Deeply Strange Yet Wonderful Reads
Posted on June 28, 2025
by Amy H
As difficult as it must be to write a good novel, writing a good novel with a completely wacko plot has to be harder. Here are the best wonderful, ridiculously plotted novels guaranteed to linger in your memory for a lifetime. Heck, many of the covers alone should accomplish that. You’re welcome.
barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth
A truly fresh heist caper with an unusual quarry: 900,000 hens. Janey takes a job in rural Iowa as an auditor for the United Egg Producers and finds a kindred spirit in the disillusioned head auditor, Cleveland Smith, who can no longer consent to the grim conditions in which chickens are bred and slaughtered. In a madcap act of ecoterrorism, the two women recruit conspirators, including an embittered animal inspector; a vengeful farmer's daughter; a lovelorn egg salesman; and Cleveland's faithful pet hen, Bwwaauk. The gang are on the verge of realizing their fowl-focused emancipation when they accidently cause more damage to the farm than they intended. This outrageous piece of rural noir and vegan-minded quirk is hugely entertaining and readers will be delighted by the characters' earnest crusade.
cinnamon and gunpowder by Eli Brown
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her. Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph, bread, is made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, Mabbot pushes her crew past exhaustion. Wedgwood begins to rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had. A swashbuckling epicure's adventure simmered over a surprisingly touching love story--with a dash of the strangest, most delightful cookbook never written, Eli Brown has crafted a uniquely entertaining novel full of adventure: the Scheherazade story turned on its head, at sea, with food.
fluke, or i know why the winged whale sings by Christopher Moore
Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew charting, recording, and photographing the enigmatic marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me. Nate begins to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun when no one else on his team saw the message. But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on and is soon enmeshed in a rollicking adventure involving an age-old conspiracy, a megalomaniac undersea ruler, and a bizarre long-distance love affair.
towing jehovah by James Morrow
The discovery of God's corpse in the mid-Atlantic poses a menace both to navigation and to faith. Charged with captaining a supertanker as it tows the two-mile long corpse northward to the Arctic so that it can be preserved, Anthony Van Horne must also contend with ecological guilt, a militant girlfriend, a father who won't talk to him, sabotage both natural and spiritual, and a crew on (and sometimes past) the brink of mutiny. James Morrow, one of the premier satirists of our time, has written a novel guaranteed to entertain and provoke. As he makes his wild, Vonnegutian charges on male chauvinism, female chauvinism, oil companies, Darwin, junk food, World War II buffs, the Catholic Church, joyless rationalism, and Cecil B. DeMille, Morrow also manages to highlight the endless beauty and sorrow of the world.
nothing to see here by Kevin Wilson
Lillian and Madison were unlikely roommates and inseparable friends at their elite boarding school. But then Lillian is expelled in the wake of a scandal, and they've barely spoken since. Until now, when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for help. Madison's twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian suspects Madison is pulling her leg, but it's the truth. Wanting to escape her dead-end life at home, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Soon Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other and (literally) stay cool while also staying out of the way of Madison's haughty politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her.
alive in necropolis by Doug Dorst
Colma, California, is the only town in America where the dead outnumber the living. The longtime "cemetery city" for San Francisco, it is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and aviation pioneer Lincoln Beachey. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate relationships, including a shaky romance with an older woman; a growing alliance with his cocky, charismatic partner, Nick Toronto; fading college friendships; and an aching sense of responsibility for a local rich kid rescued by Mercer from a dangerous prank in the cemetery. But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the police unit, Sergeant Featherstone, who seems to have become confused about whether he was policing the living or the dead. And as Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone's story, it appears that Mercer's own sanity is beginning to slip. Either that, or Colma's more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be.
starter villain by John Scalzi
Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a family-owned house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, but the bank is unlikely to approve his loan. Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie. But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital. It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.
the midnight plan of the repo man by W. Bruce Cameron
Ruddy McCann, former college football star, has experienced a seismic drop in popularity; he is now Kalkaska, Michigan's full-time repo man and part-time bar bouncer whose best friend is a low-energy Basset hound named Jake. Then Ruddy starts hearing a voice who introduces himself as Alan Lottner, a dead realtor. Ruddy isn't sure if Alan is real, or if he's losing his mind. To complicate matters, it turns out Katie, the girl he's fallen for, is Alan's daughter. When Alan demands Ruddy find his murderers, Ruddy decides a voice in your head seeking vengeance is best ignored. When Alan also demands he clean up his act, and his apartment, Ruddy tells him to back off, but where can a voice in your head go? With a sweet romance, a murder mystery, a lazy but loyal dog and a town full of cabin-fevered characters you can't help but love, this book is a wonderful laugh-out-loud, keep-you-up-late, irresistible read.
