100 Best Magical Realism Books of All Time (Updated for 2026)

1

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

5.0

Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. What starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treas

Recommended by Tony Robbins, Anthony Robbins, Brené Brown, and 27 others.

Brené Brown

There's a great quote in this book: When you're on the right path the universe conspires to help you! [source]

Daniel Ek

It was fascinating to talk to the author about how this book came to be such a hit—he never backed down, and he allowed people to read it for free in order to then boost sales—much like how Spotify’s freemium model was perceived in the early days. [source]

Eric Ripert

Speaks of everyone having an ultimate goal in life, but most of us are too afraid to pursue it. The encouragement to fulfill your dreams is very inspirational! [source]

2

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

5.0

The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love—in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism."

Recommended by Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, and 9 others.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

When asked what books he recommended to his 18-year-old daughter Malia, Obama gave the Times a list that included The Naked and the Dead and One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I think some of them were sort of the usual suspects … I think she hadn’t read yet. Then there were some books that are not on everybody’s reading list these days, but I remembered as being interesting.” Here’s what he included: The Naked and the Dead, Norman Mailer One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston [source]

Oprah Winfrey

CEO/O Network

Brace yourselves—One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is as steamy, dense and sensual as the jungle that surrounds the surreal town of Macondo! [source]

Richard Branson

Founder/Virgin Group

Today is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. [source]

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3

The Master & Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov, Diana Burgin, Katherine Tiernan O'Connor

4.7

Mikhail Bulgakov's devastating satire of Soviet life was written during the darkest period of Stalin's regime. Combining two distinct yet interwoven parts—one set in ancient Jerusalem, one in contemporary Moscow—the novel veers from moods of wild theatricality with violent storms, vampire attacks, and a Satanic ball; to such somber scenes as the meeting of Pilate and Yeshua, and the murder of Juda

Recommended by Max Levchin, Neil Gaiman, Andi Dumitrescu, and 5 others.

Max Levchin

Co-founder/PayPal, CEO/Affirm, Investor

One of the finest works of fiction of the last century. [source]

Neil Gaiman

@Slavinskas_art I love that book. [source]

Andi Dumitrescu

If I had to make a more rational choice, I’d go with Ulises or The Master and Margareta, but I think that choice is a bit snobbish. [source]

4

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

4.7

Kafka on the Shore, a tour de force of metaphysical reality, is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most b

Recommended by Bernard Tan, Brian Koppelman, and John Craig.

Bernard Tan

I’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a distant country, that I may never have had the chance to connect with in real life. As three-dimensional humans, we are all made up of so many faces and emotional layers that we find it hard to dissect them all, and when we find writers who can explain these thought processes in a way that’s tangible and digestible, there’s this incredibly comforting eureka moment of feeling understood. [source]

Brian Koppelman

If you have always wanted to read this author, I think this Covid-19 period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. [source]

John Craig

The only book, or should I say author, that takes priority is Haruki Murakami. He is a Japanese novelist that takes me into the next world. His style is surreal. Check it out. Start with Kafka on the Shore. [source]

5

Love in the Time of Cholera

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

4.7

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of One Hundred Years of Solitude comes a masterly evocation of an unrequited passion so strong that it binds three people's lives together for more than fifty years. In the story of Florentino Ariza, who waits more than half a century to declare his undying love to the beautiful Fermina Daza, whom he lost to Dr. Juvenal Urbino so many years before, García Márque

Recommended by Bryan Callen, Kate Figes, and Tendai Biti.

Bryan Callen

So here are my three must read books. I've been reading a lot of great books like: Outsmart Your Instincts, The Culture Code, and Antonio Damasio’s The Strange Order, and sometimes when you read a lot of nonfiction it’s very enriching, sometimes you need a novel. I really believe you should take a minute and read something beautiful. Listen, listen to Lolita by Nabokov. But also listen to Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy and listen to Richard Poe narrate that. Those are two of the greatest feats of the english language that I can think of. Then there’s Fortress of Solitude, an amazing book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, these are great novels. Cold Mountain is a beautiful novel, Snow Falling On Cedars, I mean they’ve been around for a while. But goddamnit, get those under your belt. Those are the novels I think you should read. You know Love In The Time Of Cholera it just makes you ache. Kind of like a Hemingway thing, where Hemingway “ahh!”, it’s the same thing, you know. So I don’t know, I’m a fan of all those books. Those are my 3 slash 20 books. [source]

Kate Figes

It’s partly such a passionate book because of the beauty of the prose, describing love through time and how she found contentment – love, passion and sex all in one. [source]

Tendai Biti

2)Marquez s “Love in the time of cholera” & “100 yrs of solitude “ are two of my top books but one still weeps reading or re- reading Tolstoy s “ War & Peace “a book bettered only by “ Anna Karenina. Not a fan of these motivational books but that “f#cked “ up book is quite funny [source]

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6

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman

4.7

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an o

Recommended by Asher Wolf and Zoe Keating.

Asher Wolf

@trib I love that book. So much. [source]

Zoe Keating

For a while in 2015 I lost the ability to read (PTSD, I’m told) and “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” and Eli Brown’s “Cinnamon & Gunpowder” were the first books I was able to understand and enjoy. @neilhimself’s book in particular was like a hand pulling me up. https://t.co/foEbRxYbuj [source]

7

The House of the Spirits

Isabel Allende, Magda Bogin

4.6

In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies.

Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter

8

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin

4.6

Japan's most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.

In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wi

Recommended by Bernard Tan, Brian Koppelman, and Sung J. Woo.

Bernard Tan

I’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a distant country, that I may never have had the chance to connect with in real life. As three-dimensional humans, we are all made up of so many faces and emotional layers that we find it hard to dissect them all, and when we find writers who can explain these thought processes in a way that’s tangible and digestible, there’s this incredibly comforting eureka moment of feeling understood. [source]

Brian Koppelman

If you have always wanted to read this author, I think this Covid-19 period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. [source]

Sung J. Woo

He’s the best-known Japanese writer right now and this book I would consider to be his opus. It’s a big sprawling book that deals with weighty subjects like the Second World War and Japan’s part in that. There is a horrifying section set when the Japanese had occupied Manchuria and the Chinese are approaching and it’s told from the point of view of a soldier who is told to kill all the animals in the zoo as the Chinese close in. It’s a harrowing tale of this Japanese soldier going round the cages killing these magnificent animals. [source]

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9

The Night Circus

Erin Morgenstern

4.6

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, wh

10

The Snow Child

Eowyn Ive

4.5

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-hai

11

Beloved

Toni Morrison

4.5

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Her new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, wh

Recommended by Bianca Belair, Esi Edugyan, and Farah Jasmine Griffin.

Bianca Belair

@ylc130 I went to the library when I was in the 3rd grade and read Beloved... I remember being so confused and my Mama having to explain it to me... I later read it as an adult and it hit me completely different. GREAT BOOK! [source]

Esi Edugyan

I was shocked by the blunt force of its subject matter and its exquisitely torqued prose. It remains one of my most adored novels. [source]

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Beloved was Morrison’s fifth novel. It’s a gripping story, inspired by a famous abolitionist case, the true story of a woman who runs away from slavery with her children, but when the slave catchers catch up with her, she kills one of her own and tries to kill the others, rather than returning them to slavery. [source]

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12

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Leslye Walton

4.5

Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.

Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava—in all other ways a normal girl—is born with the wings of a bird.

In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen

13

Like Water for Chocolate

Laura Esquivel, Carol Christensen, Thomas Christensen

4.5

Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.

The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphi

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14

Garden Spells (Waverley Family, #1)

Sarah Addison Allen

4.5

The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.

For nearl

15

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

4.5

Yann Martel's imaginative and unforgettable Life of Pi is a magical reading experience, an endless blue expanse of storytelling about adventure, survival, and ultimately, faith. The precocious son of a zookeeper, 16-year-old Pi Patel is raised in Pondicherry, India, where he tries on various faiths for size, attracting "religions the way a dog attracts fleas." Planning a move to Canada, his father

Recommended by David Allen.

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16

1Q84 (1Q84 #1-3)

Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin, Philip Gabriel

4.4

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo.

A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84 —“Q is for ‘question mark.’ A world that bears a question.” Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo takes on a suspect ghostwriting project. He

Recommended by Adam Savage.

Adam Savage

Seriously, one of my favorite books of all time. [source]

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17

American Gods (American Gods, #1)

Neil Gaiman

4.4

First published in 2001, American Gods became an instant classic—an intellectual and artistic benchmark from the multiple-award-winning master of innovative fiction, Neil Gaiman. Now discover the mystery and magic of American Gods in this tenth anniversary edition. Newly updated and expanded with the author’s preferred text, this commemorative volume is a true celebration of a modern masterpiece b

Recommended by Marko Rakar, Ricky Whittle, and Scott Johnson.

Marko Rakar

Basically, first of all, I am a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy books and I grew up with Douglas Adams and Arthur C Clarke. For me, this is the best of Gaiman’s books and I’ve got all of them. It’s set in the present time and talks about settlers who have settled a continent and have brought their gods with them. So, if you are Swedish and you cherish Nordic gods and move to the US, the gods go with you and the more you believe in them the stronger they are. But if fewer people start believing in them then they get weaker and eventually they become mortal and die. So, it’s about all these forgotten gods. It’s a horror story in which nobody dies. It’s a metaphor for our society – if you replace gods with values then you get the same thing. [source]

Ricky Whittle

Nobody can break my family.I’m proud to be apart of this diverse cast & crew who are working their butts off to deliver a fantastic season 3 continuing to tell Shadows story and the awesome characters he meets along the way as in @neilhimself incredible book #readit #details🤔 https://t.co/PahPC9j3HB [source]

Scott Johnson

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. This is a brilliant thought experiment about what happens to a god when its believers stop believing. My preferred edition is the 10th Anniversary release with expanded text. [source]

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18

The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Sarah Addison Allen

4.4

In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world--no matter how out of place they feel.

Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mo

19

The Shadow of the Wind (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #1)

Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Lucia Grave

4.4

Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. I

Recommended by Emma Watson.

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20

The Water Dancer

Ta-Nehisi Coates

4.4

Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram fro

Recommended by Oprah Winfrey, John Rampton, Rick Klau, and 2 others.

