The Best Modern Mystery Novels

From Argentina to Japan, here are some of the finest mystery novels that are revitalizing the genre right now, all of which deserve your attention. Get ready to scratch your head and remark on the ways in which these mystery writers are blending genres and casting aside the rulebook to achieve great things. Let’s dive in.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Few modern mystery novels lean as hard on the definition of “mystery” as The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle does. There are countless mystery novels that present an answer that reveals a dozen new questions, but this puzzle box of a novel actually pays all of that off with aplomb.

We begin halfway through a word that has just left the mouth of our nameless, amnesia-stricken protagonist. It is as though he has just woken up in his own body. He is in a forest, shouting a name he doesn’t know, and he is alone. He walks and eventually arrives at a manor house. The people there tell him he is their friend and that he is a doctor.

The next morning, he wakes up as a different person in the house, and it is then that he learns that he will continue to flit from body to body for eight days, tasked with solving and preventing the death of the titular Evelyn Hardcastle.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a dizzying novel, masterfully crafted and thrilling at every turn. Stuart Turton showed absurd and admirable confidence in writing such a mystery masterpiece as his debut novel. Incredible work.

Buy a copy here!

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

One of the novels that stands at the summit of the dark academia genre, If We Were Villains is also an excellently crafted murder mystery story. What sets this apart from other mystery novels is the fact that its mystery sits quietly at the back of the room. You can’t forget about it but are encouraged not to look at it.

We begin with a man named Oliver, who has just been released from prison for a murder he didn’t commit. We then flashback to the year of that fateful murder. Our cast is a group of college students, all studying theatre at a specialist arts academy. They live in the minds and works of Shakespeare, and one of them will soon die.

We don’t know who the victim will be until it happens, and we know that Oliver didn’t do it. The drama of this dark academia novel is at its forefront, with the murder mystery sitting like a ghost offstage. The blend of these two genres is what makes If We Were Villains one of the great modern mystery novels.

Buy a copy of If We Were Villains here!

The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton

Forget your typical whodunnit. Turton’s newest novel throws you headfirst into a genre-bending whirlwind of dystopian sci-fi, pulse-pounding thriller, and classic murder mystery, all set against the idyllic backdrop of a seemingly perfect island untouched by the world’s deadly fog.

With multiple POVs and the omnipresent AI Abi whispering in everyone’s ear, the narrative unfolds like a puzzle box slowly clicking into place with Emory, a would-be detective, at the heart of it.

This is no ordinary murder mystery. The memory-wiping security system adds a mind-bending twist, forcing suspects to grapple with the possibility of being a killer without any recollection of the act. It’s a constant dance of uncovering and rediscovering, keeping you guessing at every turn. Each revelation feels like a victory, propelling you further into the heart of the island’s secrets.

If you’re looking for a book that will bend your brain and keep you guessing until the last page The Last Murder at the End of the World is it.

Buy a copy of The Last Murder at the End of the World

Helle & Death by Oskar Jensen

Helle & Death is a loud and proud homage to the golden age of crime fiction; a rekindling of the cosy vibes and puzzle-box structure that made Agatha Christie a cherished household name. Jensen’s novel follows a group of eight friends in their early thirties who all studied at Oxford together ten years ago. One of those friends made his fortune straight out of uni by developing an app. He has now sold it and lives a reclusive life in a large country manor.

Out of the blue, Dodd has invited the other seven to visit his home for a reunion dinner, and we primarily follow Danish art historian Torben Helle as he and the rest spend an evening catching up, dining, and then being hit by the bombshell that Dodd is dying, and in his will he has left each of them £50,000. A large sum to many, and a pittance to others. The group drown their sorrows, and in the morning Dodd is found dead in his bed.

From here, the game is afoot. Made to look like suicide, it surely couldn’t have been. Right? Helle puts on his sleuthing hat and starts asking questions, piecing together motives and means. Whodunnit? You’ll have to read on to find out. It’s a doozy of a tale that echoes the best Christie stories, and cements Jensen as a stellar writer of the modern mystery novel.

Buy a copy of Helle & Death here!

The Three Dahlias by Katy Watson

Katy Watson’s The Three Dahlias is a love letter to the golden age of crime fiction, led by the Queen of Crime, Agatha Christie. It’s a murder-mystery story about murder-mystery stories. Our protagonists are three actresses from three generations who have all played (or are about to play) the role of an iconic detective.

Created by the author Lettice Davenport — Princess of Poison — Dahlia Lively was a Miss Marple-esque sleuth who featured in many of Davenport’s novels and was brought to life via TV and Film. To celebrate those adaptations, a celebration is being held at the stately home of the late Lettice Davenport. There, our three Dahlias will be brought together by blackmail, then by theft, and at last by murder.

This stately home inspired Davenport’s writing; most of her mystery stories were based on her own home, and now someone is using her works to inspire their own very real murders, and our three actresses must summon their inner Dahlias to solve this crime, all while fearing exposure by whomever is blackmailing them.

The Three Dahlias pays homage to the traditions of the murder mystery while also leaning into the genre’s tropes in order to break its rules and take the reader on a fresh, original journey.

Buy a copy of The Three Dahlias here!

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

This genre-blending gothic horror mystery thriller wasn’t Catriona Ward’s debut, but it was the novel that broke her into the mainstream and landed her on every reader’s lips. The Last House on Needless Street is a rare book that pushes the world of mystery novels forward, mixing terror and strangeness into its formula to create an unforgettable experience.

Our main protagonist is a man in his thirties named Ted. More than a decade ago, he was the prime suspect in the disappearance/murder of a girl at a nearby lakeside. Now, Ted lives a secluded life with his cat and his daughter. We sometimes see things from the cat’s perspective, and the daughter is not always there.

Assumptions can very quickly be made, but they are all so telegraphed, so predictable, that they can’t be true. This is a novel that wrongfoots the reader constantly and has fun doing so. The gothic and horror themes and tropes that have been mixed in make for an atmosphere that you feel as though you’re drowning in. The Last House on Needless Street set Catriona Ward up as the new queen of mystery novels.

Buy a copy here!

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

With The Last House on Needless Street, Catriona Ward turned the genres of mystery, thriller, horror, and gothic into Lego bricks to play with in new and experimental ways. With Looking Glass Sound, she takes that approach several steps further, writing a book within a book that examines the very concepts of fact and fiction, of memoir and narrative, of lives and lies.

Our protagonist, Wilder, first provides us with a memoir about two teenage summers spent on the coast of Maine, about the two friends he made there, and about the dangerous Dagger Man haunting the town. This doesn’t last long, however; soon, we move with Wilder to college in Pennsylvania and the strange roommate who calls himself Sky.

We watch Sky steal Wilder’s memoir and publish it as his own novel, propelling him into fame and leaving Wilder alone with nothing. Now, Wilder is an aging man going blind who has returned to coastal Maine with the aim of setting the record straight, of writing his memoir at last, and of exposing the now-dead Sky as the thief he was.

Looking Glass Sound is a dizzying modern thriller that examines the genre and its implications for readers, writers, and storytellers.

Buy a copy of Looking Glass Sound here!

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

Scorched Grace is a very different kind of mystery novel. Not so much because it breaks convention in a genre sense, but certainly in a tonal one, and in terms of what we expect from a mystery novel protagonist. Sister Holiday was a punk kid; a young lesbian from Brooklyn, covered in tattoos, playing in a band, doing drugs, and tangling with her parents.

She’s also a devout Catholic. After escaping to New Orleans, she was taken in by the progressive nuns of Saint Sebastian’s School, where she has worked as a teacher ever since. A tattooed, chain-smoking, filthy-mouthed nun isn’t your typical sleuth.

The mystery she becomes tangled up in is a series of arson attacks targeted at her school — arson attacks which also lead to the deaths of people she knows and cares about. When the police prove all but useless, Sister Holiday takes things into her own hands, especially when she feels prying eyes on her, and all signs point to her being set up for the crime.

Set against the backdrop of a scorching, sweltering, oppressive summer heat, with a supporting cast of angry nuns, punk teenagers, and unreliable cops, this is one of the most unique and compelling mystery novels in a long time.

Buy a copy of Scorched Grace here!

The Readers’ Room by Antoine Laurain

Translated from the French by Jane Aitken

The Readers’ Room is a delightful French murder mystery novel, very much in the vein of Agatha Christie and her compatriots. This is a bright yet twisted mystery that grows and tangles as it goes.

The Readers’ Room is set in a Paris publishing house. The head of the publishing house has been sent a manuscript that she sees as something truly unique and special. It’s fresh, daring, and exciting, and she has big plans for it. Meanwhile, the novel also remarks on the mechanics of publishing houses in a very intimate and satisfying way.

That new novel is published, but the identity of the author remains a mystery. When it is nominated for a prize, the prize can only be given if the identity of the author is revealed. Our publishing director is now caught up in the investigation of real-world murders tied to the events within this strange new mystery novel.

The cozy, warming note of The Readers’ Room is so at odds with its content, and that’s often the pleasant paradox of so many beloved murder mystery novels.

Buy a copy of The Readers’ Room here!

The Tattoo Murder by Akimitsu Takagi

Translated from the Japanese by Deborah Boehm

The honkaku genre of Japanese murder mysteries is a broad and beloved thing. Many talented authors have added small masterpieces to this genre over the past century. The genre has a legacy so grand that it is difficult to pick one that stands above the rest, but what makes 1948’s The Tattoo Murder unique is its dedication to character drama.

Translated by Deborah Boehm, The Tattoo Murder was honkaku author Akimitsu Takagi’s debut mystery novel. Set in the aftermath of World War II, after the fall of the Japanese Empire, The Tattoo Murder is a locked-room murder mystery novel that satisfies as much as it surprises.

Our protagonist is a medical student who becomes enamoured with a young woman: the heavily tattooed daughter of a late legend of the Japanese tattooing world. She tells him that her brother and sister were both lost to the war, and that she believes she herself is not long for this world.

Her prediction proves true when she is found dead in her own home’s locked bathroom, the water still running. Her torso, the canvas for her stunning tattoo art, is missing. This is a classic Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery but with added emphasis on blood, gore, and character drama.

Buy a copy here!

How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

Here is one of those modern mystery novels that had every kind of reader sitting up and paying attention, likely in part because of its delightfully cheeky title. Reminiscent of Emerald Fennell’s daring 2020 film Promising Young Woman, How to Kill Your Family is an angry mystery novel about class disparity, selfishness, and cruelty.

Our protagonist is a young woman who was raised by a poor, single French woman in London. Grace’s mother was knocked up by a philandering playboy billionaire who cast her aside and refused to even look in her or their daughter’s direction.

After the death of her mother, Grace decides to head out on a killing spree, murdering the members of her father’s rich family one by one, and we get to sit back and watch.

The mystery is revealed in the prologue, however. The novel’s framing device: Grace is in prison, writing her memoir. Here, she tells us that she actually got away with all of these murders, and was locked up for the only murder she didn’t commit. There’s our hook; there’s our mystery.

This is a wonderfully funny, grim, and satisfying book that stands out amongst other great modern mystery novels.

Buy a copy here!

The Decagon House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji

Translated from the Japanese by Ho-Ling Wong

The Decagon House Murders is another masterpiece of the Japanese honkaku genre of murder mystery novels, and one that uniquely and specifically pays homage to the legacy of Agatha Christie. Many (including myself) consider Christie’s magnum opus to have been her novel And Then There Were None, a story that has inspired so much art and media in the decades since its publication.

One of those writers inspired by it was Yukito Ayatsuji, and his novel The Decagon House Murders proudly echoes Christie’s novel in brilliantly inventive ways. Our protagonists are a group of university students who are all members of their college’s mystery club.

These students have headed out to an island which, only a few months prior, was the site of an as-yet-unsolved murder. The honkaku genre is a pool of fantastic mystery novels, and even amongst all these great books, The Decagon House Murders stands out as a mystery masterpiece.

Buy a copy here!

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Grady Henrix is an author of horror novels, all of which have brilliant titles and subvert the tropes of the genre in fun ways. This particular novel, however — The Final Girl Support Group — is as much a murder mystery as it is a horror novel. Maybe moreso, honestly.

Our protagonist is Lynette, a middle-aged woman who was once a final girl (a term used to describe the last victim left alive at the end of a slasher movie). For years, Lynette has been attending the titular therapy support group for massacre survivors, but now one of these final girls stops turning up to their sessions, and is found murdered in her home.

Someone is targeting final girls, it seems. And to make things stranger, a new final girl has just appeared, having survived a fresh massacre. Lynette makes for a great protagonist; as something of an outsider and an incredibly paranoid person, she is an unlikely hero. This adds a lot to the fun and the tension.

Buy a copy here!

The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown

Here is an exciting piece of historical drama that doubles as a compelling murder mystery story. The Key in the Lock is a narrative that is split chronologically. We follow both the adult Ivy, who lost her son in the Great War, and the younger Ivy of the past, scarred by a dreadful fire.

The mystery of the novel surrounds the fire itself, the boy who died in that fire, and the reasons behind it. As a child, Ivy was the daughter of the village daughter. When the fire broke out, she and her father were called to the big house, and are tangled in the web of lies surrounding the cause of the blaze.

As an adult, Ivy has not only lost her son but her husband is also incredibly sick, and as we flit back to the past we see how she and her husband’s relationship initially began. The Key in the Lock is a shining example of both historical British fiction and the legacy genre of murder mystery novels.

Buy a copy here!

The Leviathan by Rosie Andrews

Set in 1643, during the English Civil War, The Leviathan is a creeping, gothic piece of historical fiction that will have you gripping the pages like the wheel of an out-of-control car. Our narrator-protagonist, Thomas Treadwater, is a young man who has returned from war to his father’s farm.

His younger sister is all out of sorts because she believes that their new servant has been seducing and manipulating their ageing father. On occasion, chapters shift forward to Thomas as an old man, married and comfortable but haunted by something in his house. Something he must periodically feed and watch over.

The Leviathan is, frankly, delicious. It is a camp piece of mystery and melodrama. It has all the insane beats of a gothic horror B-movie, while also leading us by the nose with its ridiculous puzzles and problems.

It’s wonderful to see a piece of historical fiction be so lively and campy, as opposed to the more typical slow-burn approach to the genre. This is gothic historical fiction at its finest, while also being a shining example of the mystery genre.

Buy a copy here!

The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins

Here is one of the most impactful mystery novels of the past decade; all the more impressive considering it is a debut novel. Sara Collins is a Black British writer and ex-lawyer. Her debut novel The Confessions of Frannie Langton has also been adapted into a beautiful TV show.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton begins with our protagonist on trial for murder. It’s 1826, she was born and educated on the plantations of Jamaica, and she has since worked as a maid for Benham family. Mrs Benham, a woman Frannie dearly loved, is dead, and it’s Frannie who stands to hang for the murder. But did she do it? And if so, why?

The Confessions of Frannie Langton isn’t only one of the best historical novels of today; it is also a twisting, turning, tantalising murder mystery novel. A mind-bending tale of race, class, empire, love, queerness, and so much more. It is a true modern classic of historical fiction and mystery fiction.

Buy a copy here!

Elena Knows by Claudia Pineiro

Translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle

Though Claudia Pińeiro is most famous for her crime fiction, Elena Knows is a slightly different beast. This heavy yet short literary mystery novel tackles big themes of religion, sexism, responsibility, and fantasy vs reality.

The novel’s titular, Elena, is a woman in her sixties who is suffering from Parkinson’s. It’s hard for her to move around, yet she is on a journey across Buenos Aires to meet and talk with someone she hopes will understand her situation.

The situation in question concerns Elena’s daughter, Rita, who, three months prior, was found dead at their local church. Rita was found hanging from a rope in the belfry; the death was immediately written off as suicide, but Elena refuses to believe that.

Her only evidence is that it was raining on the day of Rita’s death, and Rita had always avoided the church on rainy days for fear of lightning strikes. Elena Knows takes place over a single day as she journeys across Argentina’s capital, and we are treated to flashbacks to Rita’s death and funeral and their life together as mother and daughter before that.

This is an Argentinian novel that heavily explores the effects of religion on women and children; it asks us to consider our relationships with the people around us vs the relationships we have with the invented versions of them that our minds have cooked up.

There is more to Rita, more to Elena, more to everything than is first laid out, but this is not a crime novel. It’s a mystery story with a laser focus on religion, gender, and family dynamics.

Buy a copy here!

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Blending the tone and tropes of horror fiction and mystery novels, Bad Cree tells the story of a young cree Canadian woman whose dreams are following her into reality. When Mackenzie wakes up on page one, she has the freshly severed head of a crow in her hands, and this isn’t the first time a thing from her nightmares has appeared in her waking world.

The dreams themselves are guiding her back to a lakeside forest, a place where her older sisters once briefly disappeared before emerging, disheveled and shaken up but safe. That is, until one of these twin sisters, Sabrina, suddenly died of a brain aneurysm, and now she seems to be haunting her little sister’s nightmares.

The memories, the haunting, and the blurring of dreams and reality all make for some really disturbing and chilling horror and a very compelling supernatural mystery story. Twisted and chilling as a horror novel and utterly compelling as a mystery thriller, Bad Cree is a unique spectacle of a novel.

Buy a copy of Bad Cree here!

Thank you for reading. If you liked our list of mystery novels, please consider sharing.

For that reason, we’ve done our best to provide as much variety as possible here (and, to that end, this list will be periodically updated).

What does variety mean here? Well, you’ll find a good mix of books about life by women and men; by white writers and writers of colour; by English-language authors and writers in translation from German, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and more.

Variety also means a good range of themes and topics explored. These are all life-changing books (or, at least, books with the potential to change your life), but not all of them will be each reader’s cup of tea. And so, variety is necessary.

Some of these books are about living free, without constraint. Some are warnings against living a bad life (and what that means). Others are about life’s meaning and life’s purpose.

Some of these books are positive, hopefully, hedonistic. Others are dark and bleak, but with important lessons to teach.

All of these are books about life, but very much in their own unique way. They’re about work, family, parenthood, friendship. They’re about structure and purpose and motivation. They’re about politics and economics and race and class and feminism.

One final note: this is a list of good books about life. For that reason, you’ll find nothing toxic here. No Jordan Peterson. We’ve also avoided the useless and the over-worshipped. No Paolo Coelho and no Matt Haig.

These are all potentially life-changing books; useful, actionable, inspiring books about life. Enjoy.

Fiction Books About Life

Fiction has the power to teach us great lessons. It uses language and character and tone to inspire empathy and encourage big ideas.

These are all books about life, but each in their own unique way. We’ll discuss here their themes and ideas and characters, and how these things relate to life.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

The book that put Sayaka Murata on the map as one of the biggest names in Japanese literature, Convenience Store Woman is one of those potentially life changing books that gets readers thinking about what success and personal satisfaction actually mean.

The novel’s protagonist is a woman who has worked for eighteen years at a convenience store. She enjoys her existence as a cog in the machine. She has no aspirations for love and marriage, nor for money and fame.

She does not wish for more responsibilities. She is content with her lot in life, much to the confusion of everyone else in her life, from family to friends to colleagues.

Convenience Store Woman is one of the sharpest books about life, in that it asks us to consider why we want the things we desire. Who are we making happy when we seek promotions, money, and relationships?

How do we find happiness and contentment? These things look different for each of us, and that’s okay. Convenience Store Woman asks big questions about the search for happiness and life satisfaction, making it one of the most truly potentially life changing books of today.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Few books about life in existence are as raw and smart as Kazuo Ishiguro’s magnum opus: Never Let Me Go.

Written by one of the UK’s most beloved and literary authors, Never Let Me Go is a subtly science fiction novel about a woman who grew up in a seemingly peaceful boarding school, and now works as a carer or some kind.

As we search through her memories, we see that she was taught about art and literature, taught to make art and play with others, but life at Hailsham is insular and private, with the outside world remaining a mystery.

Never Let Me Go is, inarguably, one of the biggest and best examples of life changing books ever written. It explores the theme of purpose in myriad ways: the purpose of education, of work, of art, of learning, of discovery, and even the purpose of the human body.

As books about life go, few are as far-reaching and heavy-hitting as Never Let Me Go.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

The original science fiction novel, written by a young woman who had not yet hit twenty years of age. An undisputed masterpiece of classic literature and early sci-fi. But Frankenstein is also one of the best books about life you’ll ever read.

I’m a little biased here; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is my favourite novel. But it’s that for a reason: Frankenstein is a novel about human responsibility and hubris.

Frankenstein tells the story of the titular Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who, upon losing his mother, seeks to cure death itself. He forms a new being from body parts and reanimates it, only to run from it in terror.

And here is where the themes come into play. Frankenstein is one of those life-changing books that invites readers to consider our responsibility to one another, as parents and friends and teachers and givers of life.

Frankenstein has the power to resonate with anyone who is responsible for anyone else: parents, older siblings, doctors, teachers, caregivers. It asks us to consider one human’s duty to another; our duty to educate, support, comfort, and guide one another.

There aren’t many books about life as powerful as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

If you know anything about Franz Kafka, this may seem like a strange choice for a list of best books about life. At first. What does a novella about a poor man who turns into a bug have to teach us about life? A lot, actually.

The Metamorphosis is Frank Kafka’s most famous story. It begins with Gregor Samsa, a Czech man who lives with his family. One day, he wakes up to find that he is now a big, ugly beetle.

Samsa’s first thought, however, is fear and frustration. He’s going to be late to work. How will he call his boss? How will he explain this? What if he gets fired?

While it might be absurd and darkly funny, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis has a lot to teach us about our relationship to work; about being servants to capitalism and bureaucracy.

For many who first read The Metamorphosis, it proves to be one of those truly life-changing books; one that has us reevaluating our mental and physical relationships to money and work. A very worthwhile read as books about life go.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Yaa Gyasi’s second novel is a piece of literary fiction about the migrant experience in the US. But it’s also a book about science and religion, about family and addiction and survival.

Told from the perspective of Gifty, a Black American woman born of migrant parents from Ghana, Transcendent Kingdom flits between Gifty’s current life as a neurobiologist studying addiction and her childhood, one defined by religion and race and poverty.

Transcendent Kingdom is one of those life-changing books that asks us to consider the migrant experience, the effects of racism and prejudice, and the impact of capitalism on the poorest and most marginalised people.

Using Gifty, her mother, her father, and her late big brother as examples, Transcendent Kingdom examines the comforting and corrupting effects of religion on individuals and families. It looks at how the most vulnerable of us turn to addiction.

By being grounded, topical, and relevant to racist, capitalist American life in the 20th and 21st Centuries, Transcendent Kingdom hails itself as one of the best books about life you can read right now.

My Brilliant Life by Ae-ran Kim

Translated from the Korean by Chi-young Kim

While My Brilliant Life might be one of the lesser-known Korean novels in translation, it remains one of the most quietly impactful and life-changing books you could read right now.

