Books like The invention of everything else by Samantha Hunt

H. G. Wells’ classic tales the narrator builds a machine, journeys 800,000 years ahead to a seemingly utopian future that hides a savage underground society.

Stephen Dedalus’s coming‑of‑age journey in Dublin frames his transformation from bullied youth to aspiring artist, as he distances himself from conventional life.

A biting satire that follows a young man's journey from isolated upbringing in Los Angeles to a Supreme Court race trial, exploring father‑son dynamics, racism, and political satire.

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection of short stories blends speculative fiction, horror, and sharp cultural commentary, exploring the violence, identity, and politics of womanhood through unsettling, genre‑bending narratives.

Set in an outdoor Lahore cafe, the novel unfolds over a single evening, capturing the intersections of identity and social conditions.

When a mysterious psychic arrives in 1969 Lower East Side, New York, four siblings learn the day they will die, setting off a life‑long quest that tests fate, choice, family and the search for meaning.

After being adopted by a quirky Dublin couple who treat him only as a house‑guest, Cyril embarks on a life‑spanning quest to discover his origins, his place in Ireland, and the meaning of true belonging.

A gritty coming-of-age tale of a young artist in New York grappling with the art world and personal demons.

E. L. Doctorow’s novel follows the Collyer brothers—one blind, one battle‑scarred—as they hoard New York City’s streets in their Fifth Avenue mansion, while the world’s tumultuous events, from war to jazz, filter through their secluded lives.

In 1978, John Lennon flees New York in search of an Irish island he purchased nine years earlier, confronting isolation, familial memory, and a whimsical, shape‑shifting driver in a lyrical psychological mystery.

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After the Iranian Revolution, rare‑gem dealer Isaac Amin is wrongfully imprisoned, forcing his family to confront a new reality of danger, suspicion, and the loss of a homeland.

Rat Bohemia follows Rita Mae, a rat exterminator navigating New York City’s underground gay and lesbian community amid the AIDS crisis, exploring love, loss, and renewal in a hopeful, authentic portrait of bohemian resilience.

David Leavitt’s biography follows G.H. Hardy’s discovery of Srinivasa Ramanujan in 1913, and shows how the mathematicians’ partnership reshaped math during the First World War.

A love story between a middle-aged man and a young woman from a partisans' family in London, set against the backdrop of the 1970s, exploring the seductive power of storytelling.

Over five novels and two collections of stories Tessa Hadley has earned a reputation as a fiction writer of remarkable gifts, and been compared with Elizabeth Bowen and Alice Munro. In her new novel three sisters and a brother meet up in their grandparents' old house for three long, hot summer weeks. The house is full of memories of their childhood and their past - their mother took them there when she left their father - but now they may have to sell it. And under the idyllic surface, there are tensions. Roland has come with his new wife and his sisters don't like her. Kasim, the twenty-year-old son of Alice's ex-boyfriend, makes plans to seduce Molly, Roland's teenage daughter. Fran's children uncover an ugly secret in a ruined cottage in the woods. Passion erupts where it's least expected, blasting the quiet self-possession of Harriet, the oldest sister. A way of life - bourgeois, literate, ritualised - winds down to its inevitable end. With uncanny precision and extraordinary sympathy, Tessa Hadley charts the squalls of lust and envy disrupting this ill-assorted house party, as well as the consolations of memory and affection, the beauty of the natural world, the shifting of history under the social surface. From the first page the reader is absorbed and enthralled, watching a superb craftsman at work --

Observatory Mansions follows a 37‑year‑old Francis Orme living in a crumbling apartment block once a grand estate. Surrounded by eccentric tenants and a treasured collection of 996 objects, he navigates secrets, loss, and a fragile connection with a new, vulnerable resident, Anna.

A young diarist, Edmund Bertram, reflects on friendship, family dynamics, and courtship in early 19th‑century England, offering insights into social class and sibling relationships.

A captivating tale of love and betrayal in the world of New York's elite banking industry, exploring themes of trust and dishonesty.