Fans pick 100 books like The Maze Cutter

This post-apocalyptic novel features Cassie as our flawed female main character. She is in pure survival mode, and I love the way Yancey shows the uncertainty of living in a world where you don’t know who to trust. Cassie is your typical girl next door, and while she’s trying to survive an alien invasion, I easily asked myself, What would I have done?

I love books that make you ask that. She has such a hard time trusting anyone, and given the fact that aliens are taking over people’s bodies, yeah, it’s understandable. And the five waves of the alien invasion are totally terrifying and also totally believable.

The guilt that a teenager can feel can be gut-wrenching, especially when he fires the first shot to start a second civil war. It was amazing to follow the story of 17-year-old Danny Wright through the ups and downs of a new civil war.

I loved the character development and how the author developed the characters' feelings. I felt Danny's guilt and hope that one day he would be able to save his mother and then his loss when he lost her forever. I love this book because it sent me on a rollercoaster ride of emotion while scaling the political landscape of another American civil war. 

I found this book on TikTok. The author's words and images inspired me to order it. Once I picked up the book, I couldn’t put it down. The book is thought-provoking from the first page. What is Oliver hiding from his wife? The zombie apocalypse starts, and you almost forget about the question as you follow Oliver and Zoe as they struggle through the end of the world.

I loved that even though this book is about a new type of zombie apocalypse, the overall feeling I got from it was the hope that Oliver and Zoe kept. They hoped that the other was alive and that they could keep each other safe when they were reunited.

When I read this book, I was very glad I came to it late. I never had to wait to get the next book in the series. While I am recommending this book in particular because it is the first, the whole trilogy is needed to get the full effect of the story.

Following 16-year-old Adam through this story was fun and exciting. The emotions ranging from scared as hell to hopeful throughout kept me engaged. The main feeling I kept was the hope that he and his family would stay safe in the community stronghold that they had built. I also hoped that even though society had fallen fast, maybe it could eventually be healed. 

Set in the evocative, spooky borderlands known as the Marches, between England and Wales, this is part of a series by Phil Rickman. Through the novels we follow the trials and tribulations of Merrily Watkins, a parish priest and the official exorcist for the Hereford diocese of the Church of England—thus introducing a strong element of the supernatural. Merrily is a believable and sympathetic protagonist, with her share of human weaknesses, and she’s surrounded by a rich, unforgettable cast of ongoing supporting characters: daughter Jane, musician Lol, and the wonderful Gomer Parry. It was difficult to choose one book from this fine series, but I settled on this one because it features one of my own favourite churches—Kilpeck, in the wilds of Herefordshire.

In Midwinter of the Spirit, Rickman’s excellent prose superbly evokes Herefordshire settings as a backdrop to his protagonist’s, (parish priest, rooky exorcist, and single mum Merrily Watkins), foray into a twilight world. Merrily’s character is painted by Rickman as vulnerable but driven, qualities that eventually lead her into mortal danger, with evil pursuing her in the most personal way through her daughter, and also manifesting itself at the heart of the religious establishment that should be her ultimate protector. Midwinter of the Spirit was subsequently made into an excellent TV serial, and the cathedral scenes were coincidentally filmed at Chester Cathedral, which features in my novel (and is where I was standing when the mug shot shown on this page was taken!). 

For a long time, I assumed that I would find these three novellas about churchmen and parishioners in the English countryside of the late 18th and early 19th centuries sleepy and dull. They’re anything but. Eliot depicts the presence of alcoholism, spousal abuse, loneliness, and life-damaging gossip in her fictional communities. But her signature empathy and wit, already on display in this early work, make it invigorating, not a downer.

This trilogy of novels is altogether darker than Sayers, as Andrew Taylor tackles nothing less ambitious than ‘the making of a murderer,’ as well as the history of the Church of England in the twentieth century. If the latter sounds dull, it’s not! Figuratively looking through the wrong end of a telescope, he peels away the layers of the story as he goes backward in time in the cathedral city of Rosington, from the wrenching kidnapping of the daughter of a woman priest, to the events in the far past which culminated in tragedy. Like Dorothy Sayers, though, Andrew Taylor grew up as the child of an Anglican clergyman, so there is real authenticity here, as well as fine writing and a gift for creating suspense.

Catherine Fox is intimately familiar with the nuances of the Church of England. She writes about them with wit and affection, and she’s dependably funny in this tale of a married bishop who doesn’t want to look too closely at why he’s quite so patient with his disaster of a chauffeur. The Lindchester series is ongoing, and I’m one of many followers who read along to share the joys and sorrows of the diverse, expanding, and delightful cast of characters. This is the place to start, though.

The late John Polkinghorne was the leading figure in the modern dialogue between science and religion. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge, a position which he gave up to become a priest in the Church of England. In this startling volume, he discusses all the clauses of the Nicene Creed, thinking through this fundamental statement of Christian belief as a scientist. He persistently asks, ‘What is the evidence that makes you think this might be true?’ and shows that the evidence required to justify classically orthodox Christian belief is there to be had.