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Recommendations based on Little, Bigby John Crowley
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
by Susanna Clarke
A whimsical tale of two magicians mastering the mysteries of English magic.
The novel opens in 1806 in northern England with The Learned Society of York Magicians, whose members are "theoretical magicians" who believe that magic died out several hundred years earlier. The ... (Wikipedia)
The Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A quest to save a magical kingdom from a mysterious force of darkness.
A strange, inexplicable malaise is spreading throughout Earthsea. Magic is losing its power; songs are being forgotten; people and animals are sickening or going mad. Accompanied by Arren, the young ... (Wikipedia)
A Wizard of Earthsea
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A young wizard embarks on a quest to master his own magical powers and battle a mysterious force of evil.
Ged, the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, was called Sparrowhawk in his reckless youth. Hungry for power and knowledge, Sparrowhawk tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon ... (Goodreads)
The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin
A diplomat's mission to a distant planet, exploring themes of gender and identity.
The protagonist of the novel is Genly Ai, a male Terran native, who is sent to invite the planet Gethen to join the Ekumen, a coalition of humanoid worlds. , Ai travels to the Gethen planetary system ... (Wikipedia)
The Sparrow
by Mary Doria Russell
A Jesuit mission to an alien planet ends in tragedy, raising questions about faith, morality, and the nature of God.
In the year 2019, the SETI program at Arecibo Observatory discovers radio broadcasts of music from the vicinity of Alpha Centauri . The first expedition to Rakhat, the world that is sending the ... (Wikipedia)
Gormenghast
by Mervyn Peake
A darkly humorous fantasy epic of a crumbling castle and its eccentric inhabitants.
Titus Groan is seven years old. Lord and heir to the crumbling castle Gormenghast. A gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed ... (Goodreads)
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
by Tom Robbins
An eccentric story of freedom and adventure, exploring themes of identity, fate and love.
Sissy Hankshaw, the novel's protagonist , is a woman born with enormously large thumbs who considers her mutation a gift. , The novel covers various topics, including free love , feminism , drug use ... (Wikipedia)
The Sheltering Sky
by Paul Bowles
An exploration of the human condition, as a couple travel through the Sahara desert.
The story centers on Port Moresby and his wife Kit, a married couple originally from New York who travel to the North African desert accompanied by their friend Tunner. The journey, initially an ... (Wikipedia)
A Canticle for Leibowitz
by Walter M. Miller Jr.
A post-apocalyptic tale of a world struggling to rebuild after a devastating nuclear war.
After 20th century civilization was destroyed by a global nuclear war , known as the "Flame Deluge", there was a violent backlash against the culture of advanced knowledge and technology that had led ... (Wikipedia)
The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
A group of people investigating a mysterious and haunted house, uncovering its secrets.
It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted ... (Goodreads)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
by Tom Stoppard
A humorous exploration of fate and free will, seen through the eyes of two minor characters in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".
Hamlet told from the worm's-eye view of two minor characters, bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, reality and illusion mix, and where fate leads heroes to a ... (Goodreads)
Crash
by J.G. Ballard
A dystopian novel exploring the surreal and chaotic landscape of a near-future Los Angeles.
The story is told through the eyes of narrator James Ballard, named after the author himself, but it centers on the sinister figure of Dr. Robert Vaughan, a "former TV-scientist, turned nightmare ... (Wikipedia)
Assassin's Quest
by Robin Hobb
A daring quest to save a kingdom from a powerful evil, with the help of magical powers.
FitzChivalry Farseer is raised from the dead with Wit magic, becoming more wolf than human. Only Burrich and Chade know he survived his tortures in Regal 's dungeons. They help Fitz regain his ... (Wikipedia)
Collected Fictions
by Jorge Luis Borges
An anthology of Borges' masterful short stories, exploring the depths of human thought and imagination.
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, ... (Goodreads)
Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
by Cormac McCarthy
A violent and bloody western epic, exploring the depths of human depravity.
An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west." ... (Barnes & Noble)
In Watermelon Sugar
by Richard Brautigan
A surrealist exploration of a utopian society and its inhabitants.
