Books like 'Emporium'
Readers who enjoyed Emporium by Adam Johnson also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary sc-fi action / adventure psychological literary-fiction satire humor magical-realism
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Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsalternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereThe universe began as an enormous breath being held.From the acclaimed author of Stories of Your Life and Others — the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film Arrival — comes a ground-breaking new collection of short fiction: nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure adult ai aliens alternate-history -
![Golden in Death by J.D. Robb]()
Golden in Death by J.D. Robb
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsIn the latest thriller in the #1 New York Times bestselling series, homicide detective Eve Dallas investigates a murder with a mysterious motive―and a terrifying weapon.Pediatrician Kent Abner received the package on a beautiful April morning. Inside was a cheap trinket, a golden egg that could be opened into two halves... -
![Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov]()
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsSo far the Foundation was safe. But there was a hidden Second Foundation to protect the first. The Mule has yet to find it, but he was getting closer all the time. The men of the Foundation sought it, too, to escape from Mule's mind control. Only Arkady, a 14 year-old girl seemed to have the answer, or did she..Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics contemporary -
![I, Robot by Isaac Asimov]()
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThey mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities - and unforeseen risks...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure ai alternate-history anthologies audiobook children -
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![The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin]()
The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the brilliant and award-winning author Ursula K. Le Guin comes a classic tale of two planets torn apart by conflict and mistrust — and the man who risks everything to reunite them.A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras—a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth... -
![Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang]()
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsTed Chiang's first published story, "Tower of Babylon," won the Nebula Award in 1990. Subsequent stories have won the Asimov's SF Magazine reader poll, a second Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Sidewise Award for alternate history. He won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1992. Story for story, he is the most honored young writer in modern SF... -
![Blindness by José Saramago]()
Blindness by José Saramago
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsFrom Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of lossA city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult apocalyptic audiobook book -
![The Egg by Andy Weir]()
The Egg by Andy Weir
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA short story about the universe and your place in it... -
![Ubik by Philip K. Dick]()
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsGlen Runciter runs a lucrative business—deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation... -
![Monday Begins on Saturday by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky]()
Monday Begins on Saturday by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsWhen young programmer Aleksandr Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the Scientific Research Institute of Sorcery and Wizardry, where research into magic is serious business...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book -
![The Time Machine/The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells]()
The Time Machine/The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThe Time Machine and The Invisible Man, by H. G. Wells, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras... -
![Replay by Ken Grimwood]()
Replay by Ken Grimwood
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAt forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow ...But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that... -
![Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes]()
Effacement by Hieronymus Hawkes
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhen recording every aspect of your life has become the law, what happens when your connection to the world is severed? With the advent of BioNarratus’s Vitasync neurochip, serious crime has all but disappeared. Without a lifelog you can’t get a bank account, medical insurance, or a job... -
![K-Pax by Gene Brewer]()
K-Pax by Gene Brewer
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsImagine a time and space traveler from another planet. One that looks human and exemplifies the ideal world he comes from, a world free from human nature's greed and cruelty. That creature would be "prot", as he calls himself, the newest patient at the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute.Prot seems to know more than he should about faster-than-the-speed-of-light-travel... -
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![The Humans by Matt Haig]()
The Humans by Matt Haig
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 63 ratingsBody-snatching has never been so heartwarming . . .The Humans is a funny, compulsively readable novel about alien abduction, mathematics, and that most interesting subject of all: ourselves. Combine Douglas Adams’s irreverent take on life, the universe, and everything with a genuinely moving love story, and you have some idea of the humor, originality, and poignancy of Matt Haig’s latest novel...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 21st-century action-adventure aliens animals -
![The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin]()
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants can choose - and change - their gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure aliens audiobook book classics contemporary -
![The Wall by Marlen Haushofer]()
The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFirst published to acclaim in Germany, The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult animals apocalyptic audiobook -
![Solaris by Stanisław Lem]()
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsA classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem.When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover... -
![One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz]()
One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsMichelina Bellsong is on a mission. She is following a missing family to the edge of America...to a place she never knew existed--a place of terror, wonder, and shattering revelation.What awaits her there will change her life and the life of everyone she knows--if she can find the key to survival... -
![Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge]()
Not Fade Away by Jim Dodge
