Human-powered rankings.
The Good Picks Database

Books

Titles rise when more people stand behind them.

165ranked titles
Filter ranking
Community ranking
165 of 165 titles
  1. The Sealed Letter cover
    2008 · Historical Fiction, Mystery

    The Sealed Letter

    Based on the real-life 1864 Codrington divorce scandal in Victorian England, the novel follows pioneering feminist and press founder Emily 'Fido' Faithfull as she is drawn into the marital collapse of her glamorous friend Helen. When the separation escalates into explosive courtroom accusations of adultery, Fido finds her loyalties tested and her own reputation imperiled by a confidential letter.

  2. When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife cover
    2017 · Literary Fiction, Feminist Fiction

    When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife

    Following a whirlwind courtship, an outspoken young Indian writer moves to coastal Mangalore with her university professor husband, only to be subjected to escalating emotional manipulation, surveillance, and marital violence. Clinging to her craft as a clandestine lifeline of resistance, she deconstructs the mechanisms of patriarchal abuse and reclaims her artistic agency through language.

  3. Identity cover
    1998 · Philosophical fiction, Novel

    Identity

    L'Identité

    In this brief philosophical novel set in contemporary France, lovers Chantal and Jean-Marc find their deep intimacy unsettled after Chantal laments that men no longer turn to look at her. In response, Jean-Marc begins sending her anonymous love letters in an affectionate gesture that spirals into mutual jealousy, paranoia, and a fragile blur between reality and illusion.

  4. Gandhi Before India cover
    2013 · Biography, History, Nonfiction

    Gandhi Before India

    Historian Ramachandra Guha reconstructs the foundational early decades of Mohandas Gandhi, tracing his upbringing in Gujarat, legal education in London, and formative two-decade residency in South Africa. The volume reveals how his encounters with systemic racial discrimination abroad led him to forge the philosophy of nonviolent resistance known as Satyagraha.

  5. El azul en la flama cover
    2002 · Poetry

    El azul en la flama

    In this landmark collection dedicated to José Gorostiza, Mexican poet David Huerta departs from baroque verbal excess to construct a luminous and contemplative geography of everyday perceptions. Through disciplined meditation on light, memory, and the physical senses, the poems explore the fragile yet enduring essence of language and existence.

  6. The Imperial City is Like the Sea cover
    2017 · Literary Fiction

    The Imperial City is Like the Sea

    王城如海

    Set against the smog-blanketed sprawl of contemporary Beijing, returned avant-garde theater director Yu Songpo sparks a public firestorm with his provocative new play, The Urban Revelation. When an estranged street wanderer and the family of his domestic worker cross his path, an old secret from a past medical misdiagnosis resurfaces, threatening to unravel his household. Xu Zechen crafts a nuanced panoramic inquiry into urban alienation, hidden guilt, and moral responsibility across social classes in modern China.

  7. Brazil Red cover
    2001 · Historical fiction, Adventure

    Brazil Red

    Rouge Brésil

    Set during the 1555 expedition led by Villegagnon to establish a French colony in Guanabara Bay, the novel follows two orphaned French children, Just and Colombe, taken along to serve as interpreters among the Tupinambá. Amid brutal religious strife between Catholic and Calvinist settlers, the children embark on divergent journeys of cultural immersion in the New World.

  8. Queen of the Diving Tower cover
    2013 · Young adult fiction, Sports fiction

    Queen of the Diving Tower

    Königin des Sprungturms

    Two inseparable adolescent girls train side by side as competitive high-divers until the immensely gifted Karla abruptly develops a crippling psychological block on the ten-meter platform. As coaches apply pressure and rivalries flare, their deep bond is tested by the harsh emotional realities of perfectionism, envy, and growing up.

  9. H.M. Bark Endeavour: Her Place in Australian History cover
    1997 · History, Maritime

    H.M. Bark Endeavour: Her Place in Australian History

    Representing over a quarter-century of meticulous archival and nautical research, seaman and artist Ray Parkin delivers a comprehensive anatomical and historical reconstruction of Captain James Cook's famed exploration vessel. Blending technical architectural plans and rigging diagrams with a composite voyage log from on-board journals, the landmark study chronicles the ship's 1770 eastern Australian passage in exhaustive detail.

