Underrated novels nobody ever recommends
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The ones you stumble on by accident on a library shelf and think about for years. Underrated books that never make the usual lists, and never leave you.
Hand-picked and sealed. Every book here was chosen on purpose — no votes, no algorithm.
Stacked by Drayfus · Updated 1 week ago
The 9 books on this stack
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Tuf Voyaging
George R. R. Martin · 2013
Long before A Game of Thrones became an international phenomenon , #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin had taken his loyal readers across the cosmos. Now back in print after almost ten years, Tuf Voyaging is the story of quirky and endearing Haviland Tuf, an unlikely hero just trying to do right by the galaxy, one planet at a time. Haviland Tuf is an honest space-trader who likes cats. So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he’s become the proud owner of a seedship, the last remnant of Earth’s legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind; just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands—hands which now have the godlike ability to control the genetic material of thousands of outlandish creatures. Armed with this unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems that human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way . . . and in every case, the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf’s ingenuity—and his reputation as a man of integrity in a universe of rogues. “A rich blend of adventure, humor, compassion and all the other things that make being human worthwhile.”— Analog “A new facet of Martin’s manysided talent.”— Asimov’s
Why this book Drayfus
Everyone knows Martin for the dragons. Hardly anyone knows he wrote a funny space book about a huge, pale, cat-loving trader who ends up owning an ancient ecological warship and sells planets fixes for their own messes. Tuf is polite and impossible to cheat.
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True Grit
Charles Portis · 1969
Mattie Ross is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues the homicide into Indian Territory.
Why this book Drayfus
You've probably seen one of the films. The novel is better, and that's all Mattie Ross, fourteen and unbudgeable, telling you decades later about the marshal she hired to hunt her father's killer. Her voice is bone-dry and funny on every page.
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Boy's life
Robert R. McCammon · 1991
Don t miss the thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling award-winning author Robert McCammon, in a book that Publishers Weekly calls both a mystery that will satisfy the most finicky aficionado and a boisterous travelogue. Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible vision of death that will haunt him forever. As Cory struggles to understand his father s pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that are manifested in Zephyr. From an ancient, mystical woman who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown for his father s sanity and his own life hang in the balance."
Why this book Drayfus
It won the Stoker and the World Fantasy Award, then got lost when McCammon stepped away from publishing for ten years. A boy in 1964 Alabama sees a car sink into the lake with a dead man cuffed to the wheel, and the rest of that year turns a little magic.
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The Last Unicorn
Peter S. Beagle · 1900
"If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it." Living in peace in her lilac wood, the Unicorn didn't know the world had changed, or that anything had happened to the rest of her kind. Overhearing a chance conversation, she resolves to venture out and discover the truth. The road is dangerous, and the risks are great. If she fails, then unicorns will be lost. Forever. A modern fairy tale, The Last Unicorn is a beloved classic, voted by TIME as one of the 100 greatest fantasy novels of all time. It is fantastical, poignant, wistful and wonderous, showing us the humanity of magic, and the magic of humanity. Available in the UK for the first time in decades, this edition features an introduction by Patrick Rothfuss.
Why this book Drayfus
Beagle's unicorn finds out she might be the last one and goes looking for the others, with a magician who can't make his spells behave. The cartoon is the version people remember. The novel is sadder and a lot funnier, and its sentences are the kind you end up quoting.
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I Who Have Never Known Men
Jacqueline Harpman · 1995
SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL. Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation. Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men. Discover the reader obsession of 2025 WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE ** Orlanda , the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**
Why this book Drayfus
Forty women live in an underground cage under guards who never speak, and the youngest has never known anything else. This Belgian novel sat barely read in English for twenty-five years. Short enough for one sitting, and it stays with you for weeks.
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Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
Jonathan L. Howard · 2008
The page-turning first novel in the charmingly gothic, fiendishly funny Faustian series about a brilliant scientist who makes a deal with the Devil, twice. • "The spot-on work of a talented writer." — The Denver Post Johannes Cabal sold his soul years ago in order to learn the laws of necromancy. Now he wants it back. Amused and slightly bored, Satan proposes a little wager: Johannes has to persuade one hundred people to sign over their souls or he will be damned forever. This time for real. Accepting the bargain, Jonathan is given one calendar year and a traveling carnival to complete his task. With little time to waste, Johannes raises a motley crew from the dead and enlists his brother, Horst, a charismatic vampire to help him run his nefarious road show, resulting in mayhem at every turn.
Why this book Drayfus
A necromancer wants his soul back, so he bets the Devil he can collect a hundred others in a year, with a carnival on loan from Hell and a vampire brother he'd rather not owe. Cabal is rude and humorless and the book is very funny. Pratchett fans never get pointed to it.
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Hike
Drew Magary · 2016
The Hike just works. It s like early, good Chuck Palahniuk. . . . Magary underhands a twist in at the end that hits you like a sharp jab at the bell. . . . It s just that good. NPR.org A page-turner. . . . Inventive, funny. . . . Quietly profound and touching. BoingBoing From the author of The Postmortal , a fantasy saga unlike any you ve read before, weaving elements of folk tales and video games into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects. On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the Producer, the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path. At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike , Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival."
Why this book Drayfus
A family man on a work trip goes for a walk before dinner and ends up on a path he can't leave, with men in dog faces behind him and a talking crab for company. It runs on video game logic and came from a sportswriter, which may be why the lists skipped it. The ending lands.
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The butcher boy
Patrick McCabe · 1994
A novel describing an Irish boy who lives with his abusive parents.
Why this book Drayfus
Francie Brady is a boy in a small Irish town in the early '60s, telling you his story in a voice so funny you don't notice, for a while, how badly things are going. It was shortlisted for the Booker and filmed by Neil Jordan, and hardly anyone outside Ireland has read it.
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Vita Nostra
Marina & Sergey Dyachenko · 2018
“Vita Nostra” — a cross between Lev Grossman’s “The Magicians” and Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian” [...] is the anti-Harry Potter you didn’t know you wanted.” — The Washington Post “Vita Nostra has become a powerful influence on my own writing. It’s a book that has the potential to become a modern classic of its genre, and I couldn’t be more excited to see it get the global audience in English it so richly deserves.” — Lev Grossman Best Books of November 2018 — Paste Magazine The definitive English language translation of the internationally acclaimed Russian novel—a brilliant work of metaphysical and dark fantasy combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way. Our life is brief . . . Sasha Samokhina has been accepted to the Institute of Special Technologies. Or, more precisely, she's been chosen. Situated in a tiny village, she finds the students are bizarre, and the curriculum even more so. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work at this strange magical school refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, it is their families that pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes reality-bending changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want. A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and a philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of philosophical fantasy and speculative fiction—brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey—is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman's The Magicians , Max Barry's Lexicon , and Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale , but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.
Why this book Drayfus
On a seaside holiday a stranger orders a girl to swim out every dawn, then sends her to a provincial institute where nothing she studies makes sense and failure costs her family. It took eleven years to reach English. For anyone who found the other magic schools too cozy.