Putting together a list of the best Jane Austen books might appear a simple task. Who doesn’t know such classics as Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion?

Jane Austen was born in the late 18th century. She’s one of the most popular and celebrated writers of all time, and her works are cited as some of the finest examples of British literature.

It’s regrettable to know that many of her works were originally published anonymously and brought her little success during her lifetime. Yet, in the decades following her death, they should influence the literary landscape like no other.

Jane Austen’s books are beautifully written, tell timeless stories and come with casts of unforgettable characters. They feature an array of themes, such as love, class difference, societal expectations, wealth and poverty, the value of family, but most of all, the role of women in society.

Her stories center on the domestic life of the landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. What made her works stand out and so influential, was that they were told from a female perspective. This was something unheard of in a, until now, male dominated world.

These female characters broke established traditions and remained beloved and celebrated to this day. While they are under strict social constraints, they showcase strength, wit, cleverness, bravery, and humor. They differ greatly from the meek and mild-mannered woman that were so common in literature at the time.

While Jane Austen is most known for her six major novels, I gave this list of the best Jane Austen books a wider focus and also include some of her lesser known works.

If you’re looking for more classic literature recommendations, I urge you to check out my list of the best books by Charles Dickens and the best Hemingway books.

Love and Friendship

What better way to open this list of the best Jane Austen books than with one of her earliest works?

Love and Friendship was supposedly written when Jane Austen was still only a teenager, no older than fourteen, and to amuse her family.

It’s a satirical take on the romance novels so popular at the time.

The story’s told via a series of letters. They are exchanged between our two main characters. One is Laura, the other is her friend’s daughter, Marianne. In these letters, Laura tells Marianne about failing in love, but as a cautionary tale about the dangers of romance.

While it’s clearly an early work and not one of the best Jane Austen books, it’s still an interesting read for fans of Jane Austen. It’s always interesting to read the earlier works of popular writers and see their often humble beginnings.

Even more interesting, however, is that even this very early work already shows Jane Austen’s disdain for many romantic clichés.

Lady Susan

Lady Susan is another early work by Jane Austen.

It’s a novella which tells a darkly funny story, and is once again written as a series of letters between different characters.

It centers on the charming Susan Vernon, a beautiful widow in her thirties. She enjoys nothing more than to toy with men for her own entertainment. She’s known to get what she wants and uses her manipulative ways to seduce every man she meets.

After the death of her first husband, she’s in financial troubles and sets out to marry off her teenage daughter, Fredrica, and to find a better man for herself.

Eventually, Lady Susan captures the hearts of two men, the married Mr. Manwaring, and her sister-in-law’s brother, Reginald. Things get complicated, however, when Fredrica, too, falls for Reginald.

Lady Susan is rather rough when compared to Jane Austen’s later works. While it’s far from one of the best Jane Austen books, we can already see her satirical humor and her female characters who stray from the norm.

Yet, these aren’t the only elements shown here that should come to define her later works. Lady Susan shows her talent at creating humorous plots, love struck characters and male antagonists who are both hilarious and annoying.

The Beautiful Cassandra

The Beautiful Cassandra is a miniature novel comprising only twelve chapters. It was written as a dedication to her older sister, Cassandra.

It’s a parody of the melodramatic, sentimental and picaresque novels of the time.

The story centers on a young, mischievous woman named Cassandra, who sets off into the world to make her fortune.

The plot follows her as she sets out on a visit to London to have a perfect day. There she commits a series of slightly criminal but joyful acts, including stealing from shops and spying on the locals.

In the end, The Beautiful Cassandra is a short and lighthearted little tale.

Once again, this is an earlier work written during Jane Austen’s youth, but once more we can see many of her later elements at play here. It showcases the irony that should so define her work, a gift for parody, a sense for the absurd, but most of all, her growing talent as a writer.

The Beautiful Cassandra might not be an outstanding work, but I still think this miniature novel is an interesting addition to this list of the best Jane Austen books.

Sanditon

With Sanditon we’re moving away from Jane Austen’s juvenilia and move right to her last, but ultimately unfinished, novel. Jane Austen passed away at only forty-one-years old and finished only eleven chapters of Sanditon.

The story follows Mr. Parker. He has aspirations of developing the small fictional sea side town of Sanditon into a bustling seaside resort and a playground for those who want to be seen.

For this, he enlists the help of the wealthy widow, Lady Dunham.

While Sanditon was, unfortunately, never finished, it still features many of the elements so common in the best Jane Austen books. It features a colorful cast of characters, is full of social criticism, witty humor and pokes fun at society’s obsession with the next new thing.

Sanditon still makes for an interesting read for those who are interested in the works of Jane Austen and who are interested in reading more than her six major novels.

The Watsons

The Watsons is a novel Jane Austen supposedly began in 1803, but abandoned in the following year and never revised. It was only her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh who eventually published it as part of a biography titled A Memoir of Jane Austen.

It tells the story of Emma Watson, the daughter of a widowed clergyman. She’s been well educated and raised by her wealthy aunt.

Her life’s good, but when her aunt remarries, Emma is forced to return to her home. She now has to live with her father, brother and sisters.

From now on, it’s Emma’s task to find husbands for her unrefined and reckless sisters.

While The Watsons is yet another unfinished novel, I still included it in this list of the best Jane Austen books. It features many elements that make it worth reading, especially a strong female lead, class division, the contrast between poverty and wealth. It’s definitely worth reading for fans of Jane Austen’s books.

Northanger Abby

Northanger Abby was the first of Jane Austen’s six major novels. It was, however, the last of them to be ever published.

Northanger Abby is lighter than most of her other later novels. It’s fun, lively, but also full of drama. It’s seen as a satire of the gothic genre, so popular at the time and a coming-of-age story.

The novel’s story follows the naïve, seventeen-year-old Catherine Moreland, who thinks herself a heroine in training. She loves and is addicted to romantic, gothic novels.

She’s one of ten children, but the only one of her siblings invited on a trip to Bath along the Allen family. There she meets Henry Tilney, a young clergyman, and falls in love with him.

When Henry and his sister invite her to their family estate, Northanger Abby, she’s delighted to leave her dull home behind. Once there, her imagination runs wild, and she imagines herself in the center of one of the stories she loves so much. For she suspects that the old gothic mansion hides a nefarious secret.

Catherine is essentially a young woman who depends on fairy tales and novels to make sense of the world around her. While one can tell that Jane Austen’s fond of her, she doesn’t shy away from mocking her, making fun of her and laughing at her. She even addresses the reader to give satirical contemplations about the events at play.

As mentioned before, the gothic novel was extremely popular during Jane Austen’s times. These novels were full of dewy-eyed and slightly dim heroines who relied on man. It was these clichés that always filled Jane Austen with contempt and Northanger Abby was her own way of digging into the genre and poking fun at it.

Overall, Northanger Abby might be the weakest of Jane Austen’s major novels, but it’s still a delight to read and not a bad book. Especially for its humor and satirical elements.

Sense and Sensibility

Sense and Sensibility was the first of Jane Austen’s six major novels to be published.

While it was initially published anonymously, it has become a beloved classic and is now considered one of the best Jane Austen books.

The novel tells the coming-of-age story of the Dashwood sisters, Marianne and Elinor, and their search for love. However, it’s also a portrayal of deep sisterly love and solidarity.

The two sisters couldn’t be more different. Elinor, the older, relies on her head and is the responsible and sensible one. Marianne, on the other hand, relies on hear heart, and is of an emotional and impulsive character.

When their father dies, they fall into poverty, have to move out of the family home and are now forced to live in a small cottage.

Before long, they both fall in love, however both relationships are doomed to fail because of their respective characters. Elinor falls for a man who’s promised to another woman while Marianne falls for an unfitting suitor who eventually leaves her behind.

These failed romantic experiences force the sisters to reexamine their perspective. Marianne has to learn not to chase fairytale love while Elinor has to lead her guard down and learn to trust into her feelings.

Sense and Sensibility is a tale that explores the problems of how to handle one’s feelings in a society that values status above everything else and is governed by strict rules. It also shows the weight on women’s shoulders so common during the time of its writing and the hardship they go through to find a good husband to support their families.

Sense and Sensibility isn’t as refined in certain aspects and lacks the focus of other, later Jane Austen novels. Yet, one can tell that it’s here Jane Austen figured out her literary skills and started on her path of mastery.

That doesn’t mean Sense and Sensibility isn’t worth reading. It’s still a fantastic novel and amongst the best Jane Austen books.

Jane Austen’s Letters

Our next entry on this list of the best Jane Austen books isn’t a novel. Instead, it’s a collection of her letters which can be seen as an intimate biography. While many biographies on Jane Austen’s life exist, this collection of letters stands out in a variety of ways.

It sheds light on Jane Austen as a person, her family and her life. The letters are organized chronologically and full of researched annotations.

In these letters, we’re shown her witty and memorable tone of voice, but also get to know her deeper thoughts and ideas.

Jane Austen’s Letters is the perfect book for those who want to learn more about her as a writer and connect on a deeper level.

It’s always an interesting experience to read biographies, but this one’s much more personal than those of other writers and akin to works such as A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf.

Jane Austen’s Letters is a delight for fans of Jane Austen but also for those who enjoy reading the biographies of writers.

Mansfield Park

Mansfield Park is Jane Austen’s third published novel. It’s her most controversial book and one that differs from the other best Jane Austen books.

It’s, overall, characterized by more mature themes. Mansfield Park’s focus isn’t on love, but on greed and recklessness. Yet, it’s still considered amongst the best coming-of-age stories of all time.

Mansfield Park centers on Fanny Price. At ten years old, she’s sent to live with her wealthy uncle and aunt, the Bertram’s, at their country estate, Mansfield Park.

Because of her impoverished upbringing, she’s mistreated not only by her uncle and aunt but also by three of her four cousins. It’s only the fourth, Edmund, who treats her kindly and who she eventually falls in love with.

Before long, however, the Crawford siblings, the sophisticated Henry and the vivacious Mary, move near the estate. While Henry flirts with two of Edmund’s sisters, Edmund himself starts a relationship with Mary. These events soon cause emotional upheaval for the Bertram family.

Mansfield Park stands out most for its heroine, Fanny, who differs from her other female protagonist. While they are usually witty, bright, desirable and know what they want, Fanny’s quite different. She stays in the shadows and quietly observes life. She’s of timid character, is silent, introverted and mouthy, but adheres to her own strict moral code. However, she’s much better at reading the people around her.

While this makes her a far more complex character and woman, many critics and even Jane Austen’s mother deemed her as too insipid.

Mansfield Park is, overall, a more serious and moral book, and one could even say a much darker book than the rest of her novels. It explores and questions what truly holds value. Is it money itself, or is it what we can do with it? Is it charm or is it goodness?

Emma

Emma is Jane Austen’s fourth published novel and another timeless coming-of-age story. For it, Jane Austen set out to create a character that no one but herself would very much like.

It’s by many critics considered a comedy of manners.

The titular character is Emma Woodhouse. She’s a spoiled young woman from the high society of Highbury. Not only is she beautiful and charming, she also thinks she knows what’s best for everyone around her. She’s also rich and has the freedom not to get married and promptly declares she never will.

Emma shows no interest in the romantic attraction given her, and instead believes herself a natural matchmaker. While she wants and believes she’s of help, she’s much too insensitive and causes chaos and misunderstandings.

Blinded by her desire to continue her matchmaking, she soon becomes entangled in a net of complicated relationships. When she makes an unforgiveable error, however, she risks even her own chance of true happiness.

This eventually forces Emma to look at herself and her own emotions. Before long, she has to realize just how naïve she is and what love means. Things get even more complicated for her when she develops feelings for her neighbor, Mr. Knightly.

The reason Emma deserves such a high place on the list of the best Jane Austen books is because of its heroine. While she starts out as an infuriating and unlikeable character, she eventually turns into one of Jane Austen’s most endearing and loveable. This is all because of Jane Austen’s skills in showcasing her thoughts and inner workings.

Overall, Emma’s adventures are nothing short of entertaining and Jane Austen wastes no time to poke fun at this unlikely heroin.

Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most popular novel. Almost everyone, no matter if fan or not, has heard of it. It’s by many regarded as the best of all the Jane Austen books.

It’s a heartwarming, historical romance that is still enjoyed two centuries after it was written. Its popularity never waned. The book always remained in print and serves massively popular amongst modern readers.

Following countless adaptions for the big screen, the book has also been adapted in another, more bizarre way, a work titled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Our heroine is Elizabeth Bennet, or Lizzy, one of five daughters living in the Longbourn estate with their parents. Lizzy is headstrong, cynical, and witty and should become one of the most famous and beloved female characters of all time.

The novel’s plot revolves around the troubles of the five Bennett sisters and the pressure of the marriage market. Their future’s uncertain since their home is bequeathed to the closest male heir.

Things change when Mr. Bingly, a young, rich and eligible bachelor, arrives in the neighborhood. Jane, the oldest and most faultless of the Bennett sisters, soon begins a relationship with him.

Accompanying Mr. Bingly is the young, aloof and proud Mr. Darcy who’s immediately attracted to Lizzy. While Lizzy’s captivated by him, she’s also repulsed by his behavior.

Pride and Prejudice is essentially a story of enemies who become lovers. We follow them as they each have their pride humbled, overcome their prejudices, and finally fall in love.

Yet, the novel is also the story of the Bennett family. For not all is well, and eventually, Lydia Bennett’s behavior threatens the family’s reputation.

Pride and Prejudice comes with a biting sense of humor and features a cast of unforgettable characters. There’s, of course, our protagonist, Lizzy, but also Mr. Collins and the rest of the Bennett family. They have become one of literatures most believed family.

While many see Pride and Prejudice as a funny and witty romance novel, it has much more to offer. It showcases the social rules of the time and how to unravel them. It also explores the tensions between truths acknowledged by society and authentic human feelings.

Pride and Prejudice is without a doubt amongst the very best Jane Austen books, and by many, considered her best.

Persuasion

Persuasion was Jane Austen’s final novel and was only published posthumously by her brother Henry.

It features another one of Jane Austen’s most beloved heroines, Anne Elliot.

Over the course of her life, Jane Austen came to express deep concerns over how society pressures and persuades young women, and this novel is a testament of these thoughts.

While Pride and Prejudice is Jane Austen’s most popular novel, Persuasion might be her most finely crafted one. Pride and Prejudice is witty, fun and entertaining. Persuasion, on the other hand, is a deeper, quieter and more realistic and mature novel. It’s a melancholic, almost lyrical story.

The novel’s plot centers on Anne Elliot, a twenty-year-old English woman. When Anne’s wealthy family falls from grace and experiences financial troubles, they are forced to rent out their home to Admiral Croft and his wife, Sophia.

As fate wants it, eight years ago, Anne was engaged to Sophia’s brother, Captain Fredrick Wentworth. Back then, Fredrick was nothing but a lowly naval officer, and Anne’s friend persuaded her to call off the engagement.

Fredrick, however, has become a wealthy man and is now famous for his war-time accomplishments. Meanwhile, Anne is a faded beauty, still unmarried and considered an old maid by the younger woman around her.

When Fredrick returns, Anne realizes she’s still in love with him and regrets ending their relationship. Yet Fredrick hasn’t quite forgiven her.

Persuasion is essentially a will-they-will-they-not type of plot. Anne suffers, and we as readers suffer with her, for Jane Austen shows no mercy and often toys with the reader’s expectations. After a series of plot twists and complications that drive them first further apart, they eventually reunite.

Persuasion is a novel that explores the strength of love and of second chances.

This is told from the perspective of one of her best heroines, Anne. She’s older and much more mature than Jane Austen’s other heroines. She’s used to disappointment, full of regret, and nostalgia, but develops tremendously over the course of the novel.

The novel also harshly criticizes society, and how easily young woman are swayed and persuaded by what’s expected of them. This makes Persuasion not only a work of fiction but also a commentary on social history.

All these elements make Persuasion the most satisfying of Jane Austen’s novels and one of the best Jane Austen books.

Urban fantasy books have a definition problem. Walk into the section and you’ll find werewolf boyfriends, vampire love triangles, and covers with leather trousers, most of it paranormal romance wearing the genre’s coat. That stuff sells, and this list isn’t it.

What urban fantasy actually means, at its root, is the collision of the mythic with the modern city: magic that has to operate inside traffic, rent, and bureaucracy. The city isn’t a backdrop in the good books. It’s a participant, with its own logic and its own appetites, and the fantastical elements have to negotiate with concrete.

That idea has a longer history than most lists acknowledge. It doesn’t start with Harry Dresden in 2000, and it doesn’t start with Bordertown in 1986 either. It starts decades earlier with writers who worked out that a modern city generates its own supernatural pressure.

So this list runs chronologically, from the 1940s to the 2010s, and every entry earns its place on one of two grounds: it shaped the genre, or it’s a serious piece of work in its own right. No romance-driven series, no paranormal boyfriends, no YA. If you want more fantasy afterward, my lists of books like Lord of the Rings and the best dystopian novels cover adjacent ground. The genre entire is on my best fantasy books list.

Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber

If you read one book to understand where urban fantasy came from, read this one.

Fritz Leiber published it in 1977 and it won the World Fantasy Award, and its central idea is the intellectual bedrock of the entire genre. Leiber invented a discipline he called megapolisomancy: the notion that large cities, by virtue of their accumulated mass, steel, concrete, electrical current, and human misery, generate supernatural forces of their own. Not spirits that happen to live in a city. Forces the city itself produces.

The novel follows Franz Westen, a writer recovering from alcoholism and his wife’s death in a San Francisco apartment building. Through binoculars he sees a figure on a distant hill that shouldn’t be there, and the book becomes a slow, dread-soaked pursuit through a city that is actively hostile.

Few urban fantasy novels are this personal: it’s semi-autobiographical, drawn from Leiber’s own widowhood and drinking, which gives the grief underneath it a weight most genre fiction doesn’t attempt.

If it sounds heavy, his 1943 novel Conjure Wife is the easier way in: a university professor discovers his wife practices witchcraft, then discovers every faculty wife does, and that academic politics run on curses. It’s funnier, faster, and nearly as influential. Start there if Our Lady looks daunting, but Our Lady is the one that matters historically. Leiber’s sword and sorcery side lives on my classic fantasy books list.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

The best executed urban fantasy novel ever written, decades before anyone coined the term.

The devil arrives in 1930s Moscow calling himself Woland, accompanied by a retinue that includes a giant talking cat with a fondness for firearms and chess. They proceed to dismantle the Soviet literary establishment through a series of increasingly deranged pranks: a magic show that showers the audience in money that later vanishes, apartments whose residents are teleported to Yalta, a bureaucrat’s empty suit that carries on signing paperwork without him.

Threaded through it is a second novel, the Master’s rejected manuscript about Pontius Pilate, and a third strand following Margarita, who makes a bargain to get her lover back and ends up flying naked over Moscow and hosting Satan’s ball.

Bulgakov wrote it in secret, burned the first draft, rewrote it, and died in 1940 without seeing it published, which is not the usual origin story for urban fantasy novels. It appeared censored in 1966 and uncut in 1973.

It belongs on any list of urban fantasy books because it does the thing better than the genre’s own practitioners: the supernatural doesn’t just visit the modern city, it exposes exactly what that city is.

The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs

A short novel from 1969 that Neil Gaiman has praised repeatedly, and one of the acknowledged influences on everything that followed.