  10. Oblique Pines cover
    2011 · Fiction, Short Stories

    Oblique Pines

    کاج‌های مورب

    Set against the desolate desert landscapes and remote railway outposts of southern Iran, this collection of atmospheric noir stories explores the lives of soldiers, laborers, and wanderers caught in cycles of poverty and isolation. Through tense character studies and shifting temporal perspectives, Ali Changizi examines human vulnerability and moral compromise on the margins of modern Iranian society.

  11. Dead and Gone cover
    2009 · Urban Fantasy, Mystery

    Dead and Gone

    As telepathic Louisiana cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse copes with werewolves and shapeshifters publicly revealing their existence to humanity, a brutal hate crime against a were-panther ignites simmering tensions in Bon Temps. Concurrently drawn into dangerous political infighting among the vampire hierarchy and an impending fae conflict, she must uncover a ruthless killer before whole communities are torn apart.

  12. Sympathy Tower Tokyo cover
    2024 · Speculative fiction, Literary fiction

    Sympathy Tower Tokyo

    東京都同情塔

    In an alternate, near-future Tokyo, an architect is tasked with designing a luxury high-rise rehabilitation tower within the Shinjuku Gyoen gardens intended for criminal offenders deemed deserving of public sympathy. As she works, she grapples with linguistic distortions in societal discourse, the limits of state empathy, and her own anxieties around evolving artificial intelligence.

  13. Sing, Unburied, Sing cover
    2017 · Southern Gothic, Literary fiction

    Sing, Unburied, Sing

    A thirteen-year-old boy travelling across rural Mississippi with his mother and toddler sister embarks on a fraught road trip to pick up his white father upon release from the state penitentiary. Guided by visceral family memories and pursued by restless spirits of historical racial trauma, the journey exposes the living and dead to mutual reckoning.

  14. In the Silence of Life cover
    2005 · Poetic prose, Literary fiction

    In the Silence of Life

    Hayatın Sessizliğinde

    Blurring the lines between memoir, poetry, and lyrical prose, this meditative collection reflects on bodily fragility, exile, and existential solitude. Written between the Aegean island of Rhodes and the Atlantic coast, the evocative texts probe how language and silence confront trauma and mortality.

  15. Your Republic Is Calling You cover
    2006 · Literary Fiction, Thriller

    Your Republic Is Calling You

    빛의 제국

    A dormant North Korean sleeper agent who has spent two decades building a comfortable bourgeois life in Seoul as a film importer receives an encrypted morning summons ordering him to liquidate his identity and return north within twenty-four hours. Over the course of a single frantic day, he reflects on compromised loyalties, family secrets, and the elusive nature of freedom.

  16. Nighttime Picnic cover
    2004 · Coming-of-Age Fiction

    Nighttime Picnic

    夜のピクニック

    During their high school's grueling annual tradition of an overnight eighty-kilometer walk, a group of graduating teenagers navigate unspoken family secrets, budding romances, and quiet reckonings with adulthood.

  17. Moving Parts cover
    2002 · Short Stories, Contemporary Fiction

    Moving Parts

    ส่วนที่เคลื่อนไหว

    Anchored around eleven human body parts, this surreal and darkly humorous collection captures the absurdity and alienation of modern Bangkok. Through quirky encounters, unexpected romances, and existential detours, Prabda Yoon dissects the physical and emotional disconnections of urban life at the turn of the millennium.

  18. Northward cover
    2018 · Historical Fiction, Historical Saga

    Northward

    北上

    Interweaving a 1901 voyage along the Grand Canal by an Italian explorer with a modern-day documentary quest, this multi-generational epic chronicles the cultural memory, industrial shifts, and interconnected lives sustained along China's historic waterway.

  19. Wolves and Bears cover
    2013 · Dystopian Fiction, Satire

    Wolves and Bears

    Волки и медведи

    In a fractured post-cataclysmic Saint Petersburg carved into rival territories ruled by warlords and secret police, a resourceful operative with uncanny intuition is dispatched across dangerous sector borders on a hazardous political mission.

  20. El seductor de la patria cover
    1999 · Historical Fiction

    El seductor de la patria

    Returning to Mexico in his twilight years after decades of bitter exile, former dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna pens his memoirs in a satirical, self-justifying attempt to vindicate his disastrous reign and manipulate his historical legacy.

  21. I Am a Truck cover
    2016 · Literary Fiction, Humor, Mystery

    I Am a Truck

    In rural New Brunswick, Agathe Lapointe and her husband Réjean approach their twentieth wedding anniversary. One rainy morning Réjean heads out in his Chevy Silverado and does not come back. The truck is found abandoned on the roadside with the driver door open. As the police investigation stalls, Agathe takes up rock music and forms new friendships, while Réjean's whereabouts and the reasons for his disappearance slowly come to light.