My Brilliant Life tells the story of Areum, a boy struck with a degenerative disease. Areum is sixteen and probably won’t live to see eighteen.

Raised by two loving parents in small-town South Korea, Areum has a plan to document his life and that of his parents, then present his finished journal to his parents on his seventeenth birthday.

While this is an undeniable tear-jerker of a Korean novel, it’s also one of the most powerful potentially life-changing books on the shelves. It teaches us to appreciate our days, our experiences, and our families.

My Brilliant Life teaches us how to love well. And, for that reason, it is one of the most incomparable and valuable books about life.

The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Translated from the Spanish by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre

The Adventures of China Iron is a very different kind of novel, especially as books about life go. This is an Argentinian novel all about hedonism. It’s also a queer novel about how to love unapologetically and loudly.

Set in the wilds of 19th Century Argentina, The titular China Iron is a young woman who has already been married, had a child, given that child up, and been abandoned.

All of that quickly changes, however, when she is picked up on the road by a Scottish woman driving a horse and cart. Liz gives China Iron a name and invites her to wander, live, love, and laugh with aplomb.

The Adventures of China Iron is one of those life-changing books that serves as a reminder to enjoy yourself. Whatever your gender or sexuality, you deserve happiness. You deserve to enjoy love and sex and passion and adventure, just as China Iron does.

Here’s an anti-patriarchy book that, quite literally, laughs in the face of oppressive masculinity and heteronormativity. For that reason, it’s one of the most glorious books about life.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-joo

Translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang

This is not one of those books about life that will inspire you. It’s more of a wake-up call to the disparity and cruel imbalances of our world. To put it bluntly, it’s a book about systems of sexism and patriarchy.

But a book like Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 has its place on a list of life-changing books by merit of the lessons it can offer. This is a novelisation of your average woman’s life: a life dictated by unfair disadvantage, societal rules, family pressures, and threats of violence.

While not a pleasant book, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 remains one of those books that change your life for the better. It teaches us to be kinder to women, to fight inequality, to be good feminists, to call out sexism, to march for women’s rights, to be good and righteous.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

This one is a bit of a cliche. It’s certainly not uncommon — and pretty expected — to find Slaughterhouse-Five on a list of books that will change your life, or best life-changing books. But that’s, admittedly, for good reason.

Like most World War I & 2 fiction, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is a kind of parable; an anti-war novel full of loud and clear themes and motifs that beg us to consider the value and meaning of human life.

Admittedly, Slaughterhouse-Five does this in true Vonnegut fashion: through odd symbolism, wacky science fiction, and often funny surrealism. Nevertheless, the themes are striking and the lessons vivid.

Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the strongest and best books about life, as it explores the meaninglessness of war and the futility of fate and choice. A powerful novel, to say the least.

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

While this is a book that so many (maybe most) of us were made to read in high school (I was also made to teach it), Of Mice and Men remains one of the most poignant books about life ever written. As relevant today as it was a century ago.

Telling the story of two wandering white men in early 20th Century America, Of Mice and Men is a story that debunks and deconstructs the infamous American Dream. It proves the cyclical nature of the capitalist trap, and shows us a life not worth living.

George and Lenny have a plan to cheat the system, to break the cycle, to live free and smart and proud. But capitalism comes for us all, in the end. For this reason, Of Mice and Men is one of those truly life-changing books of the 20th Century.

Nonfiction Books About Life

Written by women and men from all over the world, these nonfiction books about life have the power to change your way of thinking, to inspire compassion and empathy and a different approach to life.

Some of these books inspire action, others inspire thought. Some are about how we live, others about why we live. Some are about the body, others about the mind. But they are all, in some way, nonfiction books about life.

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life by Yiyun Li

Nobody in the English language today writes like Yiyun Li. This fact is made all the more impressive when you consider that English is her second language, having moved from Beijing to New York City years ago.

With these writing skills, Yiyun Li has penned several excellent novels, but her most impressive work is the nonfiction Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life.

This book, which blends essay and memoir together, reflects on childhood, love, mental health, and death. It was begun after a pair of failed suicide attempts and took two years to complete.

Dear Friend is a meditation on life, death, reading, and writing, as perhaps best demonstrated by this quote from the book:

“Writing is an option, so is not writing; being read is a possibility, so is not being read. Reading, however, I equate with real life: life can be opened and closed like a book; living is a choice, so is not living.”

By being a book on death, Dear Friend also doubles as one of the best books about life you’re ever likely to read.

Read More: Essential Nonfiction Books About China

A Field Guide To Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is a veteran nonfiction writer and essayist. A fierce and electrifying feminist, political activist, and social commentator. From a book on the history of walking to a manifesto against mansplaining, she’s done it all.

In A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit blends meditations on life, art, and loss to create something truly profound. She begins the book with an essay that includes this pearl of wisdom:

“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go … Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?”

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman

Men who write big, bold books on human history are a dime a dozen these days, but I promise that Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s Humankind is something different; something worth your time.

Its title being a play on words, Humankind sets out to teach us that humanity — culturally, historically, politically, socially, genetically — is far kinder than we often give it credit for. The breadth of scope in Humankind almost beggars belief.

The book debunks psychological experiments built on lies by liars; it finds a real-life example of Lord of the Flies to demonstrate that the novel is cynical nonsense; it rewrites a more truthful and optimistic history of humanity.

For anyone whose faith in humanity often wavers, Bregman’s book is a balm. It is a light in the dark, and a soothing tonic. One of the best life-changing books you’ll ever read.

Constellations: Reflections From Life by Sinead Gleeson

Irish writer Sinead Gleeson is a beloved and respected woman in many ways, and for many good reasons. In Constellations, Gleeson turns the focus of her writing on her own life — and specifically her own body — as inspiration for discussion about life and love.

In a pure, almost figurative sense, this is one of the best books about life, as it is quite literally about a life: her body, her health, her mind and experiences.

It’s a book about the things that make a life: people, places, thoughts, experiences, the things we love and lose.

Constellations is a tough book, hard-hitting and raw. That’s what makes it one of the best life-changing books you can read.

goodbye, things by Fumio Sasaki

Translated from the Japanese by Eriko Sugita

Going from a life of excessive spending and self-abuse, Fumio Sasaki decided to part with all of his possessions, except for some very basic things needed for day to day living.

While Fumio Sasak’s approach is a little extreme in some areas, every single lesson he shares in goodbye, things is actionable such as his tips on taking pictures of things you’d like to remember.

We spend more money on buying or renting bigger homes, not to put extra people in but simply to fit in more stuff, which also costs more money.

There are real, practical life lessons in here, making it one of the most visceral life-changing books to read if you want to enact real change in your real life. Truly one of the best books on minimalism out there.

The Power of Ritual by Casper Ter Kuile

Casper Ter Kuile is a British-born, US-based fellow of Harvard Divinity School, and his book explores the importance of religious ritual in a secular world.

The Power of Ritual begins by considering what church-related practices are lost in an increasingly secular world.

The two most prominent things are community-based practices, in which a group of likeminded people share time and support one another, and personal rituals like prayer.

The Power of Ritual invites secular readers to explore their own habits, hobbies, and personal behaviours, looking at how we can add a spiritual sense of ritual to the everyday, thus enhancing the importance of what we do.

He considers how our favourite novels can become sacred texts. How a community space like Crossfit can become church-like community spaces. It’s a simple concept with an immense amount of potential impact.

This is one of those books that change your life in more ways than one. It can change your attitude to ritual and religion, while also bringing meaning to your hobbies and habits in a way you never would’ve expected.

Read More: 12 Books like Atomic Habits

How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division by Elif Shafak

A world traveller and award-winning author, Elif Shafak’s voice is one worth listening to, regardless of the topic, whether her writing takes the form of fiction or nonfiction.

How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division is a lesson in optimism. It has the power to rekindle our hope and our faith when we all feel so exhausted by climate change, the rise of populism, and more.

It’s a book that can be read over a coffee, with the lyrical strength of poetry and the wisdom of a hundred lifetimes. It has a simple message but it presents that message through personal examples and grounded, cautious optimism.

A beautifully written book that may just help to alleviate some anxiety. And, in this world, that is worth everything. One of the great life-changing books of our time? Very likely, yes.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Translated from the German by Isle Lasch

Of all the nonfiction books that will change your life, Man’s Search for Meaning is perhaps one of the most obvious. You’re likely to find it alongside The Alchemist on many other lists. 

The difference is that The Alchemist is full of worthless, empty pseudo-wisdom, while Man’s Search for Meaning actually deserves to be on these lists of life-changing books.

Written in 1946, after the end of World War II, Man’s Search for Meaning is separated into two halves. The first half is a biography of Frankl’s time as a concentration camp prisoner.

This first half uses this space to examine how people find meaning in their suffering and devise a purpose for living. How do they cope? How do they make sense of their situation? How do they find meaning in their life?

In the book’s second half, Frankl lays out his own psychological invention: logotherapy, which was inspired by the events of the book’s first half. Logotherapy encourages people to find meaning in their suffering, in order to better cope with it.

Of all the overly-relied-upon life-changing books out there, Man’s Search for Meaning is a genuinely important one.

Why Marx Was Right by Terry Eagleton

Here’s a book that will likely make a lot of people cringe, roll their eyes, or worse (depending on what kind of audience this list has drawn in. But it’s not my job to care. Terry Eagleton is a fantastic critic and philosopher, and Why Marx Was Right is an important book.

I haven’t just added this book to a list of books that will change your life for the hell of it. I’ve done it because this is a book about modern life; it is relevant to right now. It looks at the atrocities thrust on us by capitalist economies and fascist, right-wing leaders.

It then applies the economic and political philosophies of Karl Marx to everything, proving how an application of marxism could, and would, fix so much of our current political climate, in ways that even the staunchest socialist (myself included) would be surprised by.

If you’ve ever suffered at the hands of a conservative government or a capitalist economic system (which, if you’re alive today, you have), then this book is for you. It’s about life and how to make it better as a community, as voters, and as people.

Behave by Robert Sapolsky

Even though it’s irrelevant, I still think it’s important to know: Robert Sapolsky sounds exactly like Adam West, and that’s super neat.

Robert Sapolsky is also a very cool scientist. In Behave, Sapoksly looks at the habits, rhymes, and reasons of human behaviour from a neurobiological angle.

In Behave, Sapolsky asks the question: why do we behave with aggression or compassion at any given time? He then plies his own expertise and research in order to answer that enormous and daunting question.

The results of this are fascinating. Behave is an enormous and dense book, but one that is worth every second of your time. This is a book about life in the truest, purest sense. It’s about life from the inside out.

Or they might be heartwarming, cosy reads and mystery novels that bring us comfort as we enjoy them on a park bench with a takeaway coffee, or by the fire in the evening.

The Best Autumn Books

Since autumn books are so difficult to define, we’ve come at the topic from a few different angles, bringing you a handful of books that fit the autumn mood, whatever that might mean to you. Enjoy these sometimes cosy, sometimes dark, sometimes spooky, and sometimes friendly autumn books.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

One of the best short novels to read during the month of October is Shirley Jackson’s magnum opus: We Have Always Lived in the Castle. This is an eerie and tense gothic novel, set in a small 20th Century American town. It follows a family that has been shunned by their community, treated like vampires or pariahs wherever they go.

Our protagonist, Merricat, is the family’s youngest daughter; her parents are dead and she practises her own brand of warding witchcraft in order to protect her remaining family from outsiders. There is so much quiet tension folded into the fabric of this novel. Dialogue is stunted; movements are robotic; the world is so quiet you can hear a ringing in your ears.

With the creepy vibes necessary for a Halloween read, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a delicious American gothic novel dripping with atmosphere. This is one of the essential autumn books to read during October.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro’s masterpiece is an English novel that is, in many ways, about Englishness itself. Its setting and tone make for a perfect autumn read. Our protagonist, Stevens, is a butler who has been working diligently at Darlington Hall for decades. One day, the estate’s newest owner announces he’s leaving for a trip to the US and that Stevens should take a holiday of his own.

Having just received a letter from an old friend and former colleague, Stevens decides to drive across the country to visit her. Along the way, he reflects on his life: on his work, his father, his relationships, and on Darlington Hall itself.

The Remains of the Day is a quietly sharp jab at conservative thoughts and behaviour; it expands on the themes introduced in his previous novel An Artist of the Floating World. But it’s the sweetly romantic setting; the road trip across soothing English countryside; the reminiscences and memories of youth that make this one of the best autumn books to enjoy as the nights draw in.

Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

The temptation is strong to recommend nothing but gothic and horror stories for autumn. Instead, why not a dark fairy tale? T. Kingfisher has made a name for herself as a writer of spooky stories in both the horror and fantasy genres, and Nettle and Bone sits at an intersection between those two genres. This novel follows a quest taken by a young princess who hopes to save the life of her older sister, whose hand was given to a prince.

Their eldest sister was already killed by this prince, and when he immediately demands the hand of the second sister, our protagonist takes matters into her own hands. She seeks out a gravewitch who tasks her with resurrecting the bones of a dog, making a cloak out of nettles, and more besides. She must do the impossible in order to save her sister in a dark, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic twist on the fairy tale formula. Perfect autumn vibes.

The Wind That Lays Waste by Selva Almada

Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

The autumn season means dramatic changes in the weather: darkness, creeping cold, shifting colours, grey skies, and rain. The best book to pair with all that drama is Argentinian author Selva Almada’s The Wind That Lays Waste.

This is a theatrical, claustrophobic, and gothic novel that concludes with the loudest pathetic fallacy you’ll likely ever read. Our cast is small: a travelling preacher and his daughter, and an atheist mechanic and his apprentice.

When the preacher breaks down, he stays with the mechanic while the atheist fixes his car. The majority of this Argentinian masterpiece is comprised of toxic, loud, opinionated men arguing back and forth about the merits of the thing they believe (or don’t).

A bleak, wild landscape; an isolated rural setting; too much masculine rage and passion; twisted people behaving in twisted ways. Gothic perfection and one of the most exciting autumn books to enjoy. As an added benefit, you can read this in a single day. Wrap up warm, pick a park bench, sit, and enjoy.

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

Catriona Ward is a masterful writer of suspenseful and strange, often gothic-tinged thrillers, and The Last House on Needless Street remains her finest work. Set in a lonely house at the end of a cul-de-sac, this horror-thriller follows Ted, a reclusive man who was once a prime suspect for the disappearance of a girl from a nearby lakeside. He was cleared, and now he lives with his daughter and his cat in a house with boarded-up windows.

The novel shifts perspective regularly, from Ted to his daughter and even his cat. Things aren’t right in this house, and people will soon come sniffing around to find out what, exactly, is off about Ted. Were suspicions correct all those years ago? Or is something even stranger and darker afoot here? Things will not go as you expect them to in this brilliantly atmospheric, impossibly tense autumnal novel.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

While it might seem odd to include a novel set in an endless indoor labyrinth on a list that celebrates such a beautiful season, hear me out. Autumn is all about cosy vibes: wrapping up warm, getting coffee with friends, relaxing at home with good food and soft lights.

Despite not having autumn aesthetics, Piranesi has autumn vibes in spades! Our protagonist is a darling himbo written with love and affection. The world he occupies is a strange mystery. Enigmatic and tantalising, it draws us in deeper and deeper.

Half of what makes a good autumn book is its addictive readability; something you can’t look up from and end up finishing in a single sitting. Piranesi is exactly that. This is a charming mystery that bends and blends genres; it subversus and confuses and draws you in like a spell: a magical read and one of the most alluring autumn books.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

While some of us want spooky and bleak books for autumn, and others want cosy and kind reads, a few might want something dark and twisted and strange. For those readers, there’s Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona: a fantastical and nasty novel set in a nondescript medieval European world.

Men who till the soil; a wise witch who nurses every child in the village; a gothic house on the hill overlooking it all. This is pure autumn vibes right here! Natural disasters plague this world; and as autumn is all about the world getting harsher and bleaker, it’s a perfect moment to read and drink in the darkness of Lapvona.

There is also a darkness in the blood of its characters. There are no heroes here, only twisted survivors of an unfair and cruel world — a perfect read for darker autumn nights.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

This one speaks for itself. There aren’t many books better suited to October than Dracula. One of the greatest horror novels, gothic novels, and vampire novels ever told, Dracula is a Halloween hat trick. It’s also a sizeable tome; perfect for sinking your fangs into.

There’s also something wonderfully romantic about Dracula’s epistolary writing style, formed entirely as it is from letters and diary entries. A timeless gothic method of storytelling. And that blend of the romantic and the gothic is exactly what good autumn books need to have. Monstrous villains, creepy castles, and an epic chase don’t hurt either.

Out by Natsuo Kirino

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

Autumn wouldn’t be autumn without a murder (in fiction). While it would be easy to pick and choose a few great Agatha Christie mysteries, let’s save her for winter. Instead, let’s go with something a little more bleak, angry, and gnarly for autumn than anything Christie ever wrote: Out by Natsuo Kirino.

Out is a Japanese novel dripping with disgust. Four women work the night shift at a sandwich-packing factory. When they’re done, they go home to abusive husbands and boyfriends. One day, one of these women snaps and strangles her husband with his own belt while their kids are just a room away. The others help her cover it all up, and things go bad. Very bad.

This is a blood-curdling, blood-soaked murder novel. Feminist and fierce, it is as twisted as it is angry and that makes it one of the coolest autumn books for a cold evening of reading.

The Manningtree Witches by A.K. Blakemore

One of the most lyrical, poetic, and talked-about British historical novels of recent years (for good reason), The Manningtree Witches is a short but intense autumn read. Set in 17th Century Essex, at the height of the puritanical Christian witch hunts that swept Europe and North America, The Manningtree Witches is bold and beautiful.

In a small town devoid of men, our protagonist is a young woman among many other women, who must simply endeavour to survive when a man comes to town and stirs trouble. The rural, pre-industrial English country setting makes for a beautiful world to explore, and the dangers of the narrative match the biting wind and darker skies of an autumn day.

Of all the autumn books here, this is one that really feels as though it embodies the season: its beauty and its bleakness.

Cunning Women by Elizabeth Lee

Much like The Manningtree Witches, Elizabeth Lee’s Cunning Women gets the tone just right when it comes to those English autumn aesthetics. Set in a rural English world of witch hunters and paranoid peasants, Cunning Women is a curiously romantic novel. Blurring the lines between dark feminist literary fiction and soothing romantic commercial fiction, Cunning Women is a warm autumn read with just the right amount of bite; like an autumn wind.

Our protagonist is a young girl whose all-female family are outcasts from their local village (the titular “cunning women”), but love blooms when Sarah meets the local farmer’s son. Meanwhile, witch hunts are escalating and paranoia is spreading through this Lancashire village like a virus. Blending romance with feminist fiction, this is one of the sweetest yet bleakest autumn books on the shelves.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

It almost feels cruel to have gone this long not having mentioned The Secret History, but better late than never. Donna Tartt’s debut is a legendary piece of modern fiction. This is the novel that defined the dark academia genre of fiction.

Set on a college campus in beautiful Vermont — a state that does autumn better than any other place in the United States — this is a tale of murder; of terrible people being terrible. Our protagonist is a savvy young lad from a small California town who earns a place in this fancy college and, thanks to his love for Greek, stumbles his way into a club/gang of obnoxious posh kids that you’ll love to hate.

But these posh kids are unshackled and untethered; they’re wild and crooked and cruel. They make kill by accident and on purpose. Lyrical and beautiful, The Secret History is one of the most atmospheric autumn books you’ll ever read.

Mordew by Alex Pheby

It can be difficult to find a place for fantasy or sci-fi novels on a list of autumn books, but Alex Pheby’s Mordew absolutely fits the bill. This is a gnarly, nasty, Lovecraftian novel that chews on fantasy tropes, spits them out, and watches as they morph into something monstrous and unsettling.

The cold and unloving world of Mordew makes for perfect autumn night reading. The titular Mordew is the world of the novel: a gothic coastal city where most people occupy the muddy slums and the master holds all the power.

Our protagonist, Nathan, spends his days trawling through living mud looking for treasures to sell. While his father lies sick, his mother sends him to the Master of Mordew himself. Nathan learns that, in the caves beneath the master’s keep, lies the body of God himself, and it’s by feasting on God’s corpse that the Master gains his power. This is a wildly ambitious, insidiously dark gothic fantasy novel; impactful and exciting, it is a perfect autumn read.

The Familiars by Stacey Halls

One of the books that really kickstarted the trend of British historical fiction, Stacey Halls’ debut The Familiars was a huge commercial success. While her second novel, The Foundling is arguably the better book, The Familiars is the one with all the autumn vibes.

Based loosely on the life of a real woman named Fleetwood Shuttleworth, The Familiars is set in the beautiful country estate of Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire. Young Fleetwood is pregnant, but she has been told that she likely won’t survive it after so many stillbirths.

But one day, while walking the grounds of her home, Fleetwood meets an enigmatic girl named Alice who was out hunting, and who promises to help Fleetwood survive her pregnancy. This beautiful, rural, historic setting is evocative and mesmerising. The family drama, the high stakes, and the layers of mystery and intrigue that pile up make for one of the most exciting autumn books of recent years.

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

In a similar dark academia vein to The Secret History, M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villains is a masterclass of autumnal atmosphere. The novel begins with a young man who has been released from prison after serving ten years for the death of a fellow student while studying theatre at university. We are then thrown back to the fateful year, to see how and why things really happened the way they did.

If We Were Villains paints a Shakespearean picture of a cast of complex, tortured, arrogant young women and men, all obsessively studying The Bard himself. The live and breathe his characters and their iconic lines. And at some point, one of them will die, and this dark drama will turn into a tantalising murder mystery story. Whatever truths come out, we know that our protagonist will end up in prison for what happens.

Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Miaojin

Translated from the Mandarin by Bonnie Huie

It’s difficult to put my finger on what exactly gives Notes of a Crocodile — a Taiwanese lesbian novel about depression and homophobia — such autumn vibes, but it definitely has them.

Perhaps it’s the university setting, which conjures thoughts of September bringing new chances and opportunities. Perhaps it’s the doomed and toxic romance between two hopeless young people, confused and angry and afraid. Perhaps it’s the grey cloud of depression and anxiety that hangs over the whole story like an autumn sky.

Whatever the case, if you want a dark, heartbreaking, powerful queer novel by a true talent of Taiwanese literature for one of your autumn books, Notes of a Crocodile is essential.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

As already mentioned, Agatha Christie is being saved for winter, but that doesn’t mean a good murder mystery isn’t more than welcome on this list of autumn books. And there are few more fun than The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton’s masterpiece debut.

This is a trippy, fantastical novel that features murder, premonitions, enigmatic guiding figures, and multiple protagonists. Our protagonist has been tasked with taking control of the bodies of eight people over eight days, like the player of a video game, in order to stop the titular death of Evelyn Hardcastle.