Two wizards, Prospero and Roger Bacon, investigate a magical threat that begins as an oddity and becomes genuinely frightening. What Bellairs does that nobody had quite done is combine the domestic and the terrifying: Prospero has a cluttered house, makes tea, worries about mundane things, and then the book turns and produces images of real dread.

An honest caveat, since this list is strict about definitions: it isn’t set in a city. It takes place in an invented land with invented kingdoms, so by the letter of the genre it doesn’t qualify.

It’s here because of what it did to the writers who came after. The tone Bellairs found, magic as something that happens to ordinary, slightly shabby people in ordinary, slightly shabby surroundings, is the tonal DNA of modern urban fantasy. Read it as an ancestor rather than an example.

It’s also very short and very good, and it costs an evening to see where the genre’s tone was born.

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Little, Big by John Crowley

The great American faerie novel, published in 1981, winner of the World Fantasy Award, and a book people either revere or bounce off entirely.

Smoky Barnable walks out of the City to marry Daily Alice Drinkwater at Edgewood, a house that is somehow larger inside than out and sits on the border of another country. The novel follows five generations of the Drinkwater family across a century, as the Tale they’re all inside of slowly reveals its shape, while the City decays into something authoritarian and strange.

Among urban fantasy novels the prose here is the point. Crowley writes in long, luminous sentences that some readers find hypnotic and others find impenetrable, and the plot advances at the speed of a season changing.

Harold Bloom called it a masterpiece and put it in the Western canon, which caused some consternation among people who don’t read fantasy.

Among urban fantasy books it’s the most literary and the most demanding. It rewards patience like almost nothing else in the genre.

Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

Published in 1984, another World Fantasy Award winner, and the book that did for English woodland what Leiber did for the city.

Ryhope Wood is three miles of ancient forest behind the Huxley family home in Herefordshire, and it is very much larger on the inside. The wood generates mythagos: physical manifestations of mythic archetypes drawn out of the unconscious minds of people near it. The older the archetype, the deeper in the wood it lives. Two brothers, returned from the Second World War, are both drawn in after their father’s obsessive research destroyed him.

The idea is extraordinary and Holdstock follows it rigorously: time dilates as you go deeper, the mythagos are shaped by the observer’s own mind, and the wood defends itself against intrusion.

It’s rural rather than urban, which is worth acknowledging, but the mechanism, myth generated by a specific place and a specific population, is exactly what this genre runs on.

Bleak, strange, and one of the finest British fantasy novels of the last fifty years, urban fantasy books or otherwise.

Borderland edited by Terri Windling

The anthology usually credited with starting urban fantasy as a self-aware genre.

Published in 1986, it’s a shared-world collection set in Bordertown, a city on the frontier between the human world and the Elflands, where neither magic nor technology works reliably and their unpredictable combination is frequently lethal. The population is runaways, outcasts, halfbloods, and musicians, all of them trying to make sense of a place that resists comprehension by design.

What made it matter to every one of the urban fantasy books that followed was the sensibility. Bordertown fused fantasy with punk, with real youth culture, with actual music scenes, and it treated its young protagonists’ problems, disenfranchisement, class conflict, race, generational rupture, as serious rather than decorative.

The Bordertown books ran for decades and shaped a generation of writers, several of whom, including Emma Bull and Charles de Lint, went on to define the genre themselves.

It’s aimed at younger readers and it doesn’t condescend to them, which is why it still reads well.

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull

Published in 1987, and along with Borderland, the book that established what modern urban fantasy books look like.

Eddi McCandry’s band has broken up and her boyfriend has dumped her. Walking home through downtown Minneapolis, she’s conscripted into a war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts, whose immortal combatants need a mortal present to make their deaths real. Assigned a shape-shifting phouka as a bodyguard, she tries to assemble a new rock band while the fae wage a covert war around her.

The music is what separates it from the urban fantasy novels that copied it. Bull was a musician, and the rehearsals, the gigs, the arguments over setlists all feel lived rather than researched, which grounds the fae material in something concrete.

It’s also genuinely a novel about Minneapolis. Specific streets, specific venues, specific weather. That commitment to a real place is a large part of what the genre inherited from it.

Foundational, warm, and still one of the most purely enjoyable urban fantasy books there is.

Last Call by Tim Powers

A 1992 World Fantasy Award winner, and the most tightly constructed novel on this list.

Scott Crane plays poker. In 1969, on a houseboat on Lake Mead, he sat down to a game of Assumption played with Tarot cards, and won something he didn’t understand he was winning. Twenty years later the debt is being called in, and the game turns out to be for the position of Fisher King of the American West.

Powers works by taking real history, in this case Bugsy Siegel, the founding of Las Vegas, and the flooding of the Colorado, and demonstrating that the occult explanation fits the documented facts better than the conventional one. No other urban fantasy books attempt anything this rigorous. It’s the most rigorous magic in urban fantasy and it never announces itself as a system.

Las Vegas as a city built on chance, luck, and ritual sacrifice is a perfect subject for this treatment, and Powers is deadly serious about it.

If you like this, Declare does the same thing to Cold War espionage and Kim Philby, and is arguably even better.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Before American Gods, this was the book that made Gaiman’s name in the genre.

Richard Mayhew, an unremarkable young businessman in London, stops to help an injured girl named Door on the pavement one night. In doing so he falls out of London Above and into London Below, a city of monsters, saints, murderers, angels, and people who slipped through the cracks, where the Underground station names are literal and there is an actual Earl holding court at Earl’s Court.

The conceit is the best version of an idea urban fantasy books keep returning to: the hidden city beneath the visible one, populated by everyone the visible one discarded. Gaiman’s London Below is specific, funny, and occasionally genuinely nasty, with Croup and Vandemar among the better villains in modern fantasy.

It started life as a BBC television series that Gaiman novelized because the production couldn’t realize what he’d written, and the book is considerably better than the show.

An urban fantasy classic in the most literal sense, and it doesn’t need to stand behind his more famous work.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Gaiman’s second appearance and his most ambitious novel.

Shadow Moon, released from prison days after his wife dies, takes a job with a man calling himself Mr Wednesday and finds himself driving across America recruiting for a war. The premise is that gods are real because belief makes them real, that immigrants brought their gods with them and then stopped tending them, and that those old gods are now scraping by as cab drivers, undertakers, and prostitutes while new gods of media, technology, and stock markets rise.

Most urban fantasy novels stay in one city; the road-trip structure here lets Gaiman write America as a foreigner sees it: the roadside attractions, the dying towns, the vast dull spaces between cities. House on the Rock and Rock City work as sacred sites precisely because they’re absurd.

It won the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and Locus awards, which almost nothing does.

The novel is uneven, the middle sags, and the Lakeside subplot is better than the main plot in ways that irritate some readers. It’s still one of the defining fantasy novels of this century.

King Rat by China Miéville

Miéville’s 1998 debut, and straight urban fantasy before he moved on to the New Weird work he’s better known for.

Saul Garamond returns to his father’s London flat, goes to bed, and wakes to find his father dead out the window and himself arrested for the murder. He’s broken out of custody by a filthy, impossibly agile figure calling himself King Rat, who informs Saul that his mother was not human and that he is heir to the sewers.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin is the myth being reworked, transposed into London’s late-nineties drum and bass scene, where the Piper’s power over rats becomes a matter of rhythm and frequency. The music is integral rather than decorative.

It’s raw compared to his later work, rawer than most urban fantasy books get away with, and the prose is doing more than it can always support, but the anger and the sheer physical grime of the city are already fully present.

Miéville’s stranger and better-known work sits closer to weird fiction than urban fantasy, but this one belongs squarely here.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Published in 2004 after ten years of writing, and the most acclaimed fantasy debut of its decade.

Magic has been gone from England for centuries, studied by gentleman theoreticians who have never performed any. Then Mr Norrell, a reclusive Yorkshire scholar, demonstrates that he can actually do it, and sets about restoring English magic on his own timid, controlling terms. Jonathan Strange becomes his pupil, then his rival, and the two of them pull something back into England that neither can manage.

Clarke writes in a pastiche of nineteenth-century prose, complete with a running apparatus of scholarly footnotes that contain some of the best material in the book: half-remembered folklore, biographies of medieval magicians, and the long shadow of the Raven King.

It’s not urban in the sense most urban fantasy books are, but Regency London is a genuine character, and the book’s central subject, magic as an institution being negotiated by committees, publishers, and government ministers, is the most sophisticated treatment of the genre’s core idea anyone has managed.

It won the Hugo and the World Fantasy Award and is nearly a thousand pages. Worth every one.

Storm Front by Jim Butcher

The book that created modern commercial urban fantasy as a category, published in 2000.

Harry Dresden is Chicago’s only professional wizard, listed in the phone book under Wizard, perpetually broke, and consulted by the police when cases stop making sense. His current job involves a missing amateur magician and two bodies whose hearts have burst from their chests, with no weapon that could have done it. Then the police start looking at him.

The formula, hardboiled private detective plus functioning magic system plus a city rendered with real specificity, is now so standard across urban fantasy books that its origin gets forgotten. Butcher executed it first and executed it well.

Being honest about it: Storm Front is the weakest book in the series by a wide margin. The prose is rough, the plotting is loose, and Harry’s attitude toward women is a running problem in the early volumes. The series improves enormously from around book three and becomes something considerably more ambitious.

It’s here for what it started, and because the Dresden Files at full strength is one of the genre’s real achievements.

Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

Published in Britain as Rivers of London in 2011, and the best police procedural the genre has produced.

Peter Grant is a probationary constable destined for the Case Progression Unit, which means paperwork, until he takes a witness statement from a ghost. Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the last officially sanctioned wizard in England, takes him on as an apprentice, and Peter begins working cases involving the personified spirits of London’s rivers, a malevolent theatrical entity, and a series of attacks that end with faces falling off.

What sets it apart from other urban fantasy novels is that Peter approaches magic like a scientist and a copper simultaneously, running experiments, worrying about procedure, and filling out the correct forms. The comedy comes from bureaucratic friction rather than quips.

Aaronovitch’s London is the real one: specific boroughs, specific tensions, specific history, with the multicultural city treated as a fact rather than a theme.

The first book is overstuffed with plot. The characters and the voice more than carry it, and the series has run for over a decade since.

Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

The nastiest book on this list, published in 2009, and a useful corrective to anything too whimsical.

James Stark was sent to Hell alive by his own magic circle, spent eleven years as a gladiator killing demons for the entertainment of the damned, and has just escaped back to Los Angeles with a very specific list of people to visit. He is not a nice man and the book has no interest in redeeming him.

Kadrey writes in a voice that owes more to hardboiled crime and grindhouse cinema than to other urban fantasy books, and the Los Angeles here is all heat, bad food, and the sense that the city was always a little demonic anyway.

There’s no romance arc, no chosen-one prophecy, and no attempt to make the supernatural community charming. What there is instead is momentum, a genuine mean streak, and some very funny dialogue.

If the genre’s cozier corners have worn thin, this is the antidote.

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley

Published in 2012, and the funniest book here.

A woman wakes in a London park, surrounded by bodies wearing latex gloves, with no memory of who she is. In her pocket is a letter that begins by explaining that the body she is occupying used to belong to the letter’s author. She is Myfanwy Thomas, a Rook in the Checquy, Britain’s secret agency for supernatural threats, and her predecessor knew her memory would be wiped and left detailed briefing documents behind.

The premise gives O’Malley an engine no other urban fantasy novels have used: the protagonist learns the world at the same rate the reader does, via internal memos.

The Checquy itself is the joke that carries the novel. It’s a supernatural organization run as an actual British civil service, with grade structures, expense reports, and interdepartmental politics, and the bureaucratic detail is funnier than any amount of banter would be.

Among recent urban fantasy books it’s the one that best understands that the genre’s real subject is administration: what happens when the impossible has to be filed, budgeted, and managed by people who’d rather go home.

More in Fantasy

Dystopian literature is a genre of speculative fiction that has become massively popular over the last decade and a half. It’s no surprise dystopian books are enjoyed by a massive fan base.

While dystopian books were popular in the 19th and 20th century, their popularity has grown significantly in recent years. Our very own world seems on the verge of change because of a multitude of factors. There’s war, climate change, economic chaos, the pandemic, energy shortages and much, much more.

The most fascinating aspect and what always brings readers back to dystopian books is their setting. They always draw from our own world and mirror its elements, such as, amongst others, our society, politics, religion, and technology, and distort them. They essentially present us with a world similar to our own in which one or more of these elements have gone horribly wrong.

While some dystopian books explore apocalyptic events and their aftermath others, many focus on such issues as the decile of society, social issues, dehumanization, injustice and inequality.

Many writers have written about dystopian versions of our future. There’s such classical writers like George Orwell and H. G. Wells, but also contemporary writers such as Suzanne Collins or Kazuo Ishiguro.

What makes dystopian literature such an interesting genre might be the fact that these books show us that, however bad things are, they could be much, much worse.

The best dystopian books, however, are those that serve as cautionary tales and comment on the problems of our very own society, and where they could lead us.

On this list, I included both classics and newer books, and also a few young adult books. All of them, however, are worth reading.

If you’re a fan of general science-fiction, you might also want to check out my list of the best science-fiction books and my list of books like Dune.

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman

Noughts & Crosses is the first dystopian book in an award-winning novel series. It’s garnered widespread popularity and was adapted for TV in recent years.

The novel depicts a fictional 21th-century dystopian Britain split by race. In this world, white Noughts are treated as an inferior race while black Crosses are born into privilege and perceived as superior.

The novel’s plot follows two friends, Sephy and Callum. While Sephy’s a Cross and the daughter of a powerful politician, Callum is a Nought, poor, and merely exists to serve Crosses.

Against all odds, however, the two of them chose each other and their love.

It’s a powerful story that reverses traditional racial stereotypes. It’s a story of friendship and love, but a love that threatens the very fabric of society.

Noughts & Crosses is an interesting dystopian book and gives as an entirely new, and uncomfortable look at the very real racial problems in our society. It’s very worth reading.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick’s science-fiction masterpiece that inspired the movie Blade Runner.

It presents us with a post-apocalyptic setting and the resulting dystopian society. Following a nuclear war, the ‘World War Terminus’ huge parts of the world are uninhabitable because of radiation poisoning.

Because of this, real animals have become scarce. Instead, artificial creatures have been created to resemble those made of flesh, including humanoids.

The plot revolves around Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter, who’s tasked with killing six Nexus 6 model androids who escaped from Mars.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is an action-packed novel full of vivid and imaginative world-building. We witness a devastated world, a futuristic setting, strange psychological tests to identify androids and social status determined by the number of natural animals one owns.

The major theme of the novel, however, isn’t one about society. Instead, the novel talks about the nature of AI, the future it could lead us to, and what makes us truly human.

It’s a fantastic novel, one I highly recommend to any fan of science-fiction, cyberpunk, but also dystopian books.

Battle Royal by Koushun Takami

When Battle Royal was first published in Japan, it proved massively popular and developed a cult following. Because of its fantastic movie adaption, the novel also became a hit with Western audiences.

It’s a Japanese thriller novel set in a fascist Japan and tells the shocking story of the titular Battle Royal program.

Each year, fifty third-year junior high classes are randomly selected. The students of each class are then kidnapped and dropped off at a remote location. They are provided weapons and provision and forced to kill each other until only one of them remains.

The novel’s story centers on the students of Shiroiwa Junior High School. Shuya Nanahara, our narrator, decides not to ‘play the game,’ as he refers to it and instead to protect his friends.

Battle Royal is an action-packed novel that features one of the most disturbing scenarios ever created. It also features a fantastic cast of characters, including Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa, Shogo Kawada and, of course, Kazuo Kiriyama.

While the novel was first seen as nothing but pure exploitation and shock-value, its status has now changed. Nowadays, it’s often regarded as the Lord of the Flies of the 21th century and one of the best dystopian books out of Japan.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

This classical dystopian book was written in 1951 and is set in a post-apocalyptic world.

One day, a large part of the world’s population is blinded by a meteor shower. What’s even worse, however, is the rise of a huge, locomotive, venomous plant species known as Triffids that roam the Earth and hunt down humans. The few humans who haven’t been blinded now have to find a way to survive.

The Day of the Triffids is a classical catastrophe novel that inspired countless other, similar novels and terrified an entire generation.

Over the course of the novel, it becomes clear that the Triffids might have been genetically modified. This fear of biological weapons came from a certain rumor popular during the time of its writing. It stated that the Soviet Union was experimenting with manipulating nature to do its bidding.

The most interesting aspect about The Day of the Triffids, however, lies in its antagonists. In a post-apocalyptic world, plants and nature are usually seen as a symbol of restoration and hope. Not so in The Day of the Triffids.

The novel’s major theme is the twisted nature of biological warfare and serves as a cautionary tale about the twisted horrors it might create.

It’s a great novel for fans of dystopian books and classical science-fiction alike.

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Uglies is the first installment in the Uglies series and presents us with a very interesting idea for a dystopia.

The novel’s set in a world of extreme beauty in which everyone whose normal is considered ugly.

It tells the story of a young girl named Tally who’s about to turn sixteen. She can’t wait for it because it means she’ll finally undergo an operation that will turn her from an Ugly into an extremely pretty person, a Pretty. Once she’s pretty, she’ll be able to enter a high-end paradise of endless fun and leisure.

Before long, however, Tally has doubts about this strange system and eventually joins a colony of her fellow Uglies.

Scott Westerfeld’s dystopian book is social criticism at its finest. It showcases our obsession with beauty and attractiveness and our prejudice against those who aren’t.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake is the first novel in Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy.

It’s set in a world in which humanity has been destroyed by a plague. We get to know Snowman, who believes himself to be the last human on Earth. He spends his days in this post-apocalyptic world surrounded by Crakers, a humanoid species created by his friend Crake.

He eventually embarks on a journey to find answers through what was once a great city and has now returned to wilderness.

As the book continues, our protagonist reminisces in his past and his role in the apocalypse is slowly revealed.

Back in the day, he and his friend stumbled upon the dark side of the internet. This act of childish curiosity should change their lives forever.

In their adult years, the world’s population is destroyed by a plague and those who survive it are set on creating genetically better humans. It’s Snowman, then known as Jimmy, and his friend Crake, who were at the center of this development.

Oryx and Crake is a dystopian novel that’s quite different from Margaret Atwood’s other dystopian book The Handmaid’s Tale.

It’s a story about the effects of our childhood on our adult years. It also serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of genetic modification.

Oryx and Crake will leave you disturbed by how plausible a scenario it presents. While not the most popular of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian books, it’s still very much worth reading.

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula K. Le Guin is not only a giant of modern literature, but also dystopian literature.

The Dispossessed is part of the fictional universe of the Hainish Cycle, which comprises seven novels, but can be read as a standalone.

The novel features two worlds, Anarres and Urras. Shelk, a brilliant physicist, lives in the utopian world of Anarres. He attempts, however, to reunite Anarres with his home of Urras.

Urras, however, is a civilization full of war, poverty, and, of course, capitalism. He tries to show the people of Urras a better way to live, but soon realizes it might be for the best if Anarres remains its own state.

It’s quite interesting that The Dispossessed is by some called a utopian novel. Its major themes center on the contrast between the freedom of an anarchic society and one that’s constrained by capitalism. Yet, it’s an ambiguous story, one that hides more below its surface than one might originally think.

Nothing much needs to be said about this dystopian novel. It’s written by a master of the genre and should be read by any fan.

Borne by Jeff VanderMeer

Borne is Jeff VanderMeer’s eighth novel and in it, he presents us with a strange, but intriguing version of the future.

