The Great Escape: 15 Best Escapist Books To Get Lost In

When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to re-live the moments that meant most. To see what kind of person you really were … A magical, time-traveling love story, from the world of The Midnight Library.

Leena didn’t believe in monsters until she saw Weavingshaw. This yearning, slow-burn gothic fantasy romance follows a young woman haunted by the ghosts of her past and a ruthless merchant known as the Saint of Silence, who promises her greatest desire in return for her darkest secret …

From New Orleans witchkin, there is no greater honor than to become the Prime — chosen to rule. But the title is meant to pass between two rival Houses of magic, not to the wayward daughter of the former Prime who died under mysterious circumstances. Now dragged back to continue the legacy that nearly destroyed her, Phine has her work cut out for her. Between her werewolf ex, power-hungry vampires, and the skeletons in her family’s closet, Phine must learn to make peace with her past to save her — and all of witchkin’s — future.

As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only one child gripping a tree trunk in terror, unable to recall a single detail of the previous hours. Twenty years later, the found boy, Rob Ryan, is a detective on the Dublin Murder Squad. When a twelve-year-old girl is found murdered in the same woods, he finds himself investigating a case chillingly similar to the previous unsolved mystery. Now Ryan has the chance to uncover both the mystery of the case before him and that of his own shadowy past.

Here we meet fifteen-year-old runaway Kafka Tamura and the elderly Nakata, who is drawn to Kafka for reasons that he cannot fathom. As their paths converge, acclaimed author Haruki Murakami enfolds readers in a world where cats talk, fish fall from the sky, and spirits slip out of their bodies to make love or commit murder, in what is a truly remarkable journey.

The unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost: An “epic trip — through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood — and you’ll relish every minute” (People).

A woman who runs a cat rescue in 1920s Montréal turns to a grouchy but charming magician to help save her shelter in this heartwarming cozy fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of the Emily Wilde series.

Meet Phoebe Berman: Despite being a hopeless romantic, she’s about to be a thirty-year-old virgin. With one month before her milestone birthday, she’s determined to finally lose it … if her own anxiety doesn’t slow her down. The can’t-miss debut novel from podcaster and comedian Brooke Averick, Phoebe Berman’s Gonna Lose It is a brutally honest and completely relatable story for anyone who’s ever felt stuck between coming of age and coming apart.

Princess Tanadelle of the Widdenmar is disillusioned with life as a princess. She longs for real conversation, the chance to build a life of her own making, and uninterrupted reading time. During a routine royal visit to the town of Little Pepperidge, Tandy’s dream comes true when she finds herself cursed to remain in a run-down bookshop until she unlocks her heart’s desire. As she settles into life among the stacks, she finds it easy to exchange balls and endless state dinners for teetering piles of books and an irritatingly handsome pirate who seems bent on stealing her stock …

In her dazzling new novel, award-winning author Jaclyn Moriarty asks the question, if you could travel back in time, when would you visit? At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child. Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: A saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read.

A masterpiece brimming with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and fierce characters, from the author who “has reshaped modern fantasy” (The Washington Post). The metropolis of New Crobuzon is gripped by an alien terror. The fate of millions lies with a clutch of renegades. A reckoning is due at the city’s heart, in the vast edifice of brick and wood and steel under the vaults of Perdido Street Station. It is too late to escape …

Before the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams — invasive images of blood and brutality — torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It’s a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. Celebrated by critics around the world, The Vegetarian is a darkly allegorical, Kafka-esque tale of power, obsession, and one woman’s struggle to break free from the violence both without and within her.

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types — the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. At once a chilling horror story and a literary novel by a contemporary master, Zone One is a dazzling portrait of modern civilization in all its wretched, shambling glory.