  22. Mountain Mirror cover
    2023 · Literary Fiction, Family Saga

    Mountain Mirror

    山鏡

    Following the death of an enterprising Hakka man who spent decades deeply intertwined with indigenous communities in Hsinchu's mountainous Wufeng Township, his family and tribal companions embark on a commemorative journey. Through shifting perspectives among his indigenous wife, daughter, and friends, the novel explores land displacement, communal memory, and intercultural coexistence across contemporary Taiwan.

  23. To Feed the Stone cover
    2015 · Poetry, Prose Poetry

    To Feed the Stone

    Nakarmić kamień

    Through a striking cycle of minimalist prose poems narrated from a child's intense, defamiliarized perspective, this debut collection examines the tactile relationships between living beings and inanimate household objects. Interrogating adult rationales, grief, and mortality, the poems invest everyday matter with profound emotional resonance.

  24. Heat Islands cover
    2022 · Dystopian, Climate Fiction, Literary Fiction

    Heat Islands

    Islas de calor

    Set in a near-future Santiago gripped by catastrophic climate collapse and daytime heat curfews, four interconnected stories trace urban dwellers navigating sweltering domestic spaces and burning hillsides. As ecological ruin blurs into emotional exhaustion, characters confront intimate fractures, survival instincts, and quiet moments of human connection.

  25. The Stolen Bicycle cover
    2015 · Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

    The Stolen Bicycle

    單車失竊記

    Twenty years after his father mysteriously vanished along with his prized bicycle, a Taiwanese novelist sets out to trace the lost heirloom through the antique bicycle trade. His search opens a rich portal into 20th-century Taiwanese history, weaving together wartime elephant handlers, bicycle infantry in Southeast Asia, and forgotten family grief.

  26. The History of Intimacy cover
    2018 · Poetry

    The History of Intimacy

    Reflecting on personal grief, social history, and the tender aftermath of apartheid in South Africa, this lyrical poetry collection captures quiet domestic intimacies and the fragile bonds of kinship.

  27. Before Us cover
    2020 · Historical Fiction, Family Saga, Literary Fiction

    Before Us

    Prima di noi

    Beginning in the chaos of the Caporetto retreat in 1917, when army deserter Maurizio Sartori encounters Nadia in a Friulian farmhouse, this epic generational saga chronicles nearly a century of Italian history through four generations of the Sartori family. Moving from rural northern Italy to postwar industrial Milan, the family confronts the ravages of two world wars, political extremism, social upheavals, and the burden of inherited guilt and silence, culminating in 2012 when their descendant seeks reconciliation with their collective past.

  28. Bridget Jones's Diary cover
    1996 · Romantic Comedy, Humor, Epistolary Fiction

    Bridget Jones's Diary

    Written in an intimate, candid diary format, this satirical comedy follows thirty-something Londoner Bridget Jones through a year of romantic misadventures, career blunders, and earnest self-improvement resolutions while caught between two very different men.

  29. Fardeqan: The Detention of the Great Sheikh cover
    2019 · Historical Fiction, Biographical Fiction

    Fardeqan: The Detention of the Great Sheikh

    فردقان

    Confined within the remote Persian fortress of Fardeqan in the early eleventh century, the renowned polymath, philosopher, and physician Ibn Sina (Avicenna) reflects upon the turbulent political rivalries, personal romances, and relentless quest for knowledge that shaped his life. While in captivity amidst shifting regional conflicts, he channels his solitude into composing seminal philosophical treatises that would profoundly influence human civilization.

  30. The Fingerprint Reader cover
    2015 · Poetry

    The Fingerprint Reader

    Czytnik linii papilarnych

    In this collection of thirty concise lyric poems, renowned Polish poet Ewa Lipska explores technological alienation, memory, and existential vulnerability in an increasingly digital and interconnected world.

  31. The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis cover
    1996 · Non-fiction, Political Science, History

    The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis

    In this impassioned critique of military dictatorship, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka analyzes the annulment of Nigeria's 1993 democratic elections and the brutal regime of General Sani Abacha. Drawing on his experience in exile following the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, Soyinka challenges conventional ideas of nationhood and sovereignty in post-colonial Africa while calling for international accountability.

  32. How Long Is Forever? cover
    1999 · Literary Fiction

    How Long Is Forever?

