75 books like The Woman Lit by Fireflies

There is great beauty to the concrete and close-space urban worlds generated by Edward P. Jones. We descend with him into an ever more compassionate world in which people love and hate one another, seek one another, find one another, and bring about uncommon transcendence of heart, mind, and spirit. An artist whose books never fail to forward the depths of American literary gravity, he is a wonder to read and his art a joy to behold. Lost in the City, his first book of short stories, garnered the PEN/Hemingway award. His second book, The Known World, was granted the Pulitzer Prize. The words of social philosopher bell hooks provide the same grounding found in reading Jones’ beautiful powerful stories, it’s “all about love.”

Annie Proulx is a genius with character, and she’s obsessed with how hard humans work to uphold their myths of identity and achievement even when the odds are stacked against them. Close Range is the best of her three very good story collections about the West. It’s famous, and rightly so, for the trail-blazing tale of cowboy queerness "Brokeback Mountain". But each story is taut with observation and image. “The Mud Below,” “The Half-Skinned Steer”—there’s more than one American classic in this book. Some Westerners aren’t fans of Proulx, but I am. She doesn’t pull her punches about what it’s really like to ranch, rodeo, fantasize about retirement, or care for family in a place with no safety net, extreme weather, and no neighbors around the corner.

How do we overcome the most wild and unforgiving shadows of our personal and communal life together? If anyone can help us more closely understand our lack of understanding of one another, it is the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and short story writer, Richard Ford. The spare beauty of Wildlife (Ford’s homage to the dark force of lost love), is in close attunement with his cult classic of short story lore, Rock Springs. Ford’s subtlety and power as an artist are irrevocably tied to the uncommon life-giving capacity he shapes in us when we give ourselves to the ancient wisdom of this story collection. 

The title story of this collection is a miracle of human relations, ecstatic prose cut to perfection, and the multivalent understandings that arise when we give ourselves freely, openly, and yes brokenly to the will to love. There is nothing so sweet as the kind of development and shaping of humanity found in  Davis’ short stories. An author whose work has appeared in Best American Short Stories and won a Pushcart Prize, Davis is an author who has not received the kind of national following she deserves.

The Lake Superior backdrop and surrounding area are so familiar from personal visits that it seemed like I was walking around in the book. I enjoyed the sense of place as much as the mystery. 

A young journalist struggling with the age-old problem of leaving his job at the office when he’s home with his family finds that the news stops for no man. He’s soon caught up in the mystery of why a native American woman came to town just to throw herself off a cliff over Lake Superior. Town politics, an elite family with enough power to squelch any gossip, and his own mother try to divert his attention from the story, but a newsman needs to know.

I loved that the protagonist of Superior Justice is an unorthodox Lutheran pastor who loves fly fishing and a great cup of coffee maybe a bit more than the job he’s paid to do. While he’s not slack in performing his preaching and counseling, he does tend to have heavier things on his mind. Like the fact that one of his parishioners is in jail for a murder he didn’t commit. Finding a way to prove that to the police and courts may be the death of him. 

Unlike his namesake, Jonah doesn’t run away when the going gets tough. While this story deals with murder and other crimes, the writer’s use of light humor and romance woven throughout is a gentle respite from the otherwise dark, suspenseful thread.

I adore the wild, untamed island where this novel is set and the way the spirits of earth and water and forest make themselves known in eerie ways. Plus there’s the mysterious old house, Metsan Valo, the enigmatic caretaker, and his wife and the questions raised as to who (or what!) exactly they were. I’m also a total sucker for stories about characters who are faced with the challenge of accepting gifts and powers they didn’t know they had and aren’t sure they want to wield, so I was rooting for Anni. Plus there’s mystery and family drama and a touch of romance...so basically everything I love in a book is represented here.

This is the first book I’ve read by William Kent Krueger, but it made me want to read the whole series. Set during a miserably cold winter in the northeast corner of Minnesota, a stone’s throw from Lake Superior, this mystery about a brutal murder and a missing native American boy will make you fear frostbite just from turning pages. 

Cork O’Connor is a complicated character in a seemingly downward spiral. Once the sheriff of this small town, he’s since lost his wife, his job, and is worried about losing his children. His mixed heritage of Irish and Ojibwe makes him see things a little differently than the new sheriff, but not having a badge won’t stop him from taking action when people he cares about are in danger.

This charming chapter book turns a typical story about three children and a new pet on its head by exploring a creative idea—the adoption of a stern, dignified small robot instead. And Sir Scrap Metal is no ordinary robot, but a secret agent working for an animal protection agency. While the kids solve a mystery with his help, the transfer of furry friend to cold titanium friend was very skillful. I never thought I could care about a robot as much as a dog or cat, but this book reminded me what pet stories are about. To those who love them, pets are both superheroes who complete special missions and also buddies who want to belong—whether they bark or meow or chirp or emit monotone robotic statements.

Superficially, The Minnesota Trilogy is a murder mystery. When two Norwegian tourists are slaughtered in a national forest, it seems like an open and shut case. All the evidence points in one direction, but park ranger Lance Hansen is not convinced. He suspects his own brother. Hansen’s amateur investigation accidentally uncovers a second mystery involving his ancestor and the death (murder?) of a nineteenth-century Ojibwe medicine man. Sundstøl’s depiction of contemporary rural Minnesota is as full of magic, menace, and intrigue as the best fantasy world-building. The American Midwest becomes a land of prophetic dreams and roaming ghosts. The clash of cultures is less political than mythic, and the stakes are spiritual. History is still happening. Family is deeper than blood. These books open my imagination and tear my heart in half.