Books like

Books like The Night Watch

12 books with a reading profile close to The Night Watch by Sarah Waters. Inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

1

Wandering Stars

by Tommy Orange

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

Wandering Stars traces a lineage of a Cheyenne family from the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and the forced assimilation at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School to the present day.
2

How Much of These Hills Is Gold

by C Pam Zhang

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

Set against the declining years of the American Gold Rush, the novel follows Lucy and Sam, two orphaned siblings of Chinese descent, as they carry their father’s decomposing body across a harsh western landscape.
3

Of Women and Salt

by Gabriela Garcia

Also inward-looking and thought-provoking · history, narrative

Spanning from nineteenth-century Cuban cigar factories to a modern-day detention center in Texas, the narrative follows five generations of women linked by blood and migration.
4

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

by Anthony Marra

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

In a rural village in war-torn Chechnya, Akhmed rescues an eight-year-old girl named Havaa after her father is abducted by Russian soldiers.
5

In the Time of the Butterflies

by Julia Alvarez

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

In 1960, three of the four Mirabal sisters were beaten to death on a road in the Dominican Republic because they had opposed the dictator Rafael Trujillo.
6

Matrix

by Lauren Groff

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

Cast out from the royal court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, seventeen-year-old Marie of France arrives at a destitute English abbey to serve as its new prioress.
7

The Covenant of Water

by Abraham Verghese

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

Spanning seven decades in Kerala, South India, the narrative follows three generations of a family afflicted by a peculiar medical condition known as the Condition.
8

The Essex Serpent

by Sarah Perry

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

In late Victorian England, newly widowed Cora Seaborne relocates to the Essex coast to pursue her interests as a naturalist.
9

Memphis

by Tara M. Stringfellow

Also inward-looking · history, narrative

Spanning three generations of a Black family in Memphis, Tennessee, this novel centers on the women of one family, who must handle poverty, domestic violence and racism while keeping alive a sense of faith and creativit…
10

There Are Rivers in the Sky

by Elif Shafak

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

The narrative follows a single drop of water across centuries, linking three distinct lives shaped by the Tigris and Thames rivers.
11

The Storm We Made

by Vanessa Chan

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

In 1930s British Malaya, Cecily Alcantara works as a low-level clerk while feeling the sting of colonial hierarchy.
12

The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

Also thought-provoking · history, narrative

In the early seventeenth century, a young servant girl escapes a starving, disease-ridden colonial settlement in North America, fleeing alone into the winter wilderness.

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