Oprah Winfrey

CEO/O Network

The only thing more thrilling than being captivated by a book is being able to share it with others. Which is why I’m excited to bring @oprahsbookclub to @apple starting TODAY! My first pick, The Water Dancer by the brilliant Ta-Nehisi Coates. It will enthrall you. #ReadwithUs https://t.co/DG99kTKrWu [source]

John Rampton

Oprah on Ta-Nehisi Coates' sci-fi debut: 'One of the best books I've ever read' https://t.co/S4r62JQOFe https://t.co/Nmd8PU7yYN [source]

Rick Klau

@goodreads @taffyakner @thrillkinson @itsDanielSuarez @blakecrouch1 @eliotpeper @RonanFarrow @cbracy The Water Dancer, by Ta-Nehesi Coates. Coates sees us—all of us—with a clarity that is as unnerving as it is breathtaking. He sees our failures, our aspirations, our hypocrisy, our pettiness, our beauty. Astounding book. https://t.co/afUvOdc8ne [source]

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21

The Astonishing Color of After

Emily X.R. Pan

4.3

Leigh Chen Sanders is absolutely certain about one thing: When her mother died by suicide, she turned into a bird.

Leigh, who is half Asian and half white, travels to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. There, she is determined to find her mother, the bird. In her search, she winds up chasing after ghosts, uncovering family secrets, and forging a new relationship with her g

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22

The Time Traveler's Wife

Audrey Niffenegger

4.3

The beloved, mega bestselling first novel from Audrey Niffenegger, “a soaring celebration of the victory of love over time” (Chicago Tribune).

A MOST UNTRADITIONAL LOVE STORY, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who inadvertently travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate

Recommended by A.r. Moxon (Julius Goat) and Gabriel Coarna.

A.r. Moxon (Julius Goat)

“A beautiful, harrowing, thrilling book....It’s a wild ride and a great read.” —Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife THE REVISIONARIES Published by Melville House Dec 03, 2019 | 608 Pages | Hardcover https://t.co/cKLZBnrQda [source]

Gabriel Coarna

Audrey Niffenegger's "The Time Traveler's Wife" and Garth Stein's "The Art Of Racing In The Rain" made me cry. [source]

23

Exit West

Mohsin Hamid

4.3

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that

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24

The Sugar Queen

Sarah Addison Alle

4.3

Twenty-seven-year-old Josey Cirrini is sure of three things: winter in her North Carolina hometown is her favorite season, she’s a sorry excuse for a Southern belle, and sweets are best eaten in the privacy of her hidden closet. For while Josey has settled into an uneventful life in her mother’s house, her one consolation is the stockpile of sugary treats and paperback romances she escapes to each

25

A Monster Calls

Patrick Ness, Jim Kay

4.3

An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor.

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn't the monster Conor's been expecting - he's been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he's had nearly every night since his mother started

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26

Midnight's Children

Salman Rushdie

4.3

Saleem Sinai was born at midnight, the midnight of India's independence, and found himself mysteriously "handcuffed to history" by the coincidence. He is one of 1,001 children born at the midnight hour, each of them endowed with an extraordinary talent—and whose privilege and curse it is to be both master and victims of their times. Through Saleem's gifts—inner ear and wildly sensitive sense of sm

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27

The Golem and the Jinni (The Golem and the Jinni, #1)

Helene Wecker

4.3

Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic, created to be the wife of a man who dies at sea on the voyage from Poland. Chava is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York harbor in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire born in the ancient Syrian desert, trapped in an old copper flask, and released in New York Cit

28

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Haruki Murakami

4.3

'A narrative particle accelerator that zooms between Wild Turkey Whiskey and Bob Dylan, unicorn skulls and voracious librarians, John Coltrane and Lord Jim. Science fiction, detective story and post-modern manifesto all rolled into one rip-roaring novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is the tour de force that expanded Haruki Murakami's international following. Tracking one man's

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29

Bone Gap

Laura Ruby

4.3

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps—gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy,

30

Practical Magic (Practical Magic #1)

Alice Hoffman

4.3

The Owens sisters confront the challenges of life and love in this bewitching novel from New York Times bestselling author Alice Hoffman.

For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in their Massachusetts town. Gillian and Sally have endured that fate as well: as children, the sisters were forever outsiders, taunted, talked about, pointed at.

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31

Ficciones

Jorge Luis Borges, John Sturrock

4.3

Jorge Luis Borges was one of those very rare creators who changed the face of an art form—in his case, the short story. His work has been paid the ultimate honor of being appropriated and imitated by innumerable writers on every continent of the world. The seventeen brief masterpieces of FICCIONES explode the boundaries of genre, offering up labyrinthine libraries, a fictional encyclopedia entry t

Recommended by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Kate Marvel, Mohsin Hamid, and 2 others.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Author

This is something very hard to find, almost by definition: a literary writer who thinks in abstract terms (the only other such author I've read is Stanislaw Lem). These are philosophical thought experiments in their purest form, yet somehow magically delivered in a playful literary athmosphere. Borges is a mathematical philosopher, first and last. Ignore the "Latin American" categorization and the nonsense about his background and personal life: one should resist embedding him in a socio-cultural framework; he is as universal as they come. It is good to read a short story once in a while to see how literature and philosophy can be saved by the parable. [source]

Kate Marvel

I don’t think there will ever be a better writer on uncertainty and science than Borges [source]

Mohsin Hamid

There is a transnational quality to Borges’s writing. [source]

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32

The Peach Keeper

Sarah Addison Allen

4.3

The New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Chased the Moon welcomes you to her newest locale: Walls of Water, North Carolina, where the secrets are thicker than the fog from the town’s famous waterfalls, and the stuff of superstition is just as real as you want it to be.

