Top 10 Fiction Books for Alternative Tastes
Discover the top 10 fiction books for alternative tastes! Explore unique, offbeat, and unconventional reads that challenge the norm and captivate imaginative minds.
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Cat's Cradle
by Kurt Vonnegut
“A free-wheeling vehicle . . . an unforgettable ride!”—The New York Times Cat’s Cradle is Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical commentary on modern man and his madness. An apocalyptic tale of this planet’s ultimate fate, it features a midget as the protagonist, a complete, original theology created by a calypso singer, and a vision of the future that is at once blackly fatalistic and hilariously funny. A book that left an indelible mark on an entire generation of readers, Cat’s Cradle is one of the twentieth century’s most important works—and Vonnegut at his very best. “[Vonnegut is] an unimitative and inimitable social satirist.”—Harper’s Magazine “Our finest black-humorist . . . We laugh in self-defense.”—Atlantic Monthly
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Lullaby
by Chuck Palahniuk
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of the New York Times bestseller Choke and the cult classic Fight Club, a cunningly plotted novel about the ultimate verbal weapon, one that reinvents the apocalyptic thriller for our times. "A harrowing and hilarious glimpse into the future of civilization.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune Ever heard of a culling song? It’s a lullaby sung in Africa to give a painless death to the old or infirm. The lyrics of a culling song kill, whether spoken or even just thought. You can find one on page 27 of Poems and Rhymes from Around the World, an anthology that is sitting on the shelves of libraries across the country, waiting to be picked up by unsuspecting readers. Reporter Carl Streator discovers the song’s lethal nature while researching Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and before he knows it, he’s reciting the poem to anyone who bothers him. As the body count rises, Streator glimpses the potential catastrophe if someone truly malicious finds out about the song. The only answer is to find and destroy every copy of the book in the country. Accompanied by a shady real-estate agent, her Wiccan assistant, and the assistant’s truly annoying ecoterrorist boyfriend, Streator begins a desperate cross-country quest to put the culling song to rest.
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Towing Jehovah
by James Morrow
A satirical novel on the death of God. For inexplicable reasons he dies and falls into the sea, and the Vatican hires a supertanker to secretly tow his two-mile-long body to the Arctic for preservation. But the secret leaks out and everyone gets in on the act, exploiting God's death to their own end.
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Battle Royale
by KĹŤshun Takami
This classic yet controversial Japanese novel is available for the first time in English--a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence that is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world.
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The Book of Dave
by Will Self
Dave Rudman, a disgruntled East End taxi driver, writes down his woes, frustrations, and pet peeves and buries them, only to have them discovered five hundred years later and used as the sacred text for a religion that has taken hold in the flooded remnants of London. Reprint.
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Blameless in Abaddon
by James Morrow
A wildly innovative odyssey, "Blameless in Abaddon" has been named a "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year. "Not to be missed," said "Booklist" about this independent sequel to the World Fantasy Award-winning novel, "Towing Jehovah." "Morrow hilariously joins the ranks of the great satirists and skillfully adds a serious critique of 2,000 years of Western theology."--"Denver Post"
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Random Acts of Senseless Violence
by Jack Womack
Lola Hart is an ordinary girl living a comfortable life in near-future Manhattan, until her family's life falls apart under the pressures of a city and country that is spinning out of control. Faced with the pressures of surviving any way she can, and surrounded by the new language and violence of the streets, Lola metamorphoses into a street-wise hustler.
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To Reign in Hell
by Steven Brust
The time is the Beginning. The place is Heaven. The story is the Revolt of the Angels—a war of magic, corruption and intrigue that could destroy the universe. To Reign in Hell was Stephen Brust's second novel, and it's a thrilling retelling of the revolt of the angels, through the lens of epic fantasy.
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The Wasp Factory
by Iain Banks
Powerful, perverse, and engrossing, this controversial novel offers a graphic portrait of a serial killer told in the first-person. "Read it if you dare!"--"The Daily Express".