If you liked
Books like Kudos
Loved Kudos by Rachel Cusk? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from literary fiction, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.
10 books · ranked
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1
The Overstory
Nine Americans whose lives are changed by trees — a chestnut tree photographed for generations, a couple bonded by a sentinel banyan, a scientist who discovers trees communicate — are drawn together in a defence of old-growth forests. Powers's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel makes trees the protagonist of American history and asks whether human consciousness will arrive before or after the damage is done.
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2
There There
Twelve urban Native Americans converge on Oakland's Big Oakland Powwow — each with their own history of displacement, addiction, family loss and cultural reconnection. Orange's debut is told in overlapping voices that build toward an act of devastating violence, asking what it means to be Native American today in a city built on the erasure of Native existence.
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3
Nine Perfect Strangers
Nine strangers check into a luxury wellness resort run by the enigmatic Masha, each hoping to change their life. What they get is increasingly strange, invasive and ultimately dangerous. Moriarty's novel asks what we are willing to have done to us in the name of transformation — and who profits from our desire to be different.
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4
The Great Alone
Ernt Allbright, a damaged Vietnam veteran, moves his family to a remote Alaskan homestead where he believes they can start over. What follows is a survival story — against the Alaskan wilderness but also against Ernt's increasingly volatile behaviour. Hannah's novel is about the terrible cost of loving a broken man, and about the daughter who must choose between staying and surviving.
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5
Verity
Struggling writer Lowen Ashby is hired to complete a bestselling thriller series after the author Verity Crawford is incapacitated. Working in the Crawford home, Lowen finds a manuscript — an apparent autobiography — that contains a confession of terrible acts. Hoover's dark thriller is about truth, gaslighting and the stories women tell themselves and each other.
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6
Circe
Circe, daughter of Helios, discovers she has the power to transform men into animals — and must navigate a world of gods, monsters and heroes while finding what she actually is. Miller's novel recasts a figure from the Odyssey as the protagonist of her own story, questioning what power means for a woman the ancient world considered marginal.
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7
Milkman
An eighteen-year-old woman in an unnamed city during 'the Troubles' is stalked by a much older paramilitary figure known only as 'the milkman' — and finds that resisting his attention makes her the subject of community gossip and suspicion. Burns's Booker Prize-winning novel, narrated by a woman known only as 'middle sister,' is written in a dense, looping, deliberately unnamed style that captures the paranoid texture of life under constant surveillance.
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8
An American Marriage
Roy and Celestial are newly married when Roy is wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The novel follows both of them — and Celestial's childhood friend Andre — through the twelve years of Roy's sentence and what happens when he is released. Jones's novel, an Oprah's Book Club selection and Women's Prize winner, is about love, loyalty and what the carceral system does to relationships.
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9
Merci Suarez Changes Gears
Merci Suárez, a scholarship student at a Florida private school, navigates middle school social dynamics, a strained friendship, and her beloved grandfather's increasingly worrying memory lapses. Medina's Newbery Medal-winning novel is a warm, specific portrait of a Cuban-American family and the particular pressures of being the kid who doesn't quite fit at a wealthy school.
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10
The Poet X
Xiomara Batista, a Dominican-American teenager in Harlem, channels her anger, faith and desire into a notebook of poems she's afraid to share — until a school slam poetry club gives her a place to perform. Acevedo's novel-in-verse won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, the Carnegie Medal and the Printz Award — a rare triple.