Books like Swamplandia!
12 books with a reading profile close to Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
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1
The Water Dancer
narrative, literary
Hiram Walker is born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, the son of an enslaved woman and the white man who owns them both.
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2
The Deep
narrative, literary
Inspired by a song by the group clipping., this novella follows the wajinru, water-breathing descendants of pregnant African women thrown overboard during the Atlantic slave trade.
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3
The Spear Cuts Through Water
narrative, literary
In the Strangled Empire, three oppressive princes rule through terror and magical birthrights under their father, the Old Emperor.
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4
Who Fears Death
narrative, literary
In a post-apocalyptic Sudan, the light-skinned Nuru people systematically oppress the dark-skinned Okeke.
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5
Once Upon a River
narrative, literary
On a winter night at the Swan Inn along the Thames, a wounded stranger staggers through the door carrying the lifeless body of a small girl.
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6
The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey
narrative, literary
In 1920s Alaska, homesteaders Jack and Mabel struggle with the isolation of the frontier and the grief of their childless marriage.
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7
The Tiger's Wife
by Téa Obreht
narrative, literary
Set in a nameless Balkan country recovering from war, the narrative follows Natalia, a young doctor on a mission to deliver medicine to an orphanage.
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8
The Lions of Al-Rassan
narrative, literary
Set in a reimagined medieval Spain, the story traces the collision of three rival cultures: the Asharites, the Jaddites, and the Kindath.
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9
Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions
by Neil Gaiman
narrative, literary
In this collection, Neil Gaiman assembles dozens of stories and poems that distort familiar reality.
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10
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
by Neil Gaiman
narrative, literary
When a middle-aged man returns to his childhood home for a funeral, he wanders to the neighboring farmhouse where he met Lettie Hempstock decades earlier.
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11
When Women Were Dragons
narrative, literary
During the 1955 Mass Dragoning, hundreds of thousands of American women spontaneously transformed into dragons and took to the skies, leaving behind families and lives of forced domesticity.
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12
Tigana
narrative, literary
Set in a Mediterranean-inspired peninsula called the Palm, the narrative centers on a group of rebels attempting to overthrow two rival sorcerer-kings, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbentain.
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