Novels you can lose yourself in: great absorbing reads

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

I loved Memoirs of a Geisha

Vanity Fair by Thackeray

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

The Harry Potter series

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Stand by Stephen King

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Interview with the Vampire by Ann Rice

Hilary Mantel’s Thomas Cromwell books

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer (nonfiction)

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

The Terror by Dan Simmons

Jonathan Franzen novels - all of them.

'Laughter in the Dark' Vladimir Nabokov

R3). You have good taste. I’ve read about 80% of your list. Maybe time to pick up a good read and switch off the Netflix in January. Thanks for taking the time to list some new ones. I’m giddy with excitement.

Thank you R7. For some reason I’ve never read the Lord of the Rings books, this might be the year I try those.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan The Beach by Alex Garland Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann Emma by Jane Austen The Blood of Others by Simone de Beauvoir A Man named Ove by Fredrik Backmann

Ah, sorry, here is my little list, hopefully properly formatted this time:

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

The Beach by Alex Garland

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

Emma by Jane Austen

The Blood of Others by Simone de Beauvoir

A Man named Ove by Fredrik Backmann

A Confederacy of Dunces (by John Kennedy Toole) A Fan’s Notes (by Fred exely) Ride a Cock Horse (by Raymond Kennedy) Hangover Square (by Patrick Hamilton) Excellent Women (by Barbara Pym) The Loved One (by Evelyn Waugh) Paris Stories (by Mavis Gallant)

Anything by Nabokov, Orwell, Kingsley Amis, knausgaard, Conrad.

Thanks for this thread rOP. My New Year’s resolution is going to be to get offline and read more.

Mark Helprin: Winter's Tale: epic fantasy set in oldtime New York. Everyone hates the movie, but the novel is magical.

Dorothy Dunnett: The House of Nicolo series: eight books of historical fiction, uncelebrated because of the prejudice against "bodice ripper" novels. Yet Dunnett was one of the smartest, most vivacious writers of the twentieth century, so if you're looking for something to settle into over a long haul, these books are the goods.

Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies. Sharp satire. Very funny look at London's smart set in the 1920s.

Ethan Mordden: One Last Waltz: Irish myth reset in the 1900s. Lyrical, unlike his gay comedies about the New York--Fire Island set.

E. F. Benson: the six Lucia novels: social rivalry in a small English town. Extremely funny.

I loved A Suitable Boy. I threw myself into it when I first quit smoking and it was a wonderful distraction.

No matter which page I start at, I always get caught up in “Gay Whore.”

Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Life after Life by Kate Atkinson

Sorry, but Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I’ve read it three times. I find it fascinating.

Gone With The Wind. I started it and couldn't put it down.

My Name Is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok

The Poetics Of Space by Gaston Bachelard

The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving

Please say something about the books and your reading experience, not just listing the titles. TIA.

Another vote for Dunnett but The Lymond Chronicles are better than The House of Niccolo

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

John Irving's entire oeuvre.

All of the Anne Rice vampire novels.

A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley.

Steinbeck’s East of Eden.

Firestarter by Stephen King. I picked it up and didn't put it down (except to eat and pee) until I was done.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, but only if you don't know the plot. I didn't, so it was totally intriguing and absorbing.

Emma, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. Terrific writing, sharp observations, and an entirely different place and time to lose yourself in.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. Another one I couldn't put down.

"So Dark the Waves on Biscayne Bay" by Barbara Thorndyke

I am 100 pages into Dune and am not getting the appeal of it at all. The princess at the start of each chapter tells you what's going to happen, which seems totally bizarre.

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. This is the little book that made California a place of romance.

[italic]The Way We Live Now[/italic] by Anthony Trollope - seems like a daunting tome (brick), but it's a soap opera of satire.

[italic]The Makioka Sisters[/italic] by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki - set in Japan on the eve of WW II it captures the societal tug-of-war between tradition and westernization.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

Feast of All Saints by Anne Rice

Kinflicks by Lisa Alther

The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

The Women's Room by Marilyn French

I love The Doomsday Book mentioned above.