What Turton really understands is the importance of a recognisable cast of eccentric, memorable characters. Every good mystery novel needs that, and this novel certainly has it. It also has an enormous, labyrinthine stately home and its wide grounds for a setting. The stakes are high, the events dizzying, the characters delightful, and the interactions engagingly fun. This is one hell of an autumn read.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

And so we arrive at the quintessential autumn read; queen of the autumn books; the perfect gothic novel: Wuthering Heights. A more ideal autumn read has never existed. Emily Bronte’s only novel begins with a man visiting the isolated houses of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.

His host, a grizzled and frightening man named Heathcliff, is hateful and unwelcoming. Intrigued by the man, our narrator asks a maid to regale him with the story of this place. And so we are thrown into the cold, hard, lonely world of Wuthering Heights, and the dark, toxic, twisted love affairs of the people who have lived and grown up there.

This is a celebration of melodrama. There are terrible people being terrible to one another, ruining their own happiness, and literally haunting each other. There’s nothing more autumnal than spending your evenings reading Wuthering Heights as the sun sets earlier and earlier.

Essential Modern Horror Books

Beyond the library of horror giant Stephen King, there is a wealth of wonderful modern horror fiction out there for you to sink your bloodthirsty fangs into!

Note: As these are the best modern horror books, not only novels, you’re going to find a few short story collections, comics, and manga here as well.

The modern horror books on this list have been gathered up from across the world — from Argentina to Japan — and represent the finest in horror fiction as it exists today (beyond that of Stephen King). Boundaries are being pushed; new kinds of horror are being discovered, poked at and tampered with. Enjoy what you find here, and keep the lights on after you’re done.

Read More: The Best Horror Novels Ever Written

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

With What Moves the Dead, author T. Kingfisher has taken Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, and built upon it. The result is something glorious. It takes a lot of daring to attempt something like this, and Kingfisher should be applauded for not only attempting it, but for also creating one of the finest modern horror books you’ll ever read.

The nameless protagonist from Poe’s original tale has here been given a name and a backstory, and just like in the original, they are on their way to the Usher house in response to a letter from an old friend. What Easton finds there, much like in Poe’s original, is a sick and frail brother-sister pair living in a crumbling estate on a marshy land.

However, in What Moves the Dead, Kingfisher has decided to answers questions raised by The Fall of the House of Usher. The biggest being: what caused all of this sickness and decay? The answer is a genius one, and it creates a wonderfully frightening and compelling “villain” for us to follow and consider.

What Moves the Dead is a truly chilling and disgusting modern horror novel; a gothic delight that builds on Poe’s original tale in so many fantastic and clever ways. An instant classic of the horror genre.

Buy a copy here!

Read More: 15 Best Books About Hell (Devils, Demons & Magic)

The Haar by David Sodergren

Legend of the world of grassroots horror David Sodergren delivers an absolute banger with The Haar, a unique work of terror that features an eighty-four-year-old protagonist, a shapeshifting sea monster, a soulless billionaire, and some unexpected but very welcome romance.

Muriel McAuley has lived in a small Scottish fishing village all her life; her husband was lost to sea a decade ago; and now a rich American wants to raze the village to make way for a golf course. And only the elderly residents of Witchaven have the guts to stand up to him. But as they fall, only Muriel remains. Her and the sea monster she found on the beach.

The Haar is a brilliant work of terror packed with really grotesque moments of body horror and some heartbreaking romantic scenes. A one-of-a-kind horror novel that proves the power of Sodergren’s unique brand of terror.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

Laura Purcell is the modern queen of horror; a British author who twists and turns all the most beloved tropes, characters, and settings that horror fans love, turning them into something wholly fresh and disgusting. While her second novel, The Corset, is considered by many (this writer included) to be her finest work, her debut novel The Silent Companions is easily her most immediately frightening.

The Silent Companions is easily one of the best modern horror books of this century; a haunted house novel of unique and exciting proportions.

Exceptionally gothic, very reminiscent of Susan Hill and Shirley Jackson, and yet wholly its own beast, The Silent Companions is gothic fiction, historical fiction, and horror all smooshed nicely together.

Our protagonist, Elsie, is pregnant, but her husband is already dead. And so she moves into his family’s country estate, where she feels isolated and lonely, with only her late husband’s cousin to call friend. The thing that haunts this novel is what makes it unique; something we’ve never seen before in the haunted house subgenre of horror fiction. A masterpiece amongst modern horror books.

Buy a copy here!

Shiver by Junji Ito

Japanese mangaka Junji Ito could (and should) easily swipe the horror crown off Stephen King’s head. Nobody in the world does horror and terror like Ito does. While he has written several lengthy horror manga, Ito’s finest works remain his short stories, and the best collection of these stories is easily Shiver.

Junji Ito blends cosmic horror (see his books Sensor and Remina for more proof of that) with the isolation, tension, and surrealism of intimate family horror. His ideas, characters, and narratives are creepy, intense, quietly frightening; his art pairs so beautifully with this as it brings to eerie life the expressions and experiences of his poor characters.

In Shiver we see a family that give into the urge to become living marionette dolls; a plague of flying balloons that look like (and hunt) us; and a house drowning in heat and grease.

It’s hard to go wrong with Junji Ito; he rarely disappoints. But if you really want to experience his finest works (and iconic characters like his terrifying cannibalistic supermodel), you need to check out Shiver immediately. Junji Ito is the true king of horror, and his manga are some of the best modern horror books of all time.

Buy a copy here!

The Hole by by Pyun Hye-young

Translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell

The Hole is perhaps one of the most underrated modern horror books you’ll ever read. This is a masterpiece of truly unsettling, nail-biting terror. Film fans should already know that Korean horror movies are a step above everything else, but the same can also be said about Korean horror novels, and The Hole is the best of them.

The Hole begins with a car crash. Our protagonist is fully paralysed, and his wife is dead. His mother-in-law has taken him in to care for him, but she blames him for the death of her daughter.

We must read on helplessly as our protagonist is trapped in his own mind, unable to move or fend for himself. All the while his mother-in-law digs an enormous hole in the garden.

Terror has never been done so well, not by Stephen King or any other horror author. This is tension like you’ve never felt it. If you’re looking for the very best modern horror books, you owe it to yourself to read Pyun Hye-young’s The Hole.

Buy a copy here!

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle

This one will be less sugar-coated than the others. Camp Damascus is, straight up, one of the best modern horror books you’ll ever read. A true masterpiece of horror fiction. Author Chuck Tingle is infamous across the internet for writing hilarious, absurdly-named self-published queer erotica about sex with monsters, dinosaurs, and even abstract concepts like time and money.

He is also a strange but wholesome man who hides his identity and makes no secret of the fact that love is what matters in this life, above all else. He believes that love is the ultimate truth. Given that information, it’s quite remarkable how Chuck Tingle has managed to write one of the best horror books of this century so far.

Camp Damascus is set in a relatively insular Montana community, in which people belong to a sect of Evangelical Christians known as the Kingdom of the Pine. This community’s pride and joy is the titular Camp Damascus, the world’s most successful gay conversion camp.

Our protagonist is a teenager named Rose Darling, a proud member of this church. When the novel begins, however, strange things are happening to Rose. During dinner with her parents, after they eagerly tell her to follow her urges and date a boy who likes her, Rose vomits a host of mayflies all over the dining table.

Rose then starts to see a horrifying figure wherever she goes, even at home. This figure is wearing a metal collar and has impossibly long fingers. Soon enough, it even manages to kill someone close to Rose. What is happening to her? Is she being haunted? Possessed? Cursed? Or is this something else entirely?

The novel’s first act is wall-to-wall scares. The second act is about revelations, themes, and understanding. And the third act is a frenzy of action and excitement. Camp Damascus is a wild ride from cover to cover. This is one American horror novel you should not miss out on. A terrifying queer tale about religious indoctrination, love, identity, truth, and so much more.

Buy a copy of Camp Damascus here!

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Written by Argentinian author Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night is nothing short of a political, cosmic horror epic. This 700+ page horror novel blends the Lovecraftian, the Stephen King-esque, and the dark academia genre to create something smart, political, and allegorical.

We begin in the early 1980s, during a period of military dictatorship. Juan is a medium for a powerful cult known as the Order. Now that his son, Gaspar, is showing signs of the same power, Juan is on the road trying to find a way to keep Gaspar away from the Order, and to give his son a better life than he has had.

The Order offers sacrifices to a cosmic god known as the Darkness, and in exchange is able to maintain power, wealth, and privilege, as well as eventually attain immortality. This is a horror novel about the abuse of power, about the rich manipulating the poor and vulnerable, about colonialism and corruption.

As it moves forward, the novel also shifts its tone from the cosmic to more local horror, and eventually to dark academia. This is a masterpiece of modern horror that wears its influences on its sleeve while also being so much greater than the sum of its parts.

Buy a copy here!

Whisper by Chang Yu-ko

Translated from the Mandarin by Roddy Flagg

Whisper is a Taiwanese folk horror story set in the modern day. If you’ve seen and enjoyed the 2022 Taiwanese horror movie Incantation, you’re going to want to read Whisper. This horror novel is very reminiscent of classic Japanese horror movies, as well as the darker side of Japanese and Chinese mythology.

The Japanese connection is fitting because Whisper is also a political novel that prods at the historical relationship between Taiwan and Japan. There are moments of gross body horror here, as well as relieving moments of comedy, and all are handled so exceptionally by the translator, Roddy Flagg.

Our protagonist is a drunk, gambling waste of space; a taxi driver who has all but given up. He and his wife are haunted by a ghost, and that ghost succeeds in killing his wife in the very first chapter (in a very gruesome and unsettling way). The ghost itself first manifests as the talking and singing voice of a Japanese girl, and its presence leads to disaster.

Whisper takes us on a journey across both geography and history, to many different locations as our protagonist continues to be haunted. This is one of those essential modern horror books that gives you everything: creeping dread, gross body horror, twisted imagery, vivid dreams, and paranoid hauntings.

Buy a copy here!

Read More: Essential Taiwanese Books

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Alison Rumfitt is one of the most unique and exciting voices in modern horror, and Tell Me I’m Worthless isn’t only one of the best modern horror books of this century, but also one of this writer’s favourite novels ever. Tell Me I’m Worthless is a British horror novel by an incredible transgender author, published by a small indie press, and it is singlehandedly shaking up the world of literature, both within and outside of the horror genre.

This is an angry novel that holds a mirror up to the fascistic state of modern day Britain. Our protagonists are a pair of young women who were once friends. At university, they and a third friend spent a night at a haunted house.

Something terrible happened at this house, and the women blame each other for it. They each claim the other sexually assaulted them in this haunted house. Now, one of them is a young trans woman haunted by ghosts that represent the twisted state of modern-day Britain. The other is a TERF who campaigns against the rights of trans people.

The house itself, Albion (get it?), is also a character in its own right, and we learn a lot about its history as the novel progresses. This is an angry, smart, punk, and critical horror novel about trans rights and TERF Island. It’s also an imaginative and bold piece of horror fiction. One of the best modern horror books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy here!

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca

This beautiful, disgusting book collects three stories by author Eric LaRocca. The first and longest is the titular Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, which is an epistolary story comprised entirely of emails and instant messages between two women.

We begin with a woman struggling to pay her rent, and so she is looking to sell an antique apple peeler online. A woman responds to the ad, they exchange a few emails, and the second woman convinces her to keep the antique, and she will just help the destitute woman pay her rent.

In exchange, she must enter into a contract where she does whatever the second woman says, and the story spirals into something quite horrific from there. The second story is set in a world where scientists have proven that there is nothing beyond death.

The son of couple who are going through divorce crucifies himself, and his suicide note simply begs them to remain together, and so they do. The crux of this story takes a cue from The Shining, as the couple then spends the winter taking care of an empty hotel on an isolated island.

The third and shortest story involves a man visiting his elderly neighbour and being wrangled into a series of dangerously escalating dares for money. Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a masterfully modern horror book from one of the genre’s rising stars.

Buy a copy here!

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There by Eric LaRocca

Following the huge success of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Met comes this collection of terrifying tales from Eric LaRocca, with a larger emphasis here on body horror. The short horror stories in this collection will make you feel more uncomfortable than you’ve ever felt; you’ll squirm in your seat as you read them. You might even feel a little nauseated.

Take, for example, the titular tale of this collection: The Trees Grew Because I Bled There (also the most aggressively visceral story here). In this story, a woman wheels herself into the house of her lover, a man who has been steadily taking pieces from her for a handful of years. He removed one eye, both her feet, and even her heart.

She offered him these things willingly, and claims to love him dearly. But now he tells her that he loves and is engaged to someone else. She does not take this news well. The story Bodies Are For Burning follows a pyromaniac obsessed with burning things — specifically people — who has been asked to look after her infant niece for a day, and is terrified of what she might let herself do.

The Strange Thing We Become is framed as a series of blog posts from a woman whose wife is undergoing cancer treatment; but this wife is also obsessed with a performance artist who did radical things as acts of protest, including bodily mutilation and self-mummification. Modern horror books are often described as “not for the feint of heart” but that phrase has never been used more accurately than when describing this collection specifically. Tread carefully.

Buy a copy here!

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood by Eric LaRocca

You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood is a wildly smart, enticing, and layered horror novella that never gets away from itself. This is a collection of transcripts, diary entires, poems, and even a novella within a novella that all works together perfectly. We begin with an editor’s note which explains that everything within this book belonged to a serial killer named Martyr Black, who recorded conversations with his partner, wrote poems, and even had his own novella published.

All of that is presented here in a satisfying cycle. We read a short diary entry, then a poem, then a few chapters of a horror novella, then a transcript, then another diary entry, and as it goes on. The novella within this novella is fantastic: the trippy and claustrophobic tale of a young woman who has been recruited by an enigmatic but beloved video games designer to help him with his newest project.

She brings along her little brother, and her work takes place in this odd man’s enormous gothic home. He has been injured and is bedridden, and his standoffish sister rules the roost. You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood is a bonkers concept that works so well in execution, perfectly demonstrating LaRocca’s imagination and his strengths as a writer, plotter, and editor.

There is nothing quite like this novella; one of the most enigmatic, exciting, and original modern horror books.

Buy a copy of You’ve Lost a Lot of Blood here!

My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix might well be king of the clever horror titles, with each one proclaiming that this is his take on a specific horror sub-genre, and each one being given a dash of humour and cheekiness. My Best Friend’s Exorcism isn’t just a funny title, but one that is also thematically detailed, stating to the reader that this is a horror novel about demonic possession, but also one about friendship.

Hendrix never just writes horror; he blends horror into stories about family feuds, community, young life, and more. Here, Hendrix is tackling the trope of high school drama, smartly setting it in the ’80s when that trope was all the rage.

Our protagonists are two best friends who (as part of a larger group of four girls), met in a clumsy way at age ten and have been mostly inseparable ever since. One night, the four of them decide to try hallucinogenic drugs and one girl, Gretchen, goes missing for the entire night. When Abby finds her best friend, she is different.

Something terrible happened to her during those few hours, and Gretchen is steadily reliving the horrors of it while also losing control of herself, changing, becoming unfamiliar, and even manipulating those around her. This is a story that uses demonic possession as a way to explain and build an allegory for puberty and adolescence, but it is not half as clumsy as that might sound.

This is a frantic, dynamic, satisfying novel that escalates to a frightening crescendo and one of the smartest modern horror novels of the past few years.

Buy a copy of My Best Friend’s Exorcism here!

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

Any fan of horror cinema will be familiar with the “final girl” trope: the one young woman left alive at the end of a slasher movie. She’s usually a sweet, innocent virgin. The trope has become an important element of the slasher formula, but also a key ingredient when creating “meta horror”, which at this point is also an exhausted genre of its own.

The Final Girl Support Group is a piece of meta horror that leans hard on the final girl trope, and yet what we have here is something truly exciting, messy, fun, and clever. The titular final girl support group is a collection of middle-aged women who all survived real slasher stories in the ’80s and now meet on a regular basis; their meeting chaired by a famous psychiatrist.

But when the novel begins, one of these final girls doesn’t show up, and we soon learn that she’s dead. A recent slasher incident has also created its first final girl in decades. So begins a slasher about slashers: the story of someone killing off final girls. This is a love letter to the genre while being a thrilling modern horror novel in its own right.

The Final Girl Support Group begins with a fun concept and quickly morphs into a chilling adventure that places it amongst the very best modern horror books.

Buy a copy here!

How to Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

Following The Final Girl Support Group, Hendrix wrote his take on the haunted house novel: How to Sell A Haunted House. Like Hendrix’s other novels, this is one of those modern horror books that puts as much of an emphasis on character drama as it does on horror, blending comedy, terror, and family drama together perfectly.

Our protagonist is a single mother named Louise, who is close to forty and living in San Francisco. She learns from her brother back home in South Carolina that their parents have tragically and suddenly died. Leaving her daughter in the hands of her ex, Louise returns home to organise the funeral, the wills, and to sell the home she grew up in, but the house has other plans.

At its heart, this is a tale of grief and familial bonds, as well as the inescapable traumas that families instil in us, to one degree or another. Smart, witty, and a brilliant reflection of sibling rivalries — both as children and as adults — this novel feels like the next step in American horror.

Fans of ghosts, demons, and hauntings will not be left disappointed, but neither will readers who love getting hooked on addictive family drama.

Buy a copy here!

My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

Genre fiction legend Stephen Graham Jones has created a smart and subversive homage to the slasher subgenre of horror movie with My Heart is a Chainsaw. But, Jones being a Blackfoot Native American, this modern horror novel is also something that confidently and powerfully shines a spotlight on the legacy of American brutality against his people.

Our protagonist is a young Idaho native named Jade, who is struggling to graduate from high school; her father is abusive, her friends nonexistence, and she has an encyclopaedic knowledge of slasher films. Jade is a walking caricature of angsty teenage life; she quotes horror films, wears heaps of eyeliner, and has accepted her position as the school and community outcast.

When My Heart is a Chainsaw begins, we enjoy a prologue which features a young Dutch couple mysteriously drowning in Jade’s local lake, before then cutting to Jade herself attempting suicide there shortly after. And so begins a literary slasher film.

If you like your modern horror books to be smart, literary affairs with a lot to say; books that play on the horror genre; books that move at a breakneck pace, then this is exactly what you’re looking for. With My Heart is a Chainsaw, Stephen Graham Jones has penned one of the great modern American horror novels.

Buy a copy here!

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

American author Paul Tremblay has made a big name for himself with some of the best modern horror books of our time, but the best of these is A Head Full of Ghosts. The perfect horror novel for fans of possession narratives, A Head Full of Ghosts begins with a young woman returning to her childhood home.

She is accompanied by an author who wishes to hear, and then writer, Merry’s family’s story. Merry recounts to the author, and to us, the story of how her older sister began to change, showing signs of schizophrenia, before the family eventually became the subject of a cult reality TV show called The Possession.

Multiple perspectives and narrative keep this incredible horror novel moving at a breakneck pace, and the events of this story are truly chilling. This is a real American horror novel, through and through, even down to its iconic rural New England setting. One of the finest modern horror books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy here!

The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

Published a few years after A Head Full of Ghosts, Tremblay’s The Cabin at the End of the World elevated his craft even further, showing his skills at their peak. This is a 300-page horror novel in which not a lot actually happens. Only a single day passes, and every moment of that day serves up nail-biting tension.

We begin with a family in a rural New Hampshire cabin: a young adopted girl and her two fathers. Almost immediately, a tall man appears and begins chatting with the girl. He explains that three more people will soon be joining him, and that the four of them must be invited into the cabin.

The are wielding hand-made weapons out of farming tools, and they promise that they will not harm the family. That, in fact, they need the family’s help to prevent the end of the world. This is a novel all about faith and cult mentalities, about scepticism versus blind belief, about conspiracies and signs and how our experiences shape us (for better or worse).

The shifting perspectives, the layers that get peeled back, it all leads to more and more uncertainty and terror from the reader, until it reaches a feverish conclusion.

Buy a copy here!

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

Both a modern horror novel and a mystery thriller, Bad Cree tells the story of a young cree woman in Vancouver whose dreams are seeping into reality. When Mackenzie wakes up one day, she is holding the severed head of a crow, and this isn’t the first time a thing from her dreams has materialised in her waking world.

The dreams themselves are taking her back to a lakeside forest, a place where her older sisters briefly disappeared, before emerging, dishevelled and shaken up, but safe. That is, until one of these sisters, Sabrina, very suddenly died of an aneurysm, and now she seems to be haunting her little sister’s nightmares.

The memories, the haunting, the blurring of dreams and reality all make for some really disturbing and chilling horror, as well as a compelling supernatural mystery. When Mackenzie confesses some of these occurrences to her family, she learns that many of them have powers related to their dreams, and so the plot thickens.

Twisted and chilling as a horror novel, and utterly compelling as a mystery thriller, Bad Cree is a unique spectacle of a novel.

Buy a copy of Bad Cree here!

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

Andrew Joseph White’s third novel continues his upward trajectory into the hallowed halls of American horror fiction. Like his first two books, Compound Fracture sees him exploring the trans-masculine narrative with nuance and dynamism. But what elevates this one even further is the ways it tangles its queer themes nicely with those of generational violence and working-class masculine struggles (reminiscent of Selva Almada’s Brickmakers).

Our protagonist is Miles, a freshly-out sixteen-year-old who has grown up in a West Virginia mining town. For generations, his family has been in a bloody war with another. His parents have seen torment and tragedy at the hands of the local sheriff, and Miles wants to end this violent cycle. But before he can, he’s beaten to within an inch of his life by she sheriff’s son. Now, he wants revenge.

Helping him on that path is the silent ghostly presence of Miles’ own great-grandfather; a socialist miner who was brutally and publicly executed one hundred years ago. Now, Miles must forge his own path of coming out, protecting his family, getting revenge, and ending this cycle of violence.

The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry

Christina Henry is one of several modern American horror authors (Paul Tremblay, Grady Hendrix etc.) who take established themes, tropes, and ideas—ones which have become cliche over the years—and do something fresh and fun with them, or even shows how they can be used to tell a different kind of story. The House That Horror Built is easily one of the best examples of this method being done to brilliant effect.

Our protagonist, Harry, is a thirty-four-year-old single mother living and struggling in Chicago with her teenage son Gabe. After the pandemic, she has taken a cleaning job at a big manor house, which happens to be owned by a reclusive former director of horror movies—films which Harry herself loves, and which she and her son have bonded over. But there is something wrong with this house.

As she gets to know Javier Castillo, and learns about the events in his life that led to his reclusion from society, she begins to wonder what other secrets remain hidden in this house: the locked room upstairs; the thumping sounds; the old horror movie props that decorate the house and seem to move on their own. This is a wonderful homage to the legacy of horror, to the haunted house story, and also a brilliant original tale in its own right.