The stories set in a nameless city which is left in ruins by ‘the Company,’ a biotech corporation.

Rachel’s a young girl who makes a living scavenging the ruins for products made and left behind by the Company. One day, during a mission, she and her partner discover a strange creature. It’s nothing but a green lump, tangled in grizzly fur. She takes the creature home and names it ‘Borne.’

Soon enough, however, the creature reveals mesmerizing shape-shifting abilities. This event should change her life forever.

Borne’s a novel that’s strange and bizarre. It showcases an ecologically ravaged world and serves as a cautionary tale against the dangers of biotechnology.

VanderMeer’s writing is as unconventional as the story, and might take some getting used to, but it’s worthwhile. Borne’s without a doubt amongst the best dystopian books in recent years.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

While George Orwell’s known mostly for his other dystopian novel Nineteen Eight-Four, Animal Farm is also massively popular.

Who doesn’t know the line ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’

Animal Farm’s a classic fable with a lasting lesson. It centers on the animals at Manor Farm. Dissatisfied with their human owners, they stage a revolt and drive them out. At first, all seems well, and the animals enjoy their newfound autonomy. Soon enough, however, another sort of tyranny replaces that of the humans, one that might be even worse.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm shows us how revolutions can go wrong and how their outcome might not bring the change people long for so dearly. In this Animal Farm’s case, it’s a clear criticism of the Soviet Union and the totalitarian regime it became.

What’s most interesting, however, and what makes it work so well, is George Orwell’s choice to not use human protagonists, but animals. Each one of them represents a specific subset of the population.

While it’s a short book, and rather on the nose, it’s still amongst the best dystopian books with a lasting message.

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells is one of the first true science-fiction novels ever written and one of the first portrayals of time travel in literature.

While it may not be entirely a dystopian novel, it still presents us with a dystopian version of the future.

During the Victorian era, a scientist develops a time machine and travels to the year 802,701 AD. He discovers Earth has become a utopia and humans have evolved into the childlike Eloi. He spends his time with them and learning about the development of humanity.

When his time machine vanishes, he’s forced to travel down into the deep and ominous tunnels below the surface. He soon discovers there’s another race descended from humans, the cannibalistic Morlocks.

The Time Machine’s major theme is that as brilliant and dazzling as a society might appear, it always has a dark underside to it. The novel also establishes many tropes of the time travel genre, especially its unexpected side-effects that have since become a staple of the genre.

It’s a fantastic novel with a great, convoluted and twisted plot. It’s a late Victorian era masterpiece and one of the most popular science-fiction books of all time.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is an allegorical tale set several thousand years in the future.

It’s another novel set in a post-apocalyptic world, but one dominated by religious fundamentalism. It’s essentially a new technological dark age after the collapse of civilization. However, some humans have developed telepathy.

The story’s set at Labrabor, whose inhabitants believe that ‘normality’ is the key to preserve their world. Anything that goes against it will cause the wrath of God to come down on them. Therefore, they’ve become eugenicists and kill or banish anyone who differs from them. This, of course, includes people with telepathic powers.

The story revolves around David, the son of a devout man and authority figure and his cousin Rosalind. We soon learn that the two of them have telepathic powers. As they grow older, it becomes harder and harder for them to conceal their powers.

Eventually, they face a dilemma. Wait for discovery and risk death, or flee into the ever-changing and dangerous Badlands.

The Chrysalids is a critic of religious fundamentalism. It showcases the persecution, intolerance, social exclusion, and discrimination such a world could bring. It’s yet another book that gives us an eerie prediction of what our real-life society could be headed towards.

The Chrysalids is often considered John Wyndham’s best book. It’s faced-paced and suspenseful, but also thought-provoking. A great read for anyone looking for dystopian books.

The Drowned World by J. G. Ballard

The Drowned World is one of the earliest works of climate fiction, a subset of the dystopian literature genre.

In the year 2145, the world’s changed and wide spread parts of it have become uninhabitable because of global warming. Many of the cities of Europe and America have become submerged and many animals around the globe have mutated.

The Drowned World’s plot centers on Dr. Robert Kearns, whose part of a group of scientists that must survive in an environmentally devastated London. The city’s changed into a primordial jungle populated by giant lizards, dragonflies and other insects. Things only get worse, for Dr. Kearny is soon beset by strange dreams.

The Drowned World is an adventurous novel that takes us on an unlikely journey. Yet, the novel’s more than a mere adventure. It paints a vivid picture of the dangers of global warming and what its changes would do to the human psychology.

What’s most interesting, however, is that the novel was written back in 1962, but it’s more relevant today than ever before. Another great read.

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games Trilogy is a vastly popular series of dystopian books and probably the most popular young adult novel series of all time.

It’s a bestseller that’s already regarded as a classic of young adult literature.

The series is set in the totalitarian nation of Panem that was once North America. It comprises a lavish capitol, which rules its surrounding twelve districts with a cruel hand.

Each year, two teenagers, a boy and a girl, are chosen as tributes amongst the population of each district to join the annual Hunger Games.

The titular games are a death battle in an arena with only one winner. This winner earns riches and resources for their district. The entire ordeal, however, is done for the entertainment of those living in the capitol and broadcast live to the entire population.

When her sister gets chosen, Katniss Everdeen of the thirteenth district volunteers to go in her place. She must now train and figure out how to survive in the arena.

This is only the plot of the first novel, however. In the subsequent entries of the series, Katniss and others eventually decide to pick up the fight against the capitol itself.

The Hunger Games Trilogy features a variety of themes. Amongst them are class division, the decadence and disregard of the ruling class, and the power of love even in the direst circumstances. It also harshly criticizes the popular genre of reality TV.

Once more, the dystopia depicted in The Hunger Games doesn’t feel too far off. Following war, new civilizations emerge. Who’s saying it couldn’t be like that of ancient Rome, which served as the inspiration for Panem.

Overall, the Hunger Games are a fantastic young adult series and a fantastic trilogy of dystopian books. This is especially owed to their protagonist Katniss, who serves as a role model for female readers of all ages.

Blindness by José Saramago

In 1998, José Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Blindness was one of the works mentioned by the committee.

The novel’s set in the year 1990. Overnight, a large percentage of the population of an unnamed city wakes up unable to see. The cause for this is never explained.

From this point onward, the city’s inhabitants have to figure out how to handle this new condition. Order soon disintegrates, food runs scarce, and criminals exploit the situation. Before long, surveillance is heightened and quarantines for those suffering from the condition are imposed.

Blindness is a disorienting read which uses its language and writing style to mimic the lives of the city’s inhabitants.

The novel showcases the fragility of human society and serves as a cautionary tale about how quick things could fall apart. More so, it sheds light on the violence and heartlessness that’s already at play in our society. Yet, it also shows the importance of solidarity and compassion in dire situations.

Blindness is José Saramago at his best. The novel features a unique scenario brought to life by fantastic imagery. Clearly another one of the best dystopian books out there.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

One of the most popular novels by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro.

It’s a coming-of-age tale that’s both powerful and exploratory.

The novel brings with a caretaker, Kathy, who’s in her thirties and reminisces about her childhood.

In the 1980s, she attended an English boarding school called Hailsham. The students were well-cared for, but taught nothing about the outside world.

When Kathy and her two friends, Ruth and Tommy, eventually leave the school grounds, they discover what Hailsham really is.

Never Let Me Go was named by Time as the best novel of 2005. It’s a dystopian book about sacrifice, impermanence, and what it means to be human. It focuses on the question of morality in an age of rapidly developing medical technology.

Its relevant themes and its simple yet emotional writing make it a great read for fans of dystopian books.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin

We’s a novel that was written in the early years of the Soviet Union and was published in New York in 1923. It’s an early example of a dystopian novel and is said to have inspired both, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.

It’s set 1000 years in the future in a utopia. This utopia’s called OneState and comprises a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines.

It’s a totalitarian society and everyone’s under constant surveillance. The citizens live their lives devoid of passion, creativity and even emotions. Everyone’s given up on their individuality and instead of names, people are only known by numbers.

One day, D-503, a mathematician who dreams only in numbers, discovers he can do and think differently. It isn’t long before he becomes involved in a resistance group.

The most interesting part about the novel is to witness how our protagonist discovers feelings and relationships with others. It also sheds light on the strange conventions of the totalitarian rule, and, of course, the consequences of going against it.

We’s fantastically written, and its prose helps to establish the novel’s setting and mood. It features abrupt, dry language which helps us to not only identify with the narrator but also the situation he’s in. However, it paints a vivid picture of the bleak world he lives in.

We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is without a doubt a classic amongst the many dystopian books out there, and a must-read for any fan of the genre.

The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand’s probably the greatest novel Stephen King’s ever written.

While the novel’s an absolute doorstopper, it’s often advertised using a few short sentences:

‘First comes the days of the plague. Then come the dreams. Dark dreams that warn of the coming of the dark man.’

At the novel’s outset, a patient infected with a hyper-contagious strain of super-flu escapes a biological testing facility. The resulting epidemic wipes out ninety-nine percent of the world’s population.

Soon enough, normal society collapses, survivors struggle, and warring factions rise. This, however, is all just the beginning.

While Mother Abigail strives to create a peaceful enclave for the survivors, Randall Flagg, the ‘Dark Man’ revels in chaos and violence. Soon enough, those similar to him flock to his side.

Stephen King uses the point of view of various characters to showcase the struggles of survival as they travel to their respective destinations.

The Stand features a variety of fantastic characters. There are Mother Abigail, Larry Underwood, Randall Flagg, and, of course, Donald Elbert, the Trashcan Man.

The Stand’s simply a masterpiece, and one of the greatest dystopian books out there.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower is one of the most iconic dystopian books out there.

It’s a science-fiction classic set in a disintegrating Los Angeles in the 2020s. It’s a grim, terrifying version of the future. Climate catastrophes have led to scarce resources and global anarchy has arisen.

Lauren Olamina tries her best to survive with her family in this devastated world. Yet, she’s also got to deal with a condition known as hyper empathy. It makes her hyper aware of the pain of others. In a city full of drugs, disease, war, water shortages and despaired people, there’s no end to her suffering.

The novel presents us with a world in which a functioning society is a thing of the past. By now, there’s only sorrow left. Yet, it also shows us the hope people cling to even in the direst situations.

While the novels told from a youthful narrative voice, the novel’s story itself is deep and emotionally mature.

The Children of Men by P. D. James

Originally written in 1992, the novel has become widely popular, more so after its movie adaption in the mid-2000s.

It’s a fantastic, dystopian thriller in which humanity has become infertile. No children have been born in twenty-five years and the last generation has reached adulthood.

Civilization’s slowly falling apart and despair and suicide are commonplace. This deterioration has gone so far that members of this last generation are even allowed to get away with murder.

In this world, we meet the Oxford historian Theodor Faron. He’s given up all hope. This changes when he meets Julian. He and his group of revolutionaries hold the key to the survival of humanity.

The Children of Men is a story about morality, tyranny, but also hope. It also focuses on another problem, that of depopulation.

The most interesting aspect about The Children of Men is the scenario it depicts. While most dystopias or apocalyptic novels rely on war, catastrophe, a pandemic or even aliens and monsters, it depicts an end of the world that’s far more conventional, yet frighteningly possible.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Published back in 1953, Fahrenheit 451 is another classic amongst the many dystopian books out there.

It’s interesting to note that the book was inspired by the Red Scare of the 1940s in which America was under the thump of anti-communist hysteria.

The novel, however, is set in the distant future in which books are banned and intellectual thought is illegal. For this reason, firemen are tasked with the burning of books so the totalitarian regime can control what the members of society learn.

This society mostly comprises people of short attention spans who are constantly bombarded by brainless media.

Our protagonist, Guy Montag, works as a fireman. Things change when he meets a neighbor with a different opinion on the value of books. He soon steals books from the burnings and slowly questions not only his occupation, but society itself.

Fahrenheit 451 is a shockingly interesting book. While it’s unlikely, that books will ever be banned completely, it’s a cautionary tale on where censorship might lead us. Another interesting aspect is the presentation of brainless media consumption and mundane life without critical thinking, which is a theme that seems more relevant today than ever before.

While Fahrenheit 451 was an important book at the time of its writing, it feels even more relevant today because of the rise of Big Data.

It’s definitely a classic and one well worth reading.

The Giver by Lois Lowry

The Giver’s an award-winning young adult classic and a coming-of-age story.

It’s set in a society devoid of social problems. It’s a perfect world without fear, war, or pain. Yet, it’s also one without choices. It’s a mundane paradise and essentially a colorless world.

The novel’s plot revolves around the twelve-year-old Jonas who’s chosen as a Receiver by The Giver. This means he has to memorize his community’s history. While he learns about the past, he soon realizes his society isn’t the perfect utopia he was taught. It’s the Giver who only holds the memories of true pain, but also the true pleasures of life.

It’s interesting to note that the book was both widely taught, but also banned for various reasons. These include introducing youth to suicide, sexual awakening and the loss of innocence.

The dominant theme of the book, however, is knowledge. What happens when only a select few can have it? Other themes include the dilemma of growing up and the struggle between individual freedom and security.

The Giver’s widely regarded a classic amongst dystopian books and has inspired many others.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange is regarded a classic and widely popular, especially because of its fantastic movie adaption by Stanley Kubrick.

It presents us with a dystopian, violent and nightmarish version of the future. In this world, youthful dissatisfaction with society is on the rise and has caused a spike in violence.

The novel’s plot revolves around the fifteen-year-old Alex, the leader of an ultra-violent gang. He and his crew commit all sorts of violent deeds as a form to rebel against society. Those acts include not only robbery but also rape and murder.

Eventually, Alex is arrested, and put into a reeducation program. There, he’s forced to undergo therapy to quell his violent urges and to be ‘corrected.’

One of the most interesting aspects about A Clockwork Orange is ‘Nadsat,’ the youthful slang Alex and his friends use. It’s not merely a specific vocabulary, but an entirely made-up language which borrows heavily from both Russian and Shakespeare.

The novel’s biggest themes are those of freedom, free will, psychological manipulation, and, of course, the alienation of youths in a society that doesn’t care about them.

A Clockwork Orange has proven to be highly influential and gave birth to a variety of phrases such as droogs and ultraviolence.

While it can be a rather brutal and violent novel, it’s another fantastic dystopian book.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

The Power is another dystopian novel full of social criticism and features an interesting reversal about patriarchal powers.

Five thousand years in the future, society is dominated by women. A male author decides to write a piece of historical fiction detailing how things changed and how women came into power.

One day, in the 21th century, teenage girls across the world discovered that they had what should become known as ‘The Power.’ It refers to an electric charge which allows them to cause horrible pain and even death. They soon learn how to awaken this power in older woman as well. This strange power changes the entire world, and soon men are no longer in charge. As a new order forms, the question remains if things will be better from now on.

As we read on, the novel interesting intertwines the stories of various women from different parts of the world. This allows us to see various scenarios about how the balance of power was shifted.

The Power is essentially a ‘what-if’ scenario. Its major themes are that of power, how it corrupts us, and how it’s abused. It also serves as a cautionary tale about going too far to right a wrong.

It’s a clever, disturbing and, at times, darkly humorous novel. Yet, it’s not a comfortable read. There’s no utopia here, no equality. Instead the book shows only one thing: it’s not men nor women, it’s humans.

The Power is another fantastic dystopian book, one that puts its focus on woman’s oppression, but also systematic inequality.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Station Eleven is a fantastic dystopian novel about the enduring power of art.

After a famous actor dies on stage, a deadly flu epidemic wipes out most of civilization and changes the world forever.

The novel centers on a young woman who’s part of a traveling theater group. They visit small communities who’ve survived and perform for them King Lear. Yet, more troubles to come.

The most interesting aspect about Station Eleven is the way it’s told. It moves back and forth in time to show us normalcy before the epidemic started and the altered world that exists twenty years later. To do this, it showcases the lives of various characters. They include the aforementioned dead actor, his wife, a paparazzi who tries to save him, his close friend and a young aspiring actress who witnessed it.

This entire story, however, is held together by the theme of theater.

Station Eleven is a novel full of imagination and world-building. We witness what people remember, what remains of the old world and what changed. This approach gives it almost the feeling of a nonfiction account.

The novel’s dominant theme is the enduring power of art, but also the power of relationships between people and how they help us get through everything, even the end of the world. It also explores what it means to be human in a world that’s lost everything.

It’s not an easy novel to read and its theme of theater might not be for everyone. What it does, however, is show us what extreme conditions can do to human beings. It’s, however, one of the best dystopian books out there.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is another vastly popular dystopian novel and one of the bleakest ever written.

It’s considered a contemporary classic and won McCarthy the Pulitzer Prize.

The Road is set in a post-apocalyptic America. It’s a world devoid of life where no hope remains. The few strugglers still alive scavenge and fight for the little resources left.

In this world, a father and son travel hoping to reach the coast to make a better life for themselves. They are looking for an end to their suffering and a better life, one that lies at the end of ‘the road.’

What’s interesting to note about The Road is we never learn what caused the end of the world. Yet, as in all good fiction, we don’t need to know what happened to witness its effects.

The Road is a bleak, melancholic and dark novel, one that’s utterly depressing, but ultimately shows how good conquers evil.

When reading The Road, one has to wonder how one would act in a situation such as this. Would we be compassionate or would we give into our individuality, competitiveness and our darkest urges?

The Road is a highly memorable read, especially because of Cormac McCarthy’s beautiful prose and unconventional style. It’s a modern classic and amongst the best dystopian books ever written.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale is by many regarded a classic of feminist dystopian literature. While it was published in 1985, it remains relevant today and feels even more so given the current political climate.

The novel’s set in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian, religious state which was formerly the United States. It emerged following a nuclear war, which left large parts of the population infertile.

In this world, women are subordinate to men, have no rights, no control over their bodies and are forbidden from reading. They are wives, mothers or handmaids.

Handmaids is the term for the few fertile women who remain and who are forced to breed.

One of them is Offred. She’s sent to the house of The Commander and his wife. Her sole reason for existing is now to bear the Commander’s child. Month after month, she prays to become pregnant, yet things slowly escalate.

The Handmaid’s Tale’s written in Margaret Atwood’s typical, unconventional style. It also features alternating storylines to present us with all parts of this nightmarish but complex universe.

It’s a scenario that’s disgustingly possible, especially given what’s currently happening in certain parts of the world. The world of The Handmaid’s Tale’s a hellish version of America which might nowadays not be too far off.

The Handmaid’s Tale is without a doubt one of the greatest dystopian books ever written and a fascinating look at not only a dystopian society but also gender discrimination.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four simply can’t be missed on a list like this.

Who doesn’t know about Big Brother or the famous, contradictory statement ‘War is Peace.’

The novel’s set in a totalitarian future. Earth is divided into three continental-sized nations who are perpetually at war with one another.

The story’s set in the totalitarian nation of Oceania in a province that was formerly known as Great Britain. Everything and everyone’s slave to this tyrannical regime led by The Party. Surveillance and censorship run rampant and free thinking is known as ‘thoughtcrime.’

Our protagonist, Winston Smith, works at the Ministry of Truth and rewrites history to fit the needs of the party. Yet, he’s not fond of the totalitarian world he lives in. It’s one of demand and absolute obedience and every aspect of his life is under the watchful eye of Big Brother, the symbolic, omnipotent head of the Party.