I would add The Gap Cycle by Stephen R Donaldson, but if you are going to read it, you need to know the following:

The first book (The Real Story) is very much setting the scene, and it tells the same story multiple times from different viewpoints, and with added amounts of detail

The first book especially is quite brutal. The action leading into the series is precipitated by kidnapping, control, and rape. It isn't extremely detailed in its depictions, but it is till fairly brutal.

Starting with the second book, the universe opens up with the action taking place in the far flung regions of human space, forbidden space (Alien Territory,) and Earth where a great deal of political machinations are taking place.

It is deeply plotted, and contains many layers, and is extremely engrossing. It is five books, with books 2-4 loosely corresponding to the operas in Wagner's Ring Cycle.

I cannot recommend it highly enough, but you need to stick with it through the first book

PS. The first book is very short

Gone With the Wind. First read it a long time ago in junior high and thought it would be horrible. But aside from some awful racial characterizations, the book has a propulsive energy to it. It kicks into high gear immediately and just keeps going. For all its arguable flaws, it just can't be put down. I read it once every few years and sometimes read it just to understand how Mitchell handles so many things and characters and yet keeps everything always moving. There's not a dull page in its 1,037 pages.

Villette by Charlotte Bronte

Reeds in the Wind by Grazia Deledda

The Angelic Avengers by Isak Dinesen

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

Dorian Gray

On The Beach

Crazy in Alabama

Shogun and Taipan by James Clavell. Totally immersive experience where you can identify with being a stranger in a strange sumptuous and highly political land.

The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr, who is an historian. Set in the late 19th century New York, it’s a fun detective story with boy whores, serial killer, use of the novel practice of psychiatry, and a peek into the seedy side of the NY elite. An American Jack the Ripper for the first novel, wily female protagonist/antagonist for the second.

Thank you to all of the people who gave descriptions and explanations of why you recommend certain novels.

Basically anything by the late PD James.

Her detective novels are experientially absorbing, intellectually stimulating, and oddly healing and nurturing.

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr is newly out this year, he won the Pulitzer for his last novel All The Light We Can Not See. This one has three interwoven timelines during the fall of Constantinople, present day Idaho and next century outer space, but they all have common threads of books, reading and libraries, and while it is a chonk of a book it reads incredibly quickly, even for me a slow reader, and is very accessible despite sounding complicated.

This thread reaffirms just how subjective reading is. So many of these “engrossing” reads were fucking laborious and chores to me.

However, here are a few of my own contributions to books that hooked me and didn’t let go… books that made me wish there were additional subway stops on my commute.

The Engagements by J Courtney Sullivan

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

Maine by J Courtney Sullivan

The Tender Bar by JR Moehringer

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Christadora by Tim Murphy

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Born Round by Frank Bruni

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

Dangerous When Wet by Jamie Brickhouse (great under the radar gay memoir)

Party of One by Dave Holmes

Oops. I slipped in some memoirs. Let the crucifixion commence.

I know it’s a frau-ish book, but “All The Light We Cannot See” kept me riveted. It’s been years, and I still think about that book.

Also, I re-read “The Robber Bride” quite often, R31. And Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” and “Ada”.

Slaughter-House Five and Mother Night

Anna Karenina

The House of Mirth

Lincoln in the Bardo

And, I'm sorry, all the books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (aka Game of Thrones)

I liked so many of your books when I read them, r42, that I'm going to check out the rest of your list.

There are a lot of lists in this thread by now. It would help if you didn't just list the books but also provide some background. What are the books about? What was it that you appreciated?

This is an obscure cult novel that would probably be cancelled today if anyone of note actually cared about or knew of it, but: Richard Fariña’s prescient hipster Ivy League novel BEEN DOWN SO LONG IT LOOKS LIKE UP TO ME.

I first read in my teens when I was really too young for it, then later when I myself was in College. Now I’m rereading it as an adult out of school for five years, and it’s sucked me back in all over again.

