Books like 'The Underground Railroad'
Readers who enjoyed The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Warbound by Larry Correia
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsNew York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author's gritty urban fantasy set in an alternate noir 1930s. A tough P.I. battles an interdimensional monster that wants to suck magic power out of the world. Sequel to Hard Magic and Spellbound. Book Three in the Grimnoir Chronicles... -
Spellbound by Larry Correia
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsDark fantasy goes hardboiled in #2 of the hard-hitting Grimnoir Chronicles by the New York Times best-selling creator of Monster Hunter International... -
The Guns of Empire by Django Wexler
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsAs the “audacious and subversive”* Shadow Campaigns novels continue, the weather is growing warmer, but the frosty threat of Vordan’s enemies is only growing worse..Categorized as:
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The Rising by Ian Tregillis
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe second book in the Alchemy Wars trilogy by Ian Tregillis, an epic tale of liberation and war. Jax, a rogue Clakker, has wreaked havoc upon the Clockmakers' Guild by destroying the Grand Forge. Reborn in the flames, he must begin his life as a free Clakker, but liberation proves its own burden...Categorized as:
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Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsThe sequel to Dread Nation is a journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother...Categorized as:
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Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsJane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead...Categorized as:
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Hard Magic by Larry Correia
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsJake Sullivan is a licensed Private Eye—with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someone to go after a suspected killer who's been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree... -
The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSomeone is killing Britain's warlocks.Twenty-two years after the Second World War, a precarious balance of power maintains the peace between Great Britain and the USSR. For decades, the warlocks have been all that stand between the British Empire and the Soviet Union-- a vast domain stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the shores of the English Channel... -
Spectred Isle by K.J. Charles
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsArchaeologist Saul Lazenby has been all but unemployable since his disgrace during the War. Now he scrapes a living working for a rich eccentric who believes in magic. Saul knows it’s a lot of nonsense...except that he begins to find himself in increasingly strange and frightening situations. And at every turn he runs into the sardonic, mysterious Randolph Glyde...Categorized as:
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Guns of the Dawn by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe first casualty of war is truth . . .First, Denland's revolutionaries assassinated their king, launching a wave of bloodshed after generations of peace. Next they clashed with Lascanne, their royalist neighbour, pitching war-machines against warlocks in a fiercely fought conflict. Genteel Emily Marshwic watched as the hostilities stole her family's young men...Categorized as:
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Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 46 ratings“An extraordinary real picture of human beings numbed by catastrophe but still driven by the unconquerable determination of living creatures to keep on being alive.” —The New Yorker“Alas, Babylon.” Those fateful words heralded the end...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics realistic survival 20th-century -
The Seventh Plague by James Rollins, Джеймс Ролинс
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIf the biblical plagues of Egypt truly happened—could they happen again—on a global scale?Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story... -
Declare by Tim Powers
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare... -
Necessary Evil by Ian Tregillis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings12 May 1940. Westminster, London, England: the early days of World War II.Again.Raybould Marsh, one of "our" Britain's best spies, has travelled to another Earth in a desperate attempt to save at least one timeline from the Cthulhu-like monsters who have been observing our species from space and have already destroyed Marsh's timeline...Categorized as:
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The Devil Lancer by Astrid Amara
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsCaptain Elliott Parrish of Her Majesty’s 17th Lancers cavalry division finds most of his assignment in the Crimea insufferable.Rampant cholera, missing supplies, and inept planning quickly mire the promise of a decisive summer victory for the British. Facing a harrowing winter campaign, Elliott must rally disheartened men through sickness, battle and starvation...Categorized as:
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The Last American Vampire by Seth Grahame-Smith
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNew York Times bestselling author Seth Grahame-Smith returns with the follow-up to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter--a sweeping, alternate history of 20th Century America as seen through the eyes of vampire Henry Sturges.THE LAST AMERICAN VAMPIREIn Reconstruction-era America, vampire Henry Sturges is searching for renewed purpose in the wake of his friend Abraham Lincoln's shocking death... -
Bran Mak Morn: The Last King by Robert E. Howard, Gary Gianni
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom Robert E. Howard’s fertile imagination sprang some of fiction’s greatest heroes, including Conan the Cimmerian, King Kull, and Solomon Kane. But of all Howard’s characters, none embodied his creator’s brooding temperament more than Bran Mak Morn, the last king of a doomed race.In ages past, the Picts ruled all of Europe. But the descendants of those proud conquerors have sunk into barbarism...Categorized as:
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The Curious Case of the Clockwork Man by Mark Hodder
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt is 1862, though not the 1862 it should be. . . . Time has been altered, and Sir Richard Francis Burton, the king’s agent, is one of the few people who know that the world is now careening along a very different course from that which Destiny intended... -
