Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Books Full of Secrets 📖
37
items For the books that make you suspicious of everyone, send you down a historical rabbit hole, or have you saying “okay, ONE more chapter.” A mix of mysteries, historical fiction, family secrets, old houses, unsolved questions, and stories where the pas...
Sections
5
Old Secrets & New Mysteries
🛸 Sci-Fi for People Who Want to Leave This Planet
🎧 When the Narrator Makes the Book come to life.
🧙♀️ Fantasy Books & Other Ways to Escape Reality
The CLASSIC reads
Old Secrets & New Mysteries
For the books that make you suspicious of everyone, send you down a historical rabbit hole, or have you saying “okay, ONE more chapter.” A mix of mysteries, historical fiction, family secrets, old houses, unsolved questions, and stories where the pas...
A beautifully atmospheric mystery set in postwar Barcelona, where a mysterious book leads to buried secrets, forgotten authors, doomed love, and a whole lot of literary intrigue. 📚🕯️ The Shadow of the Wind is perfect for readers who love historical...
The Shadow of the Wind
If you loved The Shadow of the Wind, you absolutely need this one on your list. 🕯️📚 This is the kind of book I recommend when you want to completely disappear into a story—dark Barcelona streets, forgotten books, family secrets, mystery, history, r...
The Labyrinth of the Spirits
This is the one I’d hand to someone who tells me they loved The Shadow of the Wind and wants something darker. 🕯️📚 The Angel’s Game takes you into 1920s Barcelona, where a struggling writer, a mysterious publisher, an abandoned mansion, and a very ...
The Angel's Game
One of my favorite books to recommend—and now you can read it in Spanish, too! 🇪🇸📚 La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind) is the book that started the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, and it has everything I love: mysterious libraries, f...
La sombra del viento (The Shadow of the Wind)
Okay, this one is very high on my personal Zafón list—second only to The Shadow of the Wind. 🕯️📚 The Prisoner of Heaven brings back characters and threads from the earlier books and takes you deeper into the dark, mysterious world of Barcelona, wit...
The Prisoner of Heaven
This is exactly the kind of historical fiction I get sucked into. 🕯️📚 Give me 15th-century Germany, astrology, forbidden knowledge, mysterious disappearances, superstition, and a man who may or may not have made a very bad deal—and I’m in. The Mast...
The Master's Apprentice: A Retelling of the Faust Legend
If you enjoyed The Master’s Apprentice, I’d definitely keep going with Johann Faust’s story. 🕯️📚 The Devil’s Pawn picks up the Faust legend in 1518 and takes things into Rome, France, alchemy, the papacy, Leonardo da Vinci, and—of course—a deal wit...
The Devil's Pawn
This is one of those books that made me sit back and think about my own life for a while. 📚✨ The Midnight Library is all about those “what if?” moments—the choices we make, the lives we imagine we could have lived, and what happens when we get the c...
The Midnight Library (GMA Book Club Pick)
🛸 Sci-Fi for People Who Want to Leave This Planet
For anyone who has ever looked at Earth and thought, “Yeah… I could use a vacation from this place.” 🚀 This science fiction book collection is packed with strange new worlds, space travel, aliens, dystopian futures, time-bending adventures, futurist...
This is one of those science fiction books where I completely understand why people keep recommending it. 🚀📚 Ender’s Game follows Ender Wiggin, a brilliant but very young boy who is sent to Battle School to prepare for a possible war against an ali...
The Ender Saga #1: Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, Children of the Mind, Ender in Exile
This is one of those science fiction books where I completely understand why people keep recommending it. 🚀📚 Ender’s Game follows Ender Wiggin, a brilliant but very young boy who is sent to Battle School to prepare for a possible war against an ali...
Ender's Game
🧠 1. Ender’s Shadow If you liked Ender’s Game, you absolutely need to meet Bean. 🧠🚀 Ender’s Shadow tells the Battle School story from Bean’s perspective, and I actually love getting to see the events of Ender’s Game through someone else's eyes. Be...
The Ender's Shadow Series Box Set: Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant
This one is very different from Ender’s Game, and honestly, I think that’s part of what makes the series so interesting. 🌌📚 Instead of focusing primarily on military strategy, Speaker for the Dead moves into alien cultures, communication, religion,...
Speaker for the Dead
Things get much bigger—and much more complicated—here. 🪐📚 Xenocide continues Ender’s story while bringing in questions about alien life, religion, science, artificial intelligence, and whether destroying one species can ever be justified to save an...
Xenocide (Ender Quintet Series #3)
This is where the Ender series gets especially deep into identity, consciousness, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and what it actually means to be a person. 🧠📚 By this point, the story has moved far beyond the military science fiction setup of...
Children of the Mind
This one is a little different because it fills in part of Ender’s story that happens between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. 🚀📚 So if you’ve finished the original story and still want more Ender, this gives you another look at what happened...
Ender in Exile
📚 Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card If you’ve already gotten into Orson Scott Card through Ender’s Game and the Shadow books, this is a really fun way to see what else he can do. 🚀📖 Maps in a Mirror collects nearly all of his...
Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card
Okay, this is a new one for Ender fans! 📚🚀 Ender’s Tribe is a collection of eight short stories from Orson Scott Card’s Ender Universe, bringing together stories that span different parts of the larger series. And yes, it even includes the original...
Ender's Tribe
🎧 When the Narrator Makes the Book come to life.
Because a great narrator can completely change the way I experience a book. 🎧📚 These are the audiobooks I’d actually recommend listening to—not just because I love the story, but because the narration adds something special. Distinctive voices, gre...