Not sure why it’s so absorbing—really, for all its be-bopping tangential flights of fanciful prose, it’s actually nothing all that wild in terms of what it’s saying. Like jazz, it’s all in the margins, all in the delivery.

The 1980s reprint has a foreword by Pynchon that’s as funny and compelling as the book (Thomas was a casual friend to Rich in their youth at Cornell).

As a contrarian old goat I often dislike books that others rave about, R42 (such as Doomsday Book). I'm putting Dangerous When Wet on my TBR pile - thanks.

We read The Jungle in high school, R31. Interesting suggestion for a list like this...

But it's a great absorbing read, right, R49? Even if it's depressing as all hell.

I had just finished reading Doomsday Book about a month before the pandemic hit. Oh me oh my! I loved that book even though it was sort of sloppy.

To qualify my list above, these aren’t the most beautifully written books or the most moving books I ever read, but they did what OP asked: they drew me into the world of the book to such an extent that I couldn’t stop thinking of them and felt sad to leave the world of the book behind when it was all over.

Huh, I read the Doomsday Book ages ago when it came out as the "Domesday Book". I do agree it's very engrossing. I wonder if my copy is worth anything with the original spelling.

A lot of people mention Dan Simmons, "The Terror", but I couldn't get through with it. What I do really like is his Hyperion (it's a series of 4, but really the first one is the best)- it's the science fiction equivalent of the Canterbury Tales. Also his Illium/Olympos- it's a weird hybrid history scifi saga involving the Olympian gods on Mars. I also like his take on vampires (very realistic) in "Carrion Comfort" and his ode to Stephen King of sorts in, "Summer of Night" about small town kids and the terror they encounter. He used to be a teacher, and has and interesting forward either in that book or its sequel, "Winter of Night" about how roaming radius of kids from the '50's has changed from various environmental/technology influences to modern day.

At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball

Cloud Cuckoo Land

The Prince Of Tides

Bathhaus

Orient

Doubting Thomas

R42 - great list. I honestly couldn’t find one other book int this thread that I liked. So many dry dull standards. All of R42 are great recommendations. .

I like to revisit books, usually big old potboilers, that were wildly popular when they first came out, but have kind of faded away - examples:

PEYTON PLACE by Grace Metalious - WAY better than the film OR the TV series

THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT - by Sidney Sheldon - again, WAY better than the film!

THE FIRST DEADLY SIN by Lawrence Sanders - there's a 2nd, 3rd and 4th as well, but the first one is the best

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING by Rona Jaffe, and THE GROUP by Mary McCarthy

and the hands down winner: FOREVER AMBER by Kathleen Winsor!! It was a sensation in 1944 when it came out, banned in seven states due to its sexual content (it's VERY sexy!!) but it is TOTALLY ABSORBING - all about the rise of a young girl in 17th century England, all the way to the court of Charles II - it has everything - sex, love, intrigue, history, the great plague, the Great Fire of London, etc etc - if you want absorbing, look no further!!

Forever Amber is fun but you have to be in it for the long haul (it's over 1000 pages long)

The Palliser Novels. All of them.

R58 = Lizzie Eustace

[quote] This thread reaffirms just how subjective reading is. So many of these “engrossing” reads were fucking laborious and chores to me.

You mean... tastes are subjective, and they differ?

I never would have [italic]dreamed![/italic]

Red Rising by Pierce Brown. It's the first in the series. All are good.

Madame Bovary

Atonement

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

All the presidents men

The only book I've read cover to cover in a single sitting was "Misery" by Stephen King. I just couldn't put that book down.

