In under 2 years I've went from having a 10 year reading gap, to reading Mistborn (maybe not epic fantasy), Stormlight Archive, Game of Thrones, had a few months gap then read the first 3 books in Malazan. The last one I sped through as we're expecting a baby and I wanted it read before he came. Now I've finished Memories of Ice and originally I wanted to continue, but I feel a bit burnt out. I couldn't imagine wanting to read anything else that wasn't an epic saga and now it's the opposite. Can anyone recommend me a book that is one and done, isn't massive in scope, maybe 500 pages tops. It can be a murder mystery, set in the past. I'm not too fussy, not big into romantic books.
by cappsy04
5 Comments
Peranesi
Well, I’d say go with *The Crow Road* – Iain Banks. An entertaining, dark look at family history and betrayal but minus the fantasy elements. Also, Banks knew how to draw you in from the off:
“It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.”
**Yellowface** by R.F. Kuang, 323 pages, contemporary fiction
**Purple Hibiscus** by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 307 pages, novel
**The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue** by V. E. Schwab, 442 pages, fantasy
**Circe** by Madeline Miller, 393 pages, fantasy
**Perfume: The Story of a Murderer** by Patrick Sueskind, 263 pages, historical fiction
**Born a Crime** by Trevor Noah, 289 pages, memoir
The Martian
I’d recommend an urban fantasy series. It has that fantasy twist while still being easy to understand and not to much mental work. One of my favorites is the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire. The first book is Rosemary and Rue.