Through the narrator 's first-person account we learn the story of the people and the events of i DEATH . The central tension is created by Margaret, once a lover of the narrator, and in BOIL , a ... (Wikipedia)
Cryptonomicon
by Neal Stephenson
A thrilling journey through the past and present, combining tech, history and adventure.
The action takes place in two periods—World War II and the late 1990s, during the Internet boom and Asian financial crisis . In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, a young United States Navy code ... (Wikipedia)
Grendel
by John Gardner
A modern retelling of the Beowulf story from the perspective of the monster, Grendel.
In the opening scene, Grendel briefly fights with a ram when frustrated with its stupidity. He then mockingly asks the sky why animals lack sense and dignity; the sky does not reply, adding to his ... (Wikipedia)
Borne
by Jeff VanderMeer
In a post-apocalyptic world, a scavenger finds a mysterious creature named Borne and raises it, but soon discovers its dangerous potential.
In the ruins of a nameless city of the future that is dominated by a giant grizzly bear called Mord, a woman named Rachel lives as a scavenger, collecting genetically engineered organisms and ... (Wikipedia)
Titus Groan
by Mervyn Peake
A young man's rise to power in a decaying castle, amidst a backdrop of a decaying world.
The novel begins as the imperious and ritual-driven servant Mr. Flay seeks to tell someone new of the birth of an heir to the House of Groan in a remote part of the sprawling castle of Gormenghast. A ... (Wikipedia)
King Solomon's Mines
by H. Rider Haggard
Explorers' epic journey to find a lost African kingdom and its legendary treasure.
H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines has entertained generations of readers since its first publication in 1885. Following a mysterious map of dubious reliability, a small group of men trek into ... (Goodreads)
Nine Stories
by J.D. Salinger
Nine short stories of insight into the human condition and its mysteries.
Nine Stories (1953) is a collection of short stories by American fiction writer J. D. Salinger published in April 1953. It includes two of his most famous short stories, "A Perfect Day for ... (Goodreads)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
The Shadow of the Torturer
by Gene Wolfe
A journey of self-discovery and exploration, as a young man seeks to unlock the secrets of his past.
Severian , an apprentice in the Torturers' Guild, barely survives a swim in the River Gyoll. On his way back to the Citadel, Severian and several other apprentices sneak into a necropolis where ... (Wikipedia)
Annihilation
by Jeff VanderMeer
A team of four women venture into a mysterious, surreal landscape in search of answers.
A team of four women cross the border into an uninhabited area known as "Area X", an unspecified coastal location that has been closed to the public for three decades. The group consists of a ... (Wikipedia)
Acceptance
by Jeff VanderMeer
A journey of exploration and self-discovery, as humanity faces a mysterious alien power.
Acceptance jumps around in time and between the perspectives of several characters from the first two novels in the Southern Reach Trilogy. The Lighthouse Keeper In the years before Area X, Saul ... (Wikipedia)
Stranger in a Strange Land
by Robert A. Heinlein
A human raised by Martians must find his place in a hostile Earth society.
The story focuses on a human raised on Mars and his adaptation to and understanding of humans and their culture. It is set in a post- Third World War United States, where organized religions are ... (Wikipedia)
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
by J.D. Salinger
Examination of family relationships, growing pains, and human connections.
The author writes: The two long pieces in this book originally came out in The New Yorker ? RAISE HIGH THE ROOF BEAM, CARPENTERS in 1955, SEYMOUR ? An Introduction in 1959. Whatever their differences ... (Goodreads)
The Spiderwick Chronicles Box Set
by Tony DiTerlizzi
Three siblings discover a hidden world of magical creatures and battle against evil forces to protect it.
It all started with a mysterious letter left at a tiny bookstore for authors Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. Its closing lines: "We just want people to know about this. The stuff that has happened ... (Goodreads)
The Scar
by China Miéville
A fantastical journey of survival in a dangerous, watery underworld.
The Scar opens with the journey of a small ship which has set out from the city New Crobuzon (the setting of Perdido Street Station ). It is heading to the city's new colony, Nova Esperium, which ... (Wikipedia)