house of cotton by Monica Brashears
Nineteen years old, broke, and effectively an orphan, Magnolia feels stuck and haunted: by her overdrawn bank account, by her predatory landlord, by the ghost of her late grandmother Mama Brown. One night a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton walks in and offers to turn Magnolia's luck around. He offers her a lucrative "modeling" job at his family's funeral home. Magnolia accepts. But then Cotton's requests become increasingly weird, and Magnolia discovers there's a lot more at stake than just her rent.
temporary by Hilary Leichter
Leichter's debut introduces readers to an unnamed temporary worker who lives in a bizarre world in which it's possible to fill in for the chair of a board of directors, assist an assassin, step in as a mother to a lost child, and work as a pirate deckhand on a ship with a human resources department. Anything can be a temp role in the world of the protagonist, who additionally has 18 boyfriends to fit every possible mood, season, height requirement, and occasion. She takes on ever stranger jobs, all with gusto, hoping to find one to call her own: a permanent place in a world that has made temporary positions out of every facet of life. At once amusing, surreal, and serious, Leichter reveals truths about capitalist society while exploring the meaning of doing one's work well, despite how ridiculous or temporary it might be.
gil's all fright diner by A. Lee Martinez
Welcome to Gil's All Night Diner, where zombie attacks are a regular occurrence and you never know what might be lurking in the freezer . . .Duke and Earl are just passing through Rockwood county in their pick-up truck when they stop at the Diner for a quick bite to eat. They aren't planning to stick around-until Loretta, the eatery's owner, offers them $100 to take care of her zombie problem. Given that Duke is a werewolf and Earl's a vampire, this looks right up their alley. But the shambling dead are just the tip of a particularly spiky iceberg. Someone's out to drive Loretta from the Diner, and more than willing to raise a little Hell on Earth if that's what it takes. Before Duke and Earl get to the bottom of the Diner's troubles, they'll run into such otherworldly complications as undead cattle, an amorous ghost, a jailbait sorceress, and the terrifying occult power of pig-latin. And maybe--just maybe--the End of the World, too.
the utterly uninteresting and unadventurous tales of fred, the vampire accountant by Drew Hayes
Some people are born boring. Some live boring. Some even die boring. Fred managed to do all three, and when he woke up as a vampire, he did so as a boring one. Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort. One fateful night - different from the night he died, which was more inconvenient than fateful - Fred reconnects with an old friend at his high school reunion. Fred just wanted to live a calm afterlife as an accountant who happens to be a vampire. But his high school friend, Krystal, has other plans for him as she takes him on a series of adventures involving all sorts of monsters. This rekindled relationship sets off a chain of events thrusting him right into the chaos that is the parahuman world, a world with chipper zombies, truck driver were-ponies, maniacal necromancers, ancient dragons, and now one undead accountant trying his best to "survive." Because even after it's over, life can still be a downright bloody mess.
gun, with occasional music by Jonathan Lethem
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage. Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse. Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from a beloved author is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
several people are typing by Calvin Kasulke
Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels-at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from ... wherever he says he is. Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?
john dies at the end by David Wong
You should not have read this post with your bare eyeballs. NO! Don’t look away. It’s too late….They’re watching you. My name is David Wong. My best friend is John. Those names are fake. You might want to change yours. You may not want to know about the things you’ll read on these pages, about the sauce, about Korrok, about the invasion, and the bleak future ahead. But it’s too late. You read this post. You’re in the game. The only defense is knowledge. You need to read these books, to the end. Even the part with the bratwurst. Why? You just have to trust me. The important thing is this: The drug called Soy Sauce gives users a window into another dimension. John and I never had the chance to say no. You still do. Unfortunately for us, if you make the right choice, we’ll have a much harder time fighting off the otherworldly invasion currently threatening to enslave humanity. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, I really am. But as you read about these terrible events and the very dark epoch the world is about to enter as a result, it is crucial you keep one thing in mind: None of this was my fault. (first in a series!)
a wizard's guide to defensive baking by T. Kingfisher
Fourteen-year-old Mona isn't like the wizards charged with defending the city. She can't control lightning or manipulate water. Her familiar is a sourdough starter, and her magic only works on bread. She has a comfortable life in her aunt's bakery making gingerbread men dance. But Mona's life is turned upside down when she finds a dead body on the bakery floor. An assassin is stalking the streets of Mona's city, preying on magic folk, and it appears that Mona is his next target. And in an embattled city suddenly bereft of wizards, the assassin may be the least of Mona's worries...
hench by Natalie Zina Walschots
Anna does boring things for terrible people because even criminals need office help and she needs a job. As a temp, she's just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called 'hero' leaves her badly injured. So, of course, then she gets laid off. With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she finds all kinds of evidence that she is not the only one to suffer at the hands of superheroes. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks. Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. "The Boys" meets "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" in this smart, imaginative, and evocative novel of love, betrayal, revenge, and redempction, told with razor-sharp wit and affection, in which a young woman discovers the greatest superpower-for good or ill-is a properly executed spreadsheet.
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