Here are 100 books that The Other Brother fans have personally recommended if you like
The Other Brother.
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At age five, I was reading under the blankets with a flashlight far past my bedtime. It’s an often told story of how I believed I was getting away with something while my makeshift tent, held up by my head, was lit up like a snowglobe. By age eleven, when I picked up my aunt’s book, I discovered romance novels. I was hooked. I’ve read thousands of romance novels in the almost four decades that have since passed, and I’ve learned that each person who reads a book takes something different from it, and I hope these five books that gave so much to me, might do the same for you.
This story elicited every emotion: joy, excitement, yearning, jealousy, rage, hope, betrayal, relief, shock, bewilderment… it took my poor heart on a wild ride. However, there were two pieces that stand out in stark relief in my mind. First, the betrayal of the friendship in hopes of saving it. What a position to be in. Second, Nathan’s pain and confusion as he worked his way past his own assumptions. It’s never an easy journey to know oneself. Witnessing Nathan’s journey, because of the collateral damage to his most treasured relationship, stung. Compassion for both of them broke my heart. And isn’t that the whole point of a good story? To walk in someone else’s shoes and come away with more compassion, more wisdom, and a deeper capacity to love?
Nathan Mercer, the only man in my life. Loving him was never an option.
We met ten years ago, when we started at the same company on the same day. Both new in town and with nobody else to rely on, we quickly became friends. And while Nathan went on to rule San Francisco, I’m still doing the same job with the same people. We finish each other’s sentences, we spend Christmas together and he sleeps at my house more than his. He’s beautiful.... beyond belief. In another life, he’s probably my soul mate.
At age five, I was reading under the blankets with a flashlight far past my bedtime. It’s an often told story of how I believed I was getting away with something while my makeshift tent, held up by my head, was lit up like a snowglobe. By age eleven, when I picked up my aunt’s book, I discovered romance novels. I was hooked. I’ve read thousands of romance novels in the almost four decades that have since passed, and I’ve learned that each person who reads a book takes something different from it, and I hope these five books that gave so much to me, might do the same for you.
Bryce suffered a spinal cord injury that caused him to completely reconstruct his life and rebuild his dreams. Can you imagine what that must be like? Reading this book enabled me to do just that. There are three reasons this book stuck out for me. One, it made me cry. Two, as an author of books depicting mental illness, representation is hugely important to me. Last, this couple! They are imperfect, but perfect for each other—even when it’s difficult, even when life doesn’t live up to their expectations, and even when they can’t come through for each other or themselves the way they wish they could. This story lives in my heart.
From bestselling author Kristen Granata comes a touching forced proximity grumpy sunshine romance about healing and taking chances...
Charly Johnson created a bucket list when cancer left her mother with less than a year to live. They didn’t make it all the way through the list before she died, but she made Charly promise to finish it and live her life to the fullest.
Spending the summer in a coastal mountain city in Maine is next on her list. The scenic town is perfect for finding adventure, and the quirky inn owner makes her feel right at home in the…
At age five, I was reading under the blankets with a flashlight far past my bedtime. It’s an often told story of how I believed I was getting away with something while my makeshift tent, held up by my head, was lit up like a snowglobe. By age eleven, when I picked up my aunt’s book, I discovered romance novels. I was hooked. I’ve read thousands of romance novels in the almost four decades that have since passed, and I’ve learned that each person who reads a book takes something different from it, and I hope these five books that gave so much to me, might do the same for you.
The boundaryless love we give in childhood no longer exists once our heart picks up some mileage. But what if, years later, you met up once again with your childhood best friend and fell in love? In love with the one from whom your heart built no boundaries? The fear, the joy, the euphoria…imagine the agony of abandonment when adult problems and life’s complications intervene. This book hurt because it reminded me of the fragility of love and the necessity of regaining that boundaryless faith and trust when it’s time to rebuild.
The fiercely protective boy who always caught me when I fell.
Until I moved away.
Now, ten years later, Logan Miller is a gorgeous, Grammy-winning DJ and a dedicated single dad—and hotter than any hit on the Billboards!
When our paths cross again, fantasies of him turn into reality.
I moved back to Austin to build a life outside the safety net of my wonderful, albeit overbearing, Indian family. Preferring the company of my old dog, my online games, and reruns of Marvel movies, I’m nowhere close to the type of woman who can handle…
At age five, I was reading under the blankets with a flashlight far past my bedtime. It’s an often told story of how I believed I was getting away with something while my makeshift tent, held up by my head, was lit up like a snowglobe. By age eleven, when I picked up my aunt’s book, I discovered romance novels. I was hooked. I’ve read thousands of romance novels in the almost four decades that have since passed, and I’ve learned that each person who reads a book takes something different from it, and I hope these five books that gave so much to me, might do the same for you.
