Books for adults

Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens

Best for: Readers who love immersive sense-of-place fiction and want a cross-genre story that blends survival, romance, and courtroom mystery — especially those drawn to the natural world and emotionally resonant coming-of-age narratives.

Fourth Wing

Rebecca Yarros

Best for: Readers who love enemies-to-lovers romantasy with a military academy setting and want a protagonist whose physical vulnerability — rooted in a real chronic illness — gives the story emotional stakes beyond genre convention.

Verity

Colleen Hoover

Best for: Readers who enjoy psychological thrillers built around unreliable narrators and morally compromised characters, and who are comfortable with dark subject matter — including child death and obsession — without needing a tidy resolution.

Iron Flame

Rebecca Yarros

Best for: Readers already invested in the Empyrean universe after Fourth Wing who want more of Violet and Xaden's fractured romance alongside escalating dragon-riding fantasy, political intrigue, and a civilisation-level threat.

The Silent Patient

Alex Michaelides

Best for: Readers who love twist-driven psychological thrillers in the Agatha Christie tradition and want a fast-paced, structurally ingenious debut that carries genuine thematic weight — silence, trauma, and the ethics of therapy — alongside its propulsive plot.

The Nightingale

Kristin Hannah

Best for: Readers drawn to emotionally immersive, women-centred WWII historical fiction who want a dual-narrative structure that honours both dramatic Resistance heroism and quieter domestic courage under occupation.

Never Lie

Freida McFadden

Best for: Readers new to Freida McFadden or the psychological thriller genre who want a fast-paced, self-contained standalone built around a high-concept snowbound premise and a climactic identity revelation.

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas

Best for: Readers who enjoy slow-burn romantic fantasy steeped in folklore and faerie mythology, particularly those who appreciate a mortal protagonist navigating a dangerous, court-structured magical world with genuine emotional stakes.

The Women

Kristin Hannah

Best for: Readers drawn to female-centered wartime historical fiction — particularly fans of Hannah's The Nightingale or The Four Winds — who want to encounter the long-overlooked story of U.S. Army nurses in the Vietnam War told with emotional seriousness and intimate character detail.

Lessons in Chemistry

Bonnie Garmus

Best for: Readers who love sharply drawn historical fiction and feminist satire built around an utterly singular protagonist — particularly those drawn to the world of The Queen's Gambit or The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel who want a novel that pairs genuine social anger with fleet, comic prose.

The Midnight Library

Matt Haig

Best for: Readers navigating depression, burnout, or a sense of paths not taken who want an emotionally accessible speculative novel that literalises regret and the case for living — without demanding hard SF rigour or tonal darkness.

Project Hail Mary

Andy Weir

Best for: Readers who love hard science fiction that doubles as a propulsive thriller — particularly fans of The Martian who want scientifically rigorous problem-solving, extinction-level stakes, and genuine emotional warmth delivered through a first-person, puzzle-driven narrative.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Best for: Readers who love morally complex, plot-driven historical fiction with LGBTQ+ themes and a glamorous Old Hollywood setting — particularly those who enjoy compulsive, binge-worthy narratives built around a charismatic, deeply secretive protagonist.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman

Best for: Readers drawn to character-driven literary fiction who want emotional range — dark psychological depth wrapped in deadpan humour — and who respond to stories of found family and incremental healing.

Things We Never Got Over

Lucy Score

Best for: Readers who love grumpy-sunshine enemies-to-lovers romance set in a close-knit small town and want a series opener with a found-family ensemble cast and emotionally resonant themes of trauma and self-worth.

The Wedding People

Alison Espach

Best for: Readers drawn to darkly comic literary fiction who can hold grief and absurdist humour simultaneously — particularly those who have experienced divorce, infertility, or a sense of life stalling, and who appreciate a protagonist whose interiority is intellectually as well as emotionally grounded.

The Four Winds

Kristin Hannah

Best for: Readers who love emotionally driven, female-centered historical fiction and want an unflinching saga of Depression-era and Dust Bowl hardship anchored by a resilient protagonist whose arc from outcast to survivor delivers sustained cathartic power.

If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

Gregg Olsen

Best for: Readers drawn to survivor-centered true crime who want to understand how family systems enable and conceal extreme harm, told through the eyes of the three sisters who lived it rather than through the lens of investigation or courtroom procedure.

The Thursday Murder Club

Richard Osman · Book 1, Thursday Murder Club

Best for: Cozy mystery enthusiasts who enjoy an ensemble-driven whodunit with sharp wit, a cleverly varied cast of retirees, and brisk, puzzle-forward plotting in the tradition of Agatha Christie.

The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho

Best for: Readers at a crossroads — those questioning whether they have honoured their own ambitions, or younger readers encountering big questions of purpose and destiny for the first time — who want a story that addresses those themes directly, without requiring theological or philosophical background.

House of Earth and Blood

Sarah J. Maas

Best for: Fans of Sarah J. Maas's ACOTAR series — or readers who enjoy urban fantasy blending murder mystery, slow-burn romance, and supernatural politics — who are ready for a mature, 800-page series opener.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris

Best for: Readers drawn to emotionally direct Holocaust fiction centred on human endurance and love who want a narrative grounded in real personal testimony — specifically the account of Auschwitz survivor Lale Sokolov — rather than a scholarly or documentary reconstruction of the camps.

The Last Thing He Told Me

Laura Dave

Best for: Thriller readers — particularly book-club participants and fans of character-driven domestic suspense — who want a fast, emotionally grounded read centred on a fractured stepmother-stepdaughter relationship rather than dense procedural complexity.

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

Best for: Readers who relish psychological complexity and narrative misdirection — particularly those drawn to the tradition of Patricia Highsmith or to fiction that treats marriage as a battleground of deception and power.