Orpheus Builds A Girl by Heather Parry

There has never been a modern gothic horror novel that captures the vibe, tone, and character style of the 19th Century gothic period like Heather Parry’s Orpheus Builds A Girl. This is a novel with Frankenstein and Dracula in its veins. A claustrophobic gothic story of science fiction, madness, obsession, and the frightening power of male authority.

Our two narrator-protagonists are the villain, a German doctor named Wilhelm von Tore, and the hero, a Cuban woman named Gabriela. Wilhelm is a “mad scientist” who believes that death is only the beginning, and there is life left beyond it. He becomes obsessed with a sick girl named Luciana (Gabriela’s little sister).

Luciana becomes an object of Wilhelm’s dangerous and deluded romantic obsession, as well as a lab rat for his experimental approach to mastering and overcoming death. Ghostly apparitions and gross, tangible body horror (reminiscent of the aforementioned Frankenstein and schlocky 80s horror movies like Re-Animator) is stitched through this narrative.

This is an unhinged and frighteningly intelligent gothic horror that explores themes of migration, male privilege, sisterhood, and more.

Buy a copy here!

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

Every horror fan knows that Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son, and that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree when it comes to writing excellent modern horror books. Hill has written novels, short stories, and comic books, but the best of the bunch (for this writer’s money) is NOS4A2.

Much like his father’s fiction, Hill’s NOS4A2 is set in rural New England, and begins in the 1980s with a girl who figures out how to find lost things by riding her bike across a covered bridge. One of her journeys takes her to a library where she meets a woman with the power to predict future events using Scrabble tiles.

She warns our protagonist about the book’s vampiric villain: a kidnapper of children called Charlie Manx, who takes stolen children to a place called Christmasland. NOS4A2 is a creatively strange and engaging horror novel that is wonderfully reminiscent of many of King’s own works, while still refreshingly existing as Hill’s own beast.

Side Note: Hilariously, for us British readers, the novel is spelled NOS4R2 to align with our accents.

Side Note 2: This writer is of the right age to remember a robot vampire character of the exact same name from the cartoon Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

Buy a copy here!

The Shadow Book of Ji Yun

Translated from the Mandarin by Yi Izzy Yu and John Yu Branscum

Ji Yun was a famous and well-regarded politician, scholar, poet, philosopher from 18th Century China, and what we have here is a collection of his writings, newly edited and translated by two incredible translators. As the book’s introduction explains, Ji Yun took it upon himself to investigate strange, ghostly happenings and then write them down with a “storytelling flair”.

The result of this is The Shadow Book of Ji Yun, a collection of observations, accounts, and folk tales from 18th Century China. These stories are sometimes creepy and frightening, sometimes strange and eerie, and almost always impossibly weird.

The blurb sums up the vibe by saying: “Imagine if H.P. Lovecraft was Chinese and his tales were true.” That is exactly what you’re getting here. These are stories of the metaphysical and the supernatural. Either Ji Yun experienced them himself or was told them by people he knew or met on his journeys.

In one section of the book, the stories specifically deal with encounters with gods, saints, and mythological beings from Taoist and Buddhist folklore and tradition. While not technically modern, this book still fits into this collection of modern horror books, given that it is freshly collected and translated for us to enjoy here and now, for the first time!

Buy a copy here!

Read More: Essential Chinese Books

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung

Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur

Korean author Bora Chung is a sensation. A fluent speaker of Korean, English, Russian, and Polish (at least), she also teaches Russian language, literature, and sci-fi studies at Yonsei University. Her accolades go beyond this, but the most important point for us right now is that she writes phenomenal horror and folk tales, like those found in Cursed Bunny.

This is a collection of stories that mangle genre in a playful and twisted way. Sci-fi, fantasy, fairy tales, and most importantly horror fiction are all found here. Cursed Bunny could perhaps best be described as a book of frightening and malformed fairy tales for horror addicts.

The book’s first two stories are unapologetically gross and visceral body horror; twisted, scary, and gross. From here we move into experimental ghost, sci-fi, and fantasy tales. If you’re a fan of weird fiction, of blurring the lines between genres, and of fairy tales, Cursed Bunny is one of the most essential modern horror books you could ever read.

Buy a copy here!

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Manhunt is a curious piece of fiction. It is gross, gory, uncomfortable, visceral, shocking, and punk as all hell. It isn’t, at any point, particularly scary, however. But, like many of the best 80s horror b-movies, it foregoes terror for truly disgusting body horror.

Manhunt is also a plainly angry book. It is a post-apocalyptic narrative that follows a pair of trans women who have survived a plague that specifically targeted testosterone. This plague turned anyone with high levels of testosterone into horny, snarly, mindless zombie-like beasts, which means most cis women, and some trans women and men, were saved.

Our protagonists must fight and hunt and scavenge to survive, while also facing down another threat: TERFs. There is a cult of dangerous transphobes who hunt and lynch any trans women they come across. Manhunt is a horror novel about the mindless, sexual, and physical aggression of men towards women (cis or trans), and about the potential violent endgame of transphobia.

The visceral nature of Manhunt cannot be overstated. This is a book of such violent and bloody imagery that many readers may not be able to stomach it. Horror fans should have no problem with it, and what they’ll find is one of the most daring modern horror books ever written.

Buy a copy here!

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

American author Chuck Wendig has made a name for himself writing comic books, Star Wars novels, and then his award-winning sci-fi epic Wanderers. And here, with The Book of Accidents, he has proven himself a master of modern horror as well.

The Book of Accidents follows a three-person family who have moved from Philadelphia into the family father’s childhood home, following the death of his own father. Nate’s late father was abusive and callous, and Nate — a former cop — takes joy in seeing his father die. He doesn’t want to inherit the house, but his obligations to his family force him to be responsible.

Nate’s son, Oliver, is a sweet, tender, and empathetic teenager. We watch him make friends with the local nerds at his school, and eventually meet a far rougher punk kid who might tempt him down a darker path. It doesn’t take long before strange things start happening in and around the house: images and noises that all point to a typical haunting; this story, however, is far from typical.

The Book of Accidents is a modern horror novel that tests family ties, that explores inherited trauma and cycles of abuse, and also blends the genres of horror and science fiction together in unexpected ways.

Buy a copy of The Book of Accidents here!

A Good House for Children by Kate Collins

On its surface, A Good House for Children is a traditional haunted house novel, but at its core its a novel about what parenthood asks and demands of us. This modern horror novel presents us with a dual narrative: the late 2010s and the mid 1970s, both set in the same place: a lonely house known as The Reeve, which sists on the cliffs of Dorset, on England’s south coast.

In 2017, a married couple with two children move from Bristol to The Reeve, the man of the family insisting it’ll be good for their mute son to be out in the fresh and open air. In 1976, a woman from London moves in with a family whose patriarch has died, and her job as nanny is to care for the big brood of four children: an eldest boy, twin girls, and a baby boy who was born after his father passed.

Both timelines present us with a haunting; The Reeve twists the minds of its residents, making them see things and doubt their senses. And eventually, a curse will guarantee the tragic death of a child. A Good House for Children is a spine-chilling modern horror novel that plays with the tropes and traditions of the haunted house narrative in engaging and tantalising ways.

Buy a copy here!

Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth

Motherthing is an intense and unsettling modern horror novel that explores the toxic, demanding, and unhealthy relationships between in-laws. Our protagonist is a Canadian woman named Abby whose husband has asked if they can move in with his mother to take care of her, since her physical and mental health is declining.

When the book opens, however, Ralph’s mother takes her own life, and her ghost begins to haunt the basement. We frequently flash back to Abby’s relationship to her abusive mother-in-law, as well as her own troubled childhood with her love-obsessed and abused mother.

The tension and the horror builds to a bloody conclusion as Motherthing examines the toxicity of female relationships, and the ways in which patriarchy puts pressure on the roles of women. Motherthing has so much to say about the creepy relationships that often tether mothers to their sons, as well as the strain that family puts on a person and on a marriage.

This is also a novel that blends blood, ghosts, delusional terror, and knife-edge tension spectacularly well.

Buy a copy here!

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Mariana Enriquez is one of Argentina’s finest modern writers. She takes modern politics and feminism, blends them together with folk traditions and superstition, and creates something refreshingly unique and powerful. The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is a spine-chilling collection of modern gothic short stories. These tales focus around ghosts and hauntings, cults and witches, curses and cursed places.

If you’re a fan of the ways in which horror blends with gothic fiction, you can’t do better than The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Take the story Meat, which begins with an Argentinian rock star with a cult following of obsessed teenagers.

When he kills himself (in the most brutal fashion) in a hotel room, the media predicts a slew of copycat suicides. Instead, something far darker and stranger follows. The Well follows a woman who, as a young girl, was taken to a witch by the seaside to watch as her sister and mother had their anxieties exorcised.

As an adult with her own crippling anxieties, she and her sister return to the witch only to learn the truth of what happened that day. The stories found in this collection are haunting, inducing fear and paranoia and hopelessness in the reader. A powerful collection, and one of the best modern horror books on the shelves.

Buy a copy here!

The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

The Grip of It is one of those rare modern horror books with a literary twist. Its language is considered and weighted; sometimes cryptic and often evocative. This is a haunted house novel built around vagueness. It invited the reader to contemplate the reasons behind every event and every mystery, and the results of doing so are wonderfully satisfying.

The Grip of It is set in modern-day USA. Julie and James are a couple who have decided to leave the city and buy their first home out in the countryside, because James has been struggling with a gambling addiction. As soon as they’re all moved into their large house at the edge of a forest, they start to forget who arranged the viewings, and the name of the real estate company. Memories of getting the place slip away.

Then the house itself starts to toy with them. Rooms grow and shift and move. Noises have no source. People they meet tell them conflicting stories about the history of that house and its previous residents. The novel’s narrative shifts back and forth between Julie and James, both written in the present tense to give the narrative immediacy and momentum. And the terror gradually amps up with the mystery.

The Grip of It is a dizzying and claustrophobic literary horror novel that plays with your senses and your expectations brilliantly.

Buy a copy of The Grip of It here!

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

The Last House on Needless Street is a nerve-shredding, spine-chilling psychological thriller that will send you down into a deep, dark labyrinth of confusion, paranoia, and disorientation. This horror-thriller puts you in the mind of Ted, a lonely and isolated man who lives in the titular last house on Needless Street.

Ted is unemployed and lives with his cat, Olivia, and his daughter Lauren. After spending some time with Ted, we also soon get to see the world through Olivia the cat’s eyes. Eleven years ago, Ted was a prime suspect in the disappearance of a young girl at a nearby lake (one of many). Since then, he has lived a solitary life.

However, that missing girl’s sister, another POV character in this story named Dee, is still on the hunt for her sister and the kidnapper, and the trail is leading her back to Ted. But surely Ted didn’t do it? That would be too obvious.

This really is a mind-bending thriller. You’ll guess a thousand times at what is really going on; which narrator is unreliable and how and why. You might even guess right, but you’ll enjoy the ride regardless.

This is one of those modern horror books that so seamlessly blends the horror of gore and claustrophobia with the tension of a good psychological thriller.

Buy a copy here!

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

Through the Woods is a wonderfully fresh and unique take on horror. A collection of horror short stories, reminiscent of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, but all drawn with a dreamlike flair. Carroll embraces the unknown and the unknowable with her stories; they are tales that thingle the spine and rarely reach a satisfying conclusion, leaving the reader feeling cold and alone.

But Through the Woods is also a comic book, and the twisted, ethereal nature, as well as the emphasis on black, white, and red, gives this book a nightmarish visual quality. If you’re a fan of comic books, short stories, gothic tales, and a hefty dose of dread in your horror, Through the Woods is one of the best modern horror books you can pick up and read right now.

Buy a copy here!

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll

After the sensational success of her horror comic collection, Through the Woods, Emily Carroll brings readers the spine-chilling haunted house graphic novel A Guest in the House. The story follows Abby, newly married to David (whose first wife tragically died) and doing her best to be a good stepmother to Crystal. But Crystal insists that she gets visited by her late mother at night sometimes.

Soon enough, Abby comes to understand what Crystal is talking about, and the haunting begins. But there is so much buried truth to dig up. And elevating the horror and gothic tension of the story is Carroll’s unmistakeable and unique art, which is utilised brilliantly here. The majority of the art is black and grey, with splashes of colour at pivotal moments or during dream sequences. Exquisite.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

The debut novel by an author who has already cut her teeth on imaginative and visceral short stories, Our Wives Under the Sea is a powerful modern gothic novel. The dual-narrative story follows a lesbian couple, one of whom is sent on an expedition in a submarine to the bottom of the sea.

While the expedition should last a few weeks, she and the crew are stranded there for six months. Her narrative is a claustrophobic and tense one, with a Lovecraftian fear of the unknown knocking at the walls of the submarine with every page turn.

When she finally returns, however, she is no longer herself, and her wife must make peace with the fact that the woman she loved is gone, replaced by something else. Our Wives Under the Sea is a contemporary gothic horror novel about how we grieve, and the fact that we can grieve badly.

It’s a claustrophobic story, set in a cramped submarine and an equally cramped apartment, with the unknown and the terrifying always within arm’s reach.

Buy a copy here!

Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie

This folk horror tale takes readers on a fever-dream journey across the English landscape, in a time of perpetual summer where the dead are rising as corporeal and violent ghosts.

English kids are raised on the old warning: never go to the village of Almanby. But Heather’s boyfriend has done just that, and he’s been gone too long. And so, Heather invites her friends Rachel and Antonia to join her on a trip to that forbidden village.

Rachel has to visit anyway, because she has a package to deliver, and Antonia is following Heather there because she is secretly in love with her. The road trip will be difficult, and as they approach Almanby, impossible things will start to happen.

This is an eerie tale that begins creepy and gently dials up its surreal atmosphere to eleven. This is a folk horror tale unlike any other, and would be right at home as an A24 flick.

The Gingerbread Men by Joanna Corrance

Published by the fine folks at Scotland-based indie publishing house Haunt, Joanna Corrance’s novel The Gingerbread Men is a fantastically gothic fairy tale for adults. We begin at a Christmas market in Edinburgh, where protagonist Eric is suddenly and inexplicably drawn away from his fiancee by the allure of a woman named Delia.

Showing no regret for his actions, however uncharacteristic, Eric is taken in a taxi to a remote hotel in the Scottish highlands; a place that never sees any guests and the snow never stops falling. Enchanted by Delia’s spell, Eric remains at this hotel for weeks. Those weeks become months, and soon enough Christmas rolls back around.

Only men work at the hotel, and they occasionally pass the time by telling horror stories, which we also get to enjoy. These stories act as allegories and warning signs against Delia, the hotel, and the power she seems to have over them.

Eric considers leaving, but fails, and quickly falls into a comfortable life at this labyrinthine place, under the spell of the enigmatic Delia. Blending the tropes of classic fairy tales with the horror of an unknowable, claustrophobic, and gothic environment, The Gingerbread Men is a nightmare of a novel that sets the reader on edge and keeps them there until the end.

Buy a copy of The Gingerbread Men here!

Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

Nathan Ballingrud’s short horror/sci-fi novella is a hefty return to the world of pulp genre fiction. Set in an alternative 1920s, and reminiscent of the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (who is referenced here), Crypt of the Moon Spider follows Veronica, who has just arrived on the moon; she struggled with depression and so her husband is abandoning here at an asylum.

This asylum was built atop a cave which astronomers discovered decades ago, and in that cave was the corpse of an enormous spider. Now, the silk that it left behind is used in operations and experiments on the asylum’s inmates, and Veronica is about to become the next experiment for Dr. Cull and his assistant Charlie to play around with. What does this spider silk do? What are they trying to accomplish?

Crypt of the Moon Spider is a strange and surreal novella that leaves the reader with a deep feeling of unease. Not everything makes sense; it all feels off-balance, shrouded, and unnerving. You’ll be drenched in discomfort and a victim of heavy claustrophobia as you read. It’ll be over soon, but the ride is unforgettable.

Sisters by Daisy Johnson

Daisy Johnson’s Sisters is a tiny novel; a short piece of dreadful gothic horror. Our protagonists are a pair of teenagers, two girls, whose mother has moved them north from Oxford to a big, empty house in the Yorkshire countryside.

Their mother is a children’s book author who is struggling with depression and exhaustion. The girls are left to play alone and entertain themselves. All the while, the reason for their move — some terrible incident at school — hangs over them like the sword of Damocles, and we must wonder what in the world happened.

This is a modern twist on the haunted house genre of horror, one that explores trauma and shared pain within a family that is cracked but still held together, however poorly.

Buy a copy here!

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

British author Andrew Michael Hurley has penned a few excellent gothic horror novels, but his debut The Loney remains this writer’s favourite. The titular Loney is an isolated and lonely stretch of beach in Lancashire where the majority of this novel takes place.

A family (mother, father, and two sons) come up to the Loney every year from London, along with their local parish priest. This is a pilgrimage, and here they pray, mostly for their one son who is mysteriously mute.

This is a gothic horror novel all about mysteries piled on top of mysteries. Questions surround the family, the Loney itself, their faith, and the strange locals that live in the area year-round. The Loney is all about atmosphere. The bleak, gloomy, isolated, cold world of this forgotten corner of England is an unsettling place that strikes fear without actually doing anything at all.

Buy a copy here!

Severed by Scott Snyder, Scott Tuft, and Attila Futaki

Written by comic book legend Scott Snyder (whose run on Batman is legendary, as is his vampire comic American Vampire), Severed is a fantastic piece of American horror. Set in 1916, the story follows a boy named Jack who runs away from his warm, loving home to find his “real” father.

Jack hops on a train and hitchhikes his way across the US, while being hunted by a monstrous, cannibalistic killer. This is a thrilling cat-and-mouse story set on the open road of pre-war America. It has hefty Stephen King vibes but also manages to stand on its own as an original horror comic.

The book’s framing device begins with an older Jack telling us the story of what happened on that journey and how he lost an arm along the way. And this is all expressed through some stunningly textured and rich art by Attila Futaki.

With a little blood and a lot of terror, this is an excellent piece of dark, unsettling American horror.

Buy a copy here!

The Lost Ones by Anita Frank

Set during World War I, The Lost Ones is a historical piece of gothic horror fiction very reminiscent of the works of Laura Purcell and Susan Hill. Our protagonist is a tortured young widow who lost her husband during the war, which she herself worked through as a nurse.

She has now moved in with her pregnant sister in her impressive country manor, but it’s here that the horrors unfold. Stella hears footsteps and crying: the sounds of a child haunting the house. And she becomes obsessed with who the child was and what happened to them.

This is a novel that blends horror, gothic drama, and mystery into a delicious cocktail of intrigue and dread. One of the most engaging modern horror books of recent years.

Buy a copy here!

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

Wilder Girls is unique on this list of modern horror books in the sense that it’s the only YA novel here. And, in true horror fashion, it blends with other genres as well. Those genres include post-apocalyptic fiction, sci-fi, and “pandemic fiction”.

This YA horror novel is set on an island off the coast of Maine. This island is home to the Raxter School for Girls, which has been put under quarantine after the breakout of a virus called the Tox.

The Tox has taken the lives of several students and teachers, and those who haven’t died have been physically mutated in painful and gruesome ways. These mutations are described with rawness and grit, making the reader squirm with discomfort.

Our protagonist, Hetty, leads us on a journey to uncover the mysteries of this virus, and the quarantine itself, after her best friend Byatt disappears following a “flare-up” of the virus. There is more going on here than meets the eye, and Hetty is willing to endanger herself (and her friend Reese) to find answers, and to find Byatt.

Buy a copy here!

Essential Modern Sci-fi Novels

Whether you’re an aficionado of classic science fiction and want to know what modern authors are all about, or you are new to the genre and want to start with the contemporary and work backwards, here’s what you need to be reading.

These authors from around the world are redefining the genre and writing some of the best modern sci-fi novels you can read right now.

Disclaimer: For a book to make this list of modern sci-fi novels, it has to have been published this century.

Read More: Essential Sci-fi Manga

Read More: Essential Sci-fi Books by Women

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu

It’s not a stretch to call How High We Go in the Dark the next step in science fiction. This is one of the best modern sci-fi novels you’ll ever read; a bold new approach to the genre of science fiction. Reminiscent of the narratives and themes found in the works of Emily St. John Mandel, with a sprinkling of Black Mirror, Sequoia Nagamatsu’s debut novel is essential reading.

We begin with a scientist whose daughter, also a scientist, has recently and tragically died while on an expedition to the Batagaika Crater in Siberia. Cliff heads to Siberia to continue his daughter’s work, with the support of her colleagues.

The work involves investigating the melting permafrost to see if any potentially long-frozen diseases might be uncovered and spread across the world. This is a very real issue that scientists fear, and that is part of what makes How High We Go in the Dark so compelling and chilling.

And of course, a virus is uncovered and it does spread. From here, we follow a host of different first-person narratives in a world where infected children have their organs slowly mutated until they fail completely. Multiple sci-fi themes and tropes are explored in new ways here, including the question of human intelligence when a pig that was being used to grow human organs develops advanced intelligence and even telepathic speech.

These disparate themes and narratives all work together so beautifully, like an orchestra of science fiction concepts. It’s beautiful and makes for a very addictive read.

Buy a copy here!

Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky is prolific, having written multiple sci-fi epics, each of which has further cemented him as a modern giant of the genre. Alien Clay might be his finest work; a novel that doesn’t just blend politics with scientific discovery—it stitches them together as inseparable themes and plot elements, all while being set on a strange, deadly, and exciting alien world.

Set some time in humanity’s future, Alien Clay presents an Earth ruled by a tyrannical government known as the Mandate, something which uses the veneer of science to structure society into neatly-organised and easily-controlled binaries. Our scientist protagonist, Daghdev, has been captured as an academic dissident and shipped off to a planet nicknamed Kiln. The prison labour force there are charged with uncovering the secrets of this world.

Kiln is littered with abandoned alien structures which must surely have been built by intelligent hands; they are marked with some kind of language as well. But the people who built them are gone, and they left no trace. Discovering the truth of this world is only half the battle for Daghdev; the other is breaking free of his shackles.

Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang

Translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu

As things stand right now, Hao Jingfang’s Vagabonds feels like the defining sci-fi novel of the decade. This is a grand, ambitious, considered, philosophical masterpiece of political science fiction, and one of the very best modern sci-fi novels.

Taking place in 2201, Vagabonds is set on Mars and focuses on the tensions between Mars and Earth. Similar to the timeline of the early USA, Mars was colonised (though unlike the US, it wasn’t already lived on and therefore nothing was stolen).

