What to read after “Mr. Impossible” by Loretta Chase: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Zafira is the Hunter, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to enter the cursed Arz and bring food to her starving people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, sent by his father to kill her. Both are drawn into a desert quest for an artifact that could restore magic, and neither expects what they find.
Doctor Adoulla Makhslood is the last real ghul hunter in the desert city of Dhamsawaat, and he wants only to retire. When a series of murders points to a powerful supernatural enemy, he takes up his sword again with his young apprentice and a fierce tribeswoman, and the three pursue the danger beyond the city walls.
John Carter, a former Confederate soldier, wakes on Mars and finds a dying world of red deserts, warring tribes and thin air. Taken in by the green Martians, he learns their customs and their languages, and sets out to protect Dejah Thoris, a princess of the red Martians.
In the Ozarks, widow Althea Winsloe fends off her neighbours' plans to marry her off again. She hires Jesse Best, the gentle man the village calls Simple Jess, to work her farm, and slowly learns that his honesty and steady kindness are worth more than clever talk.
Loulie al-Nazari, the Midnight Merchant, trades in jinn relics with her jinn bodyguard Qadir. When the sultan forces her into a search for a lost lamp, she must cross a desert of jinn, thieves and old stories, where the line between merchant and prey keeps shifting.
Amani Al'Hiza lives in Dustwalk, a dead-end desert town, and hides two things: she can shoot like a legend, and she is half djinn. Refusing a blackmail marriage and a future in Dustwalk, she disguises herself and joins a stranger heading into the desert, where a rebellion is gathering.
In 1925 the explorer Percy Fawcett walked into the Amazon to find a fabled civilization he called Z, and never came out. Decades later a journalist follows the same trails, sifting clues and rumors to learn what became of the missing expedition.
In Edwardian England, Robin Blyth is handed a dull government post and finds it is a cover for liaising with a hidden world of magic. His prickly counterpart Edwin Courcey blames him for a curse that puts them both in danger, and the two must work together before their time runs out.
Heartsick and desperate to return home to America, Georgina Anderson disguises herself as a cabin boy to board the Maiden Anne. The ship belongs to James Malory, a wealthy former pirate and unrepentant rake who sees through her disguise. Aboard his vessel, their sparring gives way to an attraction neither can easily dismiss.
Daisy Bowman must find a husband this season or her father will send her to America. The suitor he has chosen is Matthew Swift, a cool businessman she has disliked for years, and as the two are thrown together in London, their old quarrel turns into something else.
Shasta has grown up poor in Calormen and dreams of escape. When he meets a talking horse who longs for Narnia, the two flee north together, joined by a runaway noble girl and her horse. Their road lies across a burning desert, with pursuers close behind and a secret about Shasta's past waiting at the end.
Minerva Highwood, a bluestocking, needs to reach Scotland to present her geological discovery. The rake Lord Payne agrees to escort her, and they pose as eloping lovers to travel unnoticed. Four hundred miles of mishaps in a cramped carriage, and each night there is only one bed, turn their bickering into something neither expected.
In a bombed Italian villa at the end of the Second World War, a nurse tends a badly burned patient who can no longer remember his name. As the others in the house circle him, fragments of his past as a desert explorer and his affair with a married woman resurface.
Roland Deschain, the last gunslinger, follows the man in black across a vast, dying desert. His pursuit leads him through ruined towns and old memories, and forces him to weigh his obsession with the Dark Tower against the life of a boy he meets on the road.
Virginia Reeve is hired to lead a dozen women into the Arctic in search of a lost expedition. When only some of them come back, she is tried for murder in Boston. The courtroom testimony and the journey north slowly reveal what happened out on the ice.
Governess Honoria Anstruther-Wetherby finds a dying man and spends the night in a cottage with the stranger who helps her. He is Sylvester Cynster, Duke of St. Ives, known as Devil, and the compromising situation forces an engagement. Honoria resists marriage while Devil courts her and hunts the killer.
Anne Rollins is deep in debt when Mal Ericson, the wild drummer of the band Stage Dive, offers her money to pose as his girlfriend and repair his party-boy image. A cheerful man with no filter, Mal turns the arrangement real long before Anne is ready for it.
Single mother April Parker plans to sell her house now that her daughter is leaving for college. Her friend Mitch Malone agrees to help with repairs if she will pretend to be his girlfriend at a family dinner. The favour turns into a weekend away, where one hotel bed forces both to admit what they have been avoiding.
Each dawn the young caliph marries a bride, and each dawn she is dead. When Shahrzad volunteers to marry him, she survives the first night by telling stories and begins to look for the truth behind his cruelty.
Same genre: “Historical romance” and “Regency romance”
Daphne Bridgerton is tired of the marriage market, and Simon Basset, the new Duke of Hastings, has no wish to wed. They agree to pretend to court so that other suitors leave her alone and mothers leave him alone, and the arrangement proves harder to keep up than they expected.
Ruthie Midona runs a retirement village and keeps her life small until the owner's tattooed, easy-going son, Teddy Prescott, is installed in an on-site cottage and made assistant to two eccentric residents. Teddy has no plan and no filter, but his warmth slowly coaxes Ruthie out of the careful shell she built around herself.
Lady Penelope Campion would rather stay home with her rescued animals than face London society. When her new neighbour, the ruthless businessman Gabriel Duke, demands she clear out the animals so he can sell his house, Penny strikes a bargain: she will rehome them if he can find each one a loving home. As he struggles to place a two-legged dog, a foul-mouthed parrot and a menagerie of other strays, the cold businessman and the shy spinster are thrown together, and both must reckon with old wounds.
Linked stories follow human expeditions to Mars, from the first landing to later settlements, where the abandoned cities of an older civilisation still hold traces of its people. Against the red desert and the empty seas, the settlers bring their own dreams and failings, while Earth moves toward war.
Casey Hicks, a cheerful young hockey star who talks to everyone, shares a house with Landon Stackhouse, the quiet, prickly backup goalie newly called up to the Calgary team. A season of games, small routines and slow trust turns the unlikely roommates into something neither of them expected.
Start with “We Hunt the Flame”, “Throne of the Crescent Moon”, “A Princess of Mars”: they are the closest to “Mr. Impossible” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Mr. Impossible” these are Himbo, Forced Proximity, Missing Person), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “We Hunt the Flame”, “Throne of the Crescent Moon”, “The Stardust Thief”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