Under normal circumstances I'm a slow reader, but the following books had me zipping through them because I couldn't put them down:

Tom Tryon's Harvest Home

Stephen King's The Tommyknockers & Needful Things

Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days

David Leavitt's The Lost Language of Cranes

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

Andrew Holleran's Dancer from the Dance

Pat Conroy's The Lords of Discipline & The Prince of Tides

David Feinber's Eighty-Sixed

Robert Ferro's Blue Star

Richard Price's Ladies Man

And 3 classics: Moby-Dick, The Brother Karamazov & Crime and Punishment

OP, I loved A Suitable Boy. What was Vikram Seth’s novel that was all rhyming couplets? Did you read it? I vaguely remember it as a love story set maybe in San Francisco? i recall it not being convincing, but still an interesting read.

R64 Not a novel but, yes, excellent journalism and very engaging and easy to follow. Not a small feat when discussing not only Watergate but how the investigation proceeded.

Why, Ms Tartt’s superb academic noir The Secret History, of course.

See this thread for reasons

Wingmen by Ensan Case is one of the best gay novels I've ever read. It's available on the Internet Archive.

The 5 volumes of The Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Life of an English family (including inlaws, employees, etc) through the 40s and 50s. It is actually less cozy than it sounds, with sex, rapes, abortion,incest, gayness, etc. finished the 4th volume today and i am sad there is only one left.

Agree about American Wife mentioned above.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Ragtime

Clockers

The Dead Zone

The Corrections

Don't be deterred by FOREVER AMBER's 1000 pages - it is extremely cinematic, the way GONE WITH THE WIND was. It's an amazing work. Too bad the film version fell far, far short.

Now that I look at my list, I realize that all of them were made into not so hot films.

Middlemarch is my favorite. I read a chapter each day before work, to take me out of the real world (and it worked).

Interesting to me that on so many of the longer lists there'd be books I loved and books I hated. Yes, taste in fiction is truly more subjective than in most any other art IMHO.

Here's some of mine (with some repeats from above:

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW, Trollope's masterpiece of Victorian England but really no more intimidating than GONE WITH THE WIND

HUMAN CROQUET by Kate Atkinson about a young woman in 1980s London who thinks she losing her mind

CHRISTODORA by Tim Murphy, the AIDS crisis seen through many interlocking NYC characters

A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh, post-WW1 London that goes to many unexpected places, literally and metaphorically

Any of Barbara Pym's novels, though THE SWEET DOVE DIED and QUARTET IN AUTUMN are perhaps the most interesting because they're not about the genteel middle-aged women of her other books

MIDDLESEX by Jeffrey Eugenides about a trans person finding himself

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD by Richard Yates, about a dysfunctional 1950s marriage

LITTLE CHILDREN by Tom Perrotta, about a 2004 dysfunctional marriage

SLAVES OF SOLITUDE by Patrick Hamilton, about a group of people living in a shabby boarding house during WWII

ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS by William Boyd, about a man in contemporary London on the run from a murder he didn't commit

ARMADALE by Wilkie Collins, a true Victorian page turner about two young men, one rich and one poor

A FATAL INVERSION by Barbara Vine (pen name of Ruth Rendell), a Hitchcockian thriller about a murder cover-up years after it occurred

BEAUTIFUL RUINS by Jess Walter, comic novel somewhat centered around the making of the Taylor Burton Cleopatra

HEADLONG by Michael Frayn, about the discovery of a long lost Breugel painting

THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY by Edith Wharton, the foibles of a beautiful bourgeois American girl trying to find a rich husband

THE SLAP by Christos Tsiolkas, the repercussions among working class Australian friends and neighbors when one of their children is slapped

THE SINGER'S GUN by Emily St. John Mandel, I love all of her novels but this somewhat neglected early one is one of her best, very Patricia Highsmith, yet better!

THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE by Thomas Hardy, a very modern late Victorian novel with incredible twists and turns

MUSIC FOR TORCHING by AM Homes, comic satire of suburbia on fire

NEXT! by James Hynes, about a hapless businessman trying to change his life

GREAT EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens, his masterpiece IMHO

And finally, CLOUD CUCKOO LAND by Anthony Doerr and CROSSROADS by Jonathan Franzen, 2 of the the best novels of this or any other year

Re: Armadale - - didn't buy them as anything but a gay couple. As for Sweet Dove - - what a bunch of thoroughly unlikeable characters!