After its colonisation, Mars was dependent on Earth for supplies, but eventually wanted to strike out on its own and a war for independence ensued. After the war, Earth resembles the greatest extremes of capitalism and Mars is something of a communist utopia.

Forty years after the war, our protagonist, Luoying, is a young Martian woman who has returned to Mars after years of living and studying on Earth as part of the Mercury Group (a batch of young people sent over to learn and improve interplanetary relations).

The big question posed by Vagabonds concerns the meaning of freedom. Each planet views the inhabitants of the other with pity, seeing the other as less free. Terrans are free to pursue different jobs, move cities and countries, and spend their money how they please. Martians are free from the stresses of money, poverty, corporate pressure, unemployment, and unfulfillment.

For their unique freedoms, both planets have their own drawbacks and restrictions. Feeling like she belongs to both cultures, Luoying is seeking answers to the question of what freedom really looks like.

Beyond all of this is the world-building. Hao Jingfang provides us with such a detailed and exciting version of Mars, mechanically, politically, and economically. It’s dense but endlessly fascinating. While it is a long and slow book, Vagabonds is one to get lost in. A genius work of Chinese sci-fi and one of the best modern sci-fi novels.

Buy a copy here!

Read More: The Best Sci-Fi Books Ever Written

In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

Written by Scottish author Martin MacInnes, In Ascension is a literary sci-fi epic that has the potential to change the way you think and feel about the world around you, about what we are, where we came from, and where we might go.

Set in the present day, In Ascension follows a Dutch biologist named Leigh, who grew up in Rotterdam and is captivated by sea life. In the novel’s first part, Leigh joins an expedition to the north Atlantic ocean, to explore a deep sea vent that might tunnel deeper than the Mariana Trench, and therefore house life never seen before.

The life in this vent, untouched for billions of years, would be like a time capsule, taking us back to the earliest forms of life on this planet. What Leigh discovers in the vent takes her to the Mojave Desert, to a job working with a NASA-like space agency that is using a newly-discovered form of fuel to send people to the furthest reaches of our solar system and beyond.

The questions that In Ascension poses, and the incredibly discoveries made, ask the reader to deeply consider that old cliche: we are all made of star stuff.

In Ascension is a modern sci-fi novel that takes us from the most inaccessible parts of the deepest darkest ocean to the furthest point in our solar system. And, as we explore these places old and new, big and small, we ask ourselves what we are, where we came from, where we will go, and how it is ultimately all the same. We are all star stuff.

Buy a copy of In Ascension here!

The Hierarchies by Ros Anderson

It might be impossible to count the number of sci-fi stories that explore the themes of consciousness, AI, and machine learning. These themes have been made famous by writers like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro, Becky Chambers, and so many more.

But here, with The Hierarchies, Ros Anderson has managed to do something fresh and new on this well-trodden ground, while also taking a bold, modern approach to feminist writing. Sylv.ie is a sex robot. She exists to please the man who owns her. Sylv.ie’s owner is a married man whose wife is pregnant, and she gives birth soon after the novel begins.

Sylv.ie must stay upstairs, sit idle, browse the internet (Ether), and wait for her husband to come to her with his needs — be they sexual or social.

Sylv.ie’s moral code is governed by a short list of “hierarchies”, much like Asimov’s laws of robotics, and she is able to learn and develop by plugging herself into the internet.

Soon enough, however, Silv.ie wakes up in hospital for a “routine” check. She gets a nice new vagina, a software update, and upon returning home, she realises that a large section of her memory is missing. When she finds a coded diary from her past self, a self she no longer remembers, she learns that she has already attempted to escape once, and she must do again.

The Hierarchies is a very nuanced and captivating exploration of consciousness, learning, personal growth, freedom, and purpose. It tackles themes that sci-fi has been tackling since its inception but in bold new ways.

One fresh and fascinating aspect of the novel is the inclusion of an angry group of “bio women” who protest the existence of female sex robots. These women are allegorical of conservative bigots who look down their noses at transgender women and sex workers, and their inclusion makes this one of the most bold and dynamic modern sci-fi books you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy here!

The Vanished Birds by Simon Jiminez

The Vanished Birds is a perfect work of science fiction. An ambitious tale about purpose, destiny, and human advancement which spans decades and follows a dynamic cast of complex, compelling characters. Nia is captain of a small transport ship which visits a farming community every twelve years. During one particular visit, she is handed a mute boy who fell from the stars, and asked to take him to the Umbai Company’s Pelican Station.

After humanity abandoned an uninhabitable Earth, the first things we built were a series of bird-like stations, masterminded by Fumiko Nakajima, a woman who has lived for a thousand years by frequently freezing herself in cold sleep. She wants this boy, and her curiosity will send Nia on a journey of discovery beyond Umbai space.

The Vanished Birds breaks many of the conventions of sci-fi storytelling in small ways, in order to deliver readers something fresh, dynamic, and frankly beautiful.

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit, the first book in a trilogy of mind-bending, reality-twisting space operas, isn’t so much a pushing of the genre’s boundaries as it is an ignoring of them. In fact, the boundaries don’t exist at all. This is uncharted territory, and Yoon Ha Lee will do with them as he pleases. This is a novel that is as much a political and tactics-focussed military space opera as it is a work of borderline surrealist mathematical insanity.

In a far-distant future, so much of space is controlled by a hegemony known as the hexarchate. Through a deep understanding of mathematical and physical laws, time and space can be altered to one’s will. And so, the hexarchate must universally agree on how those laws should work.

When everyone agrees, there is harmony. But occasionally, heretical groups pop up to challenge the status quo. And doing so can literally break the fabric of everything.

Our protagonist is both a soldier and a mathematical genius named Cheris. When she strays from the agreed-upon tactics of a mission, she is set to be punished. Instead, she is anchored to the ghost of a madman who was once the greatest tactician the hexarchate has ever known. With his voice in her head, she must lead an assault on the latest group of heretics, in order to restore balance to everything. But what will she learn along the way?

Appleseed by Matt Bell

The phenomenal Appleseed is a slow-burn eco-novel spanning multiple timelines and genres, and one of the most revolutionary modern sci-fi novels ever written. Matt Bell expertly blends folklore with sci-fi and post-apocalyptic themes with an ending that ties three disparate narratives together in ways that you simply can’t predict.

We spend the majority of our time as readers in eighteenth-century Ohio, as two brothers follow the path of the legendary Johnny Appleseed, planting apple orchards across the US. As the brothers pass through settlements and forests teeming with myth, their bond is tested over and over.

The second narrative is set fifty years from our present time, in the second half of the 21st Century, when climate change has ravaged the Earth. Having invested early in genetic engineering and food science, one company now owns all the world’s resources. But a growing resistance is working to redistribute both land and power.

You follow one of the company’s original founders as he returns to the headquarters, intending to destroy what he helped build. The final narrative is set thousand years in the future, when North America is covered by a massive sheet of ice. One lonely sentient being inhabits a tech station on top of the glacier.

You follow him as he sets out to follow a homing beacon across the continent in the hopes of discovering the last remnant of civilisation. There are few novels as imaginative and beautifully plotted as Appleseed, a novel of important ideas that need to be paid attention to.

This is one of the best sci-fi novels on the shelves, especially for fans of the eco-novel subgenre.

Buy a copy here!

To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers

To Be Taught If Fortunate is an original sci-fi novella by Becky Chambers. While her celebrated Wayfarer series is a space opera, this is a harder, quieter, more serious story.

This is one of the best modern sci-fi novels; set in a future where a new public space program has been kickstarted by the funding of ordinary people, with a specific view to exploring and discovering and expanding human understanding of the cosmos.

A crew of four people has been sent to a faraway solar system, in order to examine the planets and moons that are believed to harbour life.

To Be Taught If Fortunate is another novel that flexes the muscles of Becky Chambers’ imagination. She repeatedly considers what might, reasonably, be found on certain worlds with certain climates.

This is not about imagined civilisations but about biodiversity and small discoveries, about the beauty of life and the magic of exploration. This is a book that celebrates science and what it can achieve. Easily one of the most impactful and comforting little sci-fi books by women that you’re likely to read in your life.

Buy a copy here!

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer

Annihilation is the first in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, and this modern sci-fi novel was also adapted into a film by Alex Garland, director of Ex Machina. While it is the first of a trilogy, Annihilation also works perfectly as a stand-alone novel, and it is also smartly short. A novel as strange and surreal as this one not outstaying its welcome is a very savvy decision.

Annihilation is set entirely within the limits of “Area X”, an abandoned and marshy part of US coastline which was officially designated a place of ecological disaster.

Our protagonist is a nameless biologist who is part of the twelfth expedition into Area X; the purpose of these expeditions is the explore the strange area and learn as much as possible about what it is and what caused it. Most expeditions end with disaster: insanity, disease, tragedy. And as our protagonist ventures deeper in, stranger things emerge.

The strangest being a tower/tunnel which burrows into the Earth. There is a staircase inside and the walls are lined with biblical-sounding gibberish made out of moss, flowers, and other living stuff. The thing that wrote this gibberish is a possibly extraterrestrial humanoid creature dubbed the Crawler.

Annihilation is a sci-fi eco novel of sorts that explores the concept of ecological change and adaptation in the face of difficulty and things beyond our understanding. Lovecraftian, feverishly strange, but also beautiful in a way that only the best sci-fi can be, Annihilation is one of the most addictive modern sci-fi novels ever written.

Buy a copy here!

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel took the world by storm with the publication of her post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven, a novel which focusses on the preservation of human art and culture rather than the survival of people themselves. With Sea of Tranquility, she has written a phenomenal piece of time travel science fiction which surpasses even Station Eleven, in this writer’s opinion.

Cleverly tied to her literary thriller The Glass Hotel with recurring events and characters from that novel, this is a book that unfurls gradually and strangely, creating a kind of symmetry with itself by the final page. We begin in 1912, with an English nobleman exiled to the rural wilds of western Canada by his family. Then we move to the modern day, with characters from The Glass Hotel revealing what almost seems like a glitch in the world.

Next is the life of an author who grew up on a moon colony and is now doing a global book tour in 2203, just as a pandemic is about to sweep the planet. Finally, at the book’s halfway point, we meet our true protagonist: a man named Gaspery, whose sister works for a time travel agency.

All of these lives become stitched together as the novel progresses, in ways that will blow your mind over and over again. The plotting of this novel is beaten only by its incredibly revelations. Sea of Tranquility is a true masterpiece, and one of the very best modern sci-fi novels.

Buy a copy of Sea of Tranquility here!

The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey

Before he turned to novels, M.R. Carey was a legend of the comic book world, writing under the name Mike Carey. His comic book masterpieces Lucifer and The Unwritten were celebrated across the medium.

The Girl With All The Gifts was Carey’s first foray into prose, and what a breakout hit it was. Blending science fiction and horror in a post-apocalyptic world, this novel is a dazzling exploration of human connection.

Our protagonist, Melanie, lives in a cell. Every day, she is strapped into a wheelchair and wheeled into a classroom full of other young children where they learn subjects like maths and English, like in any other school. Melanie loves one teacher in particular, and hates the military sergeant who treats her with fear and disdain.

Soon enough, we learn that the world outside this military base is infested with zombie-like things that have been infected with the fungal cordyceps (just like in The Last of Us).

Melanie and the other children are infected with the fungus, and yet they remain calm and lucid and intelligent. That is, unless they are given the chance to taste human flesh, in which case they become feral and dangerous. Sergeant Parks and the scientists at the base believe that Melanie is dead, and that what they are talking to each day is the fungus talking through her body. She is simply a test subject.

Beginning in a cramped prison cell and eventually opening up into a dangerous trek across the southeast of England, The Girl With All The Gifts is a frantic page-turner and one of the finest modern sci-fi books around.

Buy a copy here!

Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey

Infinity Gate, the first in a duology by M.R. Carey (author of The Girl With All The Gifts, above), is a sweeping science fiction epic that takes readers across an infinite multiverse. Decades from now, professor Hadiz Tambuwal stumbles across a way to Step between dimensions, granting her access to alternate Earths.

The Earth that she leaves behind, our Earth, has been ravaged by climate change and capitalism to the point of collapse. What she finds — or, more accurately, what finds her — is a political alliance of a millions Earths known as the Pandominion.

Our Earth is rare, it turns out; one which never learned to Step. The million Earths that did learn this science formed a union of worlds, but war is coming. Matching the Pandominion in terms of strength and size is a similar network of parallel Earths on which all life is mechanical, rather than biological, and these two factions do not understand one another.

Infinity Gate is a modern sci-fi epic that takes readers on a journey across many different Earths: some where no life exists at all, others where life was wiped out hundreds of years ago.

Many Pandominion worlds are almost entirely similar to ours; others saw herbivores and carnivores, rather than omnivorous apes, grow and evolve to become the dominant species. The scale of this multiversal novel is unparalleled, making Infinity Gate one of the most exciting modern sci-fi novels on the shelves.

Buy a copy of Infinity Gate here!

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

This is How You Lose the Time War is a stellar short sci-fi novel, co-written by two celebrated and award-winning science fiction authors. Primarily, this is a love story. Our protagonists, Red and Blue, are accomplished agents of rival factions which are fighting for control of time itself.

While roaming the aftermath of a battlefield, Red finds a letter left by Blue; the letter taunts and flirts and teases Red, and also reveals that Blue is becoming disenchanted by this endless war. From here we move between Red and Blue’s perspectives, and those perspectives are divided by letters sent back and forth between the two.

As they move through strands of time that move back and forth through possible pasts and futures, each finds a letter left by the other, and these letters steadily take on a different tone.

From flirtatious taunts to passionate declarations of love, the letters steadily spell out the intense addiction that these two opposing women have developed for one another.

The world-building is also thrilling. Larger-than-life concepts involving time manipulation and riding the threads of time, taking us from Shakespeare’s London to mecha wars on distant planets. This is a wildly exciting science fiction novel that shows us how, no matter the scale of the world, no matter the advancements in technology, love still conquers all.

Buy a copy here!

Ten Low by Stark Holborn

The first book in an action-packed sci-fi trilogy, Ten Low is inescapably comparable to legendary works of fiction like Dune, Mad Max, and even Star Wars, thanks to its rich yet barren desert planet (or, in this particular case, moon) setting. Our protagonist is the titular Ten Low, named for the number of years she was sentenced to serve for the actions she took during a war between a federation and a rebellion within a single solar system.

The novel is set in a future in which Earth is behind us, but still spoken of. Some people still living were even born there. And since escaping prison, Low has been hiding out on a backwater desert moon occupied by raiders, ravagers, black market traders, and other lowlifes. But this moon is also home to a strange, ghostlike alien race that goes by many names, and is so unknowable that many refuse to believe they exist at all.

But Low is guided by their whispers, and when we begin, she is urged towards a crash site, the only survivor of which is a genetically modified child soldier—a general of the federation side. Low fixes her up, and the unlikely pair begin a difficult journey of discovery, betrayal, and many tough fights in this brilliant adventure of a sci-fi novel.

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi

The first in an epic sci-fi series by genre titan John Scalzi, Old Man’s War is set in a future in which humanity has colonised much of the galaxy, but that has put us in the crosshairs of many other races vying for ownership of the stars. On Earth, people know little about what the spacefaring Colonial Defence Force gets up to, but when they hit 75 years old, American citizens are allowed to apply for the military and start a whole new life.

They don’t know how, but those who enlist assume that their age will somehow be reversed. With few years left to live, many prefer to spend a second life fighting an intergalactic war than continuing to deteriorate. John Perry has just turned seventy-five. He and his wife agreed to enlist together, but she died of a sudden stroke several years ago. And before he knows it, Perry is whisked off to the stars, and to an unknowable future.

Old Man’s War is a fast and vibrant slice of modern sci-fi, full of wit and humour, as well as plenty of heart and soul. Its version of the future is a smart and strange one, and its story is urged forward by forged friendships and plenty of twists and turns. Scalzi is a mastermind of great science fiction, and Old Man’s War is the best proof of that.

Buy a copy of Old Man’s War here!

Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

With Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, Temi Oh makes the wonderfully creative choice to take the established concept of a coming-of-age story and set it on a lonely ship bound for a far-flung planet. The titular Terra-Two is an Earth-like planet that was recently discovered, and will take twenty-three years for a manned ship to reach. But this is necessary, given the way our climate is changing.

The crew of the Damocles is comprised of four experienced astronauts, doctors, and engineers, and six British teenagers who have been training for, and dreaming of, this one-way trip for most of their lives. The novel’s first quarter introduces us to our protagonists, establishes the stakes, and throws a painful and shocking emotional curveball at us before we’ve even left Earth.

Once their journey begins, we watch with beady eyes as these young people adapt to life in space, grow, learn to work together, fight, and fall frequently into disfunction. Do You Dream of Terra-Two? blends the isolation and wide-eyed hope of a good sci-fi novel with the angst and drama of a good coming-of-age story, and this strange genre cocktail tastes excellent.

Buy a copy here!

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Several People Are Typing is a mind-bending, genre-bending novel presented entirely as a series of Slack messages. This fantastic piece of comedy horror science fiction for the digital age that would make Franz Kafka proud.

Several People Are Typing begins with Gerald, a man who works in New York City, logging into his company Slack to inform his colleagues that he has been trapped in the app. Upon learning that his consciousness (or possibly his entire self?) has been uploaded to Slack, his colleagues naturally don’t believe him and it becomes a tired prank to them very quickly.

But, with nothing to do but figure out how to get out, Gerald keeps working and his productivity gradually improves in a hilarious moment of kafkaesque black comedy. Meanwhile, more creepy events occur with increasing frequency and drama, including the sound of howling outside one colleague’s window and signs that the Slack help bot may be gaining sentience.

What begins as a kafkaesque commentary on modern work culture slowly descends into a creeping sci-fi horror novel, all written like a Slack transcript. Brilliant.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Written by one of the modern world’s finest and most beloved authors, Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun is easily one of the finest modern sci-fi books of recent years.

This is a science fiction masterpiece that tells the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend (or AF). The purpose of an AF is to be a companion to the teenager who selects them.

Klara begins her story in a store in an unspecified American city. She is put on display and, through her eyes, we learn about the world — or, at least, the world as she sees it. Klara is soon chosen by a teenage girl called Josie who takes Klara home to live with her in the countryside.

This is a novel about love and hope. Klara’s relationship with Josie, and Josie’s relationship to her own mother Chrissie and her best friend Rick, is the glue of this book.

What makes this almost an elevation of Ishiguro’s unreliable narrator trope is Klara’s own unique perspective on the world (literally, how her robot eyes see things, and metaphorically, how she learns and comes to understand people and their relationships).

This is a very sweet and tender novel full of love in all its forms. It considers class and social groups, but it also deals heavily with love, religion, superstition, and, most importantly, how we hope; how we use hope as a method of survival.

Alongside Never Let Me Go, Klara and the Sun proves that Ishiguro’s greatest strength is observing human relationships through a variety of lenses; and he is at his best when using science fiction as a tool for exploring that to its fullest.

Buy a copy here!

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses

Blurring the lines between sci-fi and dystopian fiction, Tender is the Flesh brings us something entirely new. Living in a world that is either a little to the future of, or a possible parallel to, our own, our protagonist Tejo works at a slaughterhouse which deals exclusively in human meat.

A disease is said to have tainted, and mostly wiped out, most non-human animals, and so came a period known as the Transition, wherein human meat production became an accepted norm across the world. The humans that are bred for slaughter are not considered people, are referred to as ‘heads’, and are kept in much the same condition as cattle are today.

Therein lies the book’s first clear-cut message: to consider how modern-day battery farming, and meat and dairy production, treats non-human animals: the conditions they’re kept in; the ways they are raised, tortured, abused, and ultimately killed.

If this were the only message the book carried, it wouldn’t be adding anything new to the popular discourse. Fortunately, Tender is the Flesh offers a broader scope than that. While Tender is the Flesh treads dangerously close to being gratuitous and unnecessarily violent at times, and its exposition never ceases to feel disconnected from the plot.

The questions and warnings it raises are ones genuinely worth sitting with and pondering on as our planet continues to diminish in a frightening multitude of ways.

Tejo’s personal story is also aggressively compelling, and it carries the book’s messages and morals expertly. It is, ultimately, those messages that make this book worth reading, and what makes it one of the best modern sci-fi novels.

Buy a copy here!

The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter

What do you get when you cross the political wisdom and boundless imagination of Terry Pratchett with the knowledge and experience of Stephen Baxter?

One of the most essential modern sci-fi novels on the shelves, that’s what.

One of the simplest pleasures that good sci-fi novels can provide is eliciting that “wow” feeling when confronted with a big idea or event.

The Long Earth is full of these moments:

• When you follow protagonist Joshua to his first parallel world
• When you learnt that there are no people on any other world
• When you learn that they are potentially infinite
• When you learn of a strange human-like race of natural “steppers” that move between parallel worlds
• When you learnt that a catastrophe is wiping out these worlds

There’s a healthy helping of surrealism here, as well as a big dollop of political intrigue. But there is also that blissful sense of wide-eyed discovery and adventure.

The Long Earth is a novel in which scary and dangerous ideas coalesce with the human urge for adventure, discovery, and doing something risky for the sake of it.

While it lacks the wit of Pratchett’s Discworld series, it makes up for that with a mind-opening feeling of discovery and intrigue.

Buy a copy here!

The Employees by Olga Ravn

Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2021, The Employees is a short sci-fi novel by Danish author Olga Ravn. Set on a massive spaceship in the 22nd Century, this is a satire of hypercapitalist workplace culture. It is one of the very best modern sci-fi novels.

The Employees is structured as a series of interview statements with various workers about a ship which has just picked up a collection of unknown objects from a newly discovered planet. The objects are slowly and subtly changing the minds and feelings of the workers, both human and humanoid (robot AI).

And the company is observing these changes through a series of interviews with both groups. This Danish sci-fi novel explores the theme of AI and the meaning of life in truly fresh and original ways. It also satirises the cold and uncaring relationship between a company and its workforce.

The company sits silent and invisible as its human employees grow increasingly nostalgic about life on Earth, while its robot employees feel lost, wistful, and even angry as they too become nostalgic, but for what?

The concept of AI and the ethics behind it are considered from new angles, such as when one humanoid observes that it has been programmed to behave faithfully, but all it sees are hypocritical and unfaithful humans all around it.

The Employees is one of the most original and unique science fiction novels to come along in years, and an absolute must-read amongst sci-fi books by women authors.

Buy a copy here!

Tower by Bae Myung-hoon

Translated from the Korean by Sung Ryu

Tower is a truly unique and boundary-pushing piece of modern science fiction. As its name implies, this piece of Korean sci-fi is set entirely in an enormous tower. This titular tower is a nation unto itself, home to 500,000 people.

Bae implies that it was built on Korean soil but this is never explicitly stated. The book is divided into a series of interconnected speculative tales, all set within this solitary tower nation known as Beanstalk.

