100 books like The Iron Dragon's Mother

Though not technically an island, perhaps, the world depicted in this mystifying novel is unlike any I’ve experienced before, a maze of chambers and thunderous tides where secrets are hidden out in the open.

The reader is dropped into this disorienting world with only its titular protagonist as a guide. What follows is a beguiling journey of philosophy, magic, and wide-eyed innocence—a triumph of the imagination. 

For a more traditional take on fantasy, Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria is lovely and immersive, a fascinating new world worthy of Ursula Le Guin and Gene Wolfe.

Reportedly, she created Olondria from a combination of regions in Turkey and North Africa, and it feels absolutely fresh and instantly powerful. A teenage merchant becomes haunted by the ghost of a young girl and must find a way to put her to rest.

But the story is really about the power of books and stories and language itself. It’s a love letter to adventure and open seas, harbors, and alleys, and snowy mountains in the distance.

Ms. Samatar holds several advanced degrees in language and literature, including Arabic and various African dialects, and you can feel the joy of her verbal artistry dancing on the page.

Stranger is not to be missed.

You know how you go somewhere you’ve never been and you feel hollow in your bones, like you’re more fragile there, you might blow away in a strong wind or just melt down if this place doesn’t learn to recognize you?

Amatka is like that, and it’s about that. We follow someone trying to diligently do a perfectly normal market research gig in place where everyday objects must be clearly labelled and the labels reinforced constantly, otherwise they dissolve into slush.

She has to keep putting things in their place, but she’s not too good at that, because she’s always been out of place herself.

I mean, isn’t that exactly what life is like? And then it all falls apart.

Death in Spring is a tiny book containing a bigger, more intricate world than many a doorstopper, for all that the whole story set in a small, nameless hamlet.

Life there too is made of strange, violent rituals, only not the ones we know. We follow a boy growing up and learning them, and being scarred by these mysteries—what do they fill the mouths of the dead with, before they are killed and put into a tree forever? (It’s cement.)

Rodoreda wrote in Catalan, and Tennent’s translation is fluid and beautiful.

Perfection is a rare thing; if you want to see what that looks like, here you go.   

Agent of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, Fatma el-Sha'arawi is the spectacularly well-dressed protagonist tasked with saving the world (again) in an alternate 1912 Cairo. This award-winning novel awed me with its detail and invention. What I loved most was the way the world building relegated the British Empire to relative unimportance. Come to think of it, I loved the Ministry library almost as much.

In July of 1980, a beautiful violinist disappeared during a 45-minute break while the visiting ballet company used a prerecorded piece. Helen Hagnes Mintiks was a Julliard grad who had played with professionals since her teens. After the evening’s performance ended, her colleagues knew—as any musician would—that Helen would never have left the building without her violin. It took another nine hours to find her body, thrown down a ventilation shaft, hands tied with knots that stagehands used. A witness led them to the killer, who promptly confessed—a real villain, robbing the world of a kind-hearted talent out of lust. I read this book probably 30 years ago, while I was reading my way through the entire true crime section of the Cleveland Public Library. 

Camilla Läckberg's writing was a revelation to me because it was with this book that I fell in love with Nordic Noir.

But what I found out living here, in Sweden, is that Camilla, who is greatly admired in France and in the UK, is often criticized in her home country despite her tremendous success. Businesswoman, writer, and mother of four, Camilla is an exceptional woman, but she does not fit in with the prevailing Swedish “Lagom” in a country where celebrating success is sometimes regarded as a deadly sin.

This book marked the start of her incredible career.

This was the first book I read from Natalie Walters and it was fabulous! She is an auto-buy for me with a riveting story that is not only crime-centric but with relatable and real characters! Her romance is light and expertly woven through a story that will keep you guessing, biting your fingernails, and skipping dinner!

I grew up on Santa Cruz Island, and while Floreana Island was visible on the horizon, I only knew it as the place where mysterious things had happened to people. Only when I read this book did I begin to understand. While Europe was preparing for war in the early 1930s, William Beebe’s enchanting book about Galapagos, caused a bizarre set of adventurers to converge on this small island as their chosen Eden. Stranger than fiction, what ensued was a human-made hell instead, that fostered bizarre deaths and disappearances that have remained unexplained to this day. The author uses his scientific background to analyze the known facts and lets the reader fill in the blanks. This book was the basis for the documentary film, The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden, by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

This book had everything I love in a paranormal thriller—magic, secrets, twists, turns—but with an amazing setting that reads almost like a character itself.

Sain does such a good job of describing La Cachette, Louisiana, that I could feel the swamp heat humming from the pages. The fictional town also boasts the title of self-proclaimed psychic capital of the world, which makes secret-keeping nearly impossible—a perfect tension-builder for a fast-paced plot riddled with secrets, psychics, and unreliable characters.