Before long, however, he’s contacted by his superior, an Inner Party official named O’Brian. He tells Winston he’s part of an underground resistance group known as the Brotherhood.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is a chilling portrayal of the dangers of manipulation, surveillance and censorship until the truth doesn’t matter or doesn’t even exist anymore.

It features a variety of terrifyingly interesting ideas. There’s, of course, the massive propaganda, but also concepts such as the rewriting of history, the changing of language, government-controlled media and even the indoctrination of children to survey their own parents.

Nineteen Eighty-Four shines with its meticulous and scary world-building. It can be considered one of the most terrifying, bleak and depressing novels ever written. It’s a story in which there’s no hope, no victory, only servitude and eventually, everyone will one day love Big Brother.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is another one of the most famous dystopian books ever written and my all-time favorite.

The novel describes a scenario that’s strangely realistic and frankly said, frightening. It was inspired by the utopian novels of H. G. Wells, but has been twisted into a caricature of them.

It’s set in the year 2540 in a technologically advanced future and an idealistic utopian society.

Humans aren’t born anymore, but are genetically engineered and bred in artificial wombs. They go through childhood indoctrination before they are assigned to a specific cast. This cast is predetermined by their genetic make-up and level of intelligence.

In this society, wars and conflict are a thing of the past and everyone’s happy. Yet, intellectual pursuit has given way to complacency. There are no long-lasting relationships. Should anyone feel doubt, be unhappy or even depressed, it can all be fixed by a drug called Soma.

Our protagonist, Bernhard Marx, is a member of the Alpha cast, yet he grows more and more uncomfortable with society. The plot, however, only truly starts when he visits a savage reservation. There he meets John, a man born naturally who grew up knowing nothing about the real society.

Brave New World might be described as a utopia, but it all comes at a cost. It’s a cold, uncaring world full of numbing drugs and indoctrination. Concepts such as love, care, compassion and even families are a thing of the past.

Brave New World features a variety of themes. The most prominent, however, are the ones of genetically engineering, the abuse of pharmaceutical drugs, indoctrination, blind consumerism and the disregard of intellectual pursuit.

Another important theme is that of individual freedom and freedom of expression. We see this especially in the story of John.

Brave New World is probably one of the most disturbing dystopias, given how realistic it appears. Even nowadays, with streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify, amongst others, we can consume endlessly and give into the illusion of happiness or at least complacency.

It’s a fantastically well-written novel with interesting characters and without a doubt amongst the greatest dystopian books ever written, if not the greatest.

Charles Dickens is one of England’s most beloved writers. He’s by many regarded as arguably the greats and most influential novelist of the Victorian era. Thus, many books by Charles Dickens are rightfully declared classics.

Many critics recognize him as a literary genius, but he’s also received praise from many other literary titans. His works were beloved by such writers as Leo Tolstoy, George Orwell, G. K. Chesterton and Tom Wolfe.

Books by Charles Dickens are known for their complex themes. They often focus on such issues as social concerns, labor conditions, poverty, childhood cruelty, but also love and friendship. What he’s most known for, however, are his stark portrays of the underclass in Victorian London, highlighting the wealth gap and the class struggles that so marked it.

It’s interesting to note that Charles Dickens himself grew up in misery and suffered much hardship in the earlier years of his life. When he was no older than twelve, he was forced to work ten hours a day at a factory.

Yet, he should become one of England’s most celebrated and prolific writers. Over the course of his career, he wrote fifteen novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories, and various articles and essays.

Even today, books by Charles Dickens remain widely read. His works never went out of print, he remains one of the most-sold writers even today, and a Tale of Two Cities is regarded as one of the bestselling novels of all time.

When Charles Dickens published his second book, The Pickwick Papers, serialized from 1836 to 1837, he rose to fame and became England’s most popular writer and should remain so until his death in 1870.

His influence on the literary landscape was so huge that his name, similar to that of Franz Kafka, became a term. The word ‘Dickensian’ describes works reminiscent of those by Charles Dickens. These works focus on themes such as poor social and working conditions, class struggles and other elements he’s known for.

Ever since I read A Tale of Two Cities more than a decade ago, I’ve been a great fan of books by Charles Dickens.

While most fans of classical literature will, without a doubt, know A Tale of Two Cities, and his other most popular works, I also think many of his lesser-known works are worth reading. If you’re interested in the works of other classical writers, I urge you to check out my lists of the best Mark Twain books and the best Hemingway books.

For this list, however, I want to focus almost entirely on his novels and provide you with a list of the twelve essential books by Charles Dickens.

The Old Curiosity Shop

The Old Curiosity Shop is one of Charles Dickens’ earlier works, yet it contains one of his most vivid characters.

This book by Charles Dickens revolves around the orphan Nell Trent, who lives and works with her grandfather at the titular shop.

Their troubles begin when her grandfather gambles away what little money they have. This gives one Mr. Quilp the opportunity to take possession of the shop and evict them.

Nell’s good-natured and virtuous and to save herself and her grandfather from Quilp, the two of them embark on a journey that the leads them out of London.

It’s her hope to find a better life for themselves, but throughout the journey, Nell grows progressively weaker. Even worse, Quilp is coming after them.

While many books by Charles Dickens can be rather sentimental, The Old Curiosity Shop took things to a new level. Even Charles Dickens himself described it as a work that glorifies Victorian sentimentality.

It’s interesting to note that the novel was even read by Queen Victoria, who famously described it as ‘very interesting and clever written.’

While not one of Charles Dickens’ most popular or well-known works, The Old Curiosity Shop is definitely worth reading. It’s a fantastic novel that combines beautiful descriptions of landscape and London cityscape with a depiction of how terrible a place Victorian England could be.

Our Mutual Friend

Our Mutual Friend is often regarded as one of the most sophisticated and complex books by Charles Dickens. It’s also the last novel he ever completed.

When a man named John Harmon dies, his fortune passes on to his servants Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, for his estranged son is presumed to be dead.

They take in a woman named Bella Wilfer, who was supposed to marry John Harmon’s son. At the same time, they hire a young man to be their secretary. It’s soon revealed there’s more to this young man and Bella, who’s still set to marry for money, seems to have a strange connection with him.

Our Mutual Friend is a novel with a vast cast of characters and various subplots. It features a group of friends, employees and even estranged family members who all try to manage one man’s fortune. Chaos unfolds.

The novel centers on a mystery of mistaken identities, but also features emotional generosity, violent drama and rich humor. Its central theme, however, is the power of money, how it can corrupt people and what it pushes them to do.

Our Mutual Friend might not be the most well-known or popular of the many books by Charles Dickens, but his many themes and multi-faceted plot make it very worth reading.

Hard Times

Hard Times is Charles Dickens’ tenth novel. It’s rather untypical for a novel by him since it’s a short book of only about three-hundred pages. It can be seen as a satire on the harsh social and economic conditions of the time.

Its set in an imaginary town named Coketown. It’s a place consumed by soot and smoke of heavy industrialization and that depends on the exploitation of its many workers.

The novel’s plot concerns one Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant. He devotes his life to the philosophy of utilitarianism. This leads him to a no-nonsense approach in both education and parenting. He raises his children, Tom and Luisa allowing them no fanciful or imaginative pursuits.

This harsh upbringing leads to them suffering in their later adult life. While Luisa lets her father decide her marriage using statistics, his son Tom has his own ideas about life and falls into delinquency.

Yet, the novel also focuses on the lives of the many workers who don’t profit from the economic boom following the Industrial Revolution. It showcases its readers the reality of worker conditions and makes them acknowledge them.

Hard Times is a novel that focuses heavily on social and moral themes. Utilitarianism was a philosophy that was popular, but Charles Dickens criticizes it heavily. He makes it clear to us that there’s more to human life than reason. There’s heart and imagination as well.

Hard Times is Charles Dickens’ harshest and most on-point critique of British Industrialization and explores the correlations between morality and capitalism. For this reason alone, I believe it’s one of the many books by Charles Dickens definitely worth reading.

Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby was Charles Dickens’ third novel.

Once again, it’s a novel that deals heavily with the class struggles of the Victorian era.

While it can be a grim novel, it might, overall, be the most high-spirited out of all the books by Charles Dickens. It also harshly criticizes the Yorkshire schools which many families sent their unwanted children to.

The story begins with the death of Nicholas Nickleby’s father. Following this, his mother and younger sister, Kate, have to give up their comfortable life in Devonshire. They travel to London to get help from their only reality, Ralph Nickleby, Nicholas’ uncle. Ralph, however, is a cold and ruthless man and has no desire to help them. Even worse, he hates Nicholas.

To save his family from financial ruin, he embarks on his own journey and begins work at Dotheboys Hall school in Yorkshire. The board master, Wackford Squeer, however, makes his life a living hell, even after he escapes. It’s here he also befriends Smike, another boy and also a victim of Squeer’s.

Yet, the novel isn’t as bleak as it sounds. When Nicholas and Smike flee from the school, they run into the Crummles traveling trope and join them.

This, however, isn’t all there’s to this novel.

What’s interesting to note is that Charles Dickens paid visits to many of the Yorkshire schools to do research and learn about their harsh conditions. His resentment of these schools, however, might also stem from his time at the Wellington House Academy in Camden Town. He describes it as a terrible experience.

Overall, Nicholas Nickleby is another fantastic book by Charles Dickens. It might be one of his earlier novels, but his literary genius is already visible.

The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers is Charles Dickens’ very first novel and second overall book. It’s considered one of the most decisive debuts in English fiction.

It chronicles the comical adventures of an eccentric but good-hearted man named Samuel Pickwick, his servant Sam Weller, and a group of friends known as the ‘Pickwick Club.’ Those friends include Tracy Tupman, Augustus Snodgrass and Nathaniel Winkle.

Yet, The Pickwick Papers is not a traditional novel. It’s rather a collection of nineteen loosely linked adventures, episodes and tales.

It follows the Pickwick Club on their various day-trips out of London and around England. During their time, they befriend everyone they meet, become heavily drunk and get entangled in many strange situations. In the end, however, things somehow always work out.

It’s a book that’s as hilarious as it’s sentimental. It establishes many of the elements Charles Dickens should become known for. The Pickwick Papers features many ironic situations, an English setting, a cast of eccentric characters and an examination of upper and lower class tensions.

Overall, The Pickwick Papers is an early example of Charles Dickens’ satirical style and it serves as a perfect introduction to his body of works.

Little Dorrit

Little Dorrit is probably the most powerful of Charles Dickens’ major works and also one of his most personal.

When Charles Dickens penned Little Dorrit, he drew from his own childhood experiences. His father, too, was imprisoned for debt and a young Charles Dickens had to fend for himself. One can also assume that the power-hungry businesswoman Mrs. Clennam was modeled after Charles Dickens’ own mother, who he grew to hate.

Little Dorrit is essentially a satirical critic of England’s legal and court system, its bureaucracy and the uselessness of the debtor’s prison.

In the novel itself we encounter Amy Dorrit, the youngest child of her family. She was born and raised in London’s Marshalsea prison because her father was imprisoned for debt.

Eventually, because of an inheritance, her family becomes one of wealth. Amy Dorrit also encounters one Arthur Clennam after he returns from a twenty-year absence to start a new life.

Little Dorrit is a rags-to-riches epic that once more showcases the strict class divide in Victorian era society.

Over the course of the novel, characters prevail, mature and many of the situations they encounter resonated deeply with readers at the time.

Not much needs to be said about Little Dorrit. It’s a masterpiece and one of the most powerful books by Charles Dickens.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol is the only novella on this list, but one can’t help but include it in a list of the best books by Charles Dickens.

It’s probably the most popular and well-known Christmas story of all time and one of the most famous books by Charles Dickens, if not the most famous.

Not much needs to be said about it. Everyone’s familiar with the unpleasant and grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge who hates the Christmas holiday. When he’s visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, however, he recognizes the errors of his way, changes and becomes a kind man.

It’s both a beautiful tale of redemption and a critique of Victorian society.

A Christmas Carol is a tale that reminds us to be kind to one another, to help the poor and those in need, especially during the holidays.

A Tale of Two Cities

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

Who doesn’t know this famous opening line?

A Tale of Two Cities is Charles Dickens’ most well-known work of historical fiction and one of the best-selling novels of all time.

Yet, it’s, again, rather uncharacteristic of a book by Charles Dickens. It’s shorter than most of his other works, and his usual humorous and satirical elements are almost entirely missing.

It’s set before and during the French Revolution and set in both London and Paris. While it may not be historically accurate, it’s still a vivid portrait of one of history’s most tumultuous periods.

The novel features one doctor Manette who was wrongfully imprisoned in the Bastille for eighteen years. When he’s released, he sets out to live with his daughter, Lucie. They reunited in Paris and travel back to London to start a new life.

Lucie eventually falls in love with Charles Darnay, a Frenchman who takes a stance against the poor treatment of the lower class. Because of this, the family’s once more trust in danger for the rest of Darnay’s family might not share his ideals. Soon enough, they realize no one’s safe and fear and suspicion are abound.

A Tale of Two Cities is a masterpiece that’s beautiful told from beginning to end. If you want to read Charles Dickens at his best, read A Tale of Two Cities.

Oliver Twist

Oliver Twist is the second novel Charles Dickens wrote and the one that cemented his role as a social critic of the era. It’s, by many, seen as his first proper social novel.

The titular character of Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse. As an orphan, he’s sold into apprenticeship for an undertaker. Soon enough, he runs away, travels through London and joins a group of young pickpockets. The groups led by an elderly criminal named Fagin, who draws homeless boys into a life of crime. Yet, Fagin himself is under the thump of the villainous criminal mastermind, Bill Sikes.

While thrown into horrible circumstances, our hero Oliver always remains hopeful and pure while we follow him on his unlikely journey.

Oliver Twist is a novel full of unusual friends, unexpected kindness and larger-than-life villains.

Yet, it can be a dark novel at times and Charles Dickens never describes events through rose-tinted glasses. Its themes heavily concern child labor, domestic violence, the recruitment of children as criminals and the life of street children in the Victorian era. It exposes the terrible treatment of orphans, how poverty forces children into horrible circumstances and the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution.

It’s a novel that’s part pleasure, part education, but always exciting. While I highly recommend it to anyone, it’s especially great for children. It’s also a perfect introduction to books by Charles Dickens.

Bleak House

Bleak House is, by many, considered being the greatest of all books by Charles Dickens. At the same time, however, it’s criticized by others for its strange narrative choices, the meandering plot and the many subplots and characters.

It’s a satire of the slow, corrupt process of the law, especially the Court of Chancery, where cases could be dragged out for years. It’s also a heavy critique of the 19th century English society as a whole.

The novel’s plot details the inheritance case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, which is so complex it has been drawn out for generations. It’s a larger-than-life court case about who’s inheriting the vast family fortune.

Bleak House features a vastly complicated plot full of twists, ploys, murders, secrets and spies. It’s a fantastical novel that’s at times comical, at others profound.

Over the course of the novel, we’re introduced to a vast cast of characters. We meet, amongst many others, the feisty Esther Summerson, Sir Leicester and Lady Deadlock who live in a stately home in Lincolnshire, and also the poor crossing sweeper Little Joe.

Bleak House also contains many of the elements so common for books by Charles Dickens. It features characters from all parts of society, a vivid description of London, satirical elements, and, of course, social criticism.

While I enjoyed Bleak House immensely, it’s not a novel for everyone. Many fans of books by Charles Dickens might highly enjoy it, but others might find it as bleak as the title suggests.

It can make for some challenging reading. It’s a convoluted and gratuitous satire of the Court of Chancery, which was characterized by its convoluted and gratuitous nature.

Overall, though, Bleak House is a stark contender for Charles Dickens’ greatest novel and everyone should try reading it at least once.

David Copperfield

David Copperfield is another one of the most-famous books by Charles Dickens. It’s often heralded as his greatest literary triumph and he himself considered it his magnum opus.

It was highly admired by many other writers, including Leo Tolstoy and Franz Kafka. Even Virginia Woolf, who was not a fan of Charles Dickens’ works, praised David Copperfield.

It’s a highly autobiographical novel, as one can note by the initials of the main character. The novel’s essentially a combination of Charles Dickens’ own life and fictional accounts.

Written as a first person narrative, the plot details the trials and tribulations of its titular character from infancy to maturity.

David Copperfield’s father is long dead at the outset of the novel, and he’s still very young when his mother, too, dies. While Charles Dickens blamed his parents for the miseries of his childhood, it’s David’s stepfather, Mr. Murdstone who takes on this role in David Copperfield.

Over the course of the novel, we witness David’s struggles through childhood and adolescence until he starts a successful career as a novelist and gets married.

David Copperfield features a vast cast of characters, but the most memorable among them are the glamorous Steerforth, the unlucky but cheerful Mr. Micawber, Betsey Trotwood, David’s eccentric aunt, the wicked Mr. Murdstone and, of course, the villainous Uriah Heep.

The biggest themes of the novel are personal growth and change, but one can also tell that it’s a work that helped Charles Dickens himself to grow and confront his own life.

David Copperfield features many of Charles Dickens’ usual elements. It talks about class structure, the criminal justice system, child labor and the status of woman in society.

Another core theme, however, is the question if one can leave behind their roots without becoming corrupted by either the past or newfound advantages.

David Copperfield is also a more serious and much more personal book by Charles Dickens. It’s here we can witness his style change from juvenile and humorous to more mature and serious.

What’s interesting to note is that David Copperfield is not a character of special importance. It makes him very different from the usual, larger-than-life protagonists of other novels at the time.

Not much more needs to be said about David Copperfield. It’s one of the best books by Charles Dickens, a masterpiece and simply a joy to read.

Great Expectations

Great Expectations is yet another coming of age story. It’s the tale of a young boy who sets out to become a gentleman.

It’s one of the most popular books by Charles Dickens and by many considered his finest work.

The novel’s plot follows the orphan Pip. While born into humble beginnings, he sets out to escape the lower class.

In his youth, he often visits the bitter Miss Havisham who was left at the altar. She brings up her beautiful, adopted daughter Estella to hate men. It’s no other than her that Pip falls heavily in love with.

To prove himself to her, he begins to work for a blacksmith, and soon lives in London with the help of a mysterious benefactor.

Yet, his heart gets broken when Estella marries someone else and he has to realize that ‘great expectations’ might not come to play out.

This, however, is merely a part of the novel’s intricate plot.

Great Expectations is the tale of a young man who’s been persecuted and deceived, but whose goodness of heart always remains. It’s this that rescues him from falling into snobbery and delusion.

The novel features a fantastic and memorable cast of characters. There’s, of course, Pip, our protagonist, but also the larger-than-life convict Magwitch, the sinister Miss Havisham, the good-hearted Joe and the beautiful, but cold Estella.

Great Expectations is a romantic, heart-warming tale with quite a few plot twists. It’s probably the finest and most moving of all books by Charles Dickens.

It’s a perfectly crafted novel about love, loss, and class divisions and worthy of the number one spot on this list.

Mark Twain is often called the Great American writer and to this day, he remains one of the most important figures of the American literary tradition. Many Mark Twain books are regarded as classics and remain required reading even today.

Mark Twain was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in a small riverside town in Missouri in 1983 and raised in Hannibal. This town should later become the setting for his most famous novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Mark Twain is a man who’s known for being controversial, brilliant and witty. He forever changed the landscape of American literature and even other literary titans speak of him in the highest tones.

William Faulkner termed him ‘the father of American literature,’ while Hemingway famously said, ‘All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.’