You might try William Trevor's "Miss Gomez and the Bretheren" R76.

A Dark Adapted Eye

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

R76, "Revolutionary Road" and "Little Children" were made into great movies. I highly recommend to someone doesn't want to read the books.

The Godfather by Mario Puzo. Everyone was so bowled over by the movie, but the book is better. A great, trashy absorbing read.

I loved Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell, even though I hadn’t read any of his earlier work, which this one referenced. I may reread that now that I’ve watched Get Back and am going through Beatles withdrawal.

I also loved A DARK-ADAPTED EYE, r78 and I will check out that William Trevor, whose other books I've loved, r77....and I totally agree with you about the two guys in ARMADALE.....how has that book never been adapted into a fabulous BBC mini-series??

A book with something of a cult following here in the UK - Exposé by Paul Ilett. Totally addictive story of a gay superstar taking revenge, one by one, against a team a ruthless tabloid journalists. I read this literally in one sitting. Lost an entire weekend but I couldn’t put it down. And one of the female villains is SO hilarious I fell 100% in love with her. It’s a genuine “page turner”. And really makes you think about your addiction to celebrity gossip and the impact it has on real people.

Forgot another favorite: BOYS AND GIRLS TOGETHER by William Goldman. Another cinematic read with a large cast of characters - and not one but two gay subplots!

Goldman loved putting homosexuals in his novels, and he made sure they all came to a bad end. See Marathon Man, Brothers...etc. etc...

Some great recommendations here. I just spent my day reading Gone Girl. I thought I would hate it but I was hooked within 3 pages.

I love books with strong internal dialogue.

More please!

Ugh. I hated The Goldfinch. What a disjointed waste of time. One of my favorite series I re-read every few years is the Kent family chronicles by John Jakes. A 1000 Splendid Suns is one of the few books in many years that made me cry. I also love Amy Tan's books.

Shantaram kept me busy for at least a week once.

Does anyone have any small, unknown novels they want to plug? Novels that aren't mainstream but you found absorbing?

I want to support young (or old) novelists who aren't on any best of lists.

Another vote for The Goldfinch. I read it 3 times over several years. I will also add The Secret History.

The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Shutter Island, Dennis Lehane What a book. My daughter, who does not read very often, stayed up all night reading it after checking out the first few pages. Disregard what you have heard about it, or your feelings about the movie.

I love Stephen King, I could list quite a few of his. But most recently I found Insomnia to be fascinating, with great characters,. And a lesser known favorite of his for me is Lisey’s Story. It was mentally very scary.. Not typical jump scares, more psychological inner workings of the mind.

R90

Yes I would love to.

Please read any books by Heather Gudenkauf. She’s fabulous. She is from. Iowa and has partial hearing loss. I love her style of writing. And she has a lovely website with fun, uplifting entries. Her Instagram is just a joy - Snow, the woods and her cute dog LoLo. She has a sweet personality and is always helping and encouraging other writers.

I like supporting her. I have “known” her about 10 years on social media after falling in love with her first few books.

Please read the book Carrie Pilby by Caren Lissner. Then watch the movie with Bel Powley, Nathan Lane, Gabriel Byrne, Josh Ritter & Vanessa Byer. But please do read the book. The author is also a friend. But much closer friend as we are both in NJ. She is a good, good soul. You can search her on the web for all her stories. She writes freelance for Medium, McSweeney’s and local papers.

R90: I would mention You Can't Be Too Young Or Too Pretty, which is Ethan Mordden's first novel in a long time, about gay and straight college kids in and out of love. It's reminiscent of the movie Clueless (but it has a murder cult in it as well). I'd describe it as offbeat and leave it at that.

