Books like The Fifth Season

01

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.

02

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.

A kindred fantasy read.

03

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Michelle Alexander · Politics

Michelle Alexander's central argument is stark: the United States has not ended racial caste, it has merely redesigned it.

A kindred fantasy read.

04

Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl · Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning is Viktor Frankl's account of his years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and the psychological theory he developed from that experience.

A kindred fantasy read.

05

Vicious

V.E. Schwab · Fantasy

Vicious follows Victor Vale and Eli Cardale, two college roommates who discover through a thesis project that near-death experiences can create ExtraOrdinary humans — people with abilities.

Both dig into power and its costs.

06

Firefly Lane

Kristin Hannah · Contemporary fiction

Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey meet in the summer of 1974 as fourteen-year-olds on Firefly Lane in rural Washington State, and their friendship spans three decades — through high school, college, careers in television journalism, marriages, and heartbreak.

Both dig into grief and loss.

07

Happy Place

Emily Henry · Romance

Harriet and Wyn were the couple everyone else wanted to be.

Both dig into grief and loss.

08

Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri · Short stories

Interpreter of Maladies is Jhumpa Lahiri's debut short story collection, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Both dig into grief and loss.

09

Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders · Literary fiction

Lincoln in the Bardo takes place over a single night in February 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln visits the crypt where his eleven-year-old son Willie has just been buried.

Both dig into grief and loss.

10

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami · Literary fiction

Norwegian Wood is Murakami's most straightforwardly realist novel and his most personal — a coming-of-age story set in late 1960s Tokyo, narrated by Toru Watanabe, who is recalling the year he was nineteen and the two women who shaped him.

Both dig into grief and loss.

11

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Shelby Van Pelt · Contemporary fiction

Marcellus is a giant Pacific octopus living in the Sowell Bay Aquarium.

Both dig into grief and loss.

12

Reminders of Him

Colleen Hoover · Contemporary fiction

Kenna Rowan is released from prison after serving five years for a drunk driving accident that killed her boyfriend Scotty.

Both dig into grief and loss.