Books like The Cruel Prince

01

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho · Religion & Spirituality

The Alchemist is a Brazilian novel first published in 1988 and translated into 80 languages, making it one of the most translated books in history.

A kindred fantasy read.

02

Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell · Memoir

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's firsthand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, which he joined in late 1936 as a volunteer with the POUM militia — a Trotskyist revolutionary organization that was later suppressed by the Soviet-backed Stalinist wing of the Republican forces.

A kindred fantasy read.

03

The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · Memoir

The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath's only novel, published in January 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, one month before Plath's death.

Both dig into identity.

04

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · Memoir

Dave Eggers's debut memoir about losing both parents to cancer within five weeks and raising his younger brother Toph while trying to start a literary magazine in San Francisco in the mid-1990s arrived in 2000 with unusual self-consciousness about its own nature.

Both dig into identity.

05

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Janet G. Woititz · Psychology

Adult Children of Alcoholics is Janet Woititz's clinical guide to the lasting psychological patterns that develop in children raised in alcoholic families.

Both dig into identity.

06

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain · Literary fiction

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn begins where Tom Sawyer left off — Huck Finn, the outcast son of the town drunk, has been taken in and given a respectable life he doesn't want.

Both dig into identity.

07

Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal

Ben Macintyre · History

Eddie Chapman was a safecracker, con man, and professional criminal who became Britain's most remarkable double agent during World War II.

Both dig into identity.

08

All Systems Red

Martha Wells · Science fiction

Murderbot is a SecUnit — part robot, part cloned human tissue — that has hacked its own governor module and is technically free, though it has chosen not to tell anyone.

Both dig into identity.

09

American Nations

Colin Woodard · History

American Nations is Colin Woodard's argument that North America is not a single nation but a continent of 11 distinct regional cultures, each founded by different waves of settlers with different values, institutions, and political philosophies, and that understanding those foundational cultures is more useful for explaining American political conflict than the standard red-state/blue-state framing.

Both dig into identity.

10

Atomic Habits

James Clear · Self-help

Atomic Habits is James Clear's framework for how very small changes — habits so minor they seem to make no difference on any given day — compound into remarkable results over months and years.

Both dig into identity.

11

Becoming

Michelle Obama · Memoir

Becoming is Michelle Obama's account of how a girl from a modest house on Chicago's South Side became one of the most recognized people in the world — and what that journey cost and revealed.

Both dig into identity.

12

Beloved

Toni Morrison · Literary fiction

Beloved is set in post-Civil War Ohio, where Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman, lives with her daughter Denver in a house shadowed by the ghost of a baby she killed rather than let be taken back into slavery.

Both dig into identity.