It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that me

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33

First Frost (Waverley Family, #2)

Sarah Addison Allen

4.3

From the New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spells comes a story of the Waverley family, in a novel as sparkling as the first dusting of frost on new-fallen leaves..

It's October in Bascom, North Carolina, and autumn will not go quietly. As temperatures drop and leaves begin to turn, the Waverley women are made restless by the whims of their mischievous apple tree... and all the magic that

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34

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Junot Díaz

4.3

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fukœ—the curse that has haunted the Oscar's family for gen

Recommended by Timothy Ferriss and Kushanava Choudhury.

Timothy Ferriss

Author & Entrepreneur

Raised in a culture where men are powerful, sexual, and dominant, the Klingon-speaking, D&D-playing chubby boy thinks he’ll never find true love or physical affection. Oscar struggles as a young immigrant from the Dominican Republic living with his older sister and mother in Paterson, New Jersey. A fun read with lots of geek culture, great history, and oh, it also won the Pulitzer Prize. [source]

Kushanava Choudhury

Oscar Wao is very real to me. When I read Wao, I think, there but for the grace of God go I. [source]

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35

Once Upon a River

Diane Setterfield

4.3

On a dark midwinter’s night in an ancient inn on the river Thames, an extraordinary event takes place. The regulars are telling stories to while away the dark hours, when the door bursts open on a grievously wounded stranger. In his arms is the lifeless body of a small child. Hours later, the girl stirs, takes a breath and returns to life. Is it a miracle? Is it magic? Or can science provide an ex

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36

Chocolat (Chocolat, #1)

Joanne Harris

4.3

A timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality - every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere.

Illuminating Peter Mayle's South of France with a touch of Laura Esquivel's magic realism, Chocolat is a timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakenin

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37

When the Moon Was Ours

Anna-Marie McLemore

4.3

To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel’s wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees, and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even th

38

The Starless Sea

Erin Morgenstern

4.3

Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for

Recommended by Chuck Wendig and Pim Techamuanvivit.

Chuck Wendig

1.) It is a book in love with books, a story in love with stories, and as both a writer and a reader, that is DELECTABLE FOOD. It is brain food. It is heart food. [source]

Pim Techamuanvivit

@grubreport It is so lovely. And I love that the first book reference in that book was The Shadow of the Wind, and then on from there. It’s sort of like a zombie movie that doesn’t pretend to somehow take place in a universe where no one has heard of zombies. [source]

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39

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1)

Maggie Stiefvater

4.2

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks dir

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40

A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki

4.2

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there’s only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates’ bullying. But before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who’s lived more than a century. A diary is Nao’s only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine.

Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a r

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41

Lost Lake (Lost Lake, #1)

Sarah Addison Allen

4.2

From the author of the beloved bestseller Garden Spells comes a beautiful, haunting story of old loves and new, and the power of the connections that bind us forever...

The first time Eby Pim saw Lost Lake, it was on a picture postcard. Just an old photo and a few words on a small square of heavy stock, but when she saw it, she knew she was seeing her future.

That was half a life ago. Now Lost Lake

42

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie

4.2

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic

Recommended by Anthony Julius.

Anthony Julius

I’m interested in the trials, of course – particularly the trial here, but also the trial in the States – because of what they meant in the context of the 1960s. Just as I’m interested in what The Satanic Verses meant at the moment of its publication in 1989/90: with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, the extinction of socialism as a project of human liberation, and, coincident with that, the emergence of Islam or Islamism as both a threat and a promise – and how a novel manages to be the axis on which these huge global events turn. [source]

43

The Rules of Magic

Alice Hoffman

4.2

Find your magic

For the Owens family, love is a curse that began in 1620, when Maria Owens was charged with witchery for loving the wrong man.

Hundreds of years later, in New York City at the cusp of the sixties, when the whole world is about to change, Susanna Owens knows that her three children are dangerously unique. Difficult Franny, with skin as pale as milk and blood red hair, shy and beautifu

Recommended by Anne Thériault.

Anne Thériault

@ushav Oh I love that book. I love it even more than I love Practical Magic. I read it in the bath last winter [source]

44

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa

4.2

A man returns to the town where a baffling murder took place twenty-seven years earlier, determined to get to the bottom of the story. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover; and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Na

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45

Red Russia

Tanya Thompso

4.2

Among the many things Peter doesn’t know, he doesn’t know he’s an archetype, the Prince of Coins incarnate. He doesn’t know his fiancé is a fortune teller either. He doesn’t know Russian culture, politics, or language, but he does know American business. And he knows his fiancé speaks Russian. He thinks she can make him the new Tsar of the timber industry, but first they must survive a weekend wit

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46

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward

4.2

A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award–winner Jesmyn Ward.

In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississip

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47

The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2)

Maggie Stiefvater

4.2

Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after…

48

The Book Thief

Markus Zusak

4.2

It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will be busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Gravedigger's Handbook, left behind there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, wit

Recommended by Lydia Ruffles.