I'd also recommend Somerset Maugham's novel Theatre, a backstager about show people in London in the 1930s. The characters are mostly straight, but there's a gay feeling throughout, especially in the idolatry of the central figure, a real diva of an actress. Moviemakers have found it irresistible--even in Germany--but the famous adaptation is Being Julia, with Annette Bening.

An eclectic sampling of a few more (lesser known) novels I loved:

EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY by Preeta Samarasan about the various members of a contemporary Malaysian family

ALL THE BIRDS SINGING by Evie Wyld, a lonely young British woman has retreated to a farmhouse on a desolate island and is being menaced by something unknown

HERE WE ARE by Graham Swift, the love triangle of 3 vaudevillians on the dying Brighton pier in the late 1950s

GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS by Joanne Harris, thriller about a boys school in Leeds in the 1950s with some great twists and turns

AWAIT YOUR REPLY and YOU REMIND ME OF ME, 2 great psychological thrillers by Dan Chaon

COURTING MR. LINCOLN by Louis Bayard, Young Abe's conflicting relationships with Joshua Speed and Mary Todd

THE LECTURER'S TALE by James Hynes, truly hilarious academic satire

LOVE UNKNOWN by A.N. Wilson, great comic satire about 3 English roommates in Mod London and then 25 years later

AFTER HANNIBAL by Barry Unsworth, the conflicts of rich Brits in Tuscany and their native Italian neighbors

SKIPPY DIES by Paul Murray, tragi-comic story of teenaged boys at an Irish prep school

SYCAMORE by Bryn Chancellor, neat little murder mystery about a small town in Arizona

And finally, all of David Lodge's great novels, mostly comic satires of life in England from the 1970s to the 2000s, especially SMALL WORLD, CHANGING PLACES, THERAPY, OUT OF THE SHELTER, NICE WORK, PARADISE NEWS

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee. I read the plot summary and put off reading it because I thought it would be boring, but it was fascinating and I was so sad when I came to the end.

Loved Pachinko! And learned so much about the history of Korea. Really fascinating family saga.

I just shaved my asshole!

R86. And his chapter on homosexuals on Broadway in his non-fiction book THE SEASON is particularly vile in its homophobia and fag-bashing. Hope he’s burning in hell.

[quote] Does anyone have any small, unknown novels they want to plug? Novels that aren't mainstream but you found absorbing?

I like horror novels, good ones, not crummy ones. One I found very readable (and horrifying) is "Children of the Night" by Richard Lortz. Sometimes it's called "Dracula's Children" but that's a dumb alternate title because it's not about vampires. It's set in 70s era New York and tells the tale of five children, "two Spanish, one black, one (possibly) white and the other god knows." Their lives are living hells; they're beset by adults who want to have sex with them, they're victims of incest and sexual assault, they endure beatings and grinding poverty. The novel implies that in order to escape their unbearably grim lives they dissociate into an alternate consciousness that causes them to....well, read the novel. It features graphic sex and violence and really does grip the reader. One of my favorite obscure horror novels.

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert Massie.

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. I read it a couple of years ago when it got hyped as the hot book of the moment and it has stuck with me.

I have to endorse the Dorothy Dunnett House of Nicolo saga. It's historical, and very absorbing. I wish some network would make a series out of it. I've read many of the books listed here.

You want small, unknown titles? Here goes.

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing.

When Ghosts Come Home by Wiley Cash

Hairpin Bridge by Taylor Adams

Constance by Matthew Fitzsimmons

The Body Scout by Lincoln Michel

The Family Plot by Megan Collins

The Naples novels by Elena ferrante are among the best I've ever read in my life

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess. It's an insane, funny, erudite, biting, beautifully written traipse through the 20th century and across the globe, narrated by a gay novelist who encounters many of the century's personalities as well as fictionalized versions thereof. There's a fascinating religious theme at the core that culminates in an incredible twist. It's frighteningly long but I've read it multiple times and even bought the Audible version (which I was shocked to find and which was phenomenal -- but I'd strongly recommend reading it first to get your bearings). And it famously has one of the great opening lines: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me."