The Rift Walker by Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsPrincess Adele struggles with a life of marriage and obligation as her Equatorian Empire and their American Republic allies stand on the brink of war against the vampire clans of the north. However, the alliance's horrific strategy for total victory drives Adele to abandon her duty and embark on a desperate quest to keep her nation from staining its hands with genocide... -
The Iron Codex by David Mack
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDoctor Strange meets Jason Bourne: The wizards of World War II become the sorcerers of the Cold War in this globe-spanning thriller sequel to The Midnight Front1954: In Southeast Asia, Cade Martin, hero of The Midnight Front during World War II, chases ghosts and flees his past. In the United States, Briet Segfrunsdóttir heads the Pentagon's top-secret magickal warfare program... -
The Goblin Reservation by Clifford D. Simak
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFirst-class entertainment (The Sunday Times) from a classic SF author. En route to an interplanetary research mission, a scientist is abducted by a strange, shadowy race of aliens and taken to a previously uncharted planet, a storehouse of information that would be invaluable--even to an Earth so advanced that time travel allows goblins, dinosaurs, even Shakespeare to coexist...Categorized as:
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On the Beach by Nevil Shute
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAfter the war is over, a radioactive cloud begins to sweep southwards on the winds, gradually poisoning everything in its path. An American submarine captain is among the survivors left sheltering in Australia, preparing with the locals for the inevitable. Despite his memories of his wife, he becomes close to a young woman struggling to accept the harsh realities of their situation...Categorized as:
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Fatherland by Robert Harris
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsFatherland is set in an alternative world where Hitler has won the Second World War. It is April 1964 and one week before Hitler's 75th birthday. Xavier March, a detective of the Kriminalpolizei, is called out to investigate the discovery of a dead body in a lake near Berlin's most prestigious suburb...Categorized as:
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Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit by K.J. Parker
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA talented bookbinder is tasked with creating a copy of a text so inflammatory it threatens to alter the very existence of Truth itself... -
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Tale of the Thunderbolt by E.E. Knight
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAs the Resistance attempts to overthrow their vampiric alien masters, elite Cat force member David Valentine embarks on a terrifying journey in search of a long-lost weapon that will guarantee their victory-and the end of the Kurian Order's domination of Earth...Categorized as:
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The Map of the Sky by Félix J. Palma
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe New York Times bestselling author of The Map of Time returns with a mesmerizing novel casting H.G. Wells in a leading role, as the extraterrestrial invasion featured in The War of the Worlds is turned into a bizarre reality...Categorized as:
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Fiddlehead by Cherie Priest
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEx-spy ‘Belle Boyd’ is retired – more or less. Retired from spying on the Confederacy anyway. Her short-lived marriage to a Union navy boy cast suspicion on those Southern loyalties, so her mid-forties found her unemployed, widowed and disgraced. Until her life-changing job offer from the staunchly Union Pinkerton Detective Agency... -
The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 30 ratings'The Drawing of the Dark is not only one of my favourite Tim Powers novels, it's simply one of my favourite novels. The seamless and seemingly effortless blend of action and humour, the wonderful characters, the rich settings, the brilliant plot - all of it is perfect' James P... -
At the Queen's Command by Michael A. Stackpole
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratings1763: The Crown Colonies of Mystria are in turmoil, trapped between warring empires and facing insurrection from natives and colonists alike...Captain Owen Strake, a wounded and battle-weary Redcoat of the Queen's Own Wurms, has come to this untamed land... -
Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe gathering forces of the Dark Powers threatened the world of man. The legions of Faery, aided by trolls, demons and the Wild Hunt itself, were poised to overthrow the realms of light.And alone against the armies of Chaos stood one man, the knight of Three Hearts and Three Lions... -
The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSt. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts, and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since he nearly died on the battlefield at Antietam, Trace has been haunted by the country's restless dead. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated areas as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains West from St...Categorized as:
historical-fiction magical-realism action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book death fiction -
Dreadnought by Cherie Priest
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMercy Lynch is working at a war hospital in Richmond, Virginia, when she learns that her husband has died in a POW camp and her estranged father is gravely injured and wishes to see her. With no good reason to stay in Virginia, Mercy sets out to see her father in Seattle... -
Ganymede by Cherie Priest
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe air pirate Andan Cly is going straight. Well, straighter. Although he’s happy to run alcohol guns wherever the money’s good, he doesn’t think the world needs more sap, or its increasingly ugly side-effects. But becoming legit is easier said than done, and Cly’s first legal gig—a supply run for the Seattle Underground—will be paid for by sap money...Categorized as:
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Warday by Whitley Strieber, James Kunetka
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe unthinkable happened five years ago and now two writers have set out to find what's left of America.New York, Washington D.C., San Antonio, and parts of the Central and Western states are gone, and famine, epidemics, border wars, and radiation diseases have devastated the countryside in between...Categorized as:
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Killer by David Drake, Karl Edward Wagner
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOn the nightmare planet Zuyle evolved a race of predators so deadly they could overrun worlds. Only two of them almost destroyed the planet Doronin...Categorized as:
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Fenrir by M.D. Lachlan
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Vikings are laying siege to Paris. They want the Count's sister, in return they will spare the rest of the city...Categorized as:
historical-fiction action-adventure alternate-history book dark dark-fantasy epic europe -
The Kingmakers by Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsThe epic Vampire Empire trilogy rushes to a heart-wrenching conclusion of honor and love, hatred and vengeance, sacrifice and loss. A war to the death. Empress Adele has launched a grand crusade against the vampire clans of the north. Prince Gareth, the vampire lord of Scotland, serves the Equatorian cause, fighting in the bloody trenches of France in his guise as the dashing Greyfriar...Categorized as:
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Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsGhost Talkers: a new novel from beloved fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal featuring the mysterious spirit corps and their heroic work in World War I.Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force... -
The Incorruptibles by John Hornor Jacobs
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn the contested and unexplored territories at the edge of the Empire, a boat is making its laborious way up stream. Riding along the banks are the mercenaries hired to protect it - from raiders, bandits and, most of all, the stretchers, elf-like natives who kill any intruders into their territory. The mercenaries know this is dangerous, deadly work. But it is what they do...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook book dark -
Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsOne hundred very short chapters, told in an utterly original first-person voice, propel readers through a narrative that is by turns gripping and darkly humorous, bleak and chilling, tender and transporting.What if the football hadn't gone over the wall. On the other side of the wall there is a dark secret. And the devil. And the Moon Man. And the Motherland doesn't want anyone to know...Categorized as:
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The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsMy name is Jax.That is the name granted to me by my human masters.I am a clakker: a mechanical man, powered by alchemy. Armies of my kind have conquered the world - and made the Brasswork Throne the sole superpower.I am a faithful servant. I am the ultimate fighting machine. I am endowed with great strength and boundless stamina.But I am beholden to the wishes of my human masters.I am a slave...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction politics action-adventure adult ai alchemy alternate-history -
Unnatural Issue by Mercedes Lackey
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA brand-new Elemental Masters novel from the national bestselling author Mercedes Lackey. Richard Whitestone is an Elemental Earth Master. Blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, he has sworn never to set eyes on his daughter, Suzanne...Categorized as:
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Eifelheim by Michael Flynn
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn 1349, one small town in Germany disappeared and has never been resettled. Tom, a contemporary historian, and his theoretical physicist girlfriend Sharon, become interested. Tom indeed becomes obsessed. By all logic, the town should have survived, but it didn't and that violates everything Tom knows about history...Categorized as:
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The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA fantastical reimagining of the American West which draws its influence from steampunk, the American western tradition, and magical realismThe world is only half made...Categorized as:
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Fallout by Todd Strasser
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat if the bomb had actually been dropped? What if your family was the only one with a shelter?In the summer of 1962, the possibility of nuclear war is all anyone talks about. But Scott's dad is the only one in the neighborhood who actually prepares for the worst... -
Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service in exchange for his freedom. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four... -
The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRector “Wreck ’em” Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he’ll be cast out out of the orphanage.And Wreck’s problems aren’t merely about finding a home. He’s been quietly breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply of the sap he sells...Categorized as:
historical-fiction action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book dystopia female-author fiction -
Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History by Gardner Dozois, Michael Flynn
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAlternate History: The What-If? fiction that has finally come into its own! Shedding light on the past by exploring what could have happened, this bold genre tantalizes your imagination and challenges your perceptions with thrilling reinventions of humanity's most climactic events... -
The Himalayan Codex by Bill Schutt, J.R. Finch
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the wake of World War II, zoologist and adventurer Captain R. J. MacCready is sent to the frozen mountain valleys of Tibet to find a creature of legend that may hold the secret to humankind’s evolutionary future—or the key to its extinction—in this explosive follow-up to Hell’s Gate.It is 1946, and the world is beginning to rebuild from the ashes of the devastating war... -
The Greyfriar by Clay Griffith, Susan Griffith
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsRousing pulp action and steampunk come together in a heartbreaking story of high adventure and alternate history.In the year 1870, a horrible plague of vampires swept over the northern regions of the world. It is now 2020 and a bloody reckoning is coming. Princess Adele is heir to the Empire of Equatoria, a remnant of the old tropical British Empire...Categorized as:
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