    永远有多远

    Set across several turbulent decades in a traditional Beijing courtyard neighborhood, Tie Ning's acclaimed novella follows Bai Dasheng, a woman whose boundless goodwill, sincerity, and self-effacing generosity remain steadfast despite being repeatedly exploited by family, lovers, and friends. As China transforms from the Cultural Revolution into the market-driven era of the 1990s, her unyielding decency stands in stark, poignant contrast to the shifting moral landscape and consumerist pressures of a rapidly modernizing society.

  33. Sandy Mountain cover
    2009 · Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction

    Sandy Mountain

    Piaskowa Góra

    Living in a massive housing project in the southwestern Polish city of Wałbrzych, three generations of women navigate the realities of life under communism and the turbulent transition to capitalism. The narrative centers on a young woman growing up under the shadow of family secrets, provincial gossip, and national historical trauma.

  34. The Wooden People cover
    2015 · Fiction, Literary Fiction, Philosophy

    The Wooden People

    Il popolo di legno

    In a mythical, lawless pocket of Calabria, an enigmatic speaker known as the Rat hosts an eccentric radio show on a pirate station run by local criminal elements. Addressing an audience he christens the wooden people, he delivers anarchic sermons satirizing humanity's delusions of moral progress and redemption.

  35. A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog cover
    1996 · Literary Fiction

    A Dragonfly Enlarged to the Size of a Dog

    Стрекоза, увеличенная до размеров собаки

    In a provincial Ural city during the post-Soviet transition, an overbearing former teacher and her adult daughter live trapped in an isolated, claustrophobic domestic world devoid of men. Bound by toxic codependency, repressed resentment, and relentless mutual surveillance, their daily routines and petty grievances are distorted through an obsessive psychological lens, magnifying ordinary life into something grotesque and monstrous.

  36. The Armies cover
    2007 · Literary Fiction

    The Armies

    Los ejércitos

    In the Colombian mountain town of San José, retired teacher Ismael Pasos spends quiet afternoons peering over his neighbor's garden wall. When rival armed factions invade and residents flee or disappear, Ismael refuses to leave, wandering the devastated town in search of his wife Otilia.

  37. Let’s Go Back Tonight cover
    2017 · Short Stories, Fiction

    Let’s Go Back Tonight

    همین امشب برگردیم

    In this Ahmad Mahmoud Award-winning collection of five short stories, Peyman Esmaeili explores the unsettling psychological terrain of migration, alienation, and modern displacement. From the oppressive claustrophobia of subway tunnels to the unfamiliar landscapes of Australia, ordinary characters find their safe boundaries shattered by primal fear, moral reckoning, and the disquieting sense of being strangers to both their surroundings and themselves.

  38. Fasting, Feasting cover
    1999 · Literary Fiction, Domestic Drama

    Fasting, Feasting

    Divided between two continents, Anita Desai's novel contrasts the constrained existence of Uma, an unmarried daughter bound to her overbearing parents' household in provincial India, with the emotional isolation of her privileged brother Arun during a summer stay with an American suburban family in Massachusetts. Through the everyday rituals of meals, duty, and quiet domestic restrictions, the story examines gender expectations and the subtle forms of hunger that persist across very different worlds.

  39. A World History of Second Sons cover
    2014 · Political Satire, Literary Fiction

    A World History of Second Sons

    차남들의 세계사

    In 1982 South Korea, ordinary taxi driver Na Bok-man finds himself inadvertently ensnared in the aftermath of the Busan American Cultural Center arson. Targeted by authoritarian state security forces who need a scapegoat, he is arrested and pressured into a fabricated espionage confession. As he desperately tries to prove his innocence under Chun Doo-hwan's military dictatorship, his struggle spirals into an absurd, heartbreaking collision between an ordinary citizen and state violence.

  40. The Refugees cover
    2017 · Short Story Collection, Literary Fiction

    The Refugees

    Eight stories depict the lives of Vietnamese immigrants and their families across California and Vietnam as they navigate displacement, memory, and longing.

  41. Black Magic Woman cover
    2005 · Short Story Collection, Horror Fiction

    Black Magic Woman

    Sihir Perempuan

    In this striking collection of dark feminist tales, Intan Paramaditha reimagines Indonesian folklore, gothic horror, and urban myths through the eyes of unruly women. Moving beyond traditional roles of dutiful daughters, mothers, or subservient office workers, these characters confront and unleash uncanny terrors—from vengeful ghosts and vampires to bodily horror and blood pacts—reclaiming their autonomy within a patriarchal society.

