Books like A Spectre, Haunting by China Miéville

A covert scientific team ventures into the isolated Area X, a reclaimed landscape rife with anomalies and unknown life. As discoveries deepen, hidden motives and secrets threaten to unravel the expedition and alter humanity’s understanding of nature.

After a catastrophic pandemic, former actress Kirsten Raymonde joins a traveling troupe that performs Shakespeare for scattered communities, only to confront a ruthless prophet in a desperate quest for survival.

Red Mars chronicles the early days of humanity’s colonization and political upheaval on Mars, blending environmental engineering, terraforming and nation‑building in a hard‑science vision.

Inspector Tyador Borlú journeys from Besźel to Ul Qoma to investigate the murder of a woman, navigating two distinct cities that both share one physical space yet have separate identities.

In the grim, alchemical city of New Crobuzon, scientist Isaac Underwood faces a half-bird, half-human Garuda and a ravenous caterpillar that threatens the entire metropolis.

Inside a secret library run by a god‑like patriarch, orphaned apprentices must battle for control of humanity’s fate when their master disappears.

A crew of remade prisoners aboard a massive ship is diverted to a floating city of pirate hulls when pirates strike, forcing them to navigate a bizarre, oppressive society and uncover a deadly secret beneath the waves.

China Miéville offers a vivid, fact‑based account of the February and October revolutions of 1917, exploring the key figures, political intrigues, and sweeping social change that turned Russia from autocracy into the world’s first socialist state.

This compelling book provides a meticulously documented account of officially sanctioned cannibalism in the southwestern province of Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. Drawing on his unique access to local archives of the Chinese Communist Party and on extensive interviews with party officials, the victims' relatives, and the murderers themselves, Zheng Yi points a disturbing picture of official compliance in the systematic killing and cannibalization of individuals in the name of political revolution and "class struggle.". The treasure trove of evidence Zheng Yi has unearthed offers unprecedented insights into the way the internecine, factional struggles of the Cultural Revolution reached a horrifying level of insanity and frenzy among the ethnic Zhuang people of Guangxi. Profoundly moving, acutely observed, and unflinchingly graphic, Scarlet Memorial is a shining example of a genre of investigative reporting that courageously and independently records obscure and officially censored historical events, revealing hidden dimensions of modern Chinese history and politics.

"Dark Shadows is a compelling portrait of Kazakhstan, a country that is little known in the West. Strategically located in the heart of Central Asia, sandwiched between Vladimir Putin's Russia, its former colonial ruler, and Xi Jinping's China, this vast oil-rich state is carving out its place in the world as it contends with its own complex past and present. Journalist Joanna Lillis paints a vibrant picture of this emerging nation through vivid reportage based on 13 years of on-the-ground coverage, and travels across the length and breadth of this enigmatic country that lies along the ancient Silk Road and at the geopolitical and cultural crossroads where East meets West. Featuring tales of murder and abduction, intrigue and betrayal, extortion and corruption, this book explores how a president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, transformed himself into a potentate and the economically-struggling state he inherited at the fall of the USSR into a swaggering 21st-century monocracy. A colourful cast of characters brings the politics to life: from strutting oligarch to sleeping villagers, from principled politicians to striking oilmen, from crusading journalists to courageous campaigners. Traversing dust-blown deserts and majestic mountains, taking in glitzy cities and dystopian landscapes, Dark Shadows conjures up Kazakhstan as a living, breathing place, full of extraordinary people living extraordinary lives."--Bloomsbury Publishing.