31 must-read fiction books like Playground by Richard Powers

Cover of Playground by Richard Powers

Playground

By: Richard Powers

4.35

Format: 400 pages, Hardcover

A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of T…

If you liked the fiction plot in Playground by Richard Powers , here is a list of 31 books like this:

Cover of James by Percival Everett

1. James

By: Percival Everett

4.54

Format: 303 pages, Hardcover

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , both harrowing and f… read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • novels
Cover of Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte  Wood

2. Stone Yard Devotional

By: Charlotte Wood

3.68

Format: 320 pages, Kindle Edition

A deeply moving novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be 'good', from the award-winn… read more

Similar categories in Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

3. Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

3.89

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There … read more

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Cover of Wild Houses by Colin  Barrett

4. Wild Houses

By: Colin Barrett

3.78

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

A darkly funny and deeply moving debut novel about crimes of desperation, dreams abandoned, and sma… read more

Similar categories in Colin Barrett's Wild Houses book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"What you are in, Dev, is a holding pattern, only you're not holding out for anything."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"All boys, all children, are capable of cruelty at the right juncture of opportunity and circumstance, but only a few become committed prodigies of sadism..."

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"In the dream, exactly as he had in real life, he sensed the slow, inexorable approach of the shapeless, prospectless days to come, days when there would be no need to get out of bed or brush his teet…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

"He looked around the empty kitchen. A part of him wanted this of course. A part of him had always wanted this, to be alone, away from even the prospect of any demand upon him to talk, to interact, to…"

-Colin Barrett, Wild Houses

Cover of Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel

5. Headshot

By: Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

An electrifying debut novel from an “unusually gifted writer” (Lorrie Moore) about the radical inti… read more

Similar categories in Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"The desire to please people is the desire to not be singular."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"Tanya Maw's sister is two years older, the perfect age gap for wisdom transmission."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It can be intoxicating to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent's eyes."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

"It's a warmth that she'll feel again very few times in her life. It's almost like love, but it has a surer, less desperate edge to it."

-Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

Cover of The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry

6. The Heart in Winter

By: Kevin Barry

4.02

Format: 256 pages, Hardcover

Award-winning writer Kevin Barry’s first novel set in America, a savagely funny and achingly romant… read more

Similar categories in Kevin Barry's The Heart in Winter book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
"... the morning was starkly lit under a migraine - white and vast opening sky."

-Kevin Barry, The Heart in Winter

Cover of Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

7. Enlightenment

By: Sarah Perry

3.70

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

A dazzling new work of literary fiction from the author of The Essex Serpent, a story of love and a… read more

Similar categories in Sarah Perry's Enlightenment book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Thomas [Hart] lived where he'd been born, and where (so he often thought without rancor) he'd very likely die; and if he lived alone he was not lonely, that being a condition not of solitude but of l…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"So I told her this: that it's true I've only rarely been happy, and perhaps more often been sad. But I have been content. I have lived. I have felt everything available to me: I've been faithless, de…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"I wish I could say, James, that we forgave each other in the end. I wish I could say: she put her head on my shoulder and I welcomed it and we laughed and said all was well. But in fact we were quiet…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

"...in the ordinary way we love because we're loved, and give more or less what we're given. But to love without return is more strange and more wonderful, and not the humiliating thing I'd once taken…"

-Sarah Perry, Enlightenment

Cover of This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud

8. This Strange Eventful History

By: Claire Messud

3.63

Format: 448 pages, Hardcover

An immersive, masterful story of a family born on the wrong side of history, from one of our finest… read more

Similar categories in Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
"Literature... Now, that's a religion I can believe in. That is perhaps my God."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"Family life, like playing chess, involved always thinking several steps ahead."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"... she'd been a fool, enamored of a figment, had created the soul of a man who never existed -"

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

"All-U-Can Hi-way 4-Sale Thru. This American English thrilled him - its energy, its freedom, its carelessness."

-Claire Messud, This Strange Eventful History

Cover of Orbital by Samantha Harvey

9. Orbital

By: Samantha Harvey

3.73

Format: 207 pages, Hardcover

A slender novel of epic power, Orbital  deftly snapshots one day in the lives of six women and men … read more

Similar categories in Samantha Harvey's Orbital book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • science fiction
  • novels
  • adult
"Maybe we're the new dinosaurs and need to watch out."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"The past comes, the future, the past, the future. It's always now, it's never now."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

"That's all this great human endeavor of space exploration really is, he thinks, an animal migration, a bid for survival. A looping song sent into the open, a territorial animal song."