Yet, Mark Twain wasn’t only famous for his river novels. He’s also known for his essays, his travel writings, his social commentary and his autobiographical writing.

He’s regarded as one of the greatest writers, storytellers and humorists of all time.

Over the course of a life full of travel, he wrote twenty-eight books and over one hundred short stories.

Even today, his social commentary and criticism of American politics and society remains relevant. Many of his quotes remain widely shared, especially in today’s age of social media.

While The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is often the first thing that comes to mind when people hear the name Mark Twain, he’s got much more to offer as a writer. If you’re, however, looking for other recommendations, I’d recommend you checking out my list of the best Hemingway books.

For this article, I put together my very own list of the fourteen best Mark Twain books that have earned their place on every reader’s bookshelf.

Following the Equator

Following the Equator is Mark Twain’s last work of travel writing. It’s a global travelogue in which he criticizes imperialism both in the countries he visited, but also at home.

In the early 1890s, Mark Twain’s career had gone sour. Following a series of poor investments and bankruptcy, he embarked on an international speaking tour. This trip, lasting from 1895 to 1896, allowed him to travel the world and visit the various countries of the Victorian British Empire.

He visited Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa and shares the oppression, superstition, racism and ignorance he witnessed.

One can notice that this is one of his later works. Mark Twain seems older and sadder than in his earlier works. His sense of observation and his wit, however, remain as sharp as always.

Following the Equator is a work that comprises loving sketches of the places he visited and is full of lovely prose, humor, irony and plenty of political incorrectness.

While he criticizes many of the foreign cultures and customs he witnesses, he also criticizes the tendency of American society to export their values to ‘lesser’ peoples.

While Following the Equator is one of his lesser known works, it’s still a fantastic piece of travel writing and one of the best Mark Twain books.

The Innocents Abroad

When Mark Twain grew up, he used every chance he got to travel the world. This passion is especially visible in his earlier works, like The Innocents Abroad.

The book became a bestseller during his lifetime and remains one of the most popular travelogues ever written.

The Innocents Abroad showcases Mark Twain’s talent as a travel writer and documents his journey through the Middle East and Europe with plenty of humor. He visits the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Vatican, the Sphinx and many other places. He describes each of them in his typical humorous fashion and shows his wit by pointing out their peculiarities and political incorrectness.

While The Innocents Abroad is regarded as a non-fiction book, the truth might lie somewhere between fact and fiction. One can tell that many of the stories are a bit too fantastical and are clearly enriched by Mark Twain.

What’s most interesting about this work, however, is that it gives us insight into Mark Twain’s younger days. What we see here is a young, witty and idealistic man who’s merely started down the road to become one of literature’s Greats.

The Innocents Abroad is not only one of the most popular travelogues ever written but also one of the best Mark Twain books.

The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County

While this work’s a short story, it deserves its place on a list of Mark Twain books. It’s without a doubt the most popular amongst the over one-hundred short stories Mark Twain has written over the course of his life and brought him nationwide attention.

Originally published under the title ‘Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog,’ it details a story in which a man’s stuck in a one-sided conversation. His interlocutor’s a man who loves the sound of his own voice, barely lets the narrator get in a single word and tells endless, but ultimately pointless, stories. Eventually, the man wraps it all up with the story of a jumping frog.

While it’s a short story and thus much shorter than the many other works on this list, it remains a perfect example of Mark Twain’s brand of humor.

The Prince and the Pauper

The Prince and the Pauper was Mark Twain’s first attempt at writing historical fiction.

It’s a story set in 1574, and follows two boys born on the same day and of nearly identical appearance.

One is Tom Canty, a pauper who lives in Offal Court of Pudding Lane in London with his abusive and alcoholic father. The other boy’s a price, namely Edward VI of England, son of Henry VIII of England.

The two of them trade places to experience the other’s life. Now the prince is living in poverty and the poor boy lives in fear of discovery. Both are now desperate to make it in the world of the other.

The Prince and the Pauper is as clever and witty as you’d expect from a Mark Twain book.

While it’s regarded as a children’s book, it’s commentary on social inequity and not to judge others by their looks makes it a great read for adults as well.

The Prince and the Pauper is definitely a Mark Twain book that’s worth a look and a must read for fans of his work.

A Tramp Abroad

‘A man who keeps company with glaciers, comes to feel tolerably insignificant by and by.’

From this quote, one can tell that A Tramp Abroad is another work of travel literature, but one mixed with many autobiographical elements.

It’s a sequel to The Innocents Abroad, and this time Mark Twain’s referring to himself as a tramp and not as innocent anymore.

The book was inspired by a fifteen months long trip across central Europe and across the Alps from 1878 to 1879.

It highlights his journey through central and southern Europe with a friend named Harris, a character he created for the book. The two of them travel through Germany, the Alps and Italy.

Even from the chapter titles alone, one can tell how humorous a work A Tramp Abroad is.

The chapter titles include “Alp-scaling by Carriage,” “Chillon Has a Nice, Roomy Dungeon,” and “Why Germans Wear Spectacles.”

It’s a highly entertaining travelogue full of social criticism about the Germans, the Swiss, the Americans and the English.

What’s interesting about A Tramp Abroad is that it’s much more introspective than his former travel writings, including many of his personal thoughts.

Overall, A Tramp Abroad is a fantastic book, especially for its commentary and I regard it recommended reading for anyone interesting in travel writings or Mark Twain books.

Life on Mississippi

Early in his life, Mark Twain had aspirations of becoming a steam boat pilot. That’s where his pen name originates from. Mark Twain is originally a term that signifies a depth of two fathoms or twelve feet, which is a safe depth for riverboats.

Life on Mississippi is essentially a memoir and piece of travel literature. In it, he details his younger days as a steam boater on the Mississippi before the Civil War.

It paints a colorful picture of the Mississippi area, including notes on the river and many towns alongside it.

Life on Mississippi also includes a retelling of a trip Mark Twain took from New Orleans to Saint Paul years after the Civil War. In it, he describes the many changes he witnessed along the river.

The book is both a travelogue and a historical account of the Mississippi river.

Overall, it’s a brilliant piece of non-fiction, a great travelogue and another fantastic Mark Twain book.

The Gilded Age

The Gilded Age was Mark Twain’s first attempt at writing a novel and was co-authored by Charles Dudley Warner.

As the story goes, it was apparently a result of a bet the two of them set with their wives.

It’s a sharp satire that paints a realistic picture of post-Civil War America, American manners and morals. What’s interesting to note is that the title refers to the three decades following the Civil War and essentially coined the term.

The Gilded Age can be seen as a great example of political criticism. It specifically targets the inner workings of Washington, D. C.

It pokes fun at political figures, opportunistic businessmen and the general hysteria at play in the capital. The book especially criticizes the politics and the rampant corruption of the post-war years.

Its cast of characters comprises crooked politicians, plutocrats, pretentious bankers and naïve bystanders.

It’s a lovingly written novel which is accompanied by humorous illustrations depicting both the politicians and speculators that drove American politics.

Yet, the work also serves as a cautionary tale and remains relevant even today. It depicts the influence money has over the American government.

If you’re solely interested in Mark Twain’s part of the novel, stick to the first eleven chapters of the novel. Overall, The Gilded Age is a highly memorable novel and a Mark Twain book that captured an entire period in American history.

The Mysterious Stranger

The Mysterious Stranger is a work which was only published posthumously by Mark Twain’s biographer and was unfortunately never finished.

It’s regarded as one of Mark Twain’s darkest works and was written after much heartbreak and disappointment in life. It represents a departure from his earlier humorous writings.

The book contains many of Mark Twain’s musings on man’s dual nature and the battle between God and Satan for our lost souls. It’s a contemplation of human nature and a critic of many aspects of organized religion.

The novel’s plot revolves around a group of boys in sixteenth-century Austria. One day, a mysterious stranger shows up in their town. Soon enough, however, it becomes clear that the man might indeed be the devil.

By the end of his life, Mark Twain was a beaten man and concluded that we’re all flawed creatures. The book showcases his cynicism and disillusionment with humanity and that none of his earlier humor and carefreeness remains.

While it’s regarded as one of his lesser works and is much darker than others, it’s still a fantastic Mark Twain book.

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson is essentially a work on racism in America.

It revolves around two boys who look nearly identical. One’s born into slavery because of his 1/32 black ancestry. The other’s white and born to the master of the house.

The first boy’s frightened mother, a slave, switches the babies to give her son a path towards success and respectability. As a result, the two children live reversed identities. Yet, each one of them grows into their destined roles in society.

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, however, also comes with a fantastic support cast that’s as interesting and eccentric as we’re used to from Mark Twain. I especially came to love David Wilson. Every scene he was in was a delight to read.

At first glance, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson might seem nothing but an entertaining novel, but it’s much more. It’s a witty, clever and expertly woven commentary on slavery and racism.

It brilliantly covers the zeitgeist of white versus black, good versus evil. Yet, it also shows Mark Twain’s darkening outlook on life.

The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson is another fantastic Mark Twain book, one that feels as relevant today as it was during the time it was written.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is a pinnacle work of satire and a fantastic time travel novel.

Mark Twain was supposedly inspired by reading Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. His idea was to mix the notions and habits of the present day with the necessities of the times of King Arthur.

It tells the story of Hank Morgan, an engineer who’s thrown back in time to the year 538 AD and the court of King Arthur. The results, of course, are as disastrous as they are humorous. Soon enough, his shenanigans run rampant at court.

He challenges the great magician Merlin, and using his modern-day inventions and scientific discoveries becomes the prim sorcerer at court.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court essentially showcases the contrast between feudal monarchy and democratic values in the most humorous of ways.

Yet, the book can also be seen as a cautionary tale against our tendencies to romanticize the past, and even questions the ideals that became dominant after the Industrial Revolution.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is another fantastic and funny Mark Twain book, but once again, deeper messages are hidden inside of it. It’s very well worth reading.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain

Mark Twain’s autobiography is another one of the Mark Twain books only published posthumously. This one, however, by his own express wish.

While Mark Twain had tried to write an autobiography himself, he could never complete it.

In the last years of his life, however, he would dictate to others or talk to a Stenograph. From these notes, an autobiography was eventually created.

Yet, Mark Twain’s autobiography differs widely from those of others. It’s not in chronological order since he talked about whatever came to his mind. It’s a stream-of-consciousness patchwork of memories, anecdotes, tales and his personal philosophy.

During his life, Mark Twain experienced the gold rush, The Civil War, the Reconstruction and its decline and even the onset of the American Indian Wars. He also endured heartbreak, bankruptcy, but also traveled around the globe.

Mark Twain’s autobiography is full of the wit and genius that made him such an endearing writer. Many of the stories detailed in this work are remarkable.

This book, however, also gives us a unique look at the man that was Mark Twain. He shows us his brilliance and his experiences, but also his flaws and his short attention span.

The Autobiography of Mark Twain is a last testament to how exception a writer and human being he was. It’s without a doubt a Mark Twain book anyone interested in the man should read.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is one of the books Mark Twain is most well-known for and one of his most-beloved works.

While its original publication was a commercial failure, it eventually became a bestseller during his lifetime.

The novel contains a bit of everything: treasure hunts, disappearances, true friendship and young love. What it’s most of all, however, is a coming-of-age tale for the ages.

The story’s set in the 1840s. It follows a boy named Tom Sawyer who lives on the shore of the Mississippi river with his Aunt Polly in the town of St. Petersburg.

Tom Sawyer is a troublemaker, a romantic and a dreamer. His mischievous adventures often land him in trouble. He even falls for Becky Thatcher, the new girl in town and daughter of the local judge.

When he confesses to her, however, he gets humiliated and plans to run away from home. He soon befriends another boy, Huckleberry Finn and from then on, their troubles double. This culminates in them witnessing a murder at a graveyard which forces the boys to run away from home.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a must-read for anyone who loves American literature, coming-of-age stories or those depicting underdogs.

It’s even more wry than its sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. What makes it such a delight to read, however, is Mark Twain’s ability to tap into the minds of children and convey them to his readers. He captures both their youthful innocence, but also their general disrespect for all grown-ups.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a fantastic starting place for those who’ve read no Mark Twain books.

Roughing It

Roughing It was inspired by Mark Twain’s experiences as he traveled through the American West and the Pacific Isles.

It takes place during the years 1861 and 1867, when he traveled with a stagecoach with his older brother Orion.

It’s Mark Twain’s second book and the sequel to The Innocent Abroad and a semi-autobiographical memoir full of humorous stories about his own life and the Wild West.

In this book, Mark Twain shares one of his earliest adventures.

A young Mark Twain set out to mine gold in California. For this, he traveled from town to town in Nevada, to California and eventually Hawaii. During that time he mined gold in California, worked as a prospector, a reporter, a mill worker and a lecturer.

To bring forth all these tales, he often consulted his brother’s diary. Yet, he also used those notes for the occasional imaginary tale to entertain his readers.

We learn, amongst other things, of a near-death-experience, of deadly spiders, volcanos and a humorous encounter with Mormons.

While Roughing it is still a bit rough, especially when compared to his later works, it’s here Mark Twain began to hone his craft. Many of the elements that made his later works so endearing can be found here. They’re his witty observation of the most trivial things, the entertaining plot, his humor and his love for traveling.

It’s another earlier Mark Twain book, but one that gives us an interesting picture of his earlier days both in life and as a writer.

Roughing It is by many regarded as essential reading for fans of Mark Twain, American literature and travel literature.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is by many critics called the Great American novel. It’s by many considered the apex of Mark Twain’s writing career and skill. Even Ernest Hemingway praised it in the highest tones and famously said it’s where all American literature began.

It’s a deep-felt portrayal of boyhood, but also a satire of Southern society, particularly their attitude towards race.

In this sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, a 13-year-old boy flees his abusive home. Together with a runaway slave, he sails south on the Mississippi on a rugged draft.

Both of them are trying to break free, Jim from being a slave and Huck from the constraints of society. Throughout their travels, the two of them meet various people and get entangled in comical adventures. They encounter con men, witness fake deaths and even raging family feuds.

What’s most prevalent throughout the work, however, is Huck’s goodness and his disdain for racial prejudice.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an endearing, rich narrative of a boyhood adventure. What makes it such an interesting and enjoyable read, however, is our protagonists struggle to defy society.

Similarly to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, it’s regarded as an adventure novel, but it’s also a commentary on the ugly side of society.

It’s all these parts: the humor, the adventure, the youthfulness of Huck, the troubles of Jim and its social commentary that have elevated The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the place it has today.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a novel for anyone, not only for fans of Mark Twain books or for American literature. If you haven’t read it yet, I urge you to do so.

Haruki Murakami is one of the most popular and widely read contemporary Japanese writers and for a good reason. The best Murakami books are read by millions of dedicated fans.

While he’s a Japanese writer, he’s heavily influenced by Western culture. This makes his novels an interesting blend of Wester pop-culture references and Japanese culture.

What he’s most known for are his books of magical realism, which are full of weird, absurd and surrealistic elements. Yet, he often uses those to outline the problems of our contemporary society.

His strange, magical adventures often bring to light deeper themes, such as isolation, finding happiness and identity. Many of his novels center on our urge to explore ourselves and to understand the inner workings of human identity. They are a mixture of surrealistic fantasy and a discussion of human nature.

To do so, Murakami plunges his characters into metaphysical realms, dreamscapes, the unconscious and even the afterlife.

As much as I love Murakami’s works, I can be a bit divided on him. I’ve got a strange relationship with his works. While I enjoy some of his books massively, there are others I truly disliked.

Those are, however, a few outlines and I enjoy most of his works. It’s the strange mixture of easily digestible prose, serious topics and the myriad of strange, surreal and weird elements he employs. It’s a sense of otherworldliness that surrounds his books and that always draws me back to him.

If you’re looking for absurd novels or magical realism, you could do much worse than to pick up his books.

Murakami has written both fiction and non-fiction as well as short story collections. For this list of the best Murakami books, however, I want to focus solely on his fictional novels.

1Q84

1Q84 is probably Murakami’s most widely read book, reaching one million sales after publication.

While the setting might push it into the realm of science-fiction, it’s essentially a romance and mystery novel.

The book focuses on two different characters.

One is Aomame, a woman who works as a fitness instructor and doubles as an assassin who kills male perpetrators of domestic abuse. The other is Tengo, a math teacher and copywriter.

At the outset of the novel, Aomame realizes strange discrepancies in the world around her. She soon realizes she’s entered a parallel world, one she terms 1Q84, the Q representing a question mark.

Meanwhile, Tengo takes on another job as a copywriter. Because of this, however, he becomes entangled not only with the work but also with its unusual writer. Soon, his normal, mundane life changes.

Before long, our two characters’ lives converge.

Like other Murakami books, 1Q84 focuses on a variety of themes, but the most prevalent is that of religious groups, their power and the damage they can cause. 1Q84 focuses on a fictitious religious cult called Sakigake, which is trying to establish a connection with the spirits of the Earth, the Little People.

1Q84 is the single Murakami book I really didn’t enjoy. The story was typical Murakami and all his strange, unusual elements were there, yet the book didn’t work out for me.

The biggest problem was the length and the pacing. At almost a thousand pages, the book felt way too long, became tedious and repetitive. A lot of times, it felt like the plot wasn’t moving forward and instead, certain points were brought up again and again.

I still included the book, however. The first half of the book is fantastic and makes it a great addition to this list of the best Murakami novels. It’s only in the second half where the book becomes progressively weaker. Yet, this is merely my opinion, and I’m sure many Murakami fans will enjoy this book.

Dance Dance Dance

Dance Dance Dance is the sequel to ‘A Wild Sheep Chase’ featured later on this list and is set four years after the events of said novel.

The book focuses on a lot of themes typical for Murakami: loss, abandonment and supposedly includes some of Murakami’s real-life experiences.

Dance Dance Dance is a deconstruction of the Japanese economy and advanced capitalism. It discusses the contemporary tendency to commodify and sell anything, including relationships, friends, and family.

Our narrator Boku’s more lost in life than ever. He’s unambitious, apathetic and directionless. Even worse, his girlfriend Kiki, an ear model he got to know in ‘A Wild Sheep Chase,’ went missing.

Boku’s quest leads him through the strange, multifaceted culture of modern Japan, but also turns mystical. He’s thrown into a strange world of sexuality and metaphysical dread.

The most notable element of the novel, however, is the mysterious Sheep Man. He’s a strange figure our narrator encounters in a dimly lit hotel room. The Sheep Man’s central to the events taking place, yet he only ever offers Boku cryptic explanations.

Dance Dance Dance can be best described as a suspense novel rich in surrealistic elements.

It is, however, a slowly moving book, and one I often found too slow and a tad bit boring. While I realize the book’s often regarded as one of the best Murakami books out there, it didn’t quite work for me.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

This novel can be best described as a love story full of deep loneliness. While I think it can be a beautiful book, it’s not amongst the best Murakami books.

Our narrator Hajime’s much less likeable than those of Murakami’s other books. While he’s an unpleasant person, however, he’s also interesting. Yet, his decisions, behavior, and feelings of emptiness can be quite alienating to readers.

While most other children had siblings, Hajime grew up as an only child. He spent most of his time with Shimamoto, who was also an only child. Together, the two of them often listened to her father’s record collection. When her family moved away, however, the two of them lost contact.

In the present, Hajime is in his thirties and seems to have found happiness. He’s got a loving wife, two daughters and runs a successful jazz bar.

That’s until Shimamoto reappears at his bar. She’s beautiful, intense and mysterious and suddenly Hajime’s thrown into the past and puts everything he’s got at risk.

