What to Read Next If You Liked The Innovators, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, Lila, Sharp Objects, or The World of Ice & Fire

The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson, is the latest fascinating dive into tech history from the author of Steve Jobs. Widening his scope from one man to the birth of an entire medium, the book explores the brilliant minds and events that made the internet possible. For a look at an earlier era of rapid changes in the way the world communicated, don’t miss The Victorian Internet, by Tom Standage, which reveals the way the instantaneous transmission of information via the telegraph helped give birth to a new era of globalization.
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher is a captivating new collection of short fiction from Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize–winning author of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Even in brief, her work is no less rich or revelatory, with the same focus on characterization that made historical figures flesh and blood brought to bear on tales set in the modern era. If her collection gives you the bug for more contemporary British short fiction, try Things You Should Know, by A.M. Homes, which offers 11 crystalline depictions of the fragilities of human bonds—sexual, familial, and romantic.
Lila, by Marilynne Robinson, is only the fourth novel by the Pulitzer Prize–winning author, and her first since 2008. Set in a small town in 1950s Iowa, it tells the story of the title character, who escapes a hardscrabble childhood and wanders into the town of Gilead, where she enters into an unexpected romance with the local minister that will change her fate. Though it stands alone as a gentle masterpiece, you’ll also want to read its companion novels: Gilead, which tells the minister’s story, and Home, which focuses on the couple’s son.
The chilling debut novel from the twisted mind behind Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects is a black-as-pitch thriller about a Chicago reporter who returns to her small-town home to investigate a murder and discovers unexpected secrets lurking in her own troubled past. For another riveting book about the horrors hidden within a seemingly idyllic rural setting, sample Sworn to Silence, by Linda Castillo, the first book in a series of mysteries featuring Kate Burkholder, who grew up Amish but left her sheltered community after surviving an assault by a brutal killer. Decades later, she returns home to serve as chief of police, and finds the past right where she left it.
The World of Ice & Fire, by George R.R. Martin, Elio Garcia, and Linda Antonsson, is billed as “the untold history of Westeros,” and is filled with hundreds of pages of illustrations, history, and lore from the rich world of Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire novels and HBO’s Game of Thrones. Once you’ve learned your history, it’s time to move onto geography with the comprehensive atlas of the Seven Kingdoms and beyond with The Lands of Ice & Fire, featuring original illustrations from cartographer Jonathan Roberts.
What are you reading this week?