-Samantha Harvey, Orbital

Cover of My Friends by Hisham Matar

10. My Friends

By: Hisham Matar

4.34

Format: 399 pages, Hardcover

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Return , a luminous novel of friendship, family, and … read more

Similar categories in Hisham Matar's My Friends book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • novels
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; the entire history of politics exists in that gap."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"For a writer, exile is prison, a severing from the source, and so, courageous or not, he dies in front of our eyes."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"She was older and all the more beautiful, had the weary tiredness of one who, in surrendering to her life, was ennobled by it."

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

"I walked off feeling an emptiness well up inside me. It seemed, for all the emptiness that it was, a presence. It made me want to run away, dive deeper into myself, into that cold desolation, to the …"

-Hisham Matar, My Friends

Cover of Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5) by Elizabeth Strout

11. Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)

By: Elizabeth Strout

4.46

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a hopeful, healing novel about new friend… read more

Similar categories in Elizabeth Strout's Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5) book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"...Bob caught a glimpse of himself in the store window that was right there. He was startled. Who was that tall older man? Was that him? A sense of bewilderment came to him. He turned away, then turn…"

-Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything (Amgash, #5)

Cover of Bear by Julia  Phillips

12. Bear

By: Julia Phillips

3.38

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unex… read more

Similar categories in Julia Phillips's Bear book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • nature
"There'd been only three hundred students in the whole school, which made it a tiny, gossipy hellhole, a bucket of crabs snapping at each other and falling over themselves."

-Julia Phillips, Bear

"What was Sam afraid of? Withering away here. Dreaming of chances she'd never be able to take, and shriveling up from that denial, getting poorer and put under more pressure and pushed farther from th…"

-Julia Phillips, Bear

Cover of The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

13. The Safekeep

By: Yael van der Wouden

4.08

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the … read more

Similar categories in Yael van der Wouden's The Safekeep book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
Cover of Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

14. Intermezzo

By: Sally Rooney

4.34

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

An exquisitely moving story about grief, love, and family, from the global phenomenon Sally Rooney.… read more

Similar categories in Sally Rooney's Intermezzo book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak

15. There Are Rivers in the Sky

By: Elif Shafak

4.58

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about … read more

Similar categories in Elif Shafak's There Are Rivers in the Sky book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
"Books, like paper lanterns, provide us with a light amidst the fog."

-Elif Shafak, There Are Rivers in the Sky

Cover of Held by Anne   Michaels

16. Held

By: Anne Michaels

3.66

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A breathtaking and mysterious new novel from the beloved Anne Michaels, internationally bestselling… read more

Similar categories in Anne Michaels's Held book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
"Who can say what happens when we are remembered?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Do we really need our own misery to teach us to be kind?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"We know life is finite. Why should we believe death lasts forever?"

-Anne Michaels, Held

"Would he know the moment of his death or would it be like night falling."

-Anne Michaels, Held

Cover of Mina's Matchbox by Yōko Ogawa

17. Mina's Matchbox

By: Yōko Ogawa

3.85

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

From the award-winning, psychologically astute author of The Memory Police, here is a hypnotic, int… read more

Similar categories in Yōko Ogawa's Mina's Matchbox book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Quant à l'endroit où se trouvait mon père, le jour de ses funérailles, ma mère me l'avait indiqué. C'est un peu loin, mais un jour ou l'autre nous irons le rejoindre, il n'y a pas à craindre de s'éga…"

-Yōko Ogawa, Mina's Matchbox

Cover of Playground by Richard Powers

18. Playground

By: Richard Powers

4.35

Format: 400 pages, Hardcover

A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of T… read more

Similar categories in Richard Powers's Playground book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • dystopia
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • science fiction
  • novels
  • adult
  • environment
  • nature
Cover of The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

19. The Hypocrite

By: Jo Hamya

3.55

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

From a fiercely talented writer poised to be a new generation’s Rachel Cusk or Deborah Levy, a nove… read more

Similar categories in Jo Hamya's The Hypocrite book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
"No stories are entirely imaginary, cherub, he'd said then. Everything is always a little bit real. Sometimes you steal things from other stories and change them until they work how you like."

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

"The contradiction of the time had been the heightened moral obligation to consider other people as a means to keeping one's own self-interest afloat. Showing other people care meant avoiding them."