While Shimamoto has a secret, she’s unable to escape from, Hajime doesn’t seem to be able to escape her and soon joins her on a mysterious journey.

Yet, their affair doesn’t long, and Hajime has to return to his old life, one he thought he’d escaped from.

While I don’t think South of the Border, West of the Sun, is amongst the best Murakami books, it contains some interesting musings. The most prevalent of those are happiness and loneliness. The book makes you reflect on your own life and makes you wonder if it’s all worth it.

South of the Border, West of the Sun, is a story that begs the question ‘what if’ and showcases how much our childhood influences the rest of our life.

It’s not a bad novel, but again, it didn’t quite work for me. It’s also a book that’s rather atypical for Murakami, and doesn’t feature his usual strange and surrealistic elements.

Hear the Wind Sing

Hear the Wind Sing is Murakami’s debut novel. While I enjoyed it a lot, it’s also got its problems.

It’s less a novel that follows a coherent, developing plot, but more a collection of anecdotes that play out when a university student returns to his hometown.

Even though Murakami’s non-traditional narrative and many of his usual themes are already at play here.

Our narrator, Boku, is a man who works here and there, slipping in and out of work to figure out what will bring him the most meaning in life. His best friend is known as The Rat, who follows Boku on many of his journeys. Amongst other things, the two of them develop a deep relationship with a Chinese bartender.

Each of these characters tries to figure out where their youth has gone, what happened to their childish idealism and how they should face the uncertainty of the future with confidence.

While the novel’s plot isn’t too deep, it makes up for it with its quick, light and simple writing style. It also offers us a deeper look at young man who are lost in our modern world.

While it’s far from one of the best Murakami books out there, I enjoyed it and I think it’s definitely worth reading.

Sputnik Sweetheart

Sputnik Sweetheart can be best described as a romantic detective story. It’s a tale about attraction, desire, and self-discover, but also sexuality and the psychology of love and loss.

Our narrator, K, is a teacher who’s deeply in love with his friend Sumire, a free-spirited writer. The two of them spend hours on the phone in which Sumire talks about the big questions of life. Yet, K’s never able to reveal his feelings for her.

Before long, Sumire meets and falls in love with Miu, a woman seventeen years her senior. The two of them soon take off for a vacation in Greece.

When K gets a call from Miu that Sumire disappeared, he sets out for Greece himself to help find her. It’s there he enters Sumire’s world and realizes there’s much more to reality.

Sputnik Sweetheart is definitely one of Murakami’s stranger, more confusing books and it will leave you with more questions than answers.

It’s a novel that focuses heavily on human nature, longing and loneliness. It’s a short, yet subtle and haunting novel that definitely deserves its place on a list of the best Murakami books.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is one of Murakami’s more recent novels.

It’s a novel concerning one Tsukuru Tazaki and tells us about his teenage years and his present-day life. In the 90s, Tuskuru had a group of friends from high school. Each one of them had a name related to a certain color. Only Tsukuru didn’t and thus became regarded as colorless.

Their friendship was deep, but ended when Tsukuru went to college. One day, all of his friends stopped talking to him, making him depressed and suicidal.

In the present day, Tsukuru is thirty-six years old and works as an engineer. Yet, even now, he’s still haunted by the mystery of what happened.

It’s his girlfriend who finally encourages him to reach out to his friends and to find out why they cut contact. Thus, a journey of self-discovery begins in which Tsukuru has to figure out who he really is as a person.

The novel gives us both an inward and outward look at the struggle of growing up and growing as a person. His quest for understanding brings Tsukuru back to his hometown, but also all the way to Finland.

The most prevalent themes in the novel are forgiveness and being true to oneself.

What’s interesting to note is that this novel is entirely realistic and contains none of Murakami’s usual surreal and weird elements.

It’s also less epic than some of Murakami’s other books, but also much more personal. It’s a great novel for Murakami fans and is very well worth reading. The absence of any weird elements, however, makes it hard for me to consider it amongst the best Murakami books.

Pinball, 1973

Pinball, 1973 is Murakami’s second novel and the sequel to Hear the Wind Sing.

The novel explores our narrator’s relationship to a woman named Naoko who committed suicide during his college days.

While it might sound like a dark novel, it turns out to be much more lighthearted, comical and weird. This is mostly attributed to the twins. These two weird women turn up at and being staying at Boku’s apartment and help him deal with loss and loneliness.

The novel’s plot, however, centers on Boku’s quest to find his favorite pinball machine from his days with Naoko, the ‘three flipper starship.’ Yet, this quest isn’t so much about the pinball machine, but more about his reconciliation with Naoko’s memory.

While Pinball, 1973 is still somewhat unrefined, it’s full of Murakami’s usual themes and elements. The characters are quirky and the entire novel and the events taking place have an almost otherworldly feeling about it.

Similarly to Hear the Wind Sing, the book’s more a collection of different episodes in Boku’s and other character’s lives. They are, however, full of musings about life.

It’s an odd little novel, but one I enjoyed a lot and regard as one of the best Murakami novels.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is one of Murakami’s most celebrated novels, so it’s well deserving of a spot in the best Murakami novels.

It features a strange mystery that only gets stranger the longer the novel progresses. It’s an almost perfect surrealistic tale which combines quirky characters and alternate realities with suburban Japan.

Our protagonist, Toru Okada, is a man who recently quit his job and has become a house husband. His days are spent cooking, listening to music, chatting up the neighbors and waiting for his wife to return home.

When their cat goes missing, Toru’s sent out on a quest to find it. Soon enough, however, his wife acts strangely. She comes home later and later, drops him strange hints and refuses to have sex with him. Before he realizes it, she seems to have left him and so he embarks on a new search, this time for his wife.

Eventually, he learns his wife’s held in another world which has taken on the form of a labyrinthine, infinite hotel. And so, Toru has to find a way of entering this metaphorical place.

During his search, he comes across many weird characters. The standouts here are the nihilistic teenager May Kasahara and the military Lieutenant Mamiya. While May’s a fantastic character and her interactions with Toru are great, it’s Mamiya’s tale that sets him apart. He used to be a soldier during the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo and witnessed horrible things.

Yet, those are only two of all the characters Toru encounters and each one of them serves to be as weird and quirky as the next.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a novel full of awkward moments, of violence and tension. It features themes of sex, violence, and memories lost and regained. It also deals with Japan’s painful history during World War II. Yet, it also features many of Murakami’s other typical elements.

Overall, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a puzzle, one that only slowly comes together. It’s a detective story, but at the same time, comedy and menace. It’s, however, always weirdly imaginative and surreal.

While I liked the oddness of the plot, and many of the smaller stories, the novel itself felt a bit too unfocused and loosely structured. The mystery of Toru’s quest seemed less central and became almost a backdrop for strange, unrelated tales.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is still very much worth reading, both for fans of Murakami and those interested in surreal novels. While I had my problems with it, it’s hard to not consider it one of the best Murakami books.

Norwegian Wood

Norwegian Wood was Murakami’s breakthrough novel and made him famous both in Japan and internationally.

What’s special about Norwegian Wood is that it lacks any of the absurd or weird elements so typical in his books. It’s not a work of magical realism, but one grounded entirely in reality.

The title of the novel is taken from a 1965 Beatles song. When our narrator, Toru Watanabe, listens to this same song, he reminisces about his college days back in the 60s. It’s a time in which the Japanese students rose against the government.

Yet, it’s also the time when his best friend committed suicide and he became infatuated with two women, Naoko and Midori.

Naoko was his former best friend’s girlfriend. She’s coping with her lover’s suicide and suffers from severe mental issues. Soon enough, Naoko tells Toru that she hears her former lover’s voice who’s calling to her from another world.

Midori is the complete opposite. She’s an energetic and friendly young girl, very much in love with life.

The novel centers on Toru’s feelings and his choice between saving Naoko and his desire for Midori.

Yet, Norwegian Wood is more than a simple love story. It’s a tale of growing up and how to deal with loss. It’s a very personal and tender book. We witness Toru walking the streets of Tokyo with Naoko, or spending the evening on a rooftop with Midori.

Overall, Norwegian Wood can be dark, and there’s an almost sinister undertone prevalent throughout the novel. Yet, it also offers hope and a chance to grow up.

The only real problem I had with the book was its heavy focus on sex and sex scenes and its portrayal of mental illness.

Still, it’s a fantastic tear-jerker and regarded as one of the best Murakami books for a reason.

A Wild Sheep Chase

A Wild Sheep Chase is the third installment of Murakami’s so called ‘Trilogy of the Rat’ after Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 and brings it to a close. It’s by far the best of the trilogy and even outshines its sequel Dance Dance Dance.

While it’s a book, that’s more straightforward compared to his later work, it’s heavy on magical realism.

Our narrator Boku’s now in his thirties and runs a publishing company in Tokyo. When his friend The Rat sends him a photograph of a herd of sheep, he uses it in an advertisement.

Unbeknownst to him, however, the photograph depicts a strange, magical sheep with a star-shaped birthmark. This soon gets him the attention of a powerful political and leader of a giant business syndicate only known as ‘The Boss.’

The man clarifies that Boku’s in trouble and gives him an ultimatum. He’s got to find the sheep or face dire consequences.

And so, our narrator sets out to the rural areas of Hokkaido to find not only the sheep but also his friend who seems to be entangled in the events at play.

From here on out the book serves to only get stranger.

What starts out as a detective novel in which one man takes on an all-powerful syndicate soon develops into a beautiful and sad tale of trauma and things lost.

A Wild Sheep Chase features many themes, such as Japanese culture and identity in post-WWII Japan, Japanese religious tradition and sexuality. At the center, however, is the conflict between individual will and the all-encompassing, impersonal power of the state.

While it features Murakami’s typical surrealist elements, it serves to be easily comprehensible, accessible and readable. Even though it’s one of his earlier works, I consider it amongst the best Murakami books.

After Dark

After Dark is one of the more cozy Murakami novels out there.

We get to know Mari, a young woman who spends her nights at a Denny’s. One night, she encounters a young man who insists he knows his older sister. This event sets in motion Mari’s odyssey through the sleeping city.

It’s a tale set in a single night, but which sheds light on the lives of a diverse cast of Tokyo residents. It’s in this setting that fantasy and reality collide.

The book features some of Murakami’s usual surreal and strange elements, but they didn’t feel as central to the plot as in others.

After Dark’s plot, too, isn’t as gripping or extensive as that of other Murakami novels, but I found its atmosphere much richer. There’s just something about the night, those who populate it, and how they spend their time during these late hours.

At the center of the novel, however, is a deep feeling of loneliness. While we all share the world together, and we all interact and affect each other’s lives, we’re all isolated.

It’s an enchanting little novel, one I truly came to love and regard as one of the best Murakami books out there.

Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore is Murakami at his best, but also his most confusing.

It’s a novel that blends pop-culture references, cats, magical realism, sexuality and Japanese religious tradition into an utterly stunning and mind-boggling journey.

The novel revolves around two characters.

One is Kafka Tamura, a fifteen-year-old boy who escapes from his father’s home to avoid an oedipal curse. After leaving, he sets out to find his long-lost mother and sister. His journey eventually leads him to a private library on the island of Shikoku. There he meets the beautiful, but odd Miss Saeki, who might or might not be his mother and the even odder Oshima.

The other character is Nakata, a strange and illiterate old man. What makes Nakata special is his ability to talk to cats. Because of this, he’s become a cat locator. His story beings when he’s hired by the mysterious Johnnie Walker to find a lost cat. As it turns out however, Johnnie Walker is a cat killer and Nakata is forced to leave Tokyo. He ends up traveling with a truck driver, Noshino, who grows fond of the old man. Eventually, their journey, too, leads them to Shikoku.

It’s there that the two narratives converge.

Kafka on the Shore features a variety of strange characters and even stranger events. While some of these might be comical, the book’s a serious tale. It’s one heavy with musings on both reality and the metaphysical world.

It’s a complex work, heavily layered with symbolism. Murakami himself once said, it’s a book full of riddles and their solution is unique for each reader.

While the book focuses heavily on spirituality and religion, it’s essentially a coming-of-age tale of a fifteen-year-old boy and his journey to become an independent adult.

Kafka on the Shore is without Murakami’s weirdest book and it will leave you utterly confused after your first read-through. Yet, it’s nothing short of a magical realism masterpiece, one that’s without a doubt one of the best Murakami books out there, if not the best.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is hands-down my favorite Murakami novel, even surpassing Kafka on the Shore.

It’s notable Murakami’s only pure science-fiction novel and features two seemingly unrelated narratives that couldn’t be more different.

The first focuses on a man who’s a ‘Calcutec.’ This means he’s a human data processor who specializes in using his subconscious mind for encryptions. His job is to shuffle and encrypt data so the agents of an organization known as The Factory can’t steal it. Before long, he finds himself at the center of an underground information war.

The second narrative is much stranger and set in a small town in a fantasy world. This town’s surrounded by a massive, impenetrable wall. Even more mysterious, all inhabitants seem to have lost their shadow and its only exit is protected by a fearsome gatekeeper.

After the narrator arrives in this town, his memories taken away, his shadow’s cut off from him and he gets assigned a job at the town’s library. From here on out, he tries to get back his shadow and to escape this strange town.

The most notable element of the town, however, are the many unicorns who live nearby.

These two plots are both as strange as they sound and are extremely unique to one another.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is an absolutely fantastic book which blew me away when I first read it.

It’s populated by a cast of characters as interesting as they are weird. While our narrator’s a human data processor, he’s far from the weirdest addition. We encounter deranged scientists, psychotic thugs, mysterious librarians and even subterranean monsters.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, however, also features deeper elements. Its themes, such as fulfillment, choices, as well as internal and external pressure and a good chunk of existential musings.

Yet, the most prevalent theme is without a doubt the relationship between conscious and subconscious mind. It’s this relationship that also inspired, at least in part, my short story The Special Dish.

It’s an extremely interesting book, my favorite and without a doubt one of the best Murakami books. I highly recommend it to any fan of Murakami, but also to those who like unique mysteries and science-fiction.

Frank Herbert’s Dune, originally published in 1965, has become a cornerstone of science-fiction. It quickly became a fan-favorite and many science-fiction readers are looking for more books like Dune.

It’s an epic story that has been adapted for TV and movies several times.

Dune is by many seen as the greatest science-fiction novel ever written. Even today, it remains one of the most important and influential science-fiction novels ever written.

It’s set in the distant future, in a time when a huge interplanetary empire rules over various planetary fiefdoms.

Our protagonists are the member of House Atreides which is assigned fief ruler of the planet Arrakis. Arrakis is known as Dune for its inhospitable climate and shifting sands.

Yet, there’s much more to the planet. It’s the only source in the universe for the melange, or spice, a drug that not only extends life and enhances mental abilities, but is also necessary for space navigation.

Before long, however, the Emperor conspires with the House Harkonnen. They are the former stewards of Arrakis and an enemy of House Atreides.

Dune is a rich novel full of different cultures, alien ecology and political intrigue. Yet, there are more of these. It focuses heavily on climate change and environmental issues, but also features religious symbolism and physical musings.

It’s a fantastic novel of ambitious scope that will stay with you long after you finished it.

Altogether, the original Dune saga comprises six novels by Frank Herbert himself and more than a dozen written by his son Kevin J. Anderson

For this article, I’ve put together a long list of books like Dune you’re sure to enjoy. If you’re looking for more science-fiction recommendations, be sure to check out my list of the best science-fiction novels.

Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie

Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie is a space opera set in a massive galactic empire.

It tells the story of an AI who controls the massive spaceship Justice Toren, but is also linked to thousands of human soldiers.

When the Toren Justice is destroyed, a fragment of the AI lives on in a single human body going by the name Breq. Breq now sets out on a quest for both finding answers and vengeance.

Ancillary Justice is a mystery that’s slowly unraveled. It’s a story full of political intrigue, philosophical discussions and centers heavily on artificial intelligence. The best part, however, is the layered plot and its massive payoff.

Another point to note is that Ancillary Justice was the first novel to win the Hugo, the Nebula and the Arthur C. Clarke award.

It’s a brilliant book for those who are looking for books like Dune. It’s smart, fun, inventive and features a cast of fantastic characters.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

After its release The Fifth Season won the Hugo award for best novel, so you know it’s going to be good. Even more so when you learn all three books in the trilogy won the Hugo award.

Simply said, it’s a masterpiece which tells a similar tale to Frank Herbert’s renowned classic.

It’s set in an alternate, far-future earth set on a single, Pangea-like continent which is caught in a cycle of catastrophe and wracked by natural disasters. The titular ‘fifth season’ is what the inhabitants call the recurring periods of catastrophic climate change.

The opening of the book starts when a powerful ‘orogene,’ a human who can manipulate Earth’s crust, causes massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and tears the land in two.

Orogones are a race of magical users who are enslaved and oppressed. Each of our narrators is a member of this race and as their stories slowly become entwined, the complexity of the overall plot becomes clear.

The Fifth Season is a novel that centers on both a very personal, family narrative and world-spanning, cataclysmic action. Political and magical power go hand-in-hand, yet a lot is hidden under the surface.

The Fifth Season is a fantastic fusion of science-fiction and fantasy, and it more than deserves its place on this list, especially for its fantastic storytelling.

Similar to Dune, it features both theological and supernatural elements akin to those of the Bene Gesserit. It’s a book that stands out for its meticulous world-building and deep character development.

It’s again only the first book in a series and followed by two sequels, The Obelisk Gate and the Stone Key. Both two are worth reading for those who are looking for books like Dune.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Hyperion can be called the Canterbury Tales of science-fiction.

It’s another novel set in the far-future, the 29th century. This masterpiece is a must-read for anyone who likes books like Dune.

Taken inspiration from the way the Canterbury Tales, it comprises six novellas.

They center on several pilgrims who meet on board a ship on their way to a world called Hyperion. This world is not connected to others via a farcaster portal and beyond the reach of the galactic law. When war rages, these seven pilgrims set out on their final voyage in search of answers.

These pilgrims are the Priest, the Soldier, the Poet, the Scholar, the Detective, and the Consul. On the way, each of them tells their story about how they came to take this journey.

All those stories, however, slowly reveal a larger plot little by little.

Dan Simmons uses these stories to paint a rich picture of his universe. It’s a vast place, one populated by desert planets, ocean planets and replicas of Earth.

Hyperion is a novel that features religion, war, family strife, political intrigue and artificial intelligence.

Once more, it’s only the first in Dan Simmons’ fictional universe and is followed up by three other books in his ‘Hyperion Cantos.’ All of them are equally worth reading for those who are looking for books like Dune.

Jaran by Kate Elliott

Kate Elliot’s novel is set in an interstellar future in which the vast Chapalii Empire governs conquered planets. One of them is earth.

Similar to Dune, the novel focuses on a protagonist caught in the middle of interstellar politics, war, and intrigue. Her name is Tess Soerensen, and she’s the sister of the former leader of Earth’s rebellion against the alien invaders.

While the rebellion was a loss, however, the rebellion’s leader was given a dukedom and granted nobility.

Tess, however, leaves her home for the planet Rhui. There she meets the jaran, the natives who live as nomads and who’ve long forgotten their heritage. Before long, Tess is intrigued by their ways and comes to share an emotional connection with their charismatic leader, Ilya.

Soon enough, Tess finds herself between tradition and advancement, extinction and survival.

The most interesting thing about Jaran, however, is that it uses many established tropes, but changes them up and moves them into new directions.