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGeorge Gastin is a Bay Area tow-truck operator who wrecks cars as part of an insurance scam. One of the cars he is hired to demolish is a snow-white Cadillac that was supposed to be a present for the Big Bopper, who died in the Iowa plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Gastin has a change of heart and takes off in the car, heading for Texas where the Bopper is buried... -
![Everything's Fine by Matthew Pridham]()
Everything's Fine by Matthew Pridham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsEric’s day is off to a rough start: his regional managers are in town, he’s running late to work, the moon seems to be falling apart, and he just can’t seem to get his tie right. At least he has his priorities straight: it’s the little things that matter... -
![V. by Thomas Pynchon]()
V. by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men—one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose—and "V.," the unknown woman of the title...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics -
![Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg]()
Egalia's Daughters: A Satire of the Sexes by Gerd Brantenberg
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWelcome to the land of Egalia, where gender roles are topsy-turvy as "wim" wield the power and "menwim" light the home fires...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history book -
![The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann]()
The Royal Family by William T. Vollmann
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSince the publication of his first book in 1987, William T. Vollmann has established himself as one of the most fascinating and unconventional literary figures on the scene today... -
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![Bellwether by Connie Willis]()
Bellwether by Connie Willis
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsConnie Willis has won more Hugo and Nebula awards than any other science fiction author. Now, with her trademark wit and inventiveness, she explores the intimate relationship between science, pop culture, and the arcane secrets of the heart.Sandra Foster studies fads - from Barbie dolls to the grunge look - how they start and what they mean... -
![Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy]()
Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAfter being unjustly committed to a mental institution, Connie Ramos is contacted by an envoy from the year 2137, who shows her a utopian future of sexual and racial equality and environmental harmony.But Connie also bears witness to another potential outcome: a dystopian society of grotesque exploitation. One will become our world. And Connie herself may strike the decisive blow..Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics contemporary -
![Pattern Recognition by William Gibson]()
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsCayce Pollard is an expensive, spookily intuitive market-research consultant. In London on a job, she is offered a secret assignment: to investigate some intriguing snippets of video that have been appearing on the Internet. An entire subculture of people is obsessed with these bits of footage, and anybody who can create that kind of brand loyalty would be a gold mine for Cayce's client...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics contemporary -
![The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley]()
The Things That Keep Us Here by Carla Buckley
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsHow far would you go to protect your family?Ann Brooks never thought she’d have to answer that question. Then she found her limits tested by a crisis no one could prevent. Now, as her neighborhood descends into panic, she must make tough choices to protect everyone she loves from a threat she cannot even see...Categorized as:
literary-fiction action-adventure apocalyptic audiobook book contemporary disaster drama -
![Set My Heart To Five by Simon Stephenson]()
Set My Heart To Five by Simon Stephenson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratings‘You shall read this with unadulterated pleasure’ Scotland on Sunday‘A beautiful, funny, heartfelt analysis of what it means to be human’ Simon Pegg Set in a 2054 where humans have locked themselves out of the internet and Elon Musk has incinerated the moon, Set My Heart To Five is the hilarious yet profoundly moving story of one android’s emotional awakening... -
![Lexicon by Max Barry]()
Lexicon by Max Barry
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAt an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren't taught history, geography, or mathematics--at least not in the usual ways. Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure audiobook boarding-school book -
![The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn]()
The Dark Fields by Alan Glynn
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsImagine a drug that makes your brain function with perfect efficiency, tapping into your most fundamental resources of intelligence and drive, releasing all the passive knowledge you'd ever accumulated. A drug that made you focused, charming, fast, even attractive. Eddie Spinola is on such a drug. It's called MDT-48, and it's Viagra for the brain-a designer drug that's redesigning his life... -
![The Beginning of the End by Manel Loureiro]()
The Beginning of the End by Manel Loureiro
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe dead rise...A mysterious incident in Russia, a blip buried in the news—it’s the only warning humanity receives that civilization will soon be destroyed by a single, voracious virus that creates monsters of men.Humanity fallsA lawyer, still grieving over the death of his young wife, begins to write as a form of therapy...Categorized as:
literary-fiction action-adventure adult apocalyptic audiobook book contemporary dystopia -
![We by Yevgeny Zamyatin]()
We by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsThe exhilarating dystopian novel that inspired George Orwell's 1984 and foreshadowed the worst excesses of Soviet RussiaYevgeny Zamyatin's We is a powerfully inventive vision that has influenced writers from George Orwell to Ayn Rand... -
![Island by Aldous Huxley]()
Island by Aldous Huxley
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsIn Island, his last novel, Huxley transports us to a Pacific island where, for 120 years, an ideal society has flourished. Inevitably, this island of bliss attracts the envy and enmity of the surrounding world. A conspiracy is underway to take over Pala, and events begin to move when an agent of the conspirators, a newspaperman named Faranby, is shipwrecked there... -
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![Rant by Chuck Palahniuk]()
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsBuster “Rant” Casey just may be the most efficient serial killer of our time. A high school rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small town home for the big city where he becomes the leader of an urban demolition derby called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die a spectacular highway death, after which his friends gather the testimony needed to build an oral history of his short, violent life...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 21st-century action-adventure audiobook book -
![Beneath the World, a Sea by Chris Beckett]()
Beneath the World, a Sea by Chris Beckett