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

"In the theatre's dark, he weighs up what to do out of love. There have been enough divergences so far for him to believe that Sophia's play is a self-contained thing that may only tangentially concer…"

-Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite

Cover of Rejection: Fiction by Tony Tulathimutte

20. Rejection: Fiction

By: Tony Tulathimutte

4.34

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

From the Whiting and O. Henry–winning author of Private Citizens (“the first great millennial novel… read more

Similar categories in Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection: Fiction book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Identity is diet history, single serving sociology; at its worst, a partriotism of trauma, or a prothesis of personality. Privilege discourse a well-meaning attempt to balance scales that have become…"

-Tony Tulathimutte, Rejection: Fiction

Cover of Entitlement by Rumaan Alam

21. Entitlement

By: Rumaan Alam

3.59

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A novel of money and morality from the New York Times bestselling author of Leave the World Behind … read more

Similar categories in Rumaan Alam's Entitlement book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

22. Catalina

By: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

3.65

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulne… read more

Similar categories in Karla Cornejo Villavicencio's Catalina book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
Cover of Colored Television by Danzy Senna

23. Colored Television

By: Danzy Senna

3.83

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A dark comedy about second acts, creative appropriation, and the racial identity–industrial complex… read more

Similar categories in Danzy Senna's Colored Television book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of The Sequel (The Book Series, #2) by Jean Hanff Korelitz

24. The Sequel (The Book Series, #2)

By: Jean Hanff Korelitz

4.07

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

After the “insanely readable” (Stephen King) and “perfectly told” (Malcolm Gladwell) New York Times… read more

Similar categories in Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Sequel (The Book Series, #2) book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu

25. Someone Like Us

By: Dinaw Mengestu

3.66

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

After abandoning his once promising career as a journalist in search of a new life in Paris, Mamush… read more

Similar categories in Dinaw Mengestu's Someone Like Us book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
"Sometimes I look at you and think that things go right through you. You're like a donut. There's a hole in the middle, where something solid should be"

-Dinaw Mengestu, Someone Like Us

Cover of Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

26. Creation Lake

By: Rachel Kushner

3.67

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

From Rachel Kushner, a Booker Prize finalist, two-time National Book Award finalist, and “one of th… read more

Similar categories in Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • science fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"Charisma does not originate inside the person called "charismatic." It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist."

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"Plus, Lucien said, a lot of them had come from other social milieus and had tattoos from earlier lives, since people who change affinities are the same kinds of people who are attracted to the perman…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"My biker and these tramps, as people who organize their life around some subculture or other: People can sometimes pretend so thoroughly that they forget they are pretending. At which point, it could…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

"I could sense him gathering a false hindsight that afternoon in the Place des Vosges, shaping a retrospective narrative, the thing a person tells himself about fate, about how everything had seemed f…"

-Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

Cover of Burn by Peter Heller

27. Burn

By: Peter Heller

3.72

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

From the best-selling author of The Dog Stars, a novel about two men—friends since boyhood—who emer… read more

Similar categories in Peter Heller's Burn book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • dystopia
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • science fiction
  • adult
Cover of Small Rain by Garth Greenwell

28. Small Rain

By: Garth Greenwell

4.30

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

A medical crisis brings one man close to death—and to love, art, and beauty—in a profound and lumin… read more

Similar categories in Garth Greenwell's Small Rain book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

29. Our Evenings

By: Alan Hollinghurst

4.28

Format: 496 pages, Hardcover

From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel that envisions mode… read more

Similar categories in Alan Hollinghurst's Our Evenings book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
Cover of The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

30. The Mighty Red

By: Louise Erdrich

4.01

Format: 384 pages, Hardcover

In this stunning novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich tells … read more

Similar categories in Louise Erdrich's The Mighty Red book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult fiction
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • adult
Cover of Model Home by Rivers Solomon

31. Model Home

By: Rivers Solomon

4.06

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel. The… read more

Similar categories in Rivers Solomon's Model Home book and Richard Powers's Playground

  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary

26 Top contemporary books like Playground by Richard Powers

Transform Your Habits

Stone Yard Devotional

Charlotte Wood

3.68

Transform Your Habits

Wandering Stars

Tommy Orange

3.89

Transform Your Habits

Wild Houses

Colin Barrett

3.78

Transform Your Habits

Headshot

Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

View all the books

20 must-read fiction books like Rejection: Fiction by Tony Tulathimutte

Transform Your Habits

All Fours

Miranda July

3.81

Transform Your Habits

Headshot

Rita Bullwinkel

3.63

Transform Your Habits

My Friends

Hisham Matar

4.34

Transform Your Habits

The Safekeep

Yael van der Wouden

4.08

View all the books

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