Books like Boxer, beetle by Ned Beauman

William Gibson’s debut Sprawl novel, *Neuromancer*, blends cyberpunk with a visionary digital future, following a hacker’s final job against a powerful AI. It earned Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards.

In a future where corporations weaponize genetic engineering, Paolo Bacigalupi’s *The Windup Girl* explores the ethical and societal consequences of bioterrorism and gene hacking.

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.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay follows 19‑year‑old Josef Kavalier, a Prague refugee who arrives in 1939 New York and partners with his cousin Sammy to create a comic‑book hero, the Escapist, while fighting fascism, navigating family, identity and the rapidly changing world of 20th‑century mass media.

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.

A 16‑year‑old Jewish boxer named Harry Haft survives Auschwitz by fighting inmates for SS officers, then escapes in 1945, becomes an undefeated professional in the U.S., and confronts Rocky Marciano in 1949, all while haunted by a lost love.

In Charles Dickens' historical novel set during London’s Gordon Riots of 1780, a double murder sparks a chain of conspiracy, blackmail, and abduction as fathers, sons, apprentices, and religious factions clash, with the protagonist Barnaby Rudge fleeing his own haunted past.

"A surreal and shockingly original debut novel set in a dystopian world shaped by language--literally. Vanja, a government worker, leaves her home city of Essre for the austere, wintry colony of Amatka on a research assignment. It takes some adjusting: people act differently in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion. Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja finds herself falling in love with her housemate, Nina, and decides to stick around. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony and a cover-up by its administration, she begins an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk. In Karin Tidbeck's dystopic imagining, language has the power to shape reality. Unless objects, buildings, and the surrounding landscape are repeatedly named, and named properly, everything will fall apart. Trapped in the repressive colony, Vanja dreams of using language to break free, but her individualism may well threaten the very fabric of reality. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by an idiosyncratic new voice"--

A gripping mystery set in London during the 1920s as Maisie Dobbs investigates a brutal murder of a street vendor.

A Fast-Tracking Thriller: Bernie Gunther's Fifth Novel in a Series Combines History and Mystery in Argentina and Nazi Germany in 1950s Buenos Aires.

A young Jewish girl chronicles her life in pre‑war Vienna, detailing the friendship that keeps her alive as persecution rises.

A historical mystery about a thug who becomes a detective in Victorian London, set in a small Bihari village in India and filled with skull-lined mansions and underground tunnels.

Benjamin Weaver, a private investigator, returns to solve a mystery in a London filled with political scheming and corruption, leading to a race against time to uncover the truth before the national election erupts into revolution.

An affectionate and tender memoir about the life of a marmoset monkey named Mitz in the Bloomsbury household of Virginia and Leonard Woolf.