More like Nowhere Else
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- Piranesi
Susanna Clarkestandalone novel2020
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitylonelinessreflective+1 more
A man lives in a huge isolated labyrinthine building partially submerged in an ocean, together with another man and 13 skeletons, which is the only world he recalls.
- Dream Archipelago
series16 books1976
completed
similar byliterary & generalidentity+3 more
Christopher Priest's Dream Archipelago stories return again and again to a vast chain of islands stretched across a world locked in permanent, distant war between two continental powers, without ever quite settling whether the archipelago is a real place or something closer to collective dream or fiction within the fiction. Novels like The Affirmation and The Islanders, along with numerous short stories, revisit the setting from different, often contradictory angles rather than building one continuous narrative. The ambiguity between what's real and what's invented is treated as the point, not a gap to be resolved.
- The Blue Ant Trilogy
series3 books2003
similar bymysteriouscontemporary+1 more
Hubertus Bigend is a fictional character appearing in the third trilogy of novels of science fiction and literary author William Gibson. Bigend is the antihero of Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), Spook Country (2007) and Zero History (2010). In an interview Gibson says "I've always had a sense of Bigend as someone who presents himself as though he knows what's going on, but who in fact doesn't. It's just my sense of the subtext of the character: he's bullshitting himself, at the same time as he's bullshitting all of us."
- Kairos
series11 books1962
completed
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The Time Quintet is a science fantasy series of five young adult novels written by American author Madeleine L'Engle and made up of A Wrinkle in Time (1962), A Wind in the Door (1973), A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978), Many Waters (1986), and An Acceptable Time (1989).
- Death in Her Hands
Ottessa Moshfeghstandalone novel2020
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitylonelinesscontemporary
Death in Her Hands is a 2020 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh.
- Concrete Island
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1974
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinesscontemporaryreflective
Architect Robert Maitland crashes his car onto a stretch of wasteland trapped between three converging motorways -- visible from thousands of cars, reachable by none of them. Injured and unable to climb back to the road, Maitland adapts to life on what he starts calling the Island, scavenging food thrown from car windows, and discovers he isn't alone: a runaway sex worker hiding in a bunker, and a brain-damaged former circus acrobat, both long past expecting rescue. What begins as a survival story turns into a question of whether Maitland even wants to leave. A J. G. Ballard novel of urban isolation, grouped with Crash and High-Rise.
- Dhalgren
Samuel R. Delanystandalone novel1975
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinesscontemporary
Dhalgren is a 1975 science fiction novel by American writer Samuel R. Delany. It features an extended trip to and through Bellona, a fictional city in the American Midwest cut off from the rest of the world by an unknown catastrophe. It is number 33 on the 20th Century's Greatest Hits: 100 English-Language Books of Fiction list.
- Number9dream
David Mitchellstandalone novel2001
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitylonelinesscontemporary
number9dream is the second novel by English author David Mitchell. Set in Japan, the 2001 novel narrates 19-year-old Eiji Miyake's search for his father, whom he has never met. Told in the first person by Eiji, it is a coming of age and perception story that breaks convention by juxtaposing Eiji Miyake's actual journey toward identity and understanding with his imaginative journey. The novel employs eclectic narrations in each chapter.
- Red Shift
Alan Garnerstandalone novel1973
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitycontemporary
Quoting that 1978 review article by Brian Lee: Red Shift [after The Owl Service] was again about the relationship between two adolescents, but interwoven in their love story were two other strands: one about a group of Roman legionaires 'going tribal' among warring factions of the British (the parallel and the brutal language are obviously those of the Americans among the Viet Cong and the Viet Minh); the other strand is about the massacre of a village on the Welsh border during the Civil War.{{BREAK}} Undoubtedly, Red Shift is a brilliantly written and gripping book. The difficulty about it is that Garner makes no concessions to his readers (and on the book jacket he makes it clear that it is for children). It is told almost entirely in cryptic conversation with minimal clues to the identity of the speakers. He switches from strand to strand of the story without warning. The book cannot be understood and appreciated at one hasty reading. It is worth serious study, but will children persevere? In her introduction to the 1973 edition of Children's Books of the Year, critic and reviewer Elaine Moss says: Spurred on by the publication of Alan Garner's literary crossword puzzle Red Shift ... many of us asked ourselves where children's publishing should end and adult begin? For Children's Books of the Year I have drawn the line below Red Shift and excluded it ... Alan Garner, in deliberately choosing an avant-garde form, is also choosing an advanced, sophisticated audience for his book. Alan Garner himself seems to have come around to this view. This year a television adaptation of Red Shift was screened at peak viewing time with no mention of the fact that it was originally published as a children's novel. [end quotation from the review article; ellipses by Lee]
- The Gum Thief
Douglas Couplandstandalone novel2007
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinesscontemporaryreflective
The Gum Thief is Canadian author Douglas Coupland's twelfth novel. It was published on September 25, 2007 , by Random House Canada in Canada and Bloomsbury Publishing in the United States.
