Books like

Books like The Lie Tree

12 books with a reading profile close to The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge. Balanced in tone; a moderate read.

  1. 1 Ordinary Grace

    Ordinary Grace

    by William Kent Krueger

    narrative, mystery

    In 1961, thirteen-year-old Frank Drum lives in New Bremen, Minnesota, where his father serves as a Methodist minister.

  2. 2 Winter's Bone

    Winter's Bone

    by Daniel Woodrell

    narrative, mystery

    Ree Dolly is a sixteen-year-old girl living in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, taking care of her two younger brothers and her mentally ill mother.

  3. 3 Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

    Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

    by Tom Franklin

    narrative, mystery

    In a small Mississippi town, two boys grew up on opposite sides of a divide: Larry Ott, a white loner whose father owned a garage, and Silas Jones, a Black boy who became friends with him.

  4. 4 The Muse

    The Muse

    by Jessie Burton

    narrative, mystery

    In 1967 London, Odelle Bastien, a Trinidadian immigrant, begins working at the Skelton Institute under the enigmatic Marjorie Quick.

  5. 5 Fingersmith

    Fingersmith

    by Sarah Waters

    narrative, mystery

    Set in the smog-laden streets of Victorian London, the story follows Sue Trinder, an orphan raised among a family of petty thieves and fences.

  6. 6 The Wonder

    The Wonder

    by Emma Donoghue

    narrative, mystery

    In the humid summer of 1859, English nurse Lib Wright arrives in a rural Irish village to oversee an eleven-year-old girl named Anna O'Donnell.

  7. 7 I Have Some Questions for You

    I Have Some Questions for You

    by Rebecca Makkai

    narrative, mystery

    Bodie Kane, a successful film scholar and podcaster, returns to Granby School, the New Hampshire boarding school where she spent four uncomfortable years.

  8. 8 Disappearing Earth

    Disappearing Earth

    by Julia Phillips

    narrative, mystery

    The story begins on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia with the abduction of two young sisters, Sophia and Alyona Golosovskaya, by a stranger in a tan sedan.

  9. 9 The Book of Speculation

    The Book of Speculation

    by Erika Swyler

    narrative, mystery

    Simon Watson, a young librarian in a small New York town, receives a package from an antiquarian bookseller: a fragile, water-damaged ledger from the 1700s, which appears to be a record kept by a traveling circus.

  10. 10 Happiness Falls

    Happiness Falls

    by Angie Kim

    narrative, mystery

    When Mia Parkson’s father disappears during a morning hike in Virginia, the only witness is her younger brother, Eugene, who has autism and a rare genetic condition called Angelman syndrome.

  11. 11 Now Is Not the Time to Panic

    Now Is Not the Time to Panic

    by Kevin Wilson

    narrative, mystery

    In 1996, restless teenagers Frankie Budge and Zeke create a cryptic poster featuring a drawing of a person holding a severed head and a mysterious sentence about a "coal child." They secretly photocopy and distribute th…

  12. 12 Greenwood

    Greenwood

    by Michael Christie

    narrative, mystery

    The novel follows the Greenwood family across four generations, structured like the rings of a tree from 2038 back to 1908.

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