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Naomi Alderman is the author of The Power, a 2016 best seller that won the U.K.’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. In her new novel, The Strangers, a writer also named Naomi Alderman is wrestling with grief when she discovers an alien animal species that begins proliferating.
‘The Vintner’s Luck’ by Elizabeth Knox (1998)
I read this in my early 20s when I was starting to work hard on my writing. I thought, If I can ever write anything as good, I’ll be happy forever. In 1808, a French winemaker meets an angel and, impossibly, they fall in love. It is about everything: love, sex, faith, death, memory, redemption, God. Buy it here.
‘Possession’ by A.S. Byatt (1990)
The best and classiest and most intellectual kind of mystery novel. In an archive, a researcher finds lost letters exchanged by two Victorian writers. Why were they writing to each other? Were they having an affair? And who else wants to uncover the truth? Just superb. Buy it here.
‘Leech’ by Hiron Ennes (2022)
I could not put this down, in a way I hadn’t experienced for years. A doctor arrives at a strange old castle to replace his predecessor who has died suddenly. But when he performs an autopsy on the older doctor, something strange wriggles inside him. A full world you can sink into that grips like, indeed, a leech. Buy it here.
‘Chocky’ by John Wyndham (1968)
A young boy believes he’s in contact with an alien. But the alien can’t be seen or felt; it’s only communicating with the boy’s mind. It can’t be real, can it? But if not, where are these strange new ideas in his mind coming from? The book is mesmerizing on parental love and as a weird tale. Buy it here.
‘The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James’ (1931)
James is the Victorian master of the ghost story. An M.R. James protagonist tends to be an academic—someone driven by curiosity who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. His novels are absolute master classes in how much to reveal, how much to leave to the reader’s terrified imagination. Buy it here.
‘Ficciones’ by Jorge Luis Borges (1944)
Borges writes stories that are an idea, an absolute crystalline unforgettable thought. I fell into these as a teenager, read them again and again; I could practically recite The Lottery in Babylon by heart for you. You’d also get a decent education just reading all the writers Borges mentions in his stories. Buy it here.