Books like 'The Disappearing Spoon'
Readers who enjoyed The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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Rosie Revere, Engineer by Andrea Beaty, David Roberts
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRosie may seem quiet during the day, but at night she's a brilliant inventor of gizmos and gadgets who dreams of becoming a great engineer. When her great-great-aunt Rose (Rosie the Riveter) comes for a visit and mentions her one unfinished goal--to fly--Rosie sets to work building a contraption to make her aunt's dream come true...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor action-adventure book children children-books family female-author -
![Animal Farm / 1984 by George Orwell]()
Animal Farm / 1984 by George Orwell
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsThis edition features George Orwell’s best-known novels—1984 and Animal Farm—with an introduction by Christopher Hitchens.In 1984, London is a grim city where Big Brother is always watching you and the Thought Police can practically read your mind. Winston Smith joins a secret revolutionary organisation called The Brotherhood, dedicated to the destruction of the Party...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor 20th-century alternate-history animals audiobook book classics -
![Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.]()
Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsLibrarian note: Alternate cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal... -
![Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers]()
Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with a charismatic, married doctor...Categorized as:
historical-fiction romance fiction historical literary-fiction audiobook mystery female-author -
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![Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith]()
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw... -
![The Doll by Cora Taylor]()
The Doll by Cora Taylor
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsWhile Meg is recovering from rheumatic fever her grandmother gives her the old-fashioned family doll named Jessie, and when Meg falls asleep holding Jessie, she wakes up to discover that she has gone back in time and is now Morag, a girl traveling the Canadian prairies by covered wagon...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure animals book children children-books family -
![Their Bride by Stasia Black, A.S. Green]()
Their Bride by Stasia Black, A.S. Green
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the New Republic, every woman must marry five men. It’s the law. Welcome to the apocalypse. All Vanessa ever wanted was to be loved. Okay, strike that—all she wanted was not to die at the hands of the homicidal maniac who was obsessed with hunting her down—and to be loved... -
![Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler]()
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsDarkness at Noon (from the German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics cold-war -
![The Plague by Albert Camus]()
The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people...Categorized as:
historical-fiction medical 20th-century action-adventure adult apocalyptic audiobook book -
![The Plague by Albert Camus]()
The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people... -
![The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson]()
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 28 ratings&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RThe Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr... -
![Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman]()
Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsA modern classic, Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, when he worked in a patent office in Switzerland. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics dystopia -
![The Hands of Time by Irina Shapiro]()
The Hands of Time by Irina Shapiro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen a young woman vanishes without a trace from a quaint fishing village on the coast of England only one person knows the truth, but he remains silent allowing the authorities to search for her in vain. Meanwhile, Valerie Crane finds herself transported to the year 1605. Terrified and confused she turns for help to the Whitfield brothers, who take her in and offer her a home... -
![The Last Man Alive by A.S. Neill]()
The Last Man Alive by A.S. Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe adventures of a group who survived a poisonous cloud that turned everyone else into stone... -
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![The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield]()
The Apollo Murders by Chris Hadfield
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAn exceptional debut thriller and “exciting journey” into the dark heart of the Cold War and the space race from New York Times bestselling author and astronaut Chris Hadfield (Andy Weir, author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary). 1973: a final, top-secret mission to the Moon. Three astronauts in a tiny spaceship, a quarter million miles from home. A quarter million miles from help...Categorized as:
historical-fiction action-adventure adult alternate-history amateur-sleuth audiobook book cold-war -
![Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle]()
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsBefore you see the movie, read the original novel! First published more than thirty-five years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history, from the classic 1968 movie starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, through four sequels and two television series . . . and now the newest film adaptation directed by Tim Burton...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor 20th-century action-adventure animals apocalyptic audiobook book -
![Remembrance by Jude Deveraux]()
Remembrance by Jude Deveraux
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsBestselling romance writer Hayden Lane has found her soul mate - or rather, created him: he's her latest fictional hero. And she's totally obsessed with him. Barely noticing when her real-life fiance breaks their engagement, she visits a psychic to learn more about him - and is told that in a past life Hayden was Lady de Grey, a promiscuous woman of Edwardian England... -
![Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson]()
Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsWHAT BEGAN AS A SIMPLESCHOLARLY PURSUIT ENDS IN AWAKING NIGHTMARE...Sir John Babcock, endowed with wealth and a healthy dose of curiosity, has stumbled on to an ancient order. With what he now knows, there will be no turning back. Even if he wants to. Not after he is trained as an initiate and knows of their perverted lusts—and their murders...Categorized as:
