readalikes

  • While You Wait: Heated Rivalry

    While You Wait: Heated Rivalry

    Perhaps you are enjoying the new television series Heated Rivalry. Maybe you have watched every episode as it has been released, read this interview with the actors and this one too. You probably found this interview with Chala Hunter, the intimacy coordinator for the series, fascinating. Perchance you even started learning Russian for free with… Continue reading

  • Fractured Fairy Tales and Female Antiheroes, 5 Readalikes for Fans of Wicked

    Fractured Fairy Tales and Female Antiheroes, 5 Readalikes for Fans of Wicked

    Are people born wicked? Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them? These stories reinvent well-known stories and turn fairy-tale tropes inside out. Once-overlooked characters learn about themselves and grow their magical powers, and good and evil can depend on your perspective. In Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher, an unassuming third-born princess allies with… Continue reading

  • Wicked Read-Alikes for Kids and Teens

    As a decades-long fan of the musical Wicked, I was so excited to see the movie this year (and now can’t stop singing and dancing, much to my colleagues’ and husband’s delight). I finally decided to read Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, the source text for the… Continue reading

  • Remembering Cormac McCarthy

    Award-winning author Cormac McCarthy passed away last month at age 89. He published his first novel, The Orchard Keeper in 1965, and his most recent duology, The Passenger and Stella Maris, in 2022. Known for his bracing, bleak, and atmospheric prose, his literary fiction drew on both Southern and Western genre traditions. McCarthy’s characters were… Continue reading

  • Read-alikes for the Emily St. John Mandel fan

    Want something like Emily St. John Mandel? We get this question quite a lot from fans of the author’s best-selling dystopian novel Station Eleven or her more literary mysteries starting with her debut Last Night in Montreal. Here are some read-alikes with similar qualities to St. John Mandel’s beautiful and haunting novels: Continue reading

  • If You Like Charles Portis (True Grit)

    If You Like Charles Portis (True Grit)

    There are generally three or four big successes in the life of a good book. If an author is lucky, sales peak when a book is first published, and they spike again should the book be made into a movie or if it wins a major award. Most reliably of all however is that warm… Continue reading

  • If You Liked Yuval Harari’s Sapiens

    Who are we? What are we? Why are we here? Where will we wind up? These are just a few of the questions asked – and answered – in Yuval Harari’s Sapiens, a thought-provoking and opinionated international bestseller about nothing less than the humanity, start to finish. I’ve long been intrigued with human origins, fascinated… Continue reading

  • If You Liked Where the Crawdads Sing

    With its lyrical descriptions of nature and tempestuous love story, Delia Owens’ evocative debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing (a current Peak Pick selection) has taken the literary world by storm. If you enjoyed it, or if you’re still waiting for your reserve copy to arrive, here are some similar titles you might enjoy. Aldo… Continue reading

  • If You Like Liane Moriarty

    If You Like Liane Moriarty

    Here at the library we love talking with readers, both in person and online via our Your Next Five Books recommendation service. As we do so, there are certain authors who readers will mention to us over and over again. Australian writer Liane Moriarty is one of those authors. For many readers, Moriarty strikes the… Continue reading

  • Crime: If You Like Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series.

    In his 1950 essay The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler outlined the character of the modern detective, in words fit to quote at length: “…down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual… Continue reading

  • Finding a Good Book, with NoveList Plus

    Have you ever had a new toy that was so exciting that you had to tell everyone you knew about it? This is how I feel about the Novelist Plus database that is among the many fantastic and free databases available for all Seattle Public Library cardholders. I find myself effusing enthusiastically about Novelist Plus… Continue reading