Jaran is a book highly recommended for those who like books like Dune.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the earliest and finest examples of feminist science-fiction.

It centers on a Terran named Genly Ai who’s takes to negotiate with the planet Gethen to join a vast interstellar confederation. The inhabitants of Gethen, however, are ambisexual and their culture clashes with those of the confederacy.

It’s essentially a novel which focuses on and explores an alien culture through the eyes of a visitor.

The novel again focuses on extreme climate conditions. At one point, our main character, Gently Ai, has to travel across an ice sheet for 80 days, almost losing his life. Another similarity to Dune is the focus on religion and prophetic elements.

What The Left Hand of Darkness is best known for, however, is its study of gender.

It’s a fascinating, and thought-provoking read and one I highly recommend not only for those looking for books like Dune, but for any fan of science-fiction.

Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

Leviathan Wakes is the first book in The Expense novel series which comprises nine novels.

Humanity has colonized the solar system, which is divided between three warring factions.

The novel itself explores two major plot points.

The first centers on James Holden, who’s working on the ice hauling ship ‘Canterbury.’ His life changes when the Canterbury responds to a distress signal. The crew stumbles upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli where they find a secret they never wanted to know and who someone’s willing to kill for.

The other centers on detective Miller, who’s looking for a lost girl. Before long, this search leads him to the Scopuli. He soon realizes this girl might be the key to everything.

These two mysteries are, of course, connected, and the clearer this connection becomes, the more the intrigue grows.

As the novel continues, our main characters are slowly brought together from different points in the solar system. Both Miller and Holden must now hold their own not only against the Earth government but also the Outer Planet revolutionaries and secretive corporations.

In the end, the stakes are high, and our heroes know that what they are after could save or destroy humanity. For out in the belts, a single ship can change the fate of the universe.

Leviathan Wakes is a fantastic book, one much closer to home than other books like Dune. It’s very worth reading, especially for its mystery elements and the fantastic narrative.

The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett

The Long Tomorrow is one of the few novels on this list preceding Frank Herbert’s Dune.

It was written back in 1955 and tells the story of two boys.

In a post-apocalyptic world, science and civilization are feared. Yet, our protagonists long for something greater than their simple, agrarian life.

Together they set out, travel through a war-torn land and discover a lot about themselves, but also the basis for the beliefs that have spread.

The Long Tomorrow is an interesting and well-written book with a great premise. What makes it especially worth reading is that it precedes most of the other novels on the list.

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny

Lord of Light is an interesting blend between science-fiction and mythology.

It might sound similar to Dune at first hand, but it’s also vastly different.

While Dune creates its own mythology from scratch, Lord of Light blends Hindu and Buddhist beliefs into a fantastic interstellar adventure.

While Earth is long dead, this novel is set on a post-Earth colony. There, a group of man has gained control of technology, become immortal and now rule their world as the Hindu pantheon.

Opposing them is Mahasamatma, once known as Siddhartha, who’s known as the Lord of Light.

Yet, where Lord of Light stands out, the most is in terms of political intrigue. Like in Dune, it’s one of the major themes of the novel. Yet, it also heavily focuses on the themes of colonialism and spirituality.

Overall, a book very worth reading for those who are looking for books like Dune.

The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe

This novel follows Severian, who’s a member of the torturer guild.

His life changes when he falls in love with one of the condemned, a young noblewoman. First, he’s delaying her torture before he eventually helps her commit suicide to save her from her dire fate.

This act leads to his exile from the guild to a distant metropolis.

This exile is the beginning of a heartbreaking adventure full of political intrigues not too different from that of Paul Atreides in Dune.

Yet, things get much more interesting when he comes into possession of a strange gem. It soon becomes clear that a variety of people seem determined to get their hand on it.

Gene Wolfe’s The Shadow of the Torturer is a masterpiece of science-fantasy and a great pick for fans of books like Dune.

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley

The Stars are Legion comes with a very interesting and unique setting.

While many other books like Dune are heavily inspired by Frank Herbert’s epic, the Stars are Legion is entirely different when compared to Dune. What it stands out for, however, is its epic scale, prose, characters and storytelling.

It’s set in a collapsing mass of world-ships at the edge of the universe called Legion.

Wars about control of legion are an ever-present reality, but so far there’s been no resolution.

As world-ships die, people get desperate and different factions try to uncover the secret of the central ship around which all others orbit.

At the center of these events is Zan, an amnesiac girl who’s trying to regain control of one world-ship and leave Legion. While she’s far from the only one with this goal, she, similar to Paul Atreides in Dune, seems to be the key.

She bands together with a group of other cast-offs and starts a war that only she can hope to win. Before long, Zan will learn that she carries what could destroy all of Legion or lead to its salvation.

The Stars are Legion is a fantastically well-written novel that tackles contemporary problems such as politics, gender identity and using people as mere tools to gain power.

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

The Foundation Trilogy is yet another work centering on a vast galactic empire.

Yet, Asimov’s story is different, as it portrays the collapse of an empire. What’s interesting, however, is that this collapse can’t be averted. Instead, its effects on humanity can only be dampened as much as possible.

The story of The Foundation Trilogy centers on the efforts to preserve the empire’s galactic knowledge and culture and eventually establish a new galactic empire.

It’s inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is noticeable right away.

The Foundation Trilogy focuses much less on a single narrative, but presents us with various events that take place during the fall of the Galactic Empire and the subsequent rise of the Foundation. Each of these events is detailed in a short story or novella, features its own characters, plots and crises to overcome.

What’s interesting about The Foundation Trilogy is that it relies much less on gripping action and space battles, but more on clever plots, twists and political theory.

Originally published in the 1950s, The Foundation Trilogy is considered a masterpiece of science-fiction.

If you’re looking for books like Dune, a science-fiction fan and have never read it, I highly recommend it. It’s at the pinnacle of the genre and considered one of the greatest works of science-fiction at all.

Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley’s Red Mars is the first in his acclaimed Mars trilogy. It’s a book like Dune, mostly for its setting.

It tells the story of an international expedition comprising one hundred colonists who set foot on the barren planet with plans to establish a colony there.

Using a variety of terraforming technology, they set out to change the planet forever. Yet, there are, of course, those who want to prevent the planet from ever changing.

Red Mars, however, as opposed to Dune, is a hard science-fiction novel. It concerns itself deeply with terraforming and dives deep into it and its intricacies.

Yet, it’s not merely a book about planetary physics, but also one about war and politics. It also discusses a variety of contemporary problems, namely environmental issues and our overreliance on certain resources such as oil.

In Red Mars, the central question is one about human nature. Is it possible to build a better society? To discuss this question, Kim Stanley Robinson uses the attempted colonization of Mars.

Red Mars is a great read for science-fiction fans, especially those who like hard science-fiction.

Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer

Riverworld is an odd book, yet similar other books like Dune it’s set in the far future.

The ‘Riverworld’ is a terraformed planet. It comprises a single river and valley that runs the entire circumference of the planet and is fed by a polar water source.

One day, for unknown reasons, every Homo sapiens, from the first to the latest most evolved, is resurrected along the banks of the river.

Stories of the dead coming back to life are nothing new, but Riverworld is definitely different, which can be noticed by its cast of characters.

While it features its fair cast of fictional characters, it also features prominent historical figures. Those include Mozart, King John of England, Hermann Goring and Mark Twain.

Yet, what makes the book even more interesting is its focus on how a modern, futuristic society changes these characters.

While Riverworld might sound weird at first hand, it’s a very interesting book with a unique setting that tackles deeper questions than one would first imagine. It especially focuses on sexual and religious themes.

It’s definitely a must-read for fans of books like Dune and especially for those who are interested in historical figures.

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

At first glance Brave New World might not appear a book like Dune, but similarly to Dune it depicts a futuristic society and people’s struggles for what’s important.

The book’s story is set in 2540 and humanity lives in an idealistic society. People aren’t born but engineered in artificial wombs. They go through childhood indoctrination before they are put in predetermined castes.

In this society, there are no long-lasting relationships and everyone belongs to everyone. Depression, doubt, and unhappiness can simply be cured by a drug called Soma.

Bernard Marx is a member of the highest caste who disapproves of this society and its methods. The plot truly starts, however, when Bernard visits a savage reservation and meets John. John is a young man born naturally who grew up in the reservation and knows nothing about the real society.

What’s interesting about Brave New World is that its society might be called a Utopia. People are happy, live peacefully. There’s no war, but it all comes at a price. It’s a terrifying concept, especially given how realistic it might become.

Brave New World is a fantastically written novel, ripe with scientific background and populated by interesting characters. It’s without a doubt one of the greatest dystopian novels ever written.

The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in the fantastic Remembrance of Earth Past trilogy. It’s yet another hard science-fiction novel.

With its focus on scale, it’s easy to see why the Three-Body Problem can be compared to Dune. However, it’s modern and nothing short of unique in the realm of science-fiction.

It tells the story of a first contact gone wrong.

During China’s Cultural Revaluation, a secret military project sends signals into space. Eventually, a signal from an alien civilization, referred to as the Trisolarans, is intercepted by the Chinese government.

A group of scientists, including Ye Wenje, is brought together to deceiver their message. The alien civilization lives in a solar system which comprises three solar-type stars orbiting each other in an unstable three-body system. It soon becomes clear that the Trisolarans are on the brink of destruction, yet this is not the only thing the scientists uncover.

The story of the novel features a huge cast of character and explores fascinating physical concepts. Yet, it also focuses on politics, government authority and other similar themes.

After reading this novel and especially the rest of the series, it’s easy to see why Cixin Liu is China’s most popular science-fiction writer. The Three-Body problem is often called the best Chinese science-fiction novel of all time and highly recommended to those who are looking for books like Dune.

Involution Ocean by Bruce Sterling

Involution Ocean is another book like Dune, which might be called a speculative fiction version of Moby Dick.

Our protagonist, John Newhouse, is hooked on a powerful narcotic drug named Flame.

There’s only one source. It’s derived from whale-like creatures native to the dust seas on planet Nullaqua.

When the drug gets outlawed by the Galactic Confederacy, however, John has no choice but to sign up as a seaman aboard a dust whaler and hunt the creature himself.

Involution Ocean features not only a setting similar to Dune, but also a cast of fantastic characters. They comprise junkies, misfits, but also weirder characters and those who hide their own dark secrets.

Yet, the plot of the book doesn’t center on political conflict or war. Instead, similar to Moby Dick, it centers on the confrontation between man and beast.

The book, however, also focuses on and studies the various aspects of human nature.

Involution Ocean presents us with an astonishing imaginative world. Yet, what makes it so similar to Dune is its focus on a rare commodity and the native megafauna which are both very reminiscent of the planet Arrakis.

A brilliant novel that is highly recommended reading for fans of science-fiction.

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi

The Windup Girl is a novel set in a dystopian future Thailand. It follows a diverse set of characters as they try to survive in this setting.

One is a man named Anderson Lake. He works as a Calorie Man for the AgriGen Corporation. Working undercover as a factory manager, he’s tasked with combing Bangkok’s street markets for foods thought to be extinct.

Emiko, on the other hand, is known as the Windup Girl. She’s a beautifully engineered being who was grown and created to satisfy the whims of a Japanese businessman. After being abandoned, she now walks the streets of Bangkok.

People like Emiko are known as New People. They are feared and regarded as soulless. They are nothing but slaves, soldiers, or toys.

The Windup Girl is a fascinating novel set in a future in which fossil fuels are a thing of the past and bio-engineering runs rampant.

The book focuses heavily on such issues as climate change, the nature of humanity and how counts as human, who doesn’t and why not. Another, more important them, however, is that of calories becoming a currency and that of bio-terrorism.

The Windup Girl is nothing short of fascinating and one of the greatest science-fiction novels of the twenty-first century. Those looking for books like Dune should definitely check it out.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

The Forever War starts out similar to many other science-fiction novels and space operas. Humanity gets in contact with aliens, conflict starts and war breaks out.

Our protagonist, William Mandella, becomes part of an elite military unit that travels the galaxy to fight the alien enemy in what should become known as the Forever War.

While the earlier chapters in the book which focus on military training and the first battle against the alien antagonist can be weak, the book soon gets much more interesting. It explores a variety of complex themes and draws an intricate and realistic picture of not only interstellar war but also futuristic society.

As the story continues, Mandella wants to go home, but soon realizes that what he remembers as his home might not be anymore. Because of the vast distances of space and the unexpected circumstances of space travel, he might only age months while on Earth decades and even centuries pass.

While the Forever War is a space opera, the battle scenes are actually one of its weaker elements. They are much more realistic than those in other novels, but also less exciting.

Where the book really stands out is in the exploration of its various more complex scenes. The most interesting of those is the vast changes society goes through over decades and centuries and how one adapts to them.

While the book has its weaker elements, it more than makes up for it by the complex themes it tackles.

It’s clearly one of the best science-fiction novels out there and highly recommended for those who look for books like Dune.

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Starship Troopers is another classic in the realm of science-fiction. The story is set in the far future and humanity is dominated by a military elite referred to as the Terran Federation.

The novel follows Juan ‘Johnny’ Rico, a young man, through his service in the Mobile Infantry in which he goes from recruit to officer.

All this is told against the backdrop of an interstellar war between humanity and an alien species known as ‘Arachnids’ or ‘Bugs.’

As a big fan of the movie by the same name, I expected the book to be an action packed science-fiction novel, but it was a much deeper and more complex book.

Many parts of the book are devoted to classroom scenes in which Rico and others discuss philosophical and moral topics. Those include civic virtue, war, military doctrine and suffrage.

While I don’t agree with Heinlein’s ideas and find some of them questionable, these discussions were some of the most interesting parts in the book.

Yet, the book still has its scenes of brutal action, they just aren’t the focus of the novel.

Overall, Starship Troopers is a science-fiction class. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for books like Dune, but especially those who are interested in military science-fiction.

The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954 and is, for a lot of readers, simply the fantasy series. Tolkien’s epic more or less created the modern genre and still sits at its foundation, which is exactly why so many people go looking for books like Lord of the Rings the moment they turn the last page.

It’s known for its grand world-building, its rich invented history, its languages, and half the furniture the genre still uses: wizards, dragons, magic, swords, and the long quest across a map. With around 150 million copies sold, it’s also one of the best-selling novels ever written in any genre.

Here’s the problem with most lists like this one. Search for books like Lord of the Rings and you’ll get the same twenty fantasy series every time: Mistborn, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, The First Law. Those are good books. Several are great books. But they’re recommended because they’re popular epic fantasy, not because they resemble Tolkien in any meaningful way. A Song of Ice and Fire is deliberately anti-Tolkien: low magic, political, morally grey, allergic to myth. The First Law spends three volumes dismantling exactly the story Tolkien told. Recommending those to someone who just finished the trilogy and wants more of that feeling is a category error.

So this list works differently. Every entry is here because it shares something specific with Tolkien: the writers who directly influenced him, the friends he argued with about myth, the books openly built on his template, and a couple of deliberate outliers that deliver his particular effects through completely different means. Where the connection is documented, I say what it is. Where the book is here because it produces the same feeling rather than because of any lineage, I say that too.

If you want the broader field of great epic fantasy, that’s my list of the best fantasy books. This one is about Tolkien.

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

The best place to start a list of books like Lord of the Rings is with the book that came first.

The Hobbit tells the story of Frodo’s uncle Bilbo, who opens his door one morning to find Gandalf on the step and, before long, thirteen dwarves in his dining room, all of them intent on dragging him across the world to win back a treasure guarded by the dragon Smaug.

Let’s be honest about what it is, though. It’s a children’s book, and it reads like one. The story is simpler, the stakes are smaller, and the prose doesn’t come close to the mythic grandeur of The Lord of the Rings. It’s episodic, with each chapter working almost as its own little adventure, and the tone is gentle in a way the trilogy never is.

None of that is a reason to skip it. Anyone who’s read The Lord of the Rings owes it to themselves to go back to Bilbo’s original adventure, if only because the whole trilogy grows out of one chapter here. “Riddles in the Dark,” where Bilbo meets Gollum in the tunnels and pockets a certain ring, is the best thing in the book and the hinge the entire legendarium swings on.

It’s a quick read, it’s charming, and it makes everything that follows land harder.

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The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien

If The Hobbit is where the story starts, The Silmarillion is where the world does.

It collects the mythology and history of Middle-earth, some of it written as far back as the 1910s, reaching all the way to the First Age and the creation of Arda itself. Much of it doesn’t read like a novel at all. The tales are closer to folklore, legend, and scripture, told at a distance and in a register that owes as much to the Eddas and the Bible as to modern fiction.

That’s also the problem. It’s dense, it’s complex, and it throws hundreds of names, places, and terms at you with very little handholding, which is the main reason it never approached the popularity of the trilogy. Tolkien never finished it either; his son Christopher assembled and edited it after his death.

Push through and it’s the richest world-building document in the genre, and among books like Lord of the Rings there’s nothing else quite like it. If you loved Middle-earth for the sense of enormous depth behind every ruin and half-remembered song, this is where all of that actually lives.

Unfinished Tales and The Fall of Númenor by J. R. R. Tolkien

For readers who finish The Silmarillion and still want more Middle-earth, the well goes deeper than most people realize.

Unfinished Tales gathers longer, more detailed versions of stories the published works only gesture at: Gandalf’s account of how the quest for Erebor actually came about, the tale of the Rohirrim, more on the Istari and the palantíri. Because these pieces are fuller and more novelistic than the compressed legends of The Silmarillion, plenty of readers find them a friendlier way in.

The Fall of Númenor, edited by Brian Sibley and published in 2022, does something different. It pulls Tolkien’s scattered writings on the Second Age into a single chronological narrative, covering the rise and drowning of Númenor and Sauron’s long manipulation of it. If you watched the Amazon series and wanted the real thing, this is it.

Neither of these is a novel, and neither pretends to be. They’re for readers whose search for books like Lord of the Rings really means more of Middle-earth itself. For anyone whose actual question is “how do I stay in this world longer,” they’re the answer. The rest of the posthumous shelf, sorted by who it’s for, is on my Tolkien books guide.

The Well at the World’s End by William Morris

Start at the source. If you want to know where Tolkien’s mode came from, it came substantially from here.

William Morris published this in 1896, and it brought to full scale the thing Morris had first attempted in The Wood Beyond the World: fantasy in an entirely invented world with no framing dream, no allegory, and no apology. Ralph, the youngest of King Peter’s four sons, defies his father and rides out to seek a well whose waters grant long life and fortune, and travels through a landscape of towns, forests, and warring lordships rendered in archaic, deliberately medieval prose.

The Tolkien connection is documented rather than speculative. Both men went to Exeter College, Oxford. Both loathed industrialization and wrote fiction proposing a pre-industrial alternative. Tolkien took from Morris the habit of weaving poems, songs, and proverbs directly into prose narrative, and scholars have traced specific Morris works onto specific Tolkien creations: The Roots of the Mountains toward Gollum, The Wood Beyond the World toward Lothlórien and Fangorn, and Morris’s translation of a Norse saga toward the name Wormtongue.

The archaic language is the barrier, and it’s real. Morris wrote in a consciously antique English that takes some acclimatizing. Push through and you get the landscape-heavy, journey-shaped, myth-saturated storytelling that Tolkien inherited and refined.

Among books like Lord of the Rings, this is the ancestor rather than the descendant.

