Books like “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August”

What to read after “The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August” by Claire North: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
Life After Life
Kate Atkinson · 2013
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Time Loop
- Philosophical
Ursula Todd is born in 1910 and dies, then is born again in the same English house. Over many lives she survives accidents, war and bad choices, and begins to sense that her repetitions might be leading somewhere.
2
Replay
Ken Grimwood · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Time Loop
- Philosophical
Jeff Winston dies in 1988 and wakes in 1963 in his eighteen-year-old body, with every memory of the years ahead intact. He lives that span over and over, each replay starting later, and slowly realises he is not the only one caught in the loop.
3
All You Need Is Kill
Hiroshi Sakurazaka · 2004
From the same world: “Time Loop”
- Time Loop
A young soldier is thrown into a war against alien Mimics and killed on his first day of battle, then wakes on the morning before, again and again. Each death teaches him something, and he must relive the same fight until he can survive long enough to find a way out.
4
Vita Nostra
Marina Dyachenko and Sergey Dyachenko · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Time Loop
- Philosophical
Sasha Samokhina fails her exams and is told to attend a remote institute instead. There the lessons are strange and punishing, and students are asked to do things that break the usual rules of the world. Obedience may unlock a terrifying kind of power.
5
The End of Eternity
Isaac Asimov · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Secret Society
Andrew Harlan works for Eternity, an organization that lives outside time and edits human history for what it believes is the greater good. His work is upended when he falls in love with a woman from his own past.
6
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Stuart Turton · 2018
From the same world: “Time Loop”
- Time Loop
At Blackheath, Evelyn Hardcastle is shot dead at a party every night, and Aidan Bishop wakes each morning in a different guest's body with no memory of who he is. To escape, he must use each host to find the killer, while other players want the same thing.
7
Childhood's End
Arthur C. Clarke · 1953
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Giant alien ships appear above Earth's cities and impose a peaceful rule under the Overlords. Decades of calm and progress pass, but humanity's golden age hides a purpose no one can guess until the Overlords finally reveal themselves.
8
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Stevens, a butler at an English country house, sets out on a motoring trip in 1956 and looks back over decades of service. Recalling his employer's political misjudgements and his own missed chances with the housekeeper, he begins to see what a life given to duty has cost him.
9
Speaker for the Dead
Orson Scott Card · 1986
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Years after the war against the Formics, Andrew Wiggin travels as a Speaker for the Dead, revealing the truth of the departed. On the colony world Lusitania he is drawn into the fate of a human family and the alien Pequeninos, whose customs hide a terrible secret.
10
The Three-Body Problem
Cixin Liu · 2008
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Secret Society
During the Cultural Revolution a secret military project sends signals into space, and an answer comes back. Decades later a scientist is pulled into a hidden struggle over how humanity should reply to an alien civilization facing its own collapse.
11
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey · 1951
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, Inspector Alan Grant is bored until he is given a portrait of Richard III. Wondering whether the king really murdered the princes in the Tower, he reopens a five-hundred-year-old case from his bed, working only from books.
12
Dark Matter
Blake Crouch · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
A physicist is knocked out and wakes in a version of Chicago where he never married and never had a son. To get home, he must cross a multiverse of his own choices while another version of himself hunts him.