69 books like Under the Skin

This book is about the legacy of the massive violence and trauma of slavery, but at its heart, this is entirely about motherhood. I have read no other novel that so searingly, brilliantly, and tenderly depicts the haunting extremes— physically, emotionally, and spiritually—to which motherhood will bring a woman.

I’ve always been interested in physics, but I have no talent for maths, and like lots of creative types, I find science tough. But not with the engaging voice of Italian physicist Rovelli. This blew my mind and blew the lid off of the universe.

Rovelli explains the fundamentals of physical laws beautifully but then introduces the quantum realm, where time and space are not at all what you thought they were. This isn’t unsettling to me, but it is profoundly beautiful. Time may not be linear at all, we simply have no other way of perceiving it, which means moments in time I felt were lost, are not at all if you look at them another way.

But it also reinforces the idea we must exist in the moment and savor it, as, in a sense, that’s all we have.

I was pleasantly surprised by just how weird this book is.

It is, as it was often marketed to me, “gay necromancers in space,” but it’s so much more than that. Disorientation, cerebral puzzles, and intricate worldbuilding permeate this whole book from chapter one. Tamsyn Muir is unapologetic about writing exactly what she wants, even if it’s outside a lot of readers’ comfort zones.

I found the strangeness of the societies, the challenges, and the mysteries woven into this book intriguing. It’s a murder mystery! In a high-stakes competition! With queer female main characters who have a lot of friction but are nonetheless deeply devoted to each other!

I loved how new and fresh it felt and that I couldn’t predict what would happen next.

A friend recommended this book to me, and I’m so grateful! The story unfolds through letters between Red and Blue, mortal enemies who slowly realize they have more in common with each other than their respective sides, even as they murder their way through history. As we come to know them and they learn about each other, we realize the truth about the war and the creature pursuing them through history.

Neither Red nor Blue are perfect people, but you can see why and how they are the way they are, and their love story feels natural and well-earned because of their flaws. I was so sad when I finished listening to it that I bought the book so I could read it, too!

This is an amazing nonfiction book about how octopuses have evolved in parallel with humans but along a very different evolutionary path. I’m so interested in the idea of ‘otherness.’ The notion is that there could be alien life forms that are hugely intelligent. Still, their bodies and their perceptual organs are so different that we can’t fully communicate with them and appreciate that intelligence.

The most fascinating aliens are right here on Earth, in the oceans, and can teach us profound lessons about consciousness. Octopus arms can sense and perceive independently, like multiple brains. Octopuses can’t perceive color but can change color to both camouflage and communicate. A book like this de-centers the human, and I love being knocked off my axis.

I’m fascinated by the in-depth character development and details in this book. The film is a classic, but I think the book is even better. Many people think of Hannibal Lecter as the obvious villain of Silence of the Lambs, forgetting that Clarice and the FBI were seeking his guidance to find “Buffalo Bill,” a fictional serial killer attacking women.

Buffalo Bill is an amalgamation of real serial killers, including Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, and Gary Heidnik. By cherry-picking the methods and traits of real killers, I think Harris created a truly terrifying villain. I find the characters, and especially the villain, to be rooted in reality, making them stick in your mind long after the last page.

The popularity of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie may have obscured its structural genius.

Never have I read a book so comfortable drifting between present and future within a single paragraph, even a single sentence. The short novel simultaneously exists inside a classroom in the 1930s and throughout the lives the students will later have as women.

If the Scottish author Muriel Spark had a literary model for this design, I’ve yet to discover it. Sometimes an artist creates something entirely new.

I’m full of admiration for this book. Morrison is a fifty-something bloke, but this narrative is told in the first person by a teenage girl, Haley, and the voice is totally perfect: opinionated, funny, sulky, naïve. The novel’s full of dark humour, and a real page-turner. Haley is kidnapped by her father to join a group of apocalyptic pandemic survivalists. Are they barking mad or the only people clear-sighted enough to see the danger the world is in from Virus X? You’ll veer from one viewpoint to the other throughout. You’ll also learn how to use a crossbow and what to put in your survival pack. (Warning: I could only read the bit about amputation through my fingers.) 

I loved the main character Paddy Meehan’s voice in this series. Paddy is a lowly copygirl at a Glasgow newspaper with dreams of becoming an investigative journalist during a time when girls are expected to marry out of high school and have babies, not unlike the way things were when I entered the work world. Paddy is intelligent and driven and so outside the mold that her family and boyfriend, indeed the Scottish community, cannot understand her drive to be more than what society demands she should be. She’s someone I rooted for every step of the way as she navigates the old boys’ club in the 1980s and 1990s. Combine Paddy with Mina’s brilliant writing, realistic dialogue, and compelling plotlines, and this series is one to be savored. 

This historical novel is based on quite horrifying fact. In Edinburgh in 1732, Lord Grange was apparently mourning the death of his estranged wife Rachel. Except he’d actually had her kidnapped and marooned on the remote and desolate island of St Kilda. Lawrence isn’t only a historical novelist: she’s a respected cookery and food writer, and former winner of the BBC’s MasterChef. She first heard of Lady Grange when she was researching her cookbook on Scottish islands. And she discovered that Rachel’s life had been recorded by male writers in the 18th and 19th centuries, all of whom blackened her reputation. So this book, for the first time, gives Rachel a voice.