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSouth America, 1990. Ben Ronson, a British police officer, arrives in a mysterious forest to investigate a spate of killings of a local species called the Duendes. They are silent, vaguely humanoid creatures - with long limbs and black button eyes - that have a strange psychic effect on people, exposing them to their suppressed thoughts and fears...Categorized as:
literary-fiction action-adventure adult book coming-of-age contemporary dystopia fiction -
![Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott, Giorgio Manganelli]()
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott, Giorgio Manganelli
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 53 ratingsThis masterpiece of science (and mathematical) fiction is a delightfully unique and highly entertaining satire that has charmed readers for more than 100 years. The work of English clergyman, educator and Shakespearean scholar Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926), it describes the journeys of A. Square [sic – ed... -
![Company by Max Barry]()
Company by Max Barry
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStephen Jones is a shiny new hire at Zephyr Holdings... -
![Schrodinger's Ball: A Novel by Adam Felber]()
Schrodinger's Ball: A Novel by Adam Felber
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“Tender, hilarious, and packed with delightful surprises . . . If Einstein and John Cleese had written a novel together, this would be it.”–Joseph Weisberg, author of 10th GradeFour friends set out into the night in Cambridge, Massachusetts, undeterred by the fact that one of them might actually be dead. Deb has perfected the half-hour orgasm. Grant, a geek, desperately desires Deb... -
![The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist]()
The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsOne day in early spring, Dorrit Weger is checked into the Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. She is promised a nicely furnished apartment inside the Unit, where she will make new friends, enjoy the state of the art recreation facilities, and live the few remaining days of her life in comfort with people who are just like her...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 21st-century action-adventure adult aging apocalyptic audiobook book -
![The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi]()
The Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi
Rated: 3.62 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsFrom a rising new star of horror comes a killer read that will make you lose track of time and reality. The Crimson Labyrinth is a wicked satire on extremist reality TV in the tradition of The Running Man-if that indeed is what it is. Welcome to THE MARS LABYRINTH where things aren't what they seem. Welcome to the world of Kishi, where the plot is as gnarly as the humor is twisted... -
![Adrift by Lisa Brideau]()
Adrift by Lisa Brideau
Rated: 3.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor fans of The Last Thing He Told Me comes a page-turning thriller about hidden identities and the terrifying realities of climate change.The truth won't always set you free...Ess wakes up alone on a sailboat in the remote Pacific Northwest with no memory of who she is or how she got there. She finds a note, but it's more warning than comfort: Start over. Don't make yourself known... -
![Rabbits: A Novel by Terry Miles]()
Rabbits: A Novel by Terry Miles
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsConspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast. It's an average work day. You've been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 pm...Categorized as:
magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure adult alternate-history apocalyptic audiobook book -
![Sealed by Naomi Booth, Brigid Lohrey]()
Sealed by Naomi Booth, Brigid Lohrey
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratings'We came out here to begin again. We came out here for the clear air and a fresh start. No one said to us: beware of fresh starts. No one said to us: god knows what will begin.'Timely and suspenseful, Sealed is a gripping modern fable on motherhood. A terrifying portrait of ordinary people under threat from their own bodies and from the world around them...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism action-adventure adult apocalyptic audiobook body-horror book -
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![Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle]()
Wolf In White Van by John Darnielle
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsWelcome to Trace Italian, a game of strategy and survival! You may now make your first move.Isolated by a disfiguring injury since the age of seventeen, Sean Phillips crafts imaginary worlds for strangers to play in...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 21st-century action-adventure audiobook book coming-of-age contemporary crime -
![Cold Earth by Sarah Moss]()
Cold Earth by Sarah Moss
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA team of six archaeologists from the United States, England, and Scotland assembles at the beginning of the Arctic summer to unearth traces of the lost Viking settlements in Greenland. But as they sink into uneasy domesticity, there is news of an epidemic back home, and their communications with the outside world fall away...Categorized as:
literary-fiction action-adventure adult apocalyptic archaeology book contemporary dystopia -
![The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon]()
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge...Categorized as:
humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan]()
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
Rated: 3.59 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsIt's November of 2020, and the world is freezing over, each day colder than the last. There's snow in Israel; the Thames is overflowing; and an iceberg separated from the Fjords in Norway is expected to drift just off the coast of Scotland. As ice water melts into the Atlantic, frenzied London residents evacuate by the thousands for warmer temperatures down south--but not Dylan... -
![In Our Likeness by Bryan VanDyke]()
In Our Likeness by Bryan VanDyke
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe wonders and chaos of AI converge in a powerful and thrilling novel about rewriting history, identity, love, and what it means to be human.Graham Gooding is a leader at a tech start-up when his brilliant coworker—and work crush—Nessie Locke asks for help testing a new algorithm. Graham jumps at the chance to impress her, and to improve his floundering personal life... -
![Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, William Gibson]()
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, William Gibson
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsA mysterious disaster has stricken the midwestern American city of Bellona, and its aftereffects are disturbing: a city block burns down and is intact a week later; clouds cover the sky for weeks, then part to reveal two moons; a week passes for one person when only a day passes for another. The catastrophe is confined to Bellona, and most of the inhabitants have fled...
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