Lydia Ruffles

The [source]

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49

A Wild Sheep Chase (The Rat, #3)

Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum

4.2

His life was like a recurring nightmare: a train to nowhere. But an ordinary life has a way of taking an extraordinary turn. Add a girl whose ears are so exquisite that, when uncovered, they improve sex a thousand-fold, a runaway friend, a right-wing politico, an ovine-obsessed professor and a manic-depressive in a sheep outfit, implicate them in a hunt for a sheep, that may or may not be running

Recommended by Brian Koppelman.

Brian Koppelman

If you have always wanted to read this author, I think this Covid-19 period of time is perfect for it. He could have conceived of this whole thing. [source]

50

Invisible Cities

Italo Calvino

4.2

"Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his." So begins Italo Calvino's compilation of fragmentary urban images. As Marco tells the khan about Armilla,

Recommended by Colin Thubron and James Meek.

Colin Thubron

Oh God. Well, officially it’s Marco Polo describing the cities of his travels to Kublai Khan. It’s been opined that every city he describes is a version of Venice, but I think that doesn’t really work. They seem to me to be marvellous imaginative fantasies, which sometimes reproduce states of mind. There are 40 or so cities described, all entirely imaginary I think, and that’s what’s so magical about them. But there are passages that are suggestive of something, and nearly always of the way memory works. It’s a very hard book to describe, because the cities are never just a description of a place. They all mirror states of mind and being. [source]

James Meek

It has different layers. The set-up is that Kublai Khan has conquered this vast empire; an empire so large that he, sitting at the centre of it, cannot know all the many parts of it. He can’t visit them, he can’t see them, and if he goes to one part all the other parts have changed. So he sits there at the centre of his empire and Marco Polo travels around and visits the various cities and comes back and describes them to Kublai Khan. [source]

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51

The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)

Maggie Stiefvater

4.2

The fourth and final installment in the spellbinding series from the irrepressible, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater.

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love's death. She doesn't believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she's not so sure an

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52

Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle, #3)

Maggie Stiefvater

4.2

The third installment in the all-new series from the #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs.

The trick with found things, though, is h

53

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

4.2

Alternate cover edition of ISBN 0553213695 / 9780553213690

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in positi

Recommended by David Lynch and David Lynch.

David Lynch

David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]

David Lynch

David Lynch said this is one of his most-recommended books. [source]

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54

All the Crooked Saints

Maggie Stiefvater

4.2

From bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater, a gripping tale of darkness, miracles, and family. Saints. Miracles. Family. Romance. Death. Redemption.

Here is a thing everyone wants: A miracle.

Here is a thing everyone fears:
What it takes to get one.

Any visitor to Bicho Raro, Colorado is likely to find a landscape of dark saints, forbidden love, scientific dreams, miracle-mad owls, estranged affection

55

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Jorge Luis Borges, James E. Irby, Donald A. Yates, Andre Maurois

4.2

Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface, Andre Maurois writes: "Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their w

Recommended by Caterina Fake, John King, and Nicholas Shakespeare.

John King

If you are going to think about Latin American literature, Borges is always a good place to start. [source]

Nicholas Shakespeare

No writer embodied libraries more than the immobile, blind Argentine, Jorge Luis Borges. [source]

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56

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, Margaret Atwood

4.2

IT TAKES A GRAVEYARD TO RAISE A CHILD.

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy - an ancient indigo man, a gateway to aban

Recommended by Meghan Camarena and Simon Smith.

Meghan Camarena

While I was walking to the gym I finished the last chapter of The Graveyard Book by @neilhimself. I must’ve looked like a mad woman because I was balling my eyes out in public. Damn, what an incredible story. [source]

Simon Smith

@carveresque ...but The Graveyard Book is one of the best books ever. [source]

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57

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

Aimee Bender

4.2

The wondrous Aimee Bender conjures the lush and moving story of a girl whose magical gift is really a devastating curse.

On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites into her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the c

Recommended by Leo Babauta.

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58

Sputnik Sweetheart

Haruki Murakami

4.2

alternate cover can be found here

Sumire is in love with a woman seventeen years her senior. But whereas Miu is glamorous and successful, Sumire is an aspiring writer who dresses in an oversized second-hand coat and heavy boots like a character in a Kerouac novel.

Sumire spends hours on the phone talking to her best friend K about the big questions in life: what is sexual desire, and should she ever

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59

The Enchanted

Rene Denfeld

4.2

This is an enchanted place. Others don't see it, but I do.

The enchanted place is an ancient stone prison, viewed through the eyes of a death row inmate who finds escape in his books and in re-imagining life around him, weaving a fantastical story of the people he observes and the world he inhabits. Fearful and reclusive, he senses what others cannot. Though bars confine him every minute of every d

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60

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance

Ruth Emmie Lang

4.2

Orphaned, raised by wolves, and the proud owner of a horned pig named Merlin, Weylyn Grey knew he wasn’t like other people. But when he single-handedly stopped that tornado on a stormy Christmas day in Oklahoma, he realized just how different he actually was.

That tornado was the first of many strange events that seem to follow Weylyn from town to town, although he doesn’t like to take credit. As a

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61

After Dark

Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin

4.1

A short, sleek novel of encounters set in Tokyo during the witching hours between midnight and dawn, and every bit as gripping as Haruki Murakami’s masterworks The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore.

