Books like “The Name of the Rose”

What to read after “The Name of the Rose” by Umberto Eco: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Name of the Rose”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
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.
2
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Edgar Allan Poe · 1841
Similar plot moves: “Locked Room Mystery” and “Eccentric Detective”
- Locked Room Mystery
- Eccentric Detective
In a locked Paris apartment, a woman and her daughter are found brutally murdered with no sign of how the killer entered or left. The reclusive, eccentric C. Auguste Dupin takes up the case and solves it by pure reasoning, in the story often called the first detective tale.
3
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad · 1899
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
A sailor tells of his journey up an African river to reach a mysterious ivory trader who has become a god to the locals. The deeper he goes, the more he sees of greed and cruelty, and of what people become when no one restrains them. A short, unsettling classic.
4
A Canticle for Leibowitz
Walter M. Miller Jr. · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
After a nuclear war, monks in a desert abbey preserve the few books that survive, including a blueprint signed by a martyred engineer. Across centuries they copy, guard and argue over the relics while civilisation slowly rebuilds and then repeats its old mistakes.
5
The Three Coffins
John Dickson Carr · 1935
Similar plot moves: “Locked Room Mystery” and “Eccentric Detective”
- Locked Room Mystery
- Eccentric Detective
On a foggy London evening a professor is shot dead inside a room locked from within, with fresh snow outside showing no footprints. Dr. Gideon Fell investigates the impossible killing and, along the way, explains how a locked-room murder can be done.
6
Hyperion
Dan Simmons · 1989
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Creeping Dread”
- Philosophical
- Creeping Dread
On the eve of war, seven pilgrims travel to the planet Hyperion to seek the Shrike, a deadly creature of legend. Each tells the story of what brought them there, and their tales circle the fate that awaits them at the Time Tombs.
7
Anthem
Ayn Rand · 1938
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
In a future run by the collective, the word I has no meaning and all work is done for the good of all. Equality 7-2521 breaks the rules by doing forbidden research and falling in love, then flees a society that cannot allow an individual to exist.
8
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Iain Reid · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical” and “Creeping Dread”
- Philosophical
- Creeping Dread
A man and his girlfriend drive to his parents' remote farm so she can meet them. Through the long winter journey she keeps turning over a private thought about ending the relationship, while small details around them begin to feel wrong.
9
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.
10
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Arthur Conan Doyle · 1902
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Eccentric Detective
Legend says a demonic hound haunts the Baskerville family on the Dartmoor moors. Holmes and Watson look into the death of Sir Charles and protect his heir from whatever stalks the fog-bound landscape.
11
Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808
Similar atmosphere: “Philosophical”
- Philosophical
- Forbidden Knowledge
A brilliant scholar, dissatisfied with everything he can learn, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles for a taste of true experience. What follows leads him to love, ruin and the limits of human striving. A verse tragedy about knowledge, temptation and the soul.
12
Kristin Lavransdatter
Sigrid Undset · 1920
Similar setting: “Medieval Setting”
- Medieval Setting
In fourteenth-century Norway the headstrong Kristin defies her devout father to marry the charming Erlend. Their life together brings