- Twilight Zone
universe40 books1960
Start hereStories from the Twilight Zone · Start here
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Picture, if you will, an ordinary person on an ordinary afternoon: a tired salesman, a frightened child, a man who wants only to be left alone. Somewhere between the streetlight and the front door, the rules quietly change. This is the Twilight Zone — not a place on any map but a middle ground between light and shadow, science and superstition, the pit of our fears and the summit of our knowledge. There is no continuing saga here, no cast to follow across the years. There is only the door, and the parable waiting on the far side of it. What the shelf holds is Rod Serling's anthology given the permanence of print. Serling turned his own teleplays into prose, the collections that open with Stories from the Twilight Zone, and the scripts survive alongside them — his and Richard Matheson's, the two hands that set the show's pulse. Around that core gather the story-collections of Walter B. Gibson, the volumes of new tales assembled by Carol Serling, standalone novels, and paired reissues: dozens of self-contained pieces, many writers under one banner. Read one or read forty. Each closes its own circle. The machinery is always the same and never predictable — a reasonable premise, a moral squeeze, a final turn that lands like a tap on the shoulder, sometimes cruel, sometimes merciful, always earned. Beneath the twist runs Serling's true subject: ordinary conscience under strain — prejudice, vanity, loneliness, the wish to go back. Begin where he began, with his own Stories from the Twilight Zone, then follow Matheson. There is no order to keep. You unlock this door with the key of imagination.
- Ghostwritten
David Mitchellstandalone novel1999
similar byliterary & generalcontemporaryreflective+2 more
Various individuals around the globe cross paths, while the complexities of modern societies lead to human civilization's inevitable end.
- Free Live Free
Gene Wolfestandalone novel1984
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitycontemporary
Free Live Free is a novel by American writer Gene Wolfe, first published in 1984.
- The Raw Shark Texts
Steven Hallstandalone novel2007
similar byliterary & generalmysteriousidentitycontemporary
The Raw Shark Texts is the debut novel by British author Steven Hall, released in 2007. The book was released by Canongate Books in the US and the UK and published by HarperCollins in Canada. The title is a play on "Rorschach Tests", which are inkblot tests. The novel is a work of Meta-fiction which uses Concrete poetry, linguistic jokes and cultural references. It is the story of an amnesiac re-discovering his past life through a surreal collection of clues he has left himself while evading a steampunk villain and the shark of the title.
- Ægypt
series5 books1987
completed
similar byliterary & generalidentitycontemporaryreflective+1 more
Ægypt is a fantasy tetralogy written by American author John Crowley. The series describes the life and work of Pierce Moffett, a history professor who prepares a manuscript for publication even as it prepares him for some as-yet unknown destiny, all set amidst strange and subtle Hermetic manipulations among the Faraway Hills at the border of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
- Briefing for a Descent Into Hell
Doris Lessingstandalone novel1971
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Briefing for a Descent into Hell is a 1971 psychological novel by British novelist Doris Lessing. It was shortlisted for that the 1971 Booker Prize.
- Castle Rock
series16 books1978
similar bycontemporary
Castle Rock is the fictional Maine town that links a cluster of otherwise separate Stephen King novels and novellas, including The Dead Zone, Cujo, The Dark Half, Needful Things, and Elevation. Rather than telling one continuous story, the books share a setting and occasional recurring figures, such as Sheriff Alan Pangborn, while each follows its own self-contained plot and cast. Any title can be read on its own without needing the others.
- Our Tragic Universe
Scarlett Thomasstandalone novel2010
similar byliterary & generalidentitylonelinesscontemporaryreflective
'I was reading about the end of the universe when I got a text message from my friend Libby . . .' If Kelsey Newman's theory about the end of time is true, we are all going to live forever. But for Meg – locked in a dead-end relationship and with a deadline long-gone for a book that she can't write – this thought fills her with dread. Meg is lost in a labyrinth of her own devising. But could there be an important connection between a wild beast living on Dartmoor, a ship in a bottle, the science of time, a knitting pattern for the shape of the universe and the Cottingley Fairies? Or is her life just one long chain of coincidences? Smart, entrancing and buzzing with big ideas, Our Tragic Universe is a book about how relationships are created and destroyed, and how a story might just save your life.
- Melusine
Lynne Reid Banksstandalone novel1988
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A teenaged boy becomes embroiled in the mysterious life of a farm girl while on vacation in the south of France.