At its center are two sisters—Eri, a fashion model slumbering her way into oblivion, and Mari, a young student soon led from solitary reading at an anonymous Denny’s toward people whose live

62

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

J. K. Rowling

4.1

Harry Potter has never been the star of a Quidditch team, scoring points while riding a broom far above the ground. He knows no spells, has never helped to hatch a dragon, and has never worn a cloak of invisibility.

All he knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley - a great big swollen spoiled bully. Harry’s room is a tiny closet at t

Recommended by Joe Lycett.

Joe Lycett

guys i just read this book called harry potter well worth checking out it’s about a really interesting magic lad [source]

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63

Neverwhere (London Below, #1)

Neil Gaiman

4.1

Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of hi

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64

Her Body and Other Parties

Carmen Maria Machado

4.1

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the

Recommended by Eva Victor.

Eva Victor

@jourdayen BEST BOOK [source]

65

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison, Reynolds Price

4.1

In this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison created a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances of black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in contemporary fiction.

Song of Solomon begins with one of the most arresting scenes in our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a m

Recommended by Barack Obama, Bozoma Saint John, and Jesse Williams.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene The Quiet American, Graham Greene Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gandhi’s autobiography Working, Studs Terkel Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren [source]

Bozoma Saint John

I love this book. Her writing style is incredibly poetic and complex. [source]

Jesse Williams

The characters’ dilemmas just rocked my world in high school. [source]

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66

The Tiger's Wife

Téa Obreht

4.1

Weaving a brilliant latticework of family legend, loss, and love, Téa Obreht, the youngest of The New Yorker’s twenty best American fiction writers under forty, has spun a timeless novel that will establish her as one of the most vibrant, original authors of her generation.

In a Balkan country mending from years of conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, arrives on a mission of mercy at an orphanage by

Recommended by Caterina Fake.

67

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Susanna Clarke

4.1

Librarian note: Alternate cover edition of 9780765356154.

Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke's magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing for more.

English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at t

Recommended by Lev Grossman and Tendai Huchu.

Lev Grossman

It’s a magic that feels absolutely real, as if the book were an eyewitness account. Not since Lewis has the supernatural been such a thrilling, immediate, concrete presence on the page. It’s no accident that I began The Magicians in 2004 – Strange is the book that woke me up to the power of the new fantasy. Read it, and you may be woken up too. [source]

Tendai Huchu

I chose this book because it really blurs the line between fiction and history. Just the use of footnotes and references to texts that likely don’t exist yet unless Susanna Clarke writes them in! [source]

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68

Wild Beauty

Anna-Marie McLemore

4.1

Love grows such strange things.

For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.

The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvide

69

Matilda

Roald Dahl

4.1

Matilda is a little girl who is far too good to be true. At age five-and-a-half she's knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Even more remarkably, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. The

Recommended by Kiran Millwood Hargrave.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The classic story of Matilda who gets magical powers from reading books. [source]

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70

The Night Tiger

Yangsze Choo

4.1

A sweeping historical novel about a dancehall girl and an orphan boy whose fates entangle over an old Chinese superstition about men who turn into tigers.

When 11-year-old Ren's master dies, he makes one last request of his Chinese houseboy: that Ren find his severed finger, lost years ago in an accident, and reunite it with his body. Ren has 49 days, or else his master's soul will roam the earth,

Recommended by Ann Miurako.

Ann Miurako

@jamescham @yangszechoo Already read it! Fantastic book and highly recommend [source]

71

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

4.1

On its first publication The Picture of Dorian Gray was regarded as dangerously modern in its depiction of fin-de-siècle decadence. In this updated version of the Faust story, the tempter is Lord Henry Wotton, who lives selfishly for amoral pleasure; Dorian's good angel is the portrait painter Basil Hallward, whom Dorian murders. The book highlights the tension between the polished surface of high

Recommended by Andra Zaharia, Eric Berkowitz, Marc Montagne, and 1 others.

Andra Zaharia

A copy from 1903 of this book is my most prized possession. [source]

Eric Berkowitz

The Picture of Dorian Gray is now a part of the canon that no one would admit to not having read. Most of us have read it and delighted in its witticisms. It’s hard to imagine, but when Dorian Gray was first published, the book was not well received at all. It was totally panned. It was held against him as being an example of an effete character. It was being serialised by Lippincott’s Magazine, and the serialisation of the novel stopped when it became too inflammatory. [source]

Marc Montagne

My favorite fiction book is the The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I'm a huge Oscar Wilde fan, he has one of the brightest minds and the Picture is a masterpiece and his unique novel. I consider that you should only read books that you would consider reading again at some point while still enjoying the same pleasure. The Picture is definitely one of those. [source]

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72

Every Day (Every Day, #1)

David Levithan

4.1

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.
There’s never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It’s all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin’s girlfriend, Rh

73

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1)

Ransom Riggs

4.1

Alternate Cover edition for ISBN 9781594744761

A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to

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74

Eva Luna

Isabel Allende

4.1

Meet New York Times bestselling author Isabel Allende’s most enchanting creation, Eva Luna: a lover, a writer, a revolutionary, and above all a storyteller—available for the first time in ebook.

