. In the thousands of books I’ve read, I can safely say he writes like no other-- he enshrouds your spirit with dread. The title story showcases a small town that encounters the arrival of a threatening breed of darkness. Written with the stunning imagery of Bradbury, the mysticism of Lovecraft, and the disquieting tone of William S. Burroughs, this collection will have you brightening the blaze in the fireplace, just to make the shadows retreat.

When I first read this book, I could hear Roberta Flack’s famous song “Killing Me Softly” playing in my head.

I felt as if the author had peered into my own heart and articulated everything I felt about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s greatest work, The Great Gatsby. Corrigan covers an enormous amount of territory—everything from her personal reflections on the novel to how it didn’t sell well at first to how it gained in popularity as GIs read it during WWII as part of a free books program designed just for them up to the four film iterations of the tale.

Along the way, though, she explores why Gatsby still moves so many readers and why it’s considered The Great American Novel.

This is the 1st of two books by DeMille featuring wise-cracking lawyer John Sutton. Set on the ultra-affluent Gold coast of Long Island, DeMille masterfully plays up the romantic tension between Sutton and his wife while dealing with a mafia don who moves in next door. Lots of snappy dialogue and intrigue will keep you turning the pages. 

Steinbeck is one of my favorite novelists (Willa Cather, the other) but boy did he run off the rails with this, his final book.

He describes an American society locked in irreversible decline, with everything getting worse and our polity doomed. Sixty years later the United States remains the envy of the world and almost every America today lives better materially, with more freedom and security, than almost everyone of 1961.

The novel is a reminder of the extent to which ideological negativity is ubiquitous in literature.

This novel pulled me in quickly with its portrayal of a middle-class family hoping to spend a relaxing week in a rented home they could never afford to own. The family’s plans go awry quickly when the owners show up at door wanting to stay there as a refuge from the total blackout in NYC. Adding suspense to witty social commentary, Alam creates a sense that something very bad is happening, without ever describing what that bad thing is. I had a few ideas, but the author outsmarted and surprised me with the ending. I feel he captured a lot about modern life and the anxiety many of us feel about the future. Yet, it was entertaining and made me laugh a few times.  

This is an evocative mystery with not one but two atmospheric settings: Long Island’s Suffolk County, and Ireland’s County Clare. When an Irish national is found dead on a Long Island beach, Detective Maggie D’arcy’s planned vacation to Ireland becomes a tense investigation into the mysterious victim’s death, and a fight to keep her young daughter safe both abroad and back at home. I found A Distant Grave to be deeply chilling and impossible to put down. 

First published in 1980, Gaywyck was the first historical gay gothic romance. Virga, whose day job for forty years was as photo editor, turns his extraordinary eye on turn-of-the-last century New York.

The tangled lives, dark secrets, and mad love – all conventions of the romance genre – are stood on their heads in this reimagining. “I realized genre has no gender,” Virga says, and set about cannily reversing roles and inverting tropes to fashion a puzzle wrapped in an enigma of requited and unrequited love.

Gaywyck stands the test of time and remains a modern classic.