The world-building is fantastic, as the tower needs to be a believable place in order for the author’s disparate tales to work. Infrastructure, economy, politics, and daily life all need to be accounted for and designed in a way that the reader can understand and appreciate.

The six stories in Tower are tied together by the place itself and by recurring characters and events. And each story serves to further build the world while also telling an entirely self-contained tale. In that sense, this is a unique piece of Korean fiction that blends the concepts of the novel and the short story collection.

And each tale also, as all good science fiction does, poses an ethical, political, or philosophical quandary for us to muse over. What an amazing book amongst the best modern sci-fi novels.

Buy a copy here!

The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey

The Echo Wife is a grounded piece of speculative science fiction. A deeply personal and human tale of love and loss and betrayal and desperation and death. Our protagonist, Evelyn, is a research biologist who has seen breakthroughs in the field of human cloning. Her ex-husband, a fellow biologist named Nathan, has recently remarried.

After receiving an award for her work, Evelyn is asked out to tea by Nathan’s new partner, Martine, who turns out to be a clone of Evelyn, grown by Nathan. Martine also happens to be pregnant, which is something that Evelyn, the leading expert in cloning, believes to be impossible.

To say more would be to spoil a novel full of twists and turns. This is an intimate science fiction thriller, a true page-turner. What makes this novel so crisp and tight, however, is Evelyn herself. Written as a true scientist, she is clinical and logical in her view of people. She is kind and helpful, but not warm and passionate.

The world of The Echo Wife is also wonderfully well-realised. While perhaps not hard sci-fi, it is grounded enough to feel believable — or, at least, conceivably.

Tightly plotted, elegantly written, and populated with sharp, unique characters, The Echo Wife is a modern masterpiece of speculative science fiction that explores big moral and ethical questions, as all good speculative sci-fi should.

Buy a copy here!

I’m Waiting for You by Kim Bo-young

Translated from the Korean by Sung Ryu and Sophie Bowman

Kim Bo-Young is a legend of Korean literature, and even worked as a script editor on Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-Ho’s Snowpiercer. With I’m Waiting for You, readers can see first-hand why she’s such a special sci-fi author. This collection of four stories is essential reading amongst modern sci-fi novels.

The four stories in this collection actually work as two pairs. The first and fourth stories — I’m Waiting For You and On My Way to You — are the same tale told from two perspectives: a bride and groom each making their way home to Earth for their wedding ceremony.

The second and third stories — The Prophet of Corruption and That One Life — which are also the longest and shortest tales respectively, are a blend of religion, mysticism, and science fiction. In these two middle tales, the characters are a set of gods, and it is quickly revealed that they created Earth as a school in which they themselves can learn and grow.

The main protagonist of The Prophet of Corruption, Naban, is a single god whose prophets, disciples, and children all separated from them like cells. Individually, they spend entire lifetimes on Earth, learning and experiencing and dying.

Naban believes in asceticism as a school of learning; their children are reborn in low roles; they suffer and toil and eventually return home. But some are rebelling against this approach to living and learning. What makes these stories so tantalisingly addictive is both Kim’s world-building and also her attempt at writing gods as characters, with motivations and behaviours different from our own.

The stories that bookend this collection are each written in an epistolary fashion, as letters to the other. In I’m Waiting For You, our nameless groom is trying to make it to Earth, and is updating his bride each time something goes awry (and a lot goes awry).

The same is true in On My Way to You, only here the bride has her own hurdles to get over. These two stories are heartbreaking. You’ll root for them, cry for them, hope against hope that things will work out for them.

Buy a copy here!

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

John Scalzi has solidly established himself as one of the most inventive, unique, and hilarious voices in modern science fiction. His novels are full of heart and humour, and Starter Villain is another wonderful example of that. Protagonist Charlie is thirty-two, divorced, and has ended up back in his hometown working as a substitute teacher after losing his job as a journalist in Chicago. But there’s good news: his uncle has just died.

Charlie was under no assumptions that his quiet (not eccentric at all) billionaire uncle would have left him much, if anything in his will. But, as he soon learns, Uncle Jake was, in fact, a professional villain, providing covert and illegal services to various governments and agencies around the world. He also had an island volcano lair, an army of intelligent spy cats, and an unhappy dolphin labour force who are looking to unionise.

As the inheritor of his uncle’s empire, Charlie suddenly finds himself whisked into the world of villainy and everything it entails. There’s a lot to learn, but his cat Hera should be able to help him along. Starter Villain is a charming, smart, and often hysterical novel.

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

A breakout hit when it was first published in 2017, this epistolary modern sci-fi novel takes the simple concept of “mystery” and stretches it as far as possible. Author Sylvain Neuvel clearly had a lot of fun teasing something, big, something tantalising, something jaw-dropping in the execution of Sleeping Giants.

The initial premise is simple: a young girl in a quiet USA town sneaks out at night, falls into a pit, and finds herself sitting in the palm of an enormous metal hand. Growing up to become a scientist, Rose Franklyn has dedicated her life to understanding what this hand is, and where the rest of the body is.

As the novel progresses, we find more and more parts dotted around the planet, and we also learn that they are likely extraterrestrial in origin, given the near-impossible rarity of the metals used to forge them and the age of the limbs. The body parts are slowly assembled, and more and more truths come to light.

The epistolary style of this narrative makes the plot that much more engaging, as everything is presented as a series of classified interviews with government agents of private journals of those involved.

Buy a copy of Sleeping Giants here!

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu

Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem brings science fiction back to the era of Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke—an era of wild and surreal concepts, loosely made to look plausible through their links to physics and mathematics. Set between China’s Cultural Revolution and a version of its present, the novel leads readers on a disorientating path—with all the pace and excitement of a thriller—to dizzying revelations about the universe.

During the Cultural Revolution, Ye Wenjie saw her father named as a bourgeois academic and killed by a group of students. From here, she is banished to a labour force and eventually recruited onto a mysterious science base which is sending signals out into space. They claim to be disrupting enemy satellites but something else is clearly going on.

In the present day, scientist Wang Miao is working on a new kind of nanomaterial but is soon saddled with the responsibility of infiltrating and spying on a strange collection of scientists (a cult in all but name). Their existence is linked to the suicides of multiple scientists, and once he is involved, Wang starts experiencing strange phenomenon. Adding to the strangeness, he starts playing a new VR game set on a planet with three suns.

The Three-Body Problem is one of the wildest rides you will ever take in the world of science fiction. A strange and exciting story full of cynicism and enormous ideas.

Buy a copy of The Three-Body Problem here!

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

The Space Between Worlds is the debut novel by author Micaiah Johnson; a multiverse-spanning journey of mystery and discovery, and one of the most original and affecting modern sci-fi novels on the shelves.

Our protagonist is Cara, a young traverser who moves through 380 different versions of Earth in order to observe and gather data. Her job is simply to report on what makes each version of Earth unique.

What makes this premise fun is that a traverser can only set foot on an Earth if that Earth’s version of them is dead, and Cara is dead in all but eight Earths, due to the difficult circumstances of her birth and youth. Despite its impressive and ambitious world-building, The Space Between Worlds is actually a rather intimate character-focussed sci-fi novel.

Through this sci-fi novel, Johnson offers us both questions and answers on the themes of identity, nature vs nurture, and the lasting impact of trauma. She gives us satisfying character writing, powerful plot twists, and some nice genre-bending.

Cara herself is the driving force of this novel. A damaged, angry young woman with too much on her shoulders. She is relatable in a tragic kind of way, and someone to watch with unblinking eyes as her journey of discovery becomes more personal than professional.

Buy a copy here!

The Best Modern Mexican Books

If you want to discover, understand, and fall in love with the state of modern Mexican literature, these are the Mexican novels you need to be reading right now.

Loop by Brenda Lozano

Translated by Annie McDermott

This is both one of the finest epistolary novels and one of the best modern Mexican novels we’ve ever read. Loop is a diary of sorts, or at least the diary is used here as a framing device for the narrator’s story. Unnamed, she is a woman who impatiently awaits the return of her boyfriend after he sets off on a family trip to Spain – which also takes him to Portugal and France – from their home of Mexico City after his mother passes.

Our narrator flippantly compares herself to Penelope, switching out the weaving of her shroud for writing in this notebook. Our scrawling protagonist is one of the most charming narrators I’ve come across in a long time. She’s impatient, well-read, introspective, thoughtful, witty, and ambitious.

Her notes toe the line between a succinct narrative, a dislocated train of thoughts, and a series of philosophical musings (whatever such a line would look like). Some days we learn about her friends and how she spends time with them – other times we read with fascination as she turns Proust into a character in her own life.

Despite this almost chaotic method to storytelling – this disconnected and fractured notebook novel – the themes and motifs of Loop are far more clearly laid out as a result.

Buy a copy here!

Ramifications by Daniel Saldaña París

Translated by Christine McSweeney

The English translation of Ramifications is published by the wonderful Charco Press, and this is one of the most impactful Mexican novels you’ll ever read. Ramifications is a first-person narrative, told from the perspective of a man in his thirties confined to a bed in his rundown apartment in a rundown district.

We learn about our narrator-protagonist by journeying through his childhood memories, and slowly piecing together the complex relationship between him and his immediate family. In 1994, when he was just ten years old, his mother left home to join the Zapista uprising. His father is unfit and unable to parent and teach our narrator and his sister.

In order to cope, he develops habits, hobbies, and eccentricities that only serve to make him a target at school, and to isolate him even further as an outcast. This is a masterful Mexican novel that explores the effects of our families’ actions, of memory on the present, and how we are little more than what our experiences make us.

Buy a copy here!

Sea Monsters by Chloe Aridjis

Although set in the late 80s, Sea Monsters is a powerful protest for those wandering, distracted, pondering what life has in store. Luisa, seventeen years old and with everything ahead of her, is going through that rebellious phase where life begins to open up.

Drugs and music hold untapped wonders, boys are enigmatic and sometimes cruel, but in an interesting way, and she knows that there are strange things beyond the horizon. She just needs an excuse, and when a newspaper headline tells her of a group of Ukrainian dwarfs have escaped a touring Soviet circus, she decides to chase them down.

With her is the new boy in her life, Tomas, a boy she has been drawn to and treats her about as well as she treats him. Sea Monsters doesn’t pander to or placate its audience. It speaks honestly about its protagonist’s feelings of floating in the void, needing something to anchor her down.

Although it’s a feeling not unfamiliar to many of us, it has seldom been captured with this much elegance and clarity in prose before.

Buy a copy here!

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Fernanda Melchor is arguably the best Mexican author writing today, creating some of the finest Mexican novels on the shelves. Paradais, published in English translation by Fitzcarraldo Editions, was longlisted for the International Booker Prize, and deservedly so.

Two teenage boys meet in the titular Paradais, a luxury housing estate full of wealthy locals. One boy lives there with his rich family, while the other simply works there as a gardener. Franco, the rich, fat, selfish, cruel boy who lives there, buys his new “friend” Polo alcohol so they can sit and drink and Polo will listen to Franco’s sexual fantasies about his neighbour.

Polo, with a free means to get drunk, sits and listens and numbs himself as a means of escaping his horrible lot in life for a while. Both boys are bad people, born and raised by their circumstances, but we focus more on Polo and sympathise with him more as the underdog of the two.

Polo is poor, powerless, angry, and treated like a dog’s body by his boss. But he also has no respect for women and may have impregnated his cousin. There is a deep complexity to him, a character that you feel sorry for because he was born into circumstances beyond his control, but you also can’t condone his attitude and behaviour.

Paradais is a tough but rewarding read; a short book of only a hundred pages, and one that will stay with you for years to come.

Buy a copy here!

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor

Translated by Sophie Hughes

Just like Paradais, Melchor’s novel Hurricane Season is another glowing example of the sheer pedigree of modern Mexican novels. There is so much mischief, corruption, deception, and aggression spilling out from Hurricane Season that the book’s bindings can hardly contain it.

Hurricane Season is a courageous story, and Fernanda Melchor is undoubtedly a courageous author for committing it to paper. It’s a book about the myriad evils that stain the human spirit. It’s a book that can remove any trust you might have left in your fellow man.

It’s a book about people being the worst they can be, and it’s a wholly compelling book that, once you develop a taste for it, you will lust after it until the story is over. Not only are the characters of Hurricane Season deceptive and mischievous, but so is the book itself. In fact, this is one of Melchor’s great achievements: turning the book into a spiteful character in its own right.

Framed initially as a whodunnit of sorts, the book’s first and shortest chapter – at just a single page – takes us by the hand to a dead body. The Witch. To find out whodunnit, we have to trace the lives of the various people who, in one way or another, knew The Witch.

Each chapter of Hurricane Season is, in part, a self-contained story. Characters are shared, and we often get to know one character as our protagonist after seeing them in the periphery of an earlier chapter. Each time they’re framed differently, and it becomes clear that this is a deceptive book. There is, quite simply, no book like Hurricane Season.

What begins as a whodunnit where we find ourselves excited to know about this mysterious Witch – her past, her actions, her power – soon evolves into a multi-threaded narrative about a village of twisted and corrupt individuals who speak to the undeniable evils in every human soul.

Buy a copy here!

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Monstrilio is a poetically-penned and heartbreaking work of gothic fiction with a deep focus on loss, grief, and family ties. Magos and Joseph have lost their eleven-year-old son, and in a moment of desperation and grief, Magos cuts away a piece of their son and takes it home with her to Mexico City. There, inspired by old folktales, she nurtures the lung like a plant and watches it grow into a hungry little creature: Monstrilio.

As the novel progresses, we shift perspective from that of Magos to her best friend Lena, her husband Joseph, and finally to someone named M (take a guess). Along the way, we move from place to place, watch as Monstrilio grows and comes to resemble the dead Santiago, and sit helpless as this family grieves, loves, hates, and gradually moves forward.

It’s a dark tale of monsters and pain, but it’s also achingly human and honest. For all of those reasons, it is discomfiting. Watching a living thing grow from organ to monster to something resembling a person (or maybe just a person?) is haunting and alluring in equal measure.

The Secret Life of Insects by Bernardo Esquinca

Translated by James D. Jenkins

Mexican author Bernardo Esquinca’s lifelong love for the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft seeps deeply into his own writing. The stories in this collection aren’t only dark; they are strange, unnerving, off-kilter tales of loss, heartbreak, isolation, and so many impossibilities. Stories like Dream of Me, which follows a woman who turned to a witchdoctor for guidance in love, only for the monkey’s paw to curl and her romance to turn to horror.

Then there’s The Paradoxical Man: a writer is plagued by nightmares that are damaging his work, but the therapist who offers to help him suggests that these dreams might be a portal to some lovecraftian horror that could destroy the author’s life. The titular The Secret Life of Insects presents a forensic entomologist who lost his wife under mysterious circumstances and will do anything for a chance to speak to her again.

These are tales of the inexplicable, the odd, and the chilling. They poke at the unknown and leave the reader feeling deeply disorientated. A wonderful collection of Mexican horror stories.

Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera

Translated by Lisa Dillman

Yuri Herrera is a Mexican author who lives and works in New Orleans, and Season of the Swamp reads like his dedication to that messy city and its even messier history, as well as to Mexico’s first indigenous president, Benito Juarez, who is this historical novel’s protagonist. Juarez was exiled from Mexico for several years before his eventual presidency, and during that exile he spent almost two years in New Orleans.

But we know nothing about that period. Herrera imagines that he must have met up with other exiles, and while there he would have grappled with disease and the shock of seeing the trade and ownership of human beings. This is what Season of the Swamp depicts, presented both lyrically and with a touch of surrealism. This is a short historical novel that packs a punch, reads like a dream, and presents us with many beautiful truths.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of the celebrated Gods of Jade and Shadow, but it was her novel Mexican Gothic that made the biggest splash in the world of Mexican novels when it was published. With the Books and Bao team having a deep adoration for the gothic genre, it’s no surprise that we consider this one of the most unique modern Mexican novels.

Mexican Gothic is a novel heavily inspired by the best books of the genre, especially the works of Daphne du Maurier. But, as the title confidently states, this is a uniquely Mexican take on the genre, combining the tropes established by British and American authors with Mexican culture and characters.

It goes beyond this, however, with Silvia Moreno-Garcia using her narrative to bring our attention to issues of colonialism and the racism and classism that it directly led to. On its surface, this is a dark, horror-inspired gothic novel that fills up the genre’s bingo card, but beneath it all are deep thematic waves that the reader is forced to swim in.

Buy a copy here!

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

Translated by Lisa Dillman

While this is one of the shorter Mexican novels on this list, it’s also one of the most powerful and impactful. It’s a novel about borders, about language and translation, about loss and family and distance and time. Our protagonist, Makina, sets out to cross the border between Mexico and the US, in search of her brother.

It’s a simple premise, but one full of deep imagery and themes. The border crossing that she undertakes goes beyond physical borders. These are borders between individual people; the borders between sexes, races, classes, cultures, and languages.

Signs Preceding the End of the World is a hefty little novel that looks at exoticisation, commodification, voyeurism, and of course colonialism and the concept of “othering”. Few novels have such a sting to them, and leave that sting in you for so long after you read them. Signs Preceding the End of the World is a short masterpiece of Mexican literature.

Buy a copy here!

Umami by Laia Jufresa

Translated by Sophie Hughes

This is a novel which Chloe Aridjis, author of the above Sea Monsters, called, “’A wonderfully surprising novel, powered by wit, exuberance and nostalgia.” This is a story about people and places. At its heart, it is exploring the bonds created by time and space.

Like the stories of Mariana Enriquez, it is a novel with an intimate sense of place — the place being the very heart of Mexico City. And like the novels of Italian author Elena Ferrante, this is also a novel about relationships — between families, friends, and neighbours — and how those relationships shape us as individuals.

In a courtyard, surrounded by five houses, a twelve-year-old girl who has lost her little sister decides to start a vegetable garden. From here we learn of the different lives that make up this space. One novel of multiple narratives, all exploring their own memories, losses, and relationships. Umami is one of the most beautiful and intimate Mexican novels you’ll ever read.

Buy a copy here!

Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli

Translated by Christina MacSweeney

Unbelievably, Faces in the Crowd is a debut novel. For being one of the most touching and raw Mexican novels of recent years, that’s an incredible achievement. Translated with both deftness and a delicate touch by Christina MacSweeney, Valeria Luiselli’s debut is a magical work of Mexican literature.

This is a rather enigmatic novel, made up of short vignettes that travel through time and space from city to city, character to character, narrative to narrative. It’s disjointed and appears unfocussed, requiring more than one read to fully appreciate, understand, and empathise with. But it’s worth the commitment.

Gilberto Owen was a Mexican poet who lived amongst other, more famous poets in Harlem, New York a hundred years ago. Though he was more obscure than his contemporaries, Owen has been a source of personal and professional obsession for a modern writer and translator from Mexico City.

So much has been written about the sheer cleverness and complexity of this debut novel; it’s one of those modern Mexican novels you owe it to yourself to check out.

Buy a copy here!

On Lighthouses by Jazmina Barrera

Translated by Christina MacSweeney

This one can be considered a wild card amongst Mexican novels, given how it isn’t actually one. On Lighthouses is a collection of essays. But it made this list because, just like the rest of the Mexican literature on this list, On Lighthouses is required reading.

Like many of the best essay collections, this is a blend of personal memory, facts and histories, thoughts and anecdotes, and relevant quotes. Across six chapters, each one focussed on a particular lighthouse, we learn about these places, the people that occupied them, and what they represent to the author.

Lighthouses are popular places of fascination for many of us, and sometimes it’s difficult to communicate that fascination. But here, Jazmina Barrera does it for us.

Buy a copy here!

But Latin American women have always been there, writing fantastic fiction that has defied stereotypes and allowed them to imagine a different world.

I am thinking of Victoria Ocampo, the editor of Sur magazine and author, as well as her sister Silvina, an extraordinary short story writer.

I can also name my favourite Chilean writer, María Luisa Bombal, whose dark and atmospheric stories shaped so much of my reading taste growing up.

Even the first Nobel Laurate in Literature in Latin America was a Chilean poet, Gabriela Mistral, whose beautiful and honest poetry is still very inspiring.

In Mexico you get Rosario Castellanos, a poet who championed feminist causes, and we can even go further back to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a nun in Colonial Mexico who wrote passionately about women’s rights, love, and theology.

Must-Read Books by Latin American Women

This is a very long way of saying that women in Latin America have been writing for centuries, and they are great at it. But in the last couple of decades, books by women have started dominating the scene.

The International Booker has longlisted at least one Latin American woman every year since 2017 (with three being nominated in 2020!), which also speaks of the amount of work that is being translated, too.

(Fellow translators, ¡buen trabajo!)

I am here to boost some writers who haven’t been as well publicised, but that I think deserve a lot more publicity.

Space Invaders by Nona Fernández (Chile)

Translated by Natasha Wimmer

Nona Fernández is a powerhouse when it comes to contemporary Chilean literature: novels, short stories, essays, plays, and even screenplays for some teleseries. She has done it all.

Her novels are often centered around growing up under Pinochet’s regime, and Space Invaders is a particularly good example of how she presents this theme and how she attempts to explore the trauma of the dictatorship.

The narrators of this novel are a group of kids growing up in 1980’s Santiago, who are all trying to pin down their memories of one of their classmates, González, the daughter of a police officer who appears to be moving up the ranks.

She appears to be haunting her former classmates’ dreams, bringing the memories of school uniforms, childish letters, and computer games.

Politics start at the background, blurry in the wake of the end of childhood, but as the story progresses and memories become sharper, the horrors of the dictatorship appear clearer as well.

Childhood appears here as a bit a bubble when it comes to the harsher aspects of reality, and the violence inherent to the system pierces it in tragic and horrifying ways.It’s a very slim novel (fewer than 90 pages in the Spanish edition), so anything else I say could be a spoiler, so just go and read it.

Buy a copy here!

The Rooftop by Fernanda Trías (Uruguay)

Translated by Annie McDermott

The Rooftop was originally published in 2001, but after 2020, this slim and intense piece seems to have reached a whole different meaning.

The claustrophobic feeling that permeates the novel captures the feeling of constant lockdowns and fear of what might be on the other side of our doors.

This is a book mired in paranoia. At the beginning, the pregnant narrator and her father have enclosed themselves in their apartment.

There’s a constant sense of fear and stress throughout the novel, as the main character’s fears appear to be confirmed.

The exterior world becomes frightful and menacing as her pregnancy draws to a close and the relationship with her father reveals itself to be darker than one might have thought.

It’s a very short and intense novel, which manages to create a sense of unease and terror by not saying a lot.

We only are aware of the narrator’s fear of the outside world, and we can only intuit what is that which she finds so terrifying. In a world in which the outside has become a bit of a mysterious and maybe dangerous possibility, this book hits on the anxiety of the closed space.