Eva Luna is the daughter of a professor’s assistant and a snake-bitten gardener—born poor, orphaned at an early age, and working as a servant. Eva is a naturally gifted and imaginative storyteller who meets

75

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett

4.1

‘Armageddon only happens once, you know. They don’t let you go around again until you get it right.’

People have been predicting the end of the world almost from its very beginning, so it’s only natural to be sceptical when a new date is set for Judgement Day. But what if, for once, the predictions are right, and the apocalypse really is due to arrive next Saturday, just after tea?

You could spend t

Recommended by Jazz Shaw, Jim Lee, The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form), and 3 others.

Jazz Shaw

We're watching Good Omens. It was a great book, but the TV series may actually be better. [source]

Jim Lee

@thecameroncuffe @skydart Lovely pic! And a great show! (And book 👍🏼) [source]

The CEO Library Community (through anonymous form)

One of the best 3 books I've read in 2019 [source]

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76

The Lovely Bones

Alice Sebold

4.1

On her way home from school on a snowy December day in 1973, 14-year-old Susie Salmon ("like the fish") is lured into a makeshift underground den in a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer--the man she knew as her neighbor, Mr. Harvey.

Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, The Lovely Bones, unfolds from heaven, where "life is a perpetual

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77

A Million Junes

Emily Henry

4.1

For as long as Jack “June” O’Donnell has been alive, her parents have had only one rule: stay away from the Angert family. But when June collides—quite literally—with Saul Angert, sparks fly, and everything June has known is thrown into chaos.

Who exactly is this gruff, sarcastic, but seemingly harmless boy who has returned to their hometown of Five Fingers, Michigan, after three mysterious years a

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78

Sourdough

Robin Sloan

4.1

Lois Clary, a software engineer at a San Francisco robotics company, codes all day and collapses at night. When her favourite sandwich shop closes up, the owners leave her with the starter for their mouthwatering sourdough bread.
Lois becomes the unlikely hero tasked to care for it, bake with it and keep this needy colony of microorganisms alive. Soon she is baking loaves daily and taking them to

Recommended by Brad Feld.

Brad Feld

Co-Founder/Foundry Group

Sourdough: I loved this one. Robin Sloan’s previous book, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, was my favorite book of 2013 (thanks Geraldine!) Sourdough was even tastier. [source]

79

The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)

N. K. Jemisin

4.1

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance. And worst of all,

Recommended by Jacquelyn Gill and John Lilly.

Jacquelyn Gill

@MaraWilson It’s such an amazing book. One of my all-time favorites—and the entire trilogy is that strong! [source]

John Lilly

@fredmcclimans First author to win 3 Hugos in a row. So: not bad! First book strongest imho, but all of it great. [source]

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80

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, #1)

Robin Sloan

4.1

The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, but after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything; instead, they "check out" large, obscure volumes fro

Recommended by Brad Feld.

Brad Feld

Co-Founder/Foundry Group

Robin Sloan’s … book, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, was my favorite book of 2013. [source]

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81

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin

4.1

Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of their best friend years before. Toru begins to adapt to campus life and the loneliness and isolation he faces there, but Naoko finds the pressures and responsibilities of life unbearable. As she retreats

Recommended by Bernard Tan.

Bernard Tan

I’m also a Murakami and Vonnegut fan, Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, Norwegian Wood, Slaughterhouse-Five, etc. Now that I look at the books listed, they seem to carry an existential theme. I guess I like to understand humanity and human behaviour ultimately to better understand myself. I find reading a means to connect with people who may have lived before my time, or in a distant country, that I may never have had the chance to connect with in real life. As three-dimensional humans, we are all made up of so many faces and emotional layers that we find it hard to dissect them all, and when we find writers who can explain these thought processes in a way that’s tangible and digestible, there’s this incredibly comforting eureka moment of feeling understood. [source]

82

Coraline

Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean

4.1

Coraline lives with her preoccupied parents in part of a huge old house--a house so huge that other people live in it, too... round, old former actresses Miss Spink and Miss Forcible and their aging Highland terriers ("We trod the boards, luvvy") and the mustachioed old man under the roof ("'The reason you cannot see the mouse circus,' said the man upstairs, 'is that the mice are not yet ready and

Recommended by Simon Smith.

Simon Smith

@lindsanderson @Misterbodd @PaulWat5 @f33lthesun Awesomely scary book full stop! Great though. [source]

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83

The Bear and the Nightingale (Winternight Trilogy, #1)

Katherine Arden

4.1

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn't mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse's fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls

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84

Dance Dance Dance

Haruki Murakami, Alfred Birnbaum

4.1

Alternate cover edition here.

High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem. Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami's idiosyncratic

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85

Summer of Salt

Katrina Leno

4.1

A magic passed down through generations . . .

Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for the tingle of magic in her fingers—magic that has been passed down through every woman in her family. Her twin sister, Mary, already shows an ability to defy gravity. But with their eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come.

An island where strange th

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86

Of Love and Other Demons

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

4.0

On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria, the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport, is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water

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87

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Italo Calvino and William Weave

4.0

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is a marvel of ingenuity, an experimental text that looks longingly back to the great age of narration—"when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded." Italo Calvino's novel is in one sense a comedy in which the two protagonists, the Reader and the Other Reader, ultimately end up married, having almost finished If on a Winter's Night a T

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88

To Love a Witch (Wicked Witches of the Midwest Book 16)

Amanda M. Lee

4.0

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89

Nights at the Circus

Angela Carter

4.0

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake?

Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a

Recommended by Emma Watson.

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90

Nothing to See Here

Kevin Wilson

4.0

Kevin Wilson’s best book yet—a moving and uproarious novel about a woman who finds meaning in her life when she begins caring for two children with remarkable and disturbing abilities

Lillian and Madison were the unlikeliest of roommates at their elite boarding school: Madison, the daughter of a prominent Atlanta family, being groomed for greatness; Lillian, a scholarship student, plucked out of no

Recommended by Amber Atherton.

Amber Atherton

..I am now writing this. I have not been able to put this book down for 3 HOURS. Maybe this isn't unusual for u /maybe u haven't heard of tiktok. But nothing beats the sheer delight of being engrossed in a book you came across by chance IRL. Tech needs to be more human. The end. https://t.co/qz0ZN8smxP [source]

91

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

Alix E. Harrow

4.0

In the early 1900s, a young woman searches for her place in the world after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out

Recommended by Kate Mckean and Stuart Dredge.

Kate Mckean

It’s the publication day of @AlixEHarrow’s THE TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY!!!!!!!!!! This book is an amazing gem and it will stay with you for years after reading it. You should do that. Read it. https://t.co/vuc35vHCDq [source]

Stuart Dredge

@alice Ooh! The Ten Thousand Doors of January might fit the bill - world-building + a big love story + book within a book. Reading it now and LOVE it. Also The Starless Sea in similar territory (apologies if you are already well aware of both of these!) [source]

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92

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Patrick Suskind, J.E. Woods

4.0

An acclaimed bestseller and international sensation, Patrick Suskind's classic novel provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man's indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.

In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of

Recommended by Denise Hamilton.

Denise Hamilton

It’s a very lush, richly imagined book. It just bursts with sensuality and the smells of Paris in the 18th century. [source]

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93

Echo

Pam Munoz Ryan, Pam Muñoz Ryan

4.0

Lost and alone in a forbidden forest, Otto meets three mysterious sisters and suddenly finds himself entwined in a puzzling quest involving a prophecy, a promise, and a harmonica.

Decades later, Friedrich in Germany, Mike in Pennsylvania, and Ivy in California each, in turn, become interwoven when the very same harmonica lands in their lives. All the children face daunting challenges: rescuing a f

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94

The Underground Railroad

Colson Whitehead

4.0

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a youn

Recommended by Barack Obama, Bogdana Butnar, and Joshua M. Brown.

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Just like us, the president enjoys a good beach read while relaxing in the sun. In 2016, he released his list of summer vacation books: Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, William Finnegan H Is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins Seveneves, Neal Stephenson The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead [source]

Bogdana Butnar

Currently reading two things: one is The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, which is a Man Booker nominee, and to be very honest, I'm just reading this because it's really good so my expectation is to just get the sheer satisfaction of a good piece of fiction. [source]

Joshua M. Brown

Chicago Tribune called @colsonwhitehead “the best living American novelist.” Really blown away by the writing in this, first book of his I’ve read. https://t.co/ePhD64ZPR5 [source]

95

The Angel's Game (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #2)

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

4.0

At the beginning of this powerful labyrinthian thriller, David Martin, a pulp fiction writer struggling to stay afloat, is holed up in an abandoned mansion in the heart of Barcelona, furiously tapping out story after story, becoming increasingly desperate and frustrated.

When he is approached by a mysterious publisher offering a book deal that seems almost too good to be real. David leaps at the c

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96

The Secrets of Lost Stones

Melissa Payne

4.0

A soul-stirring novel about the bonds between mother and child and the redemption that comes with facing the past and letting it go.

Thirty-two-year-old Jess Abbot has lost everything: her job, her apartment, and—most heart-wrenching—her eight-year-old son, Chance, to a tragic accident. Haunted by memories and grief, Jess packs what’s left and heads for the small mountain town of Pine Lake, where s

97

Remarkably Bright Creatures: A Novel

Shelby Van Pelt

4.0

A New York Times Bestseller * A Read With Jenna Today Show Book Club PickNow a Netflix Film“Remarkably Bright Creatures [is] an ultimately feel-good but deceptively sensitive debut. . . . Memorable and tender.” —Washington PostA charming, witty and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopusAfter Tova S

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98

Pedro Páramo

Juan Rulfo, Margaret Sayers Peden, Susan Sontag

4.0

A classic of Mexican modern literature about a haunted village.

As one enters Juan Rulfo's legendary novel, one follows a dusty road to a town of death. Time shifts from one consciousness to another in a hypnotic flow of dreams, desires, and memories, a world of ghosts dominated by the figure of Pedro Páramo - lover, overlord, murderer.

Rulfo's extraordinary mix of sensory images, violent passions,

99

Where the Forest Meets the Stars

Glendy Vanderah

4.0

An Amazon Charts, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post bestseller.

In this gorgeously stunning debut, a mysterious child teaches two strangers how to love and trust again.

After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throw

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100

Blanca & Roja

Anna-Marie McLemore

4.0

The biggest lie of all is the story you think you already know.

The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will lea