🎧 Listen to this one! I’m pretty picky about audiobooks because the narrator can completely change whether I enjoy a story—and Malcolm Hillgartner is a great fit for this one. His narration gives the story the kind of dramatic, old-world atmosphere ...
The Master's Apprentice: A Retelling of the Faust Legend
This is one where I’d choose the audiobook without hesitation because it has the same narrator as The Master’s Apprentice: Malcolm Hillgartner. 🎧 Since the narrator matters so much to me, having Hillgartner continue with Johann Faust makes this an e...
The Devil's Pawn
🧙♀️ Fantasy Books & Other Ways to Escape Reality
For when real life is simply not magical enough. 🐉📚 A collection of fantasy books filled with magic, mythical creatures, strange worlds, epic adventures, ancient secrets, and characters I’d happily follow into questionable situations. From cozy fan...
This is where I’d start if you’re getting into The Witcher. ⚔️🐺 The Last Wish introduces Geralt of Rivia through a collection of interconnected short stories, and honestly, it’s such a good way to meet him. You get monsters, magic, curses, morally c...
The Last Wish: Introducing the Witcher
If The Last Wish introduces you to Geralt, this is where the bigger Witcher story really starts to take shape. ⚔️🌲 The stories in Sword of Destiny bring Geralt closer to the people and relationships that eventually become incredibly important to the...
Sword of Destiny
Now we're getting into the main Witcher saga. 🐺⚔️ Blood of Elves shifts away from the mostly standalone adventures of the short stories and starts building the much larger story around Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, kingdoms, politics, magic, and a whole l...
Blood of Elves
This is where things start getting seriously messy. ⚔️🔥 Time of Contempt takes everything that was building in Blood of Elves and starts pulling the characters in completely different directions. Politics, magic, betrayal, war, and some very bad dec...
The Time of Contempt
This one has such a road-trip-with-a-bunch-of-completely-unhinged-people feeling to it. 😂⚔️ Geralt is determined to find Ciri, and along the way he ends up surrounded by one of the strangest groups of companions imaginable. What I love most about Ba...
Baptism of Fire
This one gets dark. 🐺🗡️ Ciri's story takes center stage as the different forces searching for her continue closing in, and the series gets increasingly brutal and complicated. I love how Sapkowski keeps playing with perspective here. You aren't sim...
The Tower of Swallows
The big one. 🐺⚔️ The Lady of the Lake brings the main Witcher saga to its conclusion, and after everything Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer have been through, this one feels enormous. I’d definitely recommend taking your time with it. There are so many ch...
The Lady of the Lake
And then, because apparently we weren't ready to leave Geralt behind yet… here's another adventure. 🐺⚔️ Season of Storms takes place earlier in Geralt's timeline, around the period of The Last Wish, so I’d save it until after the main saga even thou...
Season of Storms
Okay, this is one of those series where I’d say commit to the journey. 🖤🌵 The Dark Tower is Stephen King doing something completely different from the horror he’s usually known for—a strange, sprawling mix of dark fantasy, Western, horror, science ...
The Dark Tower 8-Book Boxed Set
This is where the strange journey begins. 🖤🌵 The Gunslinger introduces Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, as he crosses a bizarre, dying world in pursuit of the mysterious Dark Tower. It’s definitely the most unusual introduction to a series I’v...
The Gunslinger (Dark Tower Series #1)
This is where The Dark Tower really started clicking for me. 🖤 The Drawing of the Three expands Roland’s story in a completely unexpected way, as he begins bringing other people into his journey—through doors that lead to places and times that defin...
The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower Series #2)
Now we’re really getting into the world of the Dark Tower. 🌵📚 The Waste Lands expands the story even further, bringing Roland and his new companions together as they continue toward the Tower through a world that feels increasingly strange and dang...
The Waste Lands (Dark Tower Series #3)
This is the book that takes a step back from the main journey and gives us much more of Roland himself. 🖤📚 We get his younger years, his first love, his friends, and the events that shaped him into the gunslinger we meet in the earlier books. I rea...
Wizard and Glass (Dark Tower Series #4)
This one has a completely different flavor, and I loved that about it. 🌾🖤 Roland and his ka-tet arrive in the farming community of Calla Bryn Sturgis, where the townspeople are dealing with a terrifying problem: mysterious Wolves that arrive every ...
Wolves of the Calla (Dark Tower Series #5)
Okay, things get weird here. 🖤📚 Song of Susannah takes the Dark Tower story into some seriously unexpected territory, with multiple realities, possession, time travel, and connections between Roland's world and our own. I think this is one of those...
Song of Susannah (Dark Tower Series #6)
This is the big one. 🖤🌹 After everything Roland and his ka-tet have been through, the journey toward the Dark Tower finally reaches its conclusion. I’m not going to spoil anything, because the ending is absolutely something you should experience fo...
The Dark Tower (Dark Tower Series #7)
This one is the bonus Dark Tower book I’d save for after the main seven. 🖤🌬️ The Wind Through the Keyhole takes place within the larger timeline of the series, but it works almost like a story being told around a campfire—a tale within a tale. I ac...
The Wind through the Keyhole (Dark Tower Series)
The CLASSIC reads
The books that somehow never really go out of style. 📚✨ From old favorites I read growing up to the classics I eventually discovered later, this is my collection of stories that have stuck around for a reason. Think timeless characters, unforgettabl...
The Great Gatsby is one of those books where the more I think about it, the more I understand why it has stuck around. 🥂📚 Set during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, it has everything from extravagant parties and old money to romance, secrets, obsession,...
The Great Gatsby (Luxe Edition)