Books like 'Portable Curiosities'
Readers who enjoyed Portable Curiosities by Julie Koh also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary sc-fi poc-mc outdoors literary-fiction
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A Page in Your Diary by Keith A. Pearson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTen insane days. One miraculous opportunity to re-write the past."If you lived through the 1980s and love time travel novels, you'll struggle to find a more addictive read than Pearson's latest gem." - Joanna JamesIn May 1987 Jackie Benton received a heartbreaking phone call from her boyfriend, Sean Hardy, bringing an end to their five-year relationship...Categorized as:
literary-fiction adult book contemporary fiction historical-fiction paranormal time-travel -
![Playground by Richard Powers]()
Playground by Richard Powers
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFour lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home... -
![Logic Beach: Part I by Exurb1a]()
Logic Beach: Part I by Exurb1a
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMathematician Polly Hare is missing. She leaves behind: one cat, one scarf, and a hypergeometric theory of everything with the potential to end physics. Her husband Benjamin is determined to bring her home. Papers will be read. Cults will be infiltrated. Cats will be petted. Benjamin Hare cannot tie his shoes, but he may well steer the course of human history... -
![Madas’s Falling Star / Madas’s Unexpected Gift by S.E. Smith]()
Madas’s Falling Star / Madas’s Unexpected Gift by S.E. Smith
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMadas’s Unexpected GiftCan a small reptile from another world save the Princess he has adopted?L’eon, a Chameleon Lightning Lizard, awakens to find that his planet was destroyed by an unidentified force... -
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![The One by J.K. Accinni]()
The One by J.K. Accinni
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn The One, the sixth book in the Alien Species Intervention #6609 series, almost a hundred years have passed since Armageddon. The Earth is ready for habitation but it is a far different Earth from the one last seen so long ago. Alongside the original wildlife and generations of their offspring, new plants and forms of wildlife from different worlds populate the planet as chosen by the Womb... -
![Secret Agent Seduction by Maureen Smith]()
Secret Agent Seduction by Maureen Smith
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBorn to live a life of intrigue and adventure, beautiful Secret Service agent Lia Charles has never met a challenge she can't overcome. That is, until she receives her latest assignment--rescue the brilliant, boldly charismatic and bona fide hottie Armand Magliore, a revolutionary leader of a war-ravaged Caribbean republic... -
![We of the Forsaken World... by Kiran Bhat]()
We of the Forsaken World... by Kiran Bhat
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn a distant corner of the globe, a man journeys to the birthplace of his mother, a tourist town destroyed by an industrial spill. In a nameless remote tribe, the chief’s second son is born, creating a scramble for succession as their jungles are being destroyed by loggers... -
![The Free People's Village by Sim Kern]()
The Free People's Village by Sim Kern
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsIn an alternate 2020 timeline, Al Gore won the 2000 election and declared a War on Climate Change rather than a War on Terror. For twenty years, Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, enacting carbon-cutting schemes that never made it to a vote in our world. Green infrastructure projects have transformed U.S... -
![Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith]()
Life on Mars by Tracy K. Smith
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsYou lie there kicking like a baby, waiting for God himself To lift you past the rungs of your crib... -
![Over the Edge/An Edge in My Voice by Harlan Ellison]()
Over the Edge/An Edge in My Voice by Harlan Ellison
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Razor Sharp Beyond the Edge. Harlan Ellison's stories and essays have been on the cutting edge of contemporary American Literature for over 40 years, but he stubbornly refuses to abandon the use of a manual typewriter. He's involved in every medium from television drama to comic books, and his works have been translated into 26 languages... -
![Last of the Curlews by Fred Bodsworth]()
Last of the Curlews by Fred Bodsworth
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"The story of this migration is magnificent, informative, breathtaking and exotic". Los Angeles TimesMore than three million readers around the world have been touched by this conservation classic, the story of a solitary Eskimo curlew's last perilous migration and search for a mate. The lone survivor comes to stand for the entirety of a lost species... -
![Czarne oceany by Jacek Dukaj]()
Czarne oceany by Jacek Dukaj
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsDukaj od nowa skonfigurował klasyczną twardą fantastykę naukową.Mroczna, sugestywna, boleśnie realistyczna wizja społeczeństwa posthumanistycznego.Czarne oceany – przerażająca otchłań myśli ludzkiej.Nicolas Hunt kieruje tajnym projektem rządowym, badającym komercyjne zastosowania telepatii. Rezultaty tych badań zmienią nieodwracalnie nie tylko jego życie, ale także losy całego świata... -
![Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi]()
Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories by Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratings6 hrs. 10 min.Nigerian author Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi makes her American debut with this dazzling novel which explores her homeland's past, present, and possible future through the interconnected stories of four fearless globe-trotting women...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc fiction historical-fiction contemporary audiobook female-author friendship -
![Not Forgetting the Whale by John Ironmonger]()
Not Forgetting the Whale by John Ironmonger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhen a young man washes up, naked, on the sands of St Piran, he is quickly rescued by the villagers. From the retired village doctor and the schoolteacher, to the beachcomber and the owner of the local bar, the priest's wife and the romantic novelist, they take this lost soul into their midst... -
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![The High House by Jessie Greengrass]()
The High House by Jessie Greengrass
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies... -
![The Works of Rudyard Kipling (500+ works) by Rudyard Kipling]()
The Works of Rudyard Kipling (500+ works) by Rudyard Kipling
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWith A to Z Classics, discover or rediscover all the classics of literature... -
![Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu, Chen Qiufan]()
Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation by Ken Liu, Chen Qiufan
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAward-winning translator and author Ken Liu presents a collection of short speculative fiction from China. Some stories have won awards; some have been included in various 'Year's Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken's personal favorites... -
![Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai]()
Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsA tale of doom and ambition, loss and revenge, love and murder... -
![Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson]()
Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNew to town and delusionally confident, Slide imagined himself living in a glossy building with doormen and sweeping views of the skyline. Instead he's landed in a creaking, stuffy apartment with two roommates: a loping giant who hardly leaves his room, and a weight-obsessed neurotic who keeps no fewer than forty-seven lamps throughout the house, blazing at all hours... -
![Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories by Tomás Downey, Mariana Enríquez]()
Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories by Tomás Downey, Mariana Enríquez
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA boy explores the abandoned house of a dead fascist…A leaked sex tape pushes a woman to the brink…A sex worker discovers a dark secret among the nuns of the pampas…The mountain fog is not what it seems…Kermit the Frog dreams of murder…In ten chilling stories from an ensemble cast of contemporary Latin American writers, including Mariana Enriquez (tr. Megan McDowell), Camila Sosa Villlada (tr...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc horror fiction anthologies contemporary paranormal latinx-mc -
![The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey]()
The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsBeyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable world. A world where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly vines and seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He knows the first rule of survival is that you don't venture beyond the walls...Categorized as:
literary-fiction outdoors 21st-century action-adventure apocalyptic audiobook book cannibalism -
![Tumbled Graves by Brenda Chapman]()
Tumbled Graves by Brenda Chapman
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA missing child. A dead mother. Kala Stonechild is about to discover what one betrayal can lead to.When Adele Delaney and her daughter, Violet, go missing, Jacques Rouleau is called upon to investigate. However, struggling with the impending death of his ill ex-wife, he sends Kala Stonechild and Paul Gundersund instead... -
![Shallow End by Brenda Chapman]()
Shallow End by Brenda Chapman
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsStill waters run deep.Teacher, mother, wife, and convicted child molester Jane Thompson makes parole after losing everything — her husband, her children, her career, and her reputation. But just as she begins trying to build a life out of the public eye, the bludgeoned body of the student she abused four years earlier is found on the shores of Lake Ontario... -
![Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson]()
Good Night, Sleep Tight by Brian Evenson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP ANOTHER PERSON. PERHAPS TOMORROW I WILL WAKE UP NOT A PERSON AT ALL.”From the “master of literary horror” (GQ) comes a collection of new stories tracing the limits and consequences of artificial intelligence and “post-human” relationships... -
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![A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar]()
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsOPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD“Wondering if there’s a novel out there that gives Cormac McCarthy’s The Road a run for its money? Here you go. [A Guardian and a Thief is] an indelible piece of writing, in equal parts dazzling and devastating...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fiction sci-fi dystopia contemporary historical-fiction mystery book -
![Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban]()
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe turtles in London Zoo become the mutual obsession of two lonely strangers who dream of setting free the turtles and themselves. Detail by detail their diaries record a world in which thought leads to action and action brings William G. and Neaera H. to their own open sea... -
![Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson, Louise Glück]()
Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson, Louise Glück
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsKatherine Larson is the winner of the 2010 Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition. With Radial Symmetry, she has created a transcendent body of poems that flourish in the liminal spaces that separate scientific inquiry from empathic knowledge, astute observation from sublime witness... -
![Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel with Literary License by María Amparo Escandón]()
Gonzalez & Daughter Trucking Co.: A Road Novel with Literary License by María Amparo Escandón
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom the author of L.A. Weather comes “a whimsical, humorous, and passionate mystery that explores the love and hurt of a father and daughter on the run” (Jorge Ramos, News Anchor for Univision).“1,001 nights in a Mexicali women’s prison . . . González and Daughter Trucking Co. is about our compulsion to make events into stories and stories into bridges of understanding...Categorized as:
poc-mc literary-fiction fiction contemporary young-adult womens-fiction family latinx-mc -
![Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell]()
Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water... -
![Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh]()
Mothers & Other Monsters: Stories by Maureen F. McHugh
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn her debut collection, Maureen F. McHugh examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction adult anthologies contemporary dystopia family female-author fiction -
![Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong]()
Dance Dance Revolution by Cathy Park Hong
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"The Guide" is a former South Korean dissident and tour guide who speaks a fluid fabricated language; "the Historian" interviews the Guide and annotates the commentaries. Cathy Park Hong's passionate and artful poem sequence weaves an ultimately revitalizing dialogue on shared experience in a globalized world, using language as subversion and disguise... -
![From the Fatherland, with Love by Ryū Murakami]()
From the Fatherland, with Love by Ryū Murakami
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the Fatherland, with Love is set in an alternative, dystopian present in which the dollar has collapsed and Japan's economy has fallen along with it. The North Korean government, sensing an opportunity, sends a fleet of rebels in the first land invasion that Japan has ever faced. Japan can't cope with the surprise onslaught of Operation From the Fatherland, with Love... -
![Event Factory by Renee Gladman]()
Event Factory by Renee Gladman
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA “linguist-traveler” arrives by plane to Ravicka, a city of yellow air in which an undefined crisis is causing the inhabitants to flee. Although fluent in the native language, she quickly finds herself on the outside of every experience. Things happen to her, events transpire, but it is as if the city itself, the performance of life there, eludes her... -
![Hot Rock by Annie Seaton]()
Hot Rock by Annie Seaton
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMegan Miller is on a dream trip to research her doctoral thesis at a rock festival in England. When she arrives in town she’s stunned that her temporary neighbor is the spitting image of her 70’s rock idol, too bad he’s also a world-class jerk. So why can't she stop thinking about him? Seventies rock star Davy Morgan is a man with a secret: rockin’ in one time and living in another...Categorized as:
literary-fiction adult book contemporary fiction paranormal time-travel womens-fiction -
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![Low Flying Aircraft And Other Stories by J.G. Ballard]()
Low Flying Aircraft And Other Stories by J.G. Ballard
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:The Ultimate CityLow-Flying AircraftThe Dead AstronautMy Dream of Flying to Wake IslandThe Life and Death of GodThe Greatest Television Show on EarthA Place and a Time to DieThe Comsat AngelsThe Beach...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary dystopia fiction -
![Vapor by Amanda Filipacchi]()
Vapor by Amanda Filipacchi
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSoon to be a major motion picture directed by Neil LaBute and starring Renee Zellweger, this is a surreal love story from the author of Nude Men. Now in paperback, Amanda Filipacchi's quirky comic romance gives aspiring actress Anna Graham a makeover that no reader will ever forget... -
![Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti]()
Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNana Nkweti draws on myth, horror and graphic novels as well as literary fiction, gritty realism and noir as she vaults into the vibrant intersection of Cameroonian and American cultures. A teenage adoptee leverages her new parents to fast-track her fortunes. A jaded PR man spins a zombie outbreak in West Africa. And a Mami Wata sacrifices her power for the fisherman she loves... -
![Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini, Mazen Maarouf]()
Palestine +100: Stories from a Century after the Nakba by Basma Ghalayini, Mazen Maarouf
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsPalestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the...Categorized as:
literary-fiction adult anthologies contemporary dystopia fiction poc-author politics -
![The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán]()
The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“A kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room... -
![American Estrangement: Stories by Said Sayrafiezadeh]()
American Estrangement: Stories by Said Sayrafiezadeh
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSaid Sayrafiezadeh has been hailed by Philip Gourevitch as "a masterful storyteller working from deep in the American grain." His new collection of stories—some of which have appeared in The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and the Best American Short Stories—is set in a contemporary America full of the kind of emotionally bruised characters familiar to readers of Denis Johnson and George Saunders... -
![The Barbarian's Treasure by Eva O'Hare]()
The Barbarian's Treasure by Eva O'Hare
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA group of friends get together for a once-in-a-lifetime vacation on a chartered cruise only to find themselves lost at sea, at least so they think. They come upon an island full of mystery, wonder, and love... -
![Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia]()
Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsLove, life, dreams, and a world beyond reach.Amelia dreams of Mars. The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts... -
![The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger]()
The Displacements by Bruce Holsinger
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTo all appearances, the Larsen-Hall family has everything: healthy children, a stable marriage, a lucrative career for Brantley, and the means for Daphne to pursue her art full-time. Their deluxe new Miami life has just clicked into place when Luna—the world’s first category 6 hurricane—upends everything they have taken for granted...Categorized as:
literary-fiction outdoors fiction audiobook contemporary dystopia family pollution-climate-change -
![Whalefall by Daniel Kraus]()
Whalefall by Daniel Kraus
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsWhalefall is a scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach... -
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![Red Grass by Boris Vian]()
Red Grass by Boris Vian
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsBoris Vian (1920-1959) was a magnificent jack-of-all-trades--actor, jazz critic, engineer, musician, playwright, songwriter, translator--not to mention the leading social light of the Saint-Germain-des-Pres scene. His third major novel, "Red Grass "is a provocative narrative about an engineer, Wolf, who invents a bizarre machine that allows him to revisit his past and erase inhibiting memories... -
![Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman]()
Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA dark and witty story of environmental collapse and runaway capitalism from the Booker-listed author of The Teleportation Accident.The near future. Tens of thousands of species are going extinct every year. And a whole industry has sprung up around their extinctions, to help us preserve the remnants, or perhaps just assuage our guilt... -
![Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann]()
Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHow much grief is too much? How far should we go to avoid pain? From the author of the international bestselling novel Agatha comes a literary thriller about grief, love, science, and societal norms. A Danish university research group is finishing its study of a new medicine, the world’s first pill for grief... -
![A Matter of Malice by Thomas King]()
A Matter of Malice by Thomas King
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen a TV producer asks Thumps to assist with an episode about a local woman from a wealthy family whose death was ruled “misadventure,” he is reluctant to get involved. Then the producer dies in the exact same manner, and Thumps finds himself solving two cases... -
![Povídky o vlasti by Dmitry Glukhovsky]()
Povídky o vlasti by Dmitry Glukhovsky
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsRuská satira má hluboké kořeny. Již sám název této knihy je ironickým odkazem na podobnou sovětskou tradici malých, povětšinou oslavných próz. Autor však píše o zcela jiné vlasti, než byla ta sovětská, a jeho povídky mají leckdy podobu politických thrillerů. Z různých úhlů rentgenuje ruskou „demokracii“ z počátku 90...Categorized as:
literary-fiction adult alternate-history anthologies audiobook contemporary fiction humor -
![Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven]()
Heat and Light by Ellen Van Neerven
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn ‘Heat’, we meet several generations of the Kresinger family and the legacy left by the mysterious Pearl. In ‘Water’, a futuristic world is imagined and the fate of a people threatened. In ‘Light’, familial ties are challenged and characters are caught between a desire for freedom and a sense of belonging...Categorized as:
literary-fiction poc-mc adult anthologies australia contemporary female-author fiction
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