The Worm Ouroboros by E. R. Eddison

Published in 1922, thirty-two years before The Fellowship of the Ring, and nominally set on the planet Mercury, a conceit the book abandons almost immediately in favor of a world it mostly just calls earth, and occasionally even Middle Earth.

The Lords of Demonland are called upon by an emissary of Gorice XI, warlock king of Witchland, to submit. They refuse, and a war unfolds across an entire world, told in a Shakespearean, Jacobean-inflected prose that no one has attempted since.

Tolkien read it, met Eddison at the Inklings, and praised him in a letter, calling him the greatest and most convincing writer of invented worlds he had ever encountered. He also, in the same letter, said Eddison’s philosophy was rebarbative and his names badly made, and denied direct influence. Eddison, for his part, considered Tolkien’s views soft. C. S. Lewis loved it. Ursula Le Guin called it an eccentric masterpiece.

What it offers the Tolkien reader is the thing Tolkien himself valued in it: a completely self-contained secondary world, rendered with total conviction and no winking. The heroism is grand, the treachery is grand, and nothing is ironized.

Fair warning on two counts. The prose is genuinely archaic and demands patience, and the frame story that opens the book is abandoned entirely and never resolved, which irritates some readers permanently. Neither problem has stopped it being called the greatest high fantasy of them all by people whose opinion is worth something.

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis

Lewis and Tolkien were friends and colleagues at Oxford, bonded over Norse mythology, and read each other’s drafts aloud in the same pub. That connection alone makes Narnia essential context for anyone reading books like Lord of the Rings.

The best-known entry sends four children, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, out of wartime London to Professor Kirke’s house, where a wardrobe opens onto a snowbound country ruled by the White Witch and waiting for a lion named Aslan.

Where Tolkien drew on Norse and Germanic myth, Lewis reached for the classical world and whatever else caught his eye, which is why Narnia contains fauns, minotaurs, and Father Christmas without apology. Tolkien famously disliked that magpie approach.

It’s written for children and it’s shorter and simpler than anything else here, but the series has held adult readers for seventy years. The Christian allegory is there and impossible to miss; how much that bothers you is personal.

The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin

Le Guin’s Earthsea is often named the fantasy series second only to Tolkien’s in importance, and it’s still somehow underread next to the doorstoppers.

It’s the story of a boy named Duny, later Ged, whose magical talent is spotted by his aunt and then properly trained by the mage Ogion, before he goes on to the school of wizardry on Roke. Yes, a school for wizards, written decades before Harry Potter.

Ged is the interesting part. He’s arrogant, prickly, and rubs nearly everyone the wrong way, which makes his fall so much sharper when his pride summons something he can’t control. What follows is less an epic quest than a long reckoning with his own shadow.

Among books like Lord of the Rings, Earthsea is usually compared to The Hobbit rather than the trilogy, and that’s fair: it’s a coming-of-age story at heart, focused on one person’s growth rather than the fate of the world. The world-building is superb and the prose is spare and beautiful, closer to fable than to modern fantasy.

The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson

Published in 1954, the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, and the two books are a fascinating study in divergence.

Anderson took the same Norse material Tolkien drew on, the sagas, the Eddas, the cursed sword and the doomed hero, and produced something considerably harsher. A human child is stolen by elves and replaced with a changeling; both grow up, and both are destroyed by what they are. The elves here are not Tolkien’s Elves. They’re beautiful, cruel, amoral, and closer to what the actual folklore describes.

The reason it belongs on any list of books like Lord of the Rings is that it demonstrates what Tolkien chose. Same sources, same year, same tragic Norse register, and a completely different moral universe. Reading them together tells you more about Tolkien’s decisions than any biography will.

Of all the books like Lord of the Rings here it’s the shortest and the cruelest, and its influence runs directly into Michael Moorcock and everything downstream of him. Anderson revised it in 1971 into a tamer version; seek out the 1954 text.

The Shannara Series by Terry Brooks

Plenty of fantasy novels have been accused of imitating Tolkien. The Sword of Shannara caught more of that accusation than any other book in the genre, and honestly, the opening chapters earn it: a quiet valley, a hidden heir, a wizard arriving to sweep him away, and Wraith-like pursuers on the road. The parallels are impossible to miss.

Stick with it, though, and the story turns into something else. Shea’s quest for the Sword resolves far faster than Frodo’s, and from there the series spirals outward into sequels, spin-offs, and eventually science-fantasy, spanning thousands of years of invented history.

That accumulated depth is what gives Shannara the same mythic weight that made Tolkien’s world feel real. Some of the standard fantasy tropes in the early books also turn out, much later, to be something entirely different, which is a genuinely clever long game.

The first book has real problems. The series that grew out of it is one of the most sprawling in fantasy, and one of the more rewarding books like Lord of the Rings once it finds its own feet.

The Dragonlance Chronicles by Weis and Hickman

The Dragonlance books came out of Dungeons & Dragons, and they wear it openly.

What Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman did was take a shared game world and populate it with characters memorable enough to outlive their origins. Raistlin Majere in particular, the sickly, ambitious, morally compromised mage, is one of the great characters in gaming-adjacent fiction.

The books are unashamedly built from tropes: dragons, elves, dwarves, a party of adventurers assembled almost exactly as you’d roll one up at a table. Sometimes it’s over the top. It’s also enormous fun, and the emotional beats land harder than the setup suggests they should.

If you want more epic stories about elves, halflings, and dragons, and you don’t need them to reinvent anything, these are among the most purely enjoyable books like Lord of the Rings you’ll find.

Legend by David Gemmell

David Gemmell doesn’t turn up on many lists like this one, which is a small crime. Ask fantasy readers who’ve been at it for decades and Legend comes up constantly.

The setup is beautifully simple. The fortress of Dros Delnoch is the last thing standing between a massive invading horde and the heart of the empire. It cannot hold. Everyone knows it cannot hold. Druss the Legend, an aging axeman well past his prime and famous across the world, comes to defend it anyway.

That’s the whole book, and it’s magnificent. Gemmell wrote about courage, aging, and doing the right thing when it’s clearly futile, and he wrote it without a shred of sentimentality. His prose is lean, his battles are visceral, and his heroes are old, tired men who show up regardless. Few books like Lord of the Rings understand that particular kind of courage as well.

If the part of Tolkien that moves you is Théoden riding out at Helm’s Deep knowing the odds, Gemmell wrote an entire career of that. Start here.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

The rabbit book, which sounds like a joke until you read it and realize it’s a Tolkienian quest narrative with the fantasy furniture stripped out.

A warren is destined for destruction. A small group leaves before it happens, crosses a landscape that is enormous and lethal at their scale, and searches for somewhere to found a new home, encountering societies along the way that each represent a different failed answer to how to live.

The Tolkien resemblance is structural and deliberate. Adams built his rabbits a language, Lapine, with its own vocabulary and idioms. He gave them a mythology, with El-ahrairah as trickster-hero, and interleaved those legends through the narrative exactly as Tolkien interleaves songs and older tales. The journey is mapped onto real Hampshire terrain with the same specificity Tolkien applied to Middle-earth.

What you get is the thing people actually miss from The Lord of the Rings: a small band of ordinary creatures on a long dangerous journey, sustained by loyalty and storytelling, in a world with depth behind it.

It’s also considerably darker than its reputation, and it isn’t a children’s book despite being marketed as one for decades.

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

A 1926 novel that Neil Gaiman has called one of the finest in English, and which almost nobody has read.

The free state of Dorimare borders Fairyland and has spent generations pretending otherwise. Fairy fruit is contraband, the very word is unspeakable in polite company, and the mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist is a comfortable man who wants nothing to do with any of it. Then his son eats the fruit.

It belongs here for its treatment of the boundary between the mundane and the numinous, which is the same territory Tolkien worked. The Shire and Faerie sit next to each other in both writers, and both are interested in what happens when the ordinary world can no longer keep the older one out.

The prose is lovely, wry, and considerably lighter on its feet than most fantasy of any era, and the book turns from pastoral comedy into something genuinely strange by its final third.

An unfairly forgotten book, and the deepest cut among these books like Lord of the Rings.

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

The last unicorn in the world learns she’s the last, and leaves her forest to find out what happened to the others.

What earns it a place among books like Lord of the Rings is the elegiac register. Tolkien’s trilogy is, underneath the war, a book about the passing of an age: the Elves are leaving, the magic is draining out of the world, and winning the war doesn’t stop that. Beagle wrote a whole novel in exactly that key. It’s about wonder receding, and about what’s left for the people who remember it.

Beagle’s prose is the other reason. It’s funny, lyrical, and occasionally devastating in the space of a paragraph, and the book is quotable to a degree few fantasy novels manage.

It’s short, it’s not a quest epic, and its concerns are Tolkien’s concerns, which is the only test that matters here.

The Odyssey by Homer

Two entries here aren’t fantasy in the modern sense at all. This is the first of them, and it’s on the list as the archetype the whole genre descends from.

The Odyssey follows Odysseus after the Trojan War, trying to sail home to Ithaca and spending ten years failing to get there. Along the way: the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, a trip to the underworld, and a homecoming that’s less a reward than a final test.

It’s routinely named one of the two foundational texts of Western literature, and its influence on the fantasy quest is not a stretch. The long journey home, the monsters guarding each stage, the hero defined by trials, the episodic structure where each stop is its own story: Tolkien was a scholar of exactly this tradition, and the shape of the quest didn’t come from nowhere.

It’s the oldest of the books like Lord of the Rings here by nearly three thousand years, and it still reads well. Get a good modern translation. Emily Wilson’s is fast, clear, and easy to live with, and the poem moves much better than its reputation suggests.

Titus Groan and Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake

The second outlier, and the strangest thing on this list.

There is no magic in Gormenghast. No wizards, no dragons, no elves, no quest. What there is instead is a castle: an enormous, crumbling, near-infinite pile where an ancient family lives out rituals nobody remembers the purpose of, governed by rules more rigid than any magic system. Into this arrives Steerpike, a kitchen boy with ambition and no scruples, who begins climbing.

The reason it belongs here is the prose. Peake wrote some of the most beautiful sentences in English fiction, dense and grotesque and unbelievably vivid, and the castle becomes as real and as mythic as any invented world in the genre. It’s the same grand, deep-history atmosphere that makes Middle-earth feel lived in, just turned inward and confined to a single vast building. Peake was also an illustrator, and it shows: every room and every face is drawn.

The honest warning: it’s slow. Very slow. The plot in the first book barely moves, and if you’re reading for incident you’ll bounce off it hard.

If what you loved about Tolkien was the language and the atmosphere rather than the swords, this might be the best of all the books like Lord of the Rings here for you. If it was the swords, skip it. Peake the painter, poet, and illustrator is covered on my Mervyn Peake guide.

Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams

Now back to fantasy proper, and to one of the finest examples of it.

Osten Ard is a continent where humans, the troll-folk Qanuc, and the immortal, elf-like Sithi have held an uneasy peace under King John the Presbyter. When the old king’s health fails, that peace goes with it, and something far older begins to stir beneath the world.

Simon, a kitchen boy who knows nothing about any of this, gets swept into it, which is exactly the right choice of protagonist. Early on he’s less a hero than a bystander being dragged along, and that makes the whole thing land closer to the reader.

I read the entire series and loved it. The world-building is openly reminiscent of Tolkien but it goes darker, and the Sithi are the best example: elves who are genuinely alien and not remotely benevolent. Pryrates, the red priest, is an all-time favorite antagonist of mine, a straightforwardly evil man who’s terrifying precisely because he’s so unhidden about it.

Where it stumbles is when Williams reaches for Tolkien’s trick of inventing vocabulary and languages, which never quite convinces. That’s forgivable. Nobody rivals Tolkien at that, and as books like Lord of the Rings go, this one is a triumph on every other front. It’s also the series that directly inspired George R. R. Martin to write A Song of Ice and Fire. Martin’s own shelf is mapped on my George R. R. Martin guide.

More in Fantasy

Ernest Hemingway is one of the most influential American writers of all time. Many of the best Hemingway books are regarded amongst the finest works of American literature.

He was a deeply profound writer, one who shared greatly about the hardships of love, life, but also other topics such as war and opposing the unconquerable.

His works shine by a combination of a simplistic, yet powerful style, deep themes and an often harsh portrayal of realism.

He’s a writer who differed vastly from his peers. He branded a new, simplistic style of writing.

Over the years, I’ve read many of the best Hemingway books, but I also have taken his approach to the craft to heart. I think reading Ernest Hemingway is a great experience. His works might appear simplistic, but they are full of life, of a feeling of love and profound insight. If you’re interested in more literature recommendations, check out or literature category.

The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises was Hemingway’s debut and first novel. It’s, however, regarded by many as one of the best Hemingway books out there.

The novel’s defined by a contrast of Midwestern values and new experiences in post-World War I Europe. It showcases life in Paris with friends and acquaintances, meaningless revelry, but also bullfighting in Spain. It portrays the bad and the ugly of people who return from World War one, those who are lost and how they try to create something beautiful.

Its protagonist is typical of Hemingway. He’s competent, confident, yet doomed to stay unfulfilled. It’s, in essence, a personal and literary search for meaning.

The Sun Also Rises is a courageous attempt to write in a different way. It shows Hemingway’s mastery of dialogue, but also his sparse and simplistic style of description and narrative.

The Sun Also Rises is self-indulgent, promiscuous and even unflattering, but most of all, it’s honest. It shows an age of moral bankruptcy, spiritual dissolution, unrealized love and vanishing illusions.

It’s lively, engrossing, clearly one of the best Hemingway books out there and a must read for fans of his work.

A Farewell to Arms

A Farewell to Arms is Hemingway’s second novel and a fictional retelling of the events that shaped his worldview.

It’s about a young man who leaves the Midwest and goes to Italy as an ambulance driver. He wanted to join the Great War, display honor and courage, but was instead blown apart in the trenches. We see him falling in love, contemplating marriage before being rejected. In essence, it shows us how man faces life’s challenges.

It’s the first novel of his that should feature one of his most dominant themes: confrontation with death.

A Farewell to Arms is one of the most important works on World War I. It shows us that war brings out the best and worst in man, shows us weary and demoralized men and the profound struggles between loyalty and desertion.

One can also see that Hemingway’s become more confident in his craft since he wrote The Sun Also Rises.

Overall, A Farewell to Arms is another one of the best Hemingway books out there, and quite a profound and enjoyable read.

Death in the Afternoon

Hemingway was a big fan of bullfighting and we can see it in Death in the Afternoon.

This one of the best Hemingway books is his defining work on the subject. He describes bullfighting not as merely a sport, but as an inspiration for his art. He sees it as something akin to a richly choreographed ballet.

One of Hemingway’s most popular themes is courage and grace under pressure, and it’s what he sees as the essence of bullfighting. He does a tremendous job of illustrating both the savageness and the beauty of it. He describes it in detail, sheds light on the rigorous combination of athleticism and artistry, as well as the technical aspects and dangers of it.

Death in the Afternoon is a novel full of examination and insight. It shows bravery and cowardice, heroism and tragedy, and, of course, life and death.

While it’s not one of Hemingway’s most popular novels, I still believe it to be amongst the best Hemingway books and one anyone should read.

To Have and Have Not

To Have and Have Not is a novel about Hemingway’s growing awareness of the different financial and social classes of people.

Its cast of characters are based on the people Hemingway met during his time in Key West. They comprise the working class on the docks, the illegal immigrants who are smuggled in from Cuba and the rich who moor their boats there.

The plot centers on a man who’s forced to run contraband between Cuba and Key West to keep his family afloat. It leads him into a world of wealthy yachtsmen and involves him in a strange and unlikely love affair.

To Have and Have Not is a depression-era novel. It’s a harsh and realistic work, yet also oddly tender. Hemingway argues for political and social change to help the working class, yet he doesn’t think the New Deal is a solution.

Via the novel’s main character, he outlines the limits of personal freedom, self-reliance and the absence of grace under pressure.

It’s a profound and deep work and amongst the best Hemingway books.

The Green Hills of Africa

The Green Hills of Africa is Hemingway’s venture into the realm of nonfiction. It details his real-life adventure of going hunting in East Africa and provides us with insights into his life and adventures.

In his prose, he showcases the rich, unsullied lands of Africa, the fat herds, but also the dangers of overhunting and the scarcity of nature.

It’s regarded as one of the most essential books in the travel literature genre. When I first read it, I loved every page and even now I regard it as one of the best Hemingway books out there.

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway started his literary career as a writer of short stories and he became a monster of the form.

This giant book is the definite collection of all his short stories and contains all sixty he ever wrote.

It contains many highly regarded classics such as ‘Hills Like White Elephants,’ ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro,’ ‘The Killers,’ and, of course, ‘Indian Camp.’

It’s a fantastic collection, a true showcase of Hemingway’s mastery of the short story, and it contains some of the greatest short fiction ever written.

A Moveable Feast

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s memoir and was only published posthumously.

Did you ever dream of going to Paris to become a writer? If you read this book, I’m sure you’ll find it as tempting as I did.

I regard A Moveable Feast as one of the greatest and most definite memories any young writer could read, probably the best.

Before Hemingway wrote about deep sea fishing, hunting, or his experiences in war, he was a young man who desired to hone his craft.

The book’s essential a time capsule that takes us back to this time, the Paris of the 1920s.

What’s interesting to note is that it also gives us insight into other writers of the period, most notably F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein.

A Moveable Feast is definitely amongst the best Hemingway books out there, and it’s a warm, heartfelt love letter to the craft of writing and of being young.

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea was the work Hemingway published before his death.

It’s, in my opinion, his most refined and finely crafted work and his most enduring book. It’s a short, but outstanding read.

Based on his experiences in Cuba, Hemingway created the character of Santiago, an old fisherman. After an unlucky streak of not catching anything for eighty-five days, the old man catches a great marlin. Yet, his luck doesn’t last for long, for the fish is soon torn apart by sharks.

All the while, the old man reminisces about his life and his experiences as an arm wrestling-champion.

The novel’s a testament to Hemingway’s view of life, confront the unconquerable and to fight and show courage under pressure.

The old man doesn’t give in, not until the end, even though he knows he’s lost.

All this is encapsulated in the novel’s most famous line ‘A man can be destroyed, but he cannot be defeated.’

The Old Man and the Sea is a testament of his mastery of the craft like no other. The style is simplistic, yet incredibly powerful.

When the book was first published, it was an incredible success. It was first awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and later the Noble Price in Literature.

It’s without a doubt one of the best Hemingway books, if not the best, and it’s a book anyone should read.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is Hemingway’s magnum opus and clearly one of the best Hemingway books ever written.

It’s based on Hemingway’s experiences as a correspondent during the Spanish Civil war and going behind enemy lines, similar to the novel’s protagonist.

The novel showcases his classic themes in all their glory: the courage of man under pressure and the conflicts of love and war.

Once more, Hemingway uses his personal experiences, as well as that of friends and acquaintances, to develop his fictional retelling. Many of the characters in the novel are based on people Hemingway knew himself.

The novel takes place over three days and is set near the El Tajo gorge.

One of the most outstanding parts of the novel is the description of the political massacre in Pablo’s village. The best, however, at least in my opinion, was his description of the smell of death. It was something I’d never seen outlined in such detail before.

It’s a fantastic novel, and one of his most popular by far.

While it can be tough, or even tedious at times, it makes up for it by those parts who are nothing short of brilliant.

It’s a story that’s beautiful, strong and brutal, but also compassionate, moving and wise.

For me, For Whom the Bell Tolls is the best Hemingway book out there, and a book that anyone should read.