Buy a copy here!

Our Dead World by Liliana Colanzi (Bolivia)

Translated by Jessica Sequeira

I’ve always enjoyed short stories collections, and I am very lucky that Latin America has some stellar short story writers right now.

Liliana Colanzi’s Our Dead World is one of them, a fascinating collection of dark and twisted stories.

On its pages, a group of kids attend the funeral of one of their classmates, a mysterious wave of suicides haunts a college campus, and a cannibal explores the streets of Paris.

The stories are all very different, but they all share a sort of dark humour, a hint of irony that appears to string them all together, across time and space, and even genre.

My favourite might be “Alfredito”, the story about a group of kids coming to terms with the death of their classmate.

She has a way of calling attention to the details and specificity of the situations she writes, grounding even the stories with the most fantastic elements and making them vivid and true.

If you’ve enjoyed Mariana Enríquez and Samanta Schweblin, this collection hits a similar spot: dark and imaginative, the heirs of writers such as Cortázar and Silvina Ocampo, who explore the creepiest corners of the world. 

Buy a copy here!

The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (México)

Translated by Matthew Glesson and Audrey Harris

When Amparo Dávila died in April 2020, México lost one of its greatest writers.

In the 70 years of her career (she published her first book in 1950) she drew from her own dark family history (she was the only one of her siblings to survive until adulthood) and the world around her to write stories about madness, danger, and death.

While her work is hard to come across outside of Mexico (even in Spanish speaking countries!), this one collection has been translated into English and the translation is fantastic.

The Houseguest and Other Stories includes twelve stories taken from three of her collections, so you can get a sense of her style and themes: loneliness, obsessions, and fear.

The worlds in her stories are filled with terrible and mysterious things, and her characters appear to be powerless on the face of such horrors.

The title story has the main character fighting against a mysterious force that her husband has brought home, a presence that seems to be absorbing the house itself, in a way that reminds me of “House Taken Over” by Julio Cortázar.

A lot of her stories deal with housewives and the horrors they face seem to echo the constrictions put on by Latin American societies in the 20^th century, and she uses this very abstract style of horror to reflect the anxiety of women in such a world. She was a truly fantastic writer, and she is sorely missed.

Buy a copy here!

Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada (Argentina)

Translated by Kit Maude

Camila Sosa Villada was the first trans woman to win the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize (which is like the Women’s Prize for Spanish language writers) in 2020 with this absolute gem of a novel.

Centred around a group of trans women in Argentina sometime in the nineties, this novel deals with both pain and joy in a beautifully devastating way.

In the beginning, the women find a baby abandoned in the park where they work.

From that point on, the novel explores their different stories, their joys, their pain, their loves, and the family they all build together with their friends and lovers.

While Argentina is often considered to be a relatively socially progressive place, trans women there are disproportionately more likely to be the victims of hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace.

A lot of them, like the characters in this novel, turn to sex work to make a living, often in dangerous conditions. Camila Sosa Villada herself, when she was a student in Córdoba, did sex work to survive.

And while the realities that are shown in this novel are harsh and terrible, she also shows all the beauty and happiness in the love these women share for each other.

It’s really a beautiful novel, one that sheds a light over the experiences of women who are extremely marginalised and vulnerable, but also about finding a family based on love and acceptance in every way possible.

Buy a copy here!

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador)

Translated by Sarah Booker

Good Lord, is this a dark and twisted novel.

Fernanda, a student in a posh religious school in Ecuador, wakes up and realizes she’s been kidnapped by her own teacher, Miss Clara.

Fernanda and her clique of morbid girls have been torturing the poor woman for months, and it seems she has finally snapped.

The rest of the novel introduces us to the group of friends: Ximena, Analía, Fiorella and Natalia, as well as the ringleader Anneliese.

I’ve always found books about teenage girl friendships to be fascinating, especially when confronting the darkest aspects of it, so this book was right up my alley, especially since the characters here seem to have some sort of witchy coven that binds them all together.

There is also a sort of homoerotic bond, particularly between Fernanda and Anneliese, who share a relationship that appears to turn more obsessive and sinister as the book progresses.

The narrative is also filled with pop culture and literary allusions to all types of horror, including creepypastas, placing this novel firmly in the internet era.

Buy a copy here!

Here Be Icebergs by Katya Adaui (Peru)

Translated by Rosalind Harvey

Katya Adaui is a Peruvian author who has studied in New York, Paris, and Beijing. Here Be Icebergs is a short story collection that examines the nature and messy complexities of family life.

Narratively, these stories are fascinating. They mimic how we related to and talk about our families: random, biased, out-of-order stories and opinions about the people we love and hate.

The stories are tiny little vignettes; glimpses into the minds and memories of people with difficult family dynamics, traumas, and haunted memories.

These stories so closely reflect not only how we experience life with our parents, sisters, friends, and neighbours, but also how we relate those stories to one another; the lies we tell ourselves and the fears we experience alongside our experiences.

There’s power in the minimalism here. There is so much left unsaid, just as there is when we discuss our own families. There is also equal attention given to found family as there is to blood family.

Few writers are able to capture the rough complexity of family in the way that Adaui has with Here Be Icebergs.

Buy a copy here!

Eartheater by Dolores Reyes (Argentina)

Translated by Julia Sanches

While we’re still on the topic of very dark books, let’s have a word about Dolores Reyes’ Eartheater, in which a young woman eats some dirt and receives a vision about how her father had killed her mother.

In a continent devastated by domestic violence, this power proves to be useful and soon Cometierra is accosted by dozens of people who want to know about their missing relatives, mostly women.

As she is confronted by the absolute darkness of the life in the margins, Cometierra isolates from the outside world, disturbed by the violence and suffering she sees everywhere.

Born out of the #NiUnaMenos movement (“not one woman less”), this novel explores the realities and horrors of the lives of women in Argentina, and Cometierra is a fascinating narrator for such a story, thanks to the way in which she uses the language of the streets in a manner that is often surprising and deeply sincere.

She is a young girl from a bad neighbourhood, and her words reflect that. Her world is also very real, highlighting the ways in which the police does little to help the missing women and their families.

Cometierra becomes then a strange prophet, as she decides to take on the pain of others and turn it into a possibility for catharsis.

Buy a copy here!

How to Order the Universe by María José Ferrada (Chile)

Translated by Elizabeth Bryer

María José Ferrada started out as a children’s author, with illustrated books that deal with Chile’s recent history in ways that kids and teenagers are able to understand and relate.

She has written two adult novels, both of which deal very specifically with child narrators and how they see the world around them, which of course is tinted by their innocence.

How to Order the Universe was her first foray into this type of fiction, and it is a beautiful book, very nostalgic and bittersweet, and despite being a short novel, it manages to pack a punch and strike directly on the feelings.

The plot is fairly simple: a young girl accompanies her dad, a travelling salesman in his business trips around Chile in the 1970s.

If you know anything about Chile in the 70s, you can probably imagine that, as the novel progresses, the narrator is progressively confronted with the horrifying events of those years.

The historical context mostly stays in the background, however, as the main focus here is the relationship between the narrator and her dad, who seems to be a bit of a dreamer, always promising the impossible to his daughter.

He also seems to be trying to sell himself a fantasy, but as the novel progresses it becomes more and more apparent that it’s just a dream, a pretty illusion that won’t come to anything.

It’s a beautiful novel about the relationship with our parents, the lengths they can go to protect us from the ugliness of the world, and that moment when we start seeing them as humans, rather than parents.

Buy a copy here!

The Book of Anna by Carmen Boullosa (México)

Translated by Samantha Schnee

I have a massive soft spot for classic Russian Literature, and Tolstoy is one of my favourite writers ever. Anna Karenina, however, was a book that I had a hard time reading and enjoying the first time around. It took a second and third reading (and a course in Russian literature) to make me “get” Anna.

She’s far from the silly love-obsessed woman I thought her at 18, but a more complex and nuanced character that longs for a life in which she can do something, anything.

She writes a book in the novel, which is a very small detail that most people tend to ignore.This fictional book is at the centre of The Book of Anna, which presents itself as a sequel to that classic.

While it is very far from Tolstoy luscious style, Boullosa explores the lives of a bunch of characters, starting with an anarchist girl who leaves a bomb in a train in Saint Petersburg, and going on to Anna’s two kids: Sergei and Annie.

Both have lived their lives under the shadow of their scandalous mother, and it is her, once again, the one who sparks the plot.

After a request from the Emperor to purchase a portrait of dead Anna, Sergei finds an opportunity to get rid of that reminder of their family’s trauma, while at the same time bringing her back into the public eye.

The portrait, hidden away in the family’s attic, also hides the pages of the story written by Anna, a fairy tale that echoes Russian folklore.

Anna, while dead, is very much at the heart of the narrative, as everyone seems to have a different opinion on her and her legacy, and her secret book seems to be the only key to her, that remains far away from the public.

Boullosa’s novel is not going to be everyone’s thing (it was mine, though, but I am obsessed with Tolstoy), but it is fascinating in the ways the characters are connected through the past and fiction and reality merge in unexpected corners. 

Buy a copy here!

On Lighthouses by Jazmina Barrera (México)

Translated by Christina MacSweeney

I’m not sure there is a lot of non-fiction translated into English from Spanish. It’s rather interesting, considering the long tradition of the “crónica” in Spanish-language literature, but here we are.

I’ve given as a present and recommended a few times, as it is fantastic in many ways, especially for Barrera’s amazing command of words and emotion, even in non-fiction.

Jazmina Barrera is a Mexican essayist (though her first novel came out recently in Spain), and this book lives somewhere in the realm of travel books and a history of lighthouses. I personally find lighthouses fascinating, even if only in an abstract way.

On Lighthouses chronicles Barrera’s travels to different lighthouses all over the world, while being at the same time a meditation on the role of lighthouses through history and how their keepers play such a silent and fascinating book, beautifully written and quietly meditative.

It’s also very short, so anything more I say about this will be redundant. You should pick it up if you want to read something different and unique.

Her newest book at the time of writing Linea Nigra, is a meditation on motherhood and writing that has been on my TBR list for a while.

Buy a copy here!

Seeing Red by Lina Meruane (Chile)

Translated by Megan McDowell

Lina Meruane is one of those authors that inevitably intimidate me. Her books aren’t long, but they are very challenging on the emotional level, as well as being somewhat abstract.

This novel in particular, as the character loses her sight in the first few pages, exists in a world where sight has disappeared, and the narrator uses memory and her other senses to navigate her life.

She is an international student in New York, and with a stroke, her life changes completely, from being used to rely on her sight for most things, to being heavily dependent on her partner for even basic things.

And then she travels back home to Chile, where her parents fuss over her, highlighting her loss of independence and the growing vulnerability of her position.

It is a dark novel, literally so, but Lina Meruane’s pen manages to bring forward smells, textures, and sound.

Because of the style in which it is written, we get a close look at the narrator and her thoughts, and at points it gets so intimate you need to put the book down for a little while. 

Buy a copy here!

Optic Nerve by María Gainza (Argentina)

Translated by Thomas Bunstead

Optic Nerve is a book that sort of jumps across genre, between essays and fiction. Gainza, like her narrator, started out as an art critic, and this book is centreed on gazing.

The narrator is obsessed with art, so it very literally colours the way in which she sees the world, and how she relates to it.

If you like plot-driven books, this might not be your thing. The narrative is rambling, with the narrator going from certain events in her life to the lives and works of famous artists throughout history.

In her brain, her life and art are inextricably entwined, so she can see all the connections through art. It’s fascinating and disjointed, and it clearly showcases how passionate Gainza is about art.

It reminded me of whole afternoons exploring museums and getting to see the city.

Buy a copy here!

Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer (Argentina)

Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

This is a really special book, translated by the one and only Ursula K. Le Guin. Her work as a translator is not very well known, but she did translate Gabriela Mistral and Angélica Gorodischer from Spanish into English, and she did a great job with both.

This book is alternatively described as a novel or as a short story collection, but it’s really somewhere on the middle, with every chapter being about a different event in the history of the Empire of Kalpa, a long-lost kingdom with a colourful life.

Kings, Queens, wars, and all sorts of drama happen, and it is intertwined with some sections that deal with the maybe aftermath of this Empire. Possibly.

While there is a tendency to classify anything magical coming from South America as “magical realism” or “the Fantastic”, this one is straight up fantasy that echoes Tolkien’s fascination with world-building and creating a mythology.

But it is also like nothing I’ve ever read before, from anywhere in the world. The world is grounded in the fictional history she creates, and it makes up for a wonderfully vivid space.

I’m usually a character reader, and there isn’t much plot or character development here, but the uniqueness in these pages more than makes up for that and creates a fascinating perspective that feels truly magical.

Buy a copy here!

The Touch System by Alejandra Costamagna (Chile)

Translated by Lisa Dillman

After Pinochet’s dictatorship ended, Spanish language publishing started looking at Chile with new eyes. A generation of writers came out then, with a literature that aimed at expressing the new ideas and feelings that were travelling across the country.

Alejandra Costamagna is one of the women who burst onto the literary scene (they were given a lot less press than the men, but somehow all the women have managed to still be relevant 30 years later, while none of the men are widely read now), and this is her latest novel.

Finalist for the Herralde Novel Prize (given by Anagrama, one of the largest independent publishers in Spanish), this book tells the story of a young woman, Ania, who is asked by her father to travel across the Andes to say goodbye to her uncle Agustín, dying in Argentina.

The novel jumps back and forth in time, exploring memory and family history as well as grief and love.

Interwoven with Ania’s trip we find typing lessons, letters, memories, and instructions for Italian immigrants traveling to South America, weaving a tapestry of love and loss, and the ways in which family shapes you even when they are far away. Absolutely recommended.

Buy a copy here!

Forgotten Journey by Silvina Ocampo (Argentina)

Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan

Most of the writers on this least are still alive, but I also wanted to include one of the classics: Silvina Ocampo, youngest sister of Victoria Ocampo (legendary modernist editor in Argentina), married to Adolfo Bioy Casares, and close friend to Jorge Luis Borges.

While she was definitely in the literary world of mid 20^th century Argentina, her work is often cast aside. Or at least it was until some time ago, when her writing started being rediscovered and revalued as a precursor to some of the most popular Argentinian writers now; Mariana Enríquez even wrote a literary biography about Ocampo (La hermana menor, 2014).

The stories in this collection are the first ones she ever published, and they are all quite short and surreal. Disembodied feet run on the floors of the flats above, girls who look eerily like each other meet and confuse their guardian angels, and circus performers become ordinary.

In her stories, which have a delightfully dark tone In terms of atmosphere, she reminds me of a less wordy Angela Carter, and that comparison seems to be particularly apt, as both authors are inspired by fairy tales and folklore to construct their stories.

They even both wrote Bluebeard retellings! Mariana Enríquez, wrote in Freeman’s that her own time wasn’t ready for Ocampo’s mixture of the insanity of Angela Carter and Clarice Lispector’s originality. I think we might be ready now.

Buy a copy here!

Dislocations by Sylvia Molloy

Over less than 100 pages, across a series of small vignettes, Argentinian author Sylvia Molloy traces a person’s experiences and feelings as they watch an aged friend fade away from dementia.

This friend, named M.L., is visited often, and her memories are observed and pondered over. Each vignette considers something personal, linguistic, or philosophical.

Our protagonist considers who M.L. is and was, why she remembers what she does, what time feels like to her now, and why she does the curious things she does, such as make up new words.

Molloy asks, and encourages us to ask in turn, questions of time and friendship, personality and persona. She explores the nature of the mind versus the body, and she does all of this with so few words.

Not a moment or a thought is wasted as Molloy plunges into the depths of her own thoughts and imagination, her own memories, and those of M.L.

Sylvia Molloy is a legend amongst Argentine writers. To quote Mariana Enriquez, she is “One of the most lucid writers of Latin America.”

Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia

Written by Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia and translated into English by Zoë Perry, Of Cattle and Men is a short, visceral, discomfiting novel about the cycles of capitalism and the people at the very bottom.

Our protagonist, Edgar, works at a slaughterhouse; his job is to hit the cows over the head with a wooden mallet before they are killed.

Edgar is devoutly religious, and has a strict moral code of his own. Before the mallet comes down, he says a prayer for the cow’s soul.

His code leads him to do everything — up to and including murder — if he believes it to be in service of what he sees as good and right.

Of Cattle and Men is what you’d get if you placed the characters and themes of a Steinbeck novel into the cold and bleak world of a McCarthy novel.

Follow Anita on Instagram and Twitter

For this reason, it’s important to highlight and celebrate the best and most essential short story collections by women authors.

The Best Short Story Collections by Women

Here you’ll find a selection of short story collections by women of all different races, cultures, and languages. Translated from Spanish, Arabic, Korean, and more, these short story collections show the diversity of the form and its women authors.

Read More: Must-Read Short Story Collections by Black Authors

Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda 

Translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton 

This unique short story collection of whimsical, interconnected tales reinvents and retells Japanese folktales, exploring everything from ghosts and giant frogs to misogyny. Matsuda masterfully blends comedy and irony with the eerie and absurd, creating a collection that feels equally playful, and horrifying.

The stories in Where the Wild Ladies Are are woven into a feminist narrative which explores the ways in which women rebel and become “wild” in big and small ways.

Some women within this collection are vengeful, haunting the men of their pasts or making their lives a living hell, while some quietly rebel, waiting patiently for their opportunity to be free from an endless cycle.

Fast-paced, fun, yet often melancholy, Where the Wild Ladies Are builds commentary about gender inequality on a platform of old, well-loved stories, turning something old and well-loved into something fresh and new! 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw 

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a short story collection that serves as a glowing exploration of intersectionality. The characters in these stories struggle to reconcile religion with their personal experiences with sexuality, womanhood, and blackness.

Philyaw explores the ways in which the Christian church can affect self-image and self-acceptance, and how witnessing hypocrisy from trusted spiritual teachers, especially as a child, can ruin a person’s trust in “God.”

Philyaw’s characters leap from the page, their realism making it impossible to turn away from their stories, whether harrowing or heartwarming. Raw and biting, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a deeply moving collection about finding one’s own voice and truth amidst religion.

A House is a Body by Shruti Swamy 

In this short story collection, Swamy tells 12 unique stories set in India and the United States, which engage “the body” in different ways, with a focus on marriage, womanhood, and motherhood.

These themes are explored from every angle, from realism to surrealism, success to tragedy, death to new life. The characters Swamy crafts are complex; their relationships, romantic and otherwise, are nuanced and honest.

From broken marriages to budding romances, single parenthood to the loss of a child, A House is a Body explores the balance of good and bad present in everyone.  

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enríquez

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

With the same gothic and macabre feel as her first collection to be translated, Things We Lost in the Fire, Enríquez (one of Latin America’s most exciting authors) uses Argentine culture, politics, and folklore to explore new horrors in The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.

Using everything from cults, to witches, to ghosts, this collection explores obsession, the female body and things that plague it, fetish, pain, and idolatry.

The stories within this collection are as complex as they are unnerving, exploring how the tumultuous political and social climate in parts Argentina affects the lives of children and adults alike. The infusion of realism into each story, no matter how surreal or supernatural the story feels, makes them that much more terrifying and painful.

Sharp, socially conscious, and utterly gripping, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is a shining example of the short fiction and horror genres at their best. 

Buy a copy here!

The Age of Doubt by Pak Kyongni

Few authors have ever left such an indelible mark on the Korean literary landscape as Pak Kyongni, an author whose career spanned four decades following the Korean War.

Translated by a host of talented translators (such as Anton Hur and Sophie Bowman), The Age of Doubt is a collection of some of Pak’s earlier stories from the 1950s and 60s.

These stories are set against the backdrop of the fallout from the Korean War, as families reel and are grief-stricken.

The titular story follows a young widow who lost her husband to the war, and who is left almost entirely alone after her young son tragically dies shortly after.

With only her elderly mother for company, and to care for, our protagonist searches for a means to continue living.

These are tales of longing, of family, of loss, all standing on uneven, broken ground, and The Age of Doubt is one of the finest short story collections by a woman writer you’ll ever read.

Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang

Taiwanese-American author K-Ming Chang is a master of the surreal, of urban fantasy, and of mixing the fairy tale with the ordinary.

In Gods of Want she examines themes of maternity, family, migration, and queerness in ways that twist reality and make folklore feel more grounded and relevant than ever before.

These are funny and ferocious tales of surreal encounters, strange lives, and people living in impossible ways, all with the goal of asking us to consider our place within our families and cultures.

The concept of queerness within family and society is examined from all angles: love, lust, autonomy, and the body itself.

But most of all we are getting stories about the women within a family: the relationships to one another, to patriarchy, to role and duty.

There has never been a short story collection quite like this one. Chang is a true visionary.

Buy a copy here!

Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

Translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori

In all of her works of fiction, Japanese author Sayaka Murata pokes and prods at the concept of ordinary modern society. She places her characters into society and watches them panic.

She is a writer obsessed with the idea of not fitting in, of society being an unfit and frightful places for so many people — queer, neurodiverse, disabled, and more.

In Life Ceremony, she explores that concept from a dozen different angles. She paints scary worlds and scared characters desperate to escape them.

She also presents us with ordinary life, identical to our own, and protagonists doing wild and dangerous things in order to try and escape from it.

Life Ceremony is a punk and angry short story collection that uses body horror, terror, and disgusting things to get across the idea that society is not good for all of us.

Buy a copy here!

This Is My Body, Given For You by Heather Parry

Written by the celebrated author of Orpheus Builds A Girl — one of the most profound gothic novels of this century — This Is My Body, Given For You is a collection of fifteen tales of body horror and gothic terror.

Heather Parry has a grim fascination with the body, and she explores that fascination through these tales of transformation, pain, brutality, mutation, mutilation, and more.

Tonally, these tales shift from tragedies to comedies, from stories of revenge to those of grief and loss. All involve the horrifying realities of living in blood-and-water-filled sacks of meat and nerves.

In here, you’ll meet a girl stranded on an island, forced to eat bodies ravaged by plague; you’ll watch a woman cope with her husband’s sudden transformation into a hen.

You’ll also look on helplessly as bodies are ravaged and brutalised. You’ll read about sympathetic monsters and unsympathetic men. There’s so much hideous beauty in this brutal collection.

Buy a copy here!

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Set across Nigeria and the United States, The Thing Around Your Neck follows characters who are trying to reconcile these two very different cultures.

Providing commentary and insight on a wide variety of topics, from feminism to privilege, power dynamics in marriage to violence and political unrest, Adichie examines the differences in how people treat each other in Nigeria versus the US.

Poignant and purposeful, The Thing Around Your Neck showcases the triumphs and trials of the immigrant experience, demonstrates the necessity and desire to pick up and put down roots elsewhere, and explores just how deeply those roots run.