This story treated my heart like a yo-yo. Jess is hot, Emma is a hot mess. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, and more than once I struggled to read with tears streaming down my face. It’s a story about love and loyalty and what happens when it battles fear and betrayal. Though I did empathize with Jess’s situation, it was Emma who slayed me. Her social awkwardness and lack of filter pinned her heart firmly on the outside of her chest. There it sat, vulnerable and unprotected, alongside mine as I hopped on for the ride. It was her innocence, and the moment that was lost, that killed me. When the jolt hit Emma’s heart, it sent shockwaves through my own. But, by the final chapter, I fell in love with both of them, and what better way for a story to end?
I'm an idiot. Everyone knows that in a fake relationship, you keep it platonic. I knew it too, but I kissed her anyway.
From the first moment I met Emma Caldwell, I knew she was going to be trouble. Hot, adorable, complicated trouble.
So when she propositioned me—and not the sexy kind of proposition—I refused. Because the painfully awkward woman next door wanted lessons in love. I don’t do relationships, and I sure as hell don’t do love—the whole town knows that. But after what happened with my ex-fiancée, they’ve been eager to see me happily settled down.
Back in the dark ages, before the internet and cell phones, the most common form of off-duty soldiers’ entertainment was reading. I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, but I was always most excited to read fantasy and science fiction. If a book has a wild new world, magic, or tech, I’m in and usually can’t get enough. I remain a cross-genre reader to this day, but fantasy and science fiction always feel like home. Bonus points for dragons.
This fantastic desert world where fire magic is common, but taboo, sucked me in right from the start. Although the main character is a young adult, I connected with her right off the bat. Her struggles as a possessor of fire magic and learning to control it, are daunting, but I couldn’t help rooting for her. Then, there are many strange and dangerous creatures to boot. I was left guessing and worrying if she’d succeed right to the end.
I’m a Canadian science fiction writer who writes very, very slowly. I’m interested in experimental fiction and books that are unique, both thematically and stylistically. I’d like to think my books fall into this category, or at least that’s what I aspire to. I used to read science fiction exclusively, and the five books I’ve listed here were all read during those formative years; they were fundamental stepping-stones for me, as a writer, and each of them left a profound mark on my idea of how good, or effective, novels can be.
Hand’s sentences are always beautiful, and this novel, her first, is dense with new ideas and original imagery. She evokes a bizarre future in a post-apocalyptic city where twins go on a hallucinogenic quest. Reads like a somewhat disturbing mythology. Gods and talking animals, autistic prophets, feral children, and death is personified. Unforgettable.
The “sensuous and evocative” debut of the Nebula Award–winning author of Waking the Moon: A dystopian journey through a world unburdened by moral taboos (Library Journal). Set in the surreal, post-apocalyptic City of Trees, Winterlong centers on Wendy Wanders, a girl who can tap into the dreams and emotions of the people around her, and her long-lost twin brother, Raphael, a seductive, sacred courtesan to the City’s decadent elite. During their voyage, they encounter man-made and godlike monstrosities—both hideous and gorgeous—in their effort to stop an ancient power from consuming all. Blending science fiction and fantasy, Winterlong is a dark…
A while ago I lived with the extraordinary spiritual Findhorn community in Scotland and that experience opened my eyes to the mysteries that we are and that surround us. Subsequently, I became a professional travel guide writer and as I visited churches and megaliths, it gradually occurred to me that the ancients may have recorded information useful to us if only we could work out how to interpret it. Twenty years ago I settled in France, a country densely packed with extraordinary places. Here, I have been able to deepen my understanding of the universal, greater reality of which we are part.
The late great Alan Watts was the master of reminding us not to take reality – or ourselves – at face value. His prose manages to be simple and profound at the same time and he always has his feet on the earth. I could recommend any of his books but this is the one with which I began. No one else can ever tell me who or what I am. My experience of the world is always subjective, whatever science says; and the best way to see accurately is to get to know myself.
The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are explores an unrecognised but mighty taboo - our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Alan Watts, key thinker of Western Zen Buddhism, explains how to reconsider our relationship with the world.
We are in urgent need of a sense of our own existence, which is in accord with the physical facts and which overcomes our feeling of alienation from the universe. In The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts asks what causes the illusion of the self as a separate ego…
I am fascinated by the things people do and the reasons they give for doing them. That people also do things in culturally specific ways and that their culturally specific ways of doing things are related to their culturally specific ideas about what makes sense and what does not inspires in me a sense of awe. As a professor and historian, thinking anthropologically has always been an important tool, because it helps me look for the hidden, cultural logics that guided the behavior of people in history. It helps me ask different questions. And it sharpens my sense of humility for the fundamental unknowability of this world we call home.
For me, the power of both history and anthropology as disciplines of knowledge is their shared capacity for taking a thing you thought you knew and showing you that you didn’t actually know anything about it at all—in fact, you didn’t even know what questions to ask about it. I would be seriously remiss in a list like this if I did not mention the book that first fascinated me, as a historian, with the anthropologist’s way of posing questions. In this towering classic of British social anthropology, Professor Douglas forces us completely to rethink something we actually never think about at all: dirt. But trust me, once you pose the question, “what is dirt?” you can never think about filth (and its structural counterpart, purity) in the same way again.
Is cleanliness next to godliness? What does such a concept really mean? Why does it recur as a universal theme across all societies? And what are the implications for the unclean?
In Purity and Danger Mary Douglas identifies the concern for purity as a key theme at the heart of every society. In lively and lucid prose she explains its relevance for every reader by revealing its wide-ranging impact on our attitudes to society, values, cosmology and knowledge. This book has been hugely influential in many areas of debate - from religion to social theory. With a specially commissioned preface…
While The Woman in the Sun Hat is my debut novel, as a seasoned playwright, I have often gravitated to character studies in a variety of genres, usually blending comedy with pathos. What was exciting for me in writing a novel was that I could really explore an even more nuanced arc of the central character. I am a Brooklyn, NY-based Playwright, Novelist, Screenwriter, Actor, and Poet. Recent publications include my play Day of the Dog (Broadway Play Publishing) and my debut poetry collection 104 Days of the Pandemic (fandango 4 Art House). My latest novel is Graphic Nature, due out later in 2022.
While, yes, this is not a novel, there is a true character journey in reading the complete works of Ms. Sexton in sequence; a sort of poetic analysis the likes of which I have not read to such a soul-baring degree, as she depicts her thoughts and struggles with marriage, relationships, motherhood, her own parents and various other facets of her life. To me, Ms. Sexton is very much the symbol of what became the confessional poetry movement. The eloquence and depth of her writing, especially in poems like " The Double Image", "Flee on Your Donkey" and " For My Lover Returning to His Wife", are remarkable.
The Complete Poems: Anne Sexton comprises the poet's ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems from her last years.
From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women.
"Women poets in particular owe a debt to Anne Sexton, who broke new ground, shattered taboos, and endured a barrage of attacks along the way because of the flamboyance of her subject matter...Sexton has earned her place in the canon."—from the Foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin
From the time I was introduced to Depeche Mode, I quickly realized there was an underground scene dissecting the darker realms of human nature. It’s no easy task translating emotion into tangible products like film, books, and music, so if an artist can fixate an audience by getting them to interpret themselves and, the world, more effectively, there’s great value in that. If it hadn’t been for that, I probably wouldn’t have achieved things like being an award-winning author, a paralegal from the University of Texas at Austin, manage workshops via Airbnb Experiences, or receive academic certificates thru Coursera like the Science of Well-Being from Yale and Managing the Company of the Future from London Business School.
Released in the early ‘90s, Frisk was adapted into a film in the mid-90s by Todd Verow. Both received mixed reviews due its transgressive content about madness and bizarre sexual aesthetic. Frisk leaves little to the imagination as the narrator explores taboo photography and sexual deviance while traveling through Holland. Critics and fans found this breakthrough novel deeply polarizing because it involves a gay character obsessed with annihilation. Nevertheless, the overall theme is about victimization, and a culture obsessed with objectification. Despite the novel’s punk prose and hypnotic pacing, there’s something to be said when humanity has a tendency to destroy what society deems perfect. Cooper definitely explores how human desire can become just as fanatical as a religious zealot. A must read for fans of cinematic gore.
When Dennis is thirteen, he sees a series of photographs of a boy apparently unimaginably mutilated. Dennis is not shocked, but stunned by their mystery and their power; their glimpse at the reality of death. Some years later, Dennis meets the boy who posed for the photographs. He did it for love.
Surrounded by images of violence, the celebrity of horror, news of disease, a wasteland of sex, Dennis flies to Europe, having discovered some clues about the photographs: “I see these criminals on the news who’ve killed someone methodically, and they’re free. They know something amazing. You can just…