  42. En voz baja cover
    1996 · Literary Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction

    En voz baja

    In Santiago during the shadow of military dictatorship, adolescent Amanda observes the secrecy and quiet tension that fractures her household after her father's imprisonment and exile as a political dissident. As she comes of age surrounded by hushed conversations, she gradually deciphers the unspoken traumas and boundaries defining her family's everyday survival.

  43. Open Water cover
    2021 · Literary Fiction, Romance

    Open Water

    In South East London, an unnamed photographer and a dancer meet at a pub and quickly become friends. Both attended private schools on scholarships where they felt out of place, and both are trying to make a living through art. Their friendship gradually becomes a romance rooted in music, conversation, and mutual trust. When constant police scrutiny and personal grief weigh on the photographer, he withdraws into isolation. That silence threatens to undo the bond they built.

  44. Sendero de suicidas cover
    2021 · Poetry

    Sendero de suicidas

    Awarded the 2021 Premio Bellas Artes de Poesía Aguascalientes, this collection gathers poetic meditations on mortality arranged around methods of departure, engaging in an intimate, choral dialogue with writers and poets throughout history who took their own lives.

  45. ¡Milagro! Un retrato de Violeta Quevedo cover
    2025 · Biographical Essay, Literary Nonfiction

    ¡Milagro! Un retrato de Violeta Quevedo

    In this biographical essay, Gonzalo Maier examines the eccentric life and singular literary voice of Chilean author Violeta Quevedo (Rita Salas Subercaseaux). Drawing on archival materials, forgotten chronicles, and period anecdotes, Maier traces how a devoutly Catholic, hypochondriacal aristocrat navigated Santiago's collision with modernity, while reflecting on the arbitrary nature of literary canons and the oddity of writing outside conventional forms.

  46. The Sisters cover
    2001 · Drama, Play

    The Sisters

    In the wake of the sudden death of Nigeria's long-serving president, three sisters—Taiwo, Funmi, and Toun—along with their devoted companion Nana, gather in the presidential villa to observe mourning rituals before the state funeral. Funmi, the grieving First Lady, is besieged by secret revelations and phone calls from women claiming to have borne the late president's children. Taiwo, wheelchair-bound from an attack that saw her own husband executed as a coup plotter by the president's regime, harbors deep bitterness and refuses to participate in false piety. As personal resentments and hidden hypocrisies unravel within the villa's walls, the sisters' intense clashes lay bare the transience of political power, the decay of the ruling elite, and the painful truths underlying family bonds.

  47. From the Land of Light cover
    2018 · Historical Fiction

    From the Land of Light

    Işık Ülkesinden

    Following the collapse of Ottoman rule in the Balkans, the Bayraktar family migrates to Anatolia during the founding years of the Turkish Republic. The novel traces an educated woman navigating shifting social customs, family tensions between tradition and reform, and the practical challenges of starting over in a new state.

  48. Shame and Fate cover
    2020 · Literary Fiction, Mystery

    Shame and Fate

    Aib dan Nasib

    First Prize winner of the 2019 Jakarta Arts Council Novel Competition, this mosaic novel depicts the turbulent social undercurrents of an Indramayu village in West Java. Shifting across episodic viewpoints, Minanto explores how patriarchal violence, poverty, and generational scandals weave collective shame with personal fate.

  49. The Nocturnal Harmony of Wood Orchestra cover
    1996 · Psychological Fiction, Surrealism

    The Nocturnal Harmony of Wood Orchestra

    همنوایی شبانه ارکستر چوب‌ها

    Yadollah is an Iranian musician and writer living in an attic room in a Parisian boarding house with other Iranian exiles and French tenants. Suffering from chronic insomnia and memory loss, he spends his nights painting and reconstructing his past in Tehran while preparing for what he believes is his trial after death.

  50. The Intimate Life of Lighters: Animism in Ultra-Modern Society cover
    2009 · Essays, Philosophy, Nonfiction

    The Intimate Life of Lighters: Animism in Ultra-Modern Society

    La vida íntima de los encendedores: Animismo en la sociedad ultramoderna

    Winner of the Málaga Essay Prize, this witty philosophical inquiry takes the everyday pocket lighter as a lens to examine how animist thinking endures in the technological age. Mexican author Ignacio Padilla argues that humans persistently attribute capricious intent and soul to inanimate objects to soften modern existential alienation.