Buy a copy here!

Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

Bad Behavior explores the realities of connection, intimacy, and desire, without ever shying away from portraying the uglier parts of these basic human needs. Gaitskill’s characters are artsy types, from writers to painters, living in and around New York City.

The juxtaposition between the grimy, gritty descriptions of NY, and the beauty and clarity of art serves to highlight the coexistence of the beautiful and the grotesque within the characters. This collection gives voice to the outsiders, the people on the fringe of society, people who are considered inherently dirty and immoral.

Gaitskill shines at creating a balance of pointing out the flaws in her characters, and exploring their reasons, allowing readers to make their own judgments. Raw and introspective, Bad Behavior is an intense and unrelenting depiction of the rougher parts of life in the city in the 1980’s. 

Buy a copy here!

Flowers of Mold by Ha Seong-nan

Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong

Flowers of Mold is a collection of stories about the everyday experiences of seemingly regular people in urban South Korea, yet each story feels intensely strange and unsettling. The characters in these stories live ordinary lives, trying to navigate their surroundings, from apartment buildings to buses to their workplaces.

However mundane and matter of fact these stories may seem, something sinister yet undefinable lurks under the surface. Odd, inventive, and suspenseful, Flowers of Mold is a masterful example of creating and sustaining tension, and finding the horror, wonder, and strangeness in the mundane. 

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Her Body and Other Parties is a genre bending, genre defying collection which pulls elements of science fiction, horror, fairytales, realism, and fantasy together to create something completely original.

Machado’s 8 stories are woven together by their commentary on expectations placed on the female body and mind, and challenge notions of how, where, and in what context they are allowed to take up space.

Through a queer, feminist lens, Machado also challenges views on sex and female sexuality by presenting a range of experiences from complete detachment to obsession.

Earthy, rooted, yet otherworldly, Her Body and Other Parties pushes the limits of what readers expect to encounter when the open the front cover, creating a raw, strange, and intense reading experience that is sure to make an impact.  

Buy a copy here!

The Sea Cloak by Nayrouz Qarmout

Translated from the Arabic by Perween Richards

What we often need as much as hard political facts and details is true connections to those innocents who suffer the most. We debate these topics while forgetting that they are people – not chess pieces.

Through The Sea Cloak — a collection of eleven biting and honest Arabic short stories — Nayrouz Qarmout offers that connection. She allows us to replace these pawns with people. She opens the door between us and Palestine, stretches out her hand and says, “Here, come see our lives for yourself.”

Qarmout herself, a feminist journalist and women’s rights campaigner based in Gaza, grew up in a Syrian refugee camp. She has experienced life for Palestinians in almost every way that it can be experienced.

As authorities on family, women’s rights, and childhoods in Gaza go, she is arguably the foremost. And here, in The Sea Cloak, she channels her knowledge, her emotional experiences, and her insights into a collection of human stories that are, while undeniably political, more concerned with family life and childhood.

The Sea Cloak might be stories, but they are stories that bring us far closer to the real lives of Palestinians than ever a news report or a collection of data could. Beyond that, they are a full exploration of the emotional spectrum, with the ability to draw tears and laughs from us; the two actions being separated perhaps by a single page.

Qarmout has a raw gift for empathy and translator Perween Richards is able to capture every nuance and detail of Qarmout’s themes, ensuring that nothing is lost, and everything is gained.

Buy a copy here!

Heads of the Colored People by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

The stories in Nafissa Thompson-Spires’ debut collection are remarkable and disarming, these stories shine a light on the so-called colourblind, post racial United States and lay bear the trauma just beneath the surface.

Although a few of the characters pop up in different stories, each story has its own, individual take on topics like mental illness, politics, media, anger and blackness.

In Suicide Watch we spend several suffocating pages inside the head of a narcissist contemplating the best way to kill herself, while constantly getting distracted by the likes on her social media posts.

In Belles Lettres two mothers go to war via letters over how to best parent their daughters, the only two Black students in their class, while continually one-upping and not so subtlety insulting the other’s child.

And in the title story, two Black men get in a fight outside of a convention because one feels slighted by the other, and this fight has consequences that reach far beyond them.

Buy a copy here!

Apple and Knife by Intan Paramaditha 

Translated from the Indonesian by Stephen J. Epstein 

The 13 brief tales that make up Apple and Knife feel as if they were plucked from a book of fairy tales.

Paramaditha plays with the darker, more somber elements of the fairy tale model; a woman becomes a scorpion, an ancient queen hides in a modern woman’s body, a gorgeous woman hides her disfigurement to hire a lover, and a “Cinderella” of sorts cuts off her toe to fit into the lost slipper.

The horrors within these stories come from the juxtaposition between a distinctly feminine power and rage, and disfigurement, shame, and ugliness.

Drawing strength and a kind of mythic energy from menstrual blood, childbearing, and their carnal need, the women in Apple and Knife break down the unchanged patriarchal values that persist despite changes on the surface.

Subversive and sharp, Apple and Knife unearths the sinister lurking beneath the ordinary, and makes space for long-diminished female rage and magic to roam free. 

Seeking Fortune Elsewhere by Sindya Bhanoo

This is a collection of eight staggering short stories that centre around distance: geographic, familial, and emotional.

In Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, veteran journalist Sindya Bhanoo explores the connections between lovers, parents and their children, people and their jobs, and even nations and cultures.

The book’s first story focusses on an elderly upper-middle-class woman who has found herself in a retirement village, courtesy of her daughter who now lives and works in the US. She and the other residents form a hierarchy based on what country their children immigrated to.

In its second, story, an Indian professor at a US university has come under fire by the press after years of treating his Indian students like family. Some have claimed he took advantage of their closeness, getting them to do free labour for him.

This is a collection of tales that are all united by themes of distance and connection, but they demonstrate an enormous variety of emotion as people struggle with losing their parents and their children, their homes and their jobs.

These novels from Canada, Korea, UK, Japan, Argentina, and more present narratives that are unnerving, unsettling, and weird, bordering on outright horrifying.

The Most Unsettling Books from Around the World

From ghosts, guts, and gore to the twisted side of the human psyche, these stories creep under your skin and linger in your mind long after you turn the last page, each for unique and distinct reasons.

We hope you enjoy this list of some of the best unsettling books from around the world!

A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan

A Touch of Jen is one of those unsettling books that plays with the convergence of humour and horror, crafting a disturbing and monstrous modern horror story with new age spiritual verbiage and social media stalking.

Morgan’s first novel follows the relationship between Remy and Alicia, a couple obsessed with one of Remy’s ex-coworkers, the magnetic and tantalizing Jen.

The cover and synopsis of A Touch of Jen feel unsuspecting; it plays with a heightened and intense sense of femininity, and how this shapes our view of the narrative. As readers, we do not expect a novel with a baby pink cover and a woman in a compromising pose to be borderline horror.

These expectations allow the unnerving feelings to creep in, as the sheer weirdness of the events our protagonists go through begin to overwhelm our suppositions about the narrative. Light and dark, funny and sinister, darling and grotesque, A Touch of Jen is sure to give you the creeps.

Bunny by Mona Awad

Like A Touch of Jen, Bunny is also one of those unsettling books that uses the feminine in an unexpected way, making it an integral part of the grotesque imagery of the novel.

Though often classified as outright horror fiction, Bunny‘s distinct, and almost infamous, brand of horror is less about fear and more about immersion into total weirdness.

Bunny follows a group of cultish Creative Writing MFA students who call each other “bunny.” Samantha, an outsider in the program, gets sucked in by this cloyingly sweet group of women who behave, speak, and dress how we might expect little girls to.

Behind the frilly dresses, glitter, and pet names lurks something more sinister, and we as readers get to discover this as Samantha does. Creepy, strange, and anxiety inducing, Bunny combines dark academia, heightened femininity, and cultish behaviour to create a truly unnerving reading experience. 

Read More: Delectable Dark Academia Books

Foe by Iain Reid

Reid’s second and lesser-known novel Foe is full of utterly strange occurrences, twists, and eerie vibes that make it one of the best examples of truly unsettling books. Following a very average couple living a quiet life with a rural backdrop, Foe subverts readers expectations again and again.

Junior and Hen are just as confused as readers when they get a strange visitor who upends their simple existence, and catapults the story into increasingly strange territory.

While the twists are wild and unexpected, the truly unnerving parts are the moments of quietness, the unresolved, drawn out, and unanswered questions. The lack of understanding Hen and Junior feel about their situation lends to the reader’s own uncertainty, making the inevitable twists and turns that much punchier and unnerving. 

The Vegetarian by Han Kang 

Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith 

In this intensely strange and brief novel, Kang presents a layered social commentary on everything from the degradation and abuse of women, to mental illness, to our treatment of the earth. It does so much so well, considering how it is one of the shorter unsettling books.

On the surface, the novel is told from three points of view, and follows Yeong-hye, a woman for whom a dream changes her whole worldview, from a distance.

The three narrators, her husband, her sister, and her brother-in-law, present the changes in Yeong-hye through the lenses of their own biases, desires, and thoughts towards her.

Though it appears that Yeong-hye is the main character, we are never in her head, and our narrators get little to no information about her situation directly from her. This presents a unique and unsettling dynamic, in which the person which the story is about feels, more or less, like an object: an amalgamation of all that others project on her.

Whether those around her expect Yeong-hye to be quiet, self-abnegating, and altruistic, a receptacle for aesthetic and sexual desires, or view her as a child or a wounded animal, no one recognizes her as an autonomous, individual creature. Haunting, twisted, and unearthly, The Vegetarian‘s unsettling nature contains multitudes, from the characters to the moral questions and social consequences they represent.

Read More: The Best Horror Manga

Boy Parts by Eliza Clark 

Boy Parts is a masterful example of meticulously crafted suspense and unease in a novel. Clark’s fast-paced, roller coasted of a story follows Irina, a photographer whose obsessive focus is on explicit pictures of “normal” looking men: non-model types who she can more easily use and manipulate.

In many ways, Irina subverts the expectation for a female protagonist; she is unlikable at best and downright villainous at her worst. This characterisation immediately establishes Boy Parts as one of the most unsettling books you’ll come across.

She embodies character traits that are seen as masculine and positive for men, like assertiveness, dominance, and even ruthlessness. Seeing all of these traits on a woman is off-putting; it makes the reader wary of her from page one.

Yet, as with any other narrator, readers can find moments of tenderness, and can understand how trauma has contributed to Irina’s outlook and morality. Boy Parts is an absolutely unnerving reading experience, and leaves you with a myriad of social issues to reevaluate. 

The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura

Translated from the Japanese by Lucy North

The Woman in the Purple Skirt is a brief and strange novel which follows “the woman in the yellow cardigan” as she observes the strange and seemingly infamous “woman in the purple skirt.”

The plot is simple and linear, especially compared to many other unsettling books: the woman in the yellow cardigan follows the woman in the purple skirt, memorises her rhythms and routines, and observes her everyday interactions.

At first, the situation seems odd and a bit creepy, with our narrator talking little about her own life, thoughts and schedule in favor of the other woman’s. As the narrative progresses, so does the uneasiness the reader experiences; our narrator feels increasingly untrustworthy, and stranger by the page.

The unsettling nature of this novel is twofold. The detachment and distance of the narrator makes her feel unknowable, and coupled with her stalkerish obsession with the woman in the purple skirt, Imamura’s novel is sure to have you looking over your shoulder.

Read More: Best Translated Horror Fiction

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin 

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Little Eyes, like many of Schweblin’s other unsettling books, combines elements of horror and speculative fiction with real-world backdrop to create a truly unnerving novel which hits very close to home.

It centers around the worldwide usage of “kentukis,” robotic animals with cameras for eyes, which live with a “keeper,” and contain a “dweller,” whose role is to control the kentuki and observe the keeper.

Schweblin comments on how the anonymity of the internet and social media creates opportunity for aggression and exploitation without the traditional “consequences” that in-person violence can lead to.

What makes Little Eyes so creepy is its realism; it is very easy to imagine a world in which household robots that closely watch you, and have access to all of your most personal and intimate moments.  This speculative novel plays with ideas of privacy and consent with the rise of artificial intelligence in unique and truly unnerving ways.  

Read More: Best Terrifying Short Ghost Stories

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson 

The classic and well-loved novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, a pioneer in 20th-century gothic horror, is still just as unsettling today as it was in the 1960’s. In her most famous novel, Jackson plays with the supernatural and human reactions to these phenomena.

The novel follows the convergence of several characters from different walks of life, onto the famously “haunted” house on a hill, the goal being to study, categorize, and understand supernatural phenomena scientifically.

Though decidedly spooky and firmly set in the horror genre, The Haunting of Hill House contains multitudes. It is particularly notable for its rich character development and exploration throughout, and for the daringly sexually ambiguous relationship between its main female characters, in a time when queerness in most literature was erased.

The Haunting of Hill House is suspenseful, mysterious, and a slow burn that will leave you feeling unnerved.

Dead Relatives by Lucie McKnight Hardy

What better way to follow up on the legacy of Shirley Jackson than with a fantastic short story collection in the vein of Jackson’s own brand of modern gothic and u settling books.

Dead Relatives is a collection of eerie tales from Welsh author Lucie McKnight Hardy. The titular, and longest, story — Dead Relatives — tells the tale of a young girl who has always lived in her big, almost empty, country house with her mother.

Iris may be haunted, or she may simply have an overactive imagination that fights back against her boredom and isolation. She speaks to the pictures of deceased ancestors on the walls of the stairs; she feeds the dead tree on the house grounds with meat and bones from leftover meals.

The question of whether or not Iris and her home encounter anything supernatural at all is what makes this one of the best unsettling books in recent years. Not to mention the many other, far shorter, stories in the Dead Relatives collection, almost all of which utilise creepy twists to deliver chilling and unexpected endings.

Read More: Magical Books About Witches

Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enríquez

Translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell

Things We Lost in the Fire is a dark, macabre, and gothic collection of short stories that play with horrors big and small. These twelve stories follow a variety of narrators, with a focus on children and the impoverished. The supernatural is an integral part of most of the stories featured in Things We Lost in the Fire.

From ghosts and unnamed creatures to demented children and murderous adults, this collection plays with the line between the fantastical and the horrors of real life. Effortlessly blending the supernatural with Argentine traditions, folklore, and culture, each story Enríquez creates is unique, poignant, and utterly unnerving.

More articles from Haley:

• Books about Mothers and Motherhood
• Books with Unlikeable Protagonists

Novels written in the World War 2 era and during the Cold War have found relevance now more than ever before.

We’re all digging out our old copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tale, and finding ourselves struck by how they seem more like ordinary life than dystopian fiction.

But the breadth of dystopian fiction goes way beyond Orwell, Huxley, Atwood, and Bradbury. There are authors from all across the globe (most notably East Asia) crafting their own takes on the dystopian novel.

The hypnotic thing about dystopian novels in translation, more than any other fiction in translation, is that these books are drawing from their own political histories.

The Best Dystopian Novels in Translation to Read Now

Dystopian novels need to look at how their unique politics, religions, laws, and customs could be taken to extremes very different from the ones envisioned by Orwell and Huxley.

Translated literature is arguably at its most exciting and frightening within the genre of dystopian fiction. So, let’s take a look at eight of the best translated dystopian novels that are more relevant today than ever before.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses

Living in a world that is either a little to the future of, or a possible parallel to, our own, our protagonist Tejo works at a slaughterhouse which deals exclusively in human meat.

A disease is said to have tainted, and mostly wiped out, most non-human animals, and so came a period known as the Transition, wherein human meat production became an accepted norm across the world.

The humans that are bred for slaughter are not considered people, are referred to as ‘heads’, and are kept in much the same condition as cattle are today.

Therein lies the book’s first clear-cut message: to consider how modern-day battery farming, and meat and dairy production, treats non-human animals: the conditions they’re kept in; the ways they are raised, tortured, abused, and ultimately killed.

If this were the only message the book carried, it wouldn’t be adding anything new to the popular discourse. Fortunately, Tender is the Flesh offers a broader scope than that.

While Tender is the Flesh treads dangerously close to being gratuitous and unnecessarily violent at times, and its exposition never ceases to feel disconnected from the plot.

The questions and warnings it raises are ones genuinely worth sitting with and pondering on as our planet continues to diminish in a frightening multitude of ways.

Tejo’s personal story is also aggressively compelling, and it carries the book’s messages and morals expertly. It is, ultimately, those messages that make this book worth reading, and what makes it one of the best dystopian novels in translation.

Read our full review of Tender is the Flesh here!

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

Penguin Ed. translated from the Russian by Clarence Brown

Often Orwell is cited as truly carving out the genre of dystopian fiction, but he was in fact inspired by Zamyatin’s incredible Russian novel, We.

Taking place a thousand years after the Russian Revolution, which Zamyatin had just lived through, trust in the system and the government is enforced by those known as The Benefactor and The Guardian, who liberally monitor ordinary citizens (sound familiar?).

Taking this one step further, everyone lives in a home made of glass. Anyone who attempts to rebel through art or creativity is lobotomised by the government. We is a truly chilling tale and the true origin to the genre of dystopian fiction.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

This thrilling Japanese dystopian novel by The Housekeeper and the Professor author Yoko Ogawa tells the story of an island where everything is at danger of disappearing.

On any given day, something might disappear from existence – roses, perfume, ribbon, emeralds. And when they go, memories of them go, too. Those few people who can recall disappeared things are in danger of being abducted and killed by the mysterious and terrifying Memory Police.

This book wonderfully and engagingly comments on the importance of remembering our history so that we don’t repeat it. Our memories and our history are what guide our futures.

When they vanish, we become powerless. The Memory Police is pointing its finger at those nations whose governments control the media and what can be published, while also being a gripping and entertaining piece of translated literature.

Read our full review of The Memory Police

City of Ash and Red by Hye-Young Pyun

Translated from the Korean by Sora-Kim Russell

In this best of the Korean dystopian novels, City of Ash and Red, the protagonist is quickly and inexplicably transferred by his company to a country only referred to as C.

Upon arrival he finds the whole country drowning in disease and rubbish, with people being dragged into quarantine, and fear and distrust in the air.

Any fan of Kafka will recognise parallels between this tale and more than one of old Franz’s, with the key link being an overwhelming feeling of confusion, fear, and frustration.

Our protagonist seeks answers, but none are to be found. He wants to explain himself, but nobody will listen – nobody, in fact, cares.

Read our full review of City of Ash and Red

The Day The Sun Died by Yan Lianke

Translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas

In The Day the Sun Died, Li Niannian is a fourteen-year-old son of a funeral director living in a village in central China. One night there occurs a “great somnambulism” wherein all the villagers begin dreamwalking, returning to work or acting out their fantasies in the dead of night.

As seen from Li’s perspective, we the reader voyeuristically bear witness to the dreams-in-action of the individuals in the village. Darkly funny, darkly disturbing, Lianke writes with a hypnotic pace which maintains the tension that’s balanced on the edge of a knife.

Read our full review of The Day Sun Died

The Last Children of Tokyo by Yoko Tawada

Translated from the Japanese by Margaret Mitsutani

In The Last Children of Tokyo, Yoshiro and Mumei exist in a Japan in which the cities have mostly been abandoned, ties with the outside world have been cut, all other languages are no longer taught or spoken.

Many of the middle-aged people have moved to Okinawa, where they work on fruit farms which are almost completely the sole providers of food for the other islands of Japan. Tawada has, as all great dystopian writers must do, been true to her country.

She has taken a real look at the trends, habits, and laws which define Japan, and she has bent and twisted them; not so far as to distort them, but far enough to see where they might lead if left unchecked.

Read our full review of The Last Children of Tokyo

The President’s Room by Ricardo Romero

Translated from the Spanish by Charlotte Coombe

A delightfully eerie and Kafkaesque of dystopian novels, told by an unreliable narrator about a strange and uncanny place. In the suburb of a nameless town, every house has one room set aside for the president, if he comes to visit.

Nobody can enter except the president – that is, if he ever visits. Our narrator is a small boy who questions this normality, but even he can’t be trusted.

The President’s Room asks us to challenge the accepted norms when it comes to politics and our governments: the things expected of us, and the things we don’t question which, perhaps, we should.

It’s a Kafkaesque story taken to a more heavily political and radical extreme, and a fantastic example of the breadth of incredible literature coming out of Latin America right now.

Read More: 15 Romance Novels from Around the World

Palestine +100

Edited by Basma Ghalayini

Palestine +100 is a collection of science fiction stories set around 2048, one hundred years after the Nakba. Unsurprisingly, all of them are heavily political, and each in its own way. Dystopia aside, this is one of the best collections of Arabic short stories around.

The theme, subtext, and tone of each story is refreshingly individual, personal, and therefore refreshingly.

Though time and again there’s a Black Mirror parallel to be drawn, what with every writer using the broad and interpretive basis of sci-fi to paint an often bleak, sometimes eerie, occasionally funny, and always clever vision of the near future of Palestine.

(The publishers of Palestine +100, Comma Press, also published the equally impressive Iraq +100)

Dark Constellations by Pola Oloixarac

Translated from the Spanish by Roy Kesey

Dark Constellations is one of those rare visionary dystopian novels that takes the genre to new heights, ultimately exploring and questioning humanity’s insatiable hunger for knowledge and complete control.

It looks back at the 19th century golden age of scientific discovery, creates a time-bending science fiction tale which leads to a modern-day world of intense surveillance and control, as well as how science will ultimately advance the evolution of humanity itself.

A book that almost defies genre, blending dystopian themes with science fiction and dark fantasy. Here, you’ll find elements of Aldous Huxley, William Gibson, Haruki Murakami and George Orwell, all merging together to create something larger than the sum of its parts.

Dorohedoro by Q Hayashida

Translated from the Japanese by AltJapan

Dorohedoro is an oddity on this list of dystopian novels, mostly on account of it being a manga series, not a novel. But it is still dystopian and in translation, so I’m counting it.

Most importantly, Dorohedoro is also excellent. This dystopian manga is set in a far-flung future world divided in two. One place is a city called The Hole, and the other is a dimension filled with magic-wielding sorcerers who pop over to The Hole for some aggressive fun.

Sorcerers have been invading The Hole and experimenting on its citizens with magic, turning them into beastly things. Our protagonist, Caiman, is one of those experiments. Caiman has a lizard head and no memories of his pre-lizard life.

With his best friend Nikaido by his side, Caiman sets out on a revenge-fuelled mission to find the sorcerer who changed him. Along the way, bones will crunch and blood will spill.

The world of Dorohedoro is a lawless and gnarly one. The manga’s art drip-feeds remnants of Japanese society through its signage and architecture, but the dystopian world of Dorohedoro is a twisted and broken amalgamation of our own.

Further reading: The New York Times featured this engrossing story about how middle eastern authors are finding refuge in the dystopian novel.