historical-fiction humor action-adventure adult book conspiracies cosmic-horror crime -
![Murder at the Capitol by C.M. Gleason]()
Murder at the Capitol by C.M. Gleason
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn July 1861, just months after the Battle of Fort Sumter plunges the young nation into civil war, President Lincoln's top priority is to unite the country, while Adam Quinn finds himself on the trail of a murderer . . . On Independence Day, the citizens of Washington, DC, are celebrating as if there isn't a war on... -
![Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud]()
Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe sequel to Crypt of the Moon Spider, Cathedral of the Drowned is a dripping, squirming, scuttling tale of altered bodies and minds.There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp. One is a brain in a jar, stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home... -
![The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood]()
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsThe Blind Assassin opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental. But just as the reader expects to settle into Laura's story, Atwood introduces a novel-within-a-novel...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
![VALIS by Philip K. Dick]()
VALIS by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsVALIS is the first book in Philip K. Dick's incomparable final trio of novels (the others being The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer). This disorienting and bleakly funny work is about a schizophrenic hero named Horselover Fat; the hidden mysteries of Gnostic Christianity; and reality as revealed through a pink laser... -
![White Light by Rudy Rucker]()
White Light by Rudy Rucker
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFelix Rayman spends the day teaching indifferent students, pondering his theories on infinity, and daydreaming. When his dreams finally separate him from his physical body, Felix plunges headfirst into a multidimensional universe beyond the limits of space and time -- the place of White Light... -
![In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka]()
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the Penal Colony is a short story by Franz Kafka. This story is set in a penal colony with no name. The book describes the last use of a torture and execution device developed sculpting condemned the judgment against her skin before you let him die, all in the course of twelve hours... -
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![The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson]()
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 65 ratings"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Stevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil, has become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a moral tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives... -
![Whiplash by Claudy Conn]()
Whiplash by Claudy Conn
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhy do second chances have to come with complications? Trevor, Prince of Lugh, had been thwarted from putting Pestale, the eldest Dark Prince, to death, but now he's been asked to investigate whether the Dark Prince has evaded punishment. This time, Trevor plans to make sure Pestale is taken care of permanently... -
![The Castle by Franz Kafka]()
The Castle by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsTranslated and with a preface by Mark HarmanLeft unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle... -
![Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes]()
Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWednesday, September 5, 1973: The first day of Karl Shoemaker’s senior year in stifl ing Lightsburg, Ohio. For years, Karl’s been part of what he calls “the Madman Underground”—a group of kids forced (for no apparent reason) to attend group therapy during school hours. Karl has decided that senior year is going to be different. He is going to get out of the Madman Underground for good... -
![The Asylum by Karen Coles]()
The Asylum by Karen Coles
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratings1906: Being a woman is dangerous, being different is deadly.Maud Lovell has been at Angelton Lunatic Asylum for five years. She is not sure how she came to be there and knows nothing beyond its four walls. She is hysterical, distressed, untrustworthy. Badly unstable and prone to violence. Or so she has been told... -
![Animal Farm by George Orwell]()
Animal Farm by George Orwell
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 96 ratingsLibrarian's note: There is an Alternate Cover Edition for this edition of this book here.A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality... -
![Квест by Boris Akunin]()
Квест by Boris Akunin
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Квест" - новый роман из серии "Жанры", в которой Борис Акунин представляет образцы всевозможных видов литературы, как существующих, так и изобретенных автором.К числу последних относится и "роман-компьютерная игра" - книга, которую можно не только читать, но в которую можно и играть. Этот остросюжетный роман построен по законам и логике компьютерной игры...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book espionage fiction -
![Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer]()
Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe Right Honourable Leslie Titmuss has clawed his way up the Tory government ranks and is now Secretary of State at the Ministry of Housing, Ecological Affairs and Planning (H.E.A.P.), and in pursuit of beautiful widow Jenny Sidonia. But seismic changes are afoot in the beautiful countryside where a new town threatens to engulf his own back garden... -
![Margery Kempe by Robert Glück]()
Margery Kempe by Robert Glück
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis tale of romantic obsession chronicles two relationships that take place in disparate worlds, separated by 500 years. The story of failed saint Margery Kempe's physical passion for Jesus mirrors the tale of the narrator's adoration of a young man...Categorized as:
historical-fiction fiction lgbtq classics 20th-century literary-fiction historical medieval -
![Margot by Jillian Cantor]()
Margot by Jillian Cantor
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAnne Frank has long been a symbol of bravery and hope, but there were two sisters hidden in the annex, two young Jewish girls, one a cultural icon made famous by her published diary and the other, nearly forgotten...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century alternate-history audiobook book drama family fiction -
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![The Song of Synth by Seb Doubinsky]()
The Song of Synth by Seb Doubinsky
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWilliams Burroughs meets Philip K. Dick in this dystopian drug-fueled novel set in the not-so-distant future.Synth is a drug able to induce hallucinations indistinguishable from reality. But it’s brand new, highly addictive, and more than likely dangerous. Even the dealers peddling the pills don’t know what long term effects the drug will have on its users... -
![Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy]()
Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDr. Tom More has created a stethoscope of the human spirit. With it, he embarks on an unforgettable odyssey to cure mankind's spiritual flu. This novel confronts both the value of life and its susceptibility to chance and ruin... -
![The Martian in the Wood by Stephen Baxter]()
The Martian in the Wood by Stephen Baxter
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsStephen Baxter's The Martian in the Wood, a Tor.com Original In the aftermath of the First Martian War, in the interim between it and what was to come later, England seemed to once again become a green and peaceful place, if one haunted by the terrible events in Surrey that had happened in those early years of the century. Although people hoped and prayed peace had come, they were wrong... -
![Searching for Captain Wentworth by Jane Odiwe]()
Searching for Captain Wentworth by Jane Odiwe
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhen aspiring writer, Sophie Elliot, receives the keys to the family townhouse in Bath, it's an invitation she can’t turn down, especially when she learns that she will be living next door to the house her favourite author, Jane Austen, lived in...Categorized as:
historical-fiction action-adventure adult book fiction historical industrial-era magic -
![Daughter of Kura by Debra Austin]()
Daughter of Kura by Debra Austin
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"At first, Snap was aware of a few background noises -- a baby cried, the fire crackled, one of the older children laughed. Eventually, the other sounds disappeared, and she heard only the ancient rhythm of the drums, the dancers' voices, and the sounds of her own feet as they beat a path to an unclear future... -
![Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley]()
Point Counter Point by Aldous Huxley
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsAldous Huxley's lifelong concern with the dichotomy between passion and reason finds its fullest expression both thematically and formally in his masterpiece Point Counter Point... -
![The Once and Future Me by Melissa Pace]()
The Once and Future Me by Melissa Pace
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDark Matter meets Girl, Interrupted in this spellbinding psychological thriller about a young woman teetering between two realities.Virginia November 12th, 1954: A young woman wakes, agitated and confused, on a patient transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital... -
![Freeware by Rudy Rucker]()
Freeware by Rudy Rucker
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsRudy Rucker has seen the future. . .and it is extreme.The Godfather of cyberpunk--a mad scientist bravely meddling in the outrageous and heretical--Rucker created Bopper Robots, who rebelled against human society in his award-winning classic "Software... -
![The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein]()
The Mind-Body Problem by Rebecca Goldstein
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWhen Renee Feuer goes to college, one of the first lessons she tries to learn is how to liberate herself from the restrictions of her orthodox Jewish background. As she discovers the pleasures of the body, Renee also learns about the excitements of the mind. She enrolls as a philosophy graduate student, then marries Noam Himmel, the world-renowned mathematician... -
![Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie]()
Imaginary Friends by Alison Lurie
Rated: 3.63 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn the name of sociological research, two scientists infiltrate the ranks of the Truth Seekers--a rather ridiculous small-town cult whose credo involves sex, spiritualism, and a flying saucer messiah... -
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![The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson]()
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis volume includes Stevenson's famous spine-chilling thriller Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Weir of Hermiston, a brilliant autobiographical portrayal of a father-son relationship... -
![Prototype by M.D. Waters]()
Prototype by M.D. Waters
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe stunning debut that began with Archetype— and has readers buzzing—concludes in Prototype, when a woman’s dual pasts lock onto a collision course, threatening her present and future. Emma looks forward to the day when she can let go of her past—both of them. After more than a year on the run, with clues to her parents’ whereabouts within her grasp, she may finally find a place to settle down... -
![The Little Book by Selden Edwards]()
The Little Book by Selden Edwards
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn irresistible triumph of the imagination more than thirty years in the making, The Little Book is a breathtaking love story that spans generations, ranging from fin de siècle Vienna through the pivotal moments of the twentieth century...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book drama family -
![A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn]()
A Guide for the Perplexed by Dara Horn
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe incomparable Dara Horn returns with a spellbinding novel of how technology changes memory and how memory shapes the soul.Software prodigy Josie Ashkenazi has invented an application that records everything its users do. When an Egyptian library invites her to visit as a consultant, her jealous sister Judith persuades her to go... -
![Knocking on Heaven's Door by Sharman Apt Russell]()
Knocking on Heaven's Door by Sharman Apt Russell
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWinner of Arizona Author's Award for Fiction and the New Mexico/Arizona Award for Science Fiction.On a hotter and more volatile earth in the twenty-third century, humans like Clare and Jon live in utopia, hunting and gathering in small tribal bands, engaged in daily art and ritual, reunited with old friends like the shaggy mammoth and giant ground sloth... -
![Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes by Patricia Highsmith]()
Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes by Patricia Highsmith
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThese ten stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad, with dark, inventive takes on environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, religious conservatism, and more...
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