Fans pick 94 books like The Unlikely Master Genius

I hated having to put this book down to sleep, go to work, go back to work, eat, or whatever. I love Heyer's humor. After reading the book many, many times for its warm, feel-good story, I still laugh at some of the predicaments Frederica's adventurous young siblings fall into. And Endymion Dauntry, her silly sister’s cork-brained beau! 

Her writing style is polished and the dialogue is witty. The love interest is believable as is not always the case with romance novels. Accuracy in detail and depiction of the period is important to me, too, and Heyer delivers it. The story is engaging and fun without being silly, and as it’s an older book, it’s free of tedious sex scenes. It’s a feel-good story.

I like books with strong and sensible female characters and male characters who are not the stereotypical “alpha male,” that’s why I’ve read this book several times.

When widowed Samantha is faced with the prospect of being forced to live with her hateful in-laws, she neither dithers nor worries about the impropriety of fleeing her home with the help of a male acquaintance. Crippled in the Napoleonic wars, he is feeling somewhat oppressed by his own relatives. 

Another “plus” for me is that they do not so much fall in love as slide into it. The tendency of romantic characters to kiss and immediately tumble into lust, if not love, strikes me as unrealistic. I also like good writing and the occasional plot twist, and Mary Balogh excels at both.

This book delighted me. I expected the usual boy meets girl, they fall in love, have a temporary setback, and then makeup. Instead, it’s much more complicated than that.

It’s not love at first sight: Evan rescues her small son but is not immediately attracted to her. Widowed Deborah is wary after a disappointing marriage and a childhood with little affection and too much fear. Evan’s loving family is of a wealthier and higher social position and is not inclined to accept her.

I very much appreciated that there were real obstacles to overcome on both sides, unlike romances in which the hero and his relations do not boggle at the heir marrying a woman of a lower class with no dowry. I insist on some realism even in romance.  

This book reminds me of my favorite Georgette Heyer romances in its depiction of the Georgian period. When I read historical fiction of any kind, I want to feel I’m in that time, not reading about modern people in costume.

The story of a blind young woman confined to a country estate because her brother feels she is unable to deal with society was compelling. I liked the characters, and the story carried me along so successfully that I regretted finishing it (after keeping me up after I should have been in bed). 

I’m a critical reader, and I couldn’t find a thing in the book to annoy me.

Written in elegant prose and with vivid visual detail, this book uncovers an exotic lost world—lost both to the author, with the death of her parents, and to all of us, with the march of history.

This is the world of a British bookshop owner and his Italian-born wife, in Cairo after World War II, in the years leading up to the 1952 revolution that marked the awakening of independent feeling in Egypt. The city Warner uncovers, on the brink of the revolution and after a devastating war, is her childhood paradise, and she is not afraid to portray it as exotic even as she understands the risk of betraying a colonial gaze.

To recreate this world, she uses not only old photographs and her own memories, but also artefacts, from furniture to clothing, shoes, most of all books (not just their content, but as objects), which she researches meticulously,… show more.

This is the 75th anniversary edition of a book first published in 1946, a best-seller at the time, and the impetus for changes in the treatment of psychiatric patients. The narrator, novelist Victoria Cunningham, finds herself incarcerated in a corrupt and badly-run hospital with little memory of how she got there; I was disturbed by the way she had to navigate through an obscure, nonsensical bureaucracy that seems more insane than any of the hospital’s patients. Virginia is supported by her loving and loyal husband, but at times she loses track of her memories and forgets who he is. The book is frightening—especially given that it’s based on the author’s own experiences at Bellevue Hospital in New York—but also intimate and moving.

This novel does the very scary thing of looking postpartum directly in the eye.

It follows new mom Liz Bennet along her increasingly unhinged search for clues about her husband’s suspected infidelity. Most moms (hopefully!) won’t relate to Liz’s specific situation, but Justine Sullivan paints a terrifyingly realistic portrait of the madness of those first years of new motherhood.

I loved this book because it builds from the sadness of a life taken far too young to the beauty of deep reflections on the meaning of life, love, and loss. Paul Kalanithi was a brilliant neurosurgeon just completing his years of training when he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.

Kalanithi, a new father, wrote much of this book while he was dying. As a writer myself, this book caused me to wonder if I could be so open about my reality, in a book or any other form, while dying. I do not know the answer, but I treasure the experience of having read a book that raised such a powerful stirring in myself. Like the other books I recommend, Kalanithi’s memoir is a gift from the book Gods.

The subtitle of the book helps you understand Gary Thomas’s purpose: he wants to help his readers see that marriage is not primarily for our happiness.

Although it is a gift and frequently fills us with joy, marriage is also very sanctifying, which is to say it makes us holy. Few things in life help us grow spiritually as much as marriage. When we get married we learn to be patient, gentle, and we frequently have to find ourselves being forgiving. And these are all wonderful graces.

This novel has all the makings of a science fiction novel. But is it? Quantum physicist Matt Bronik is suffering from strange, violent seizures. He doesn’t believe they are tied to his research—studying quantum interference. But when he disappears, his wife Brigid is determined to find him. Is it Matt’s research into the universe’s deepest mysteries that has endangered his life? Is it Chinese competitors, the Department of Defense, or an unscrupulous billionaire? All of the above? None of the above?

Examining these books, it’s clear now that I really like thrillers where there’s science involved (and thrillers in general). I liked how this novel set a series of scientific puzzles in place and then knocked them down one by one. Because no matter how much science is involved, it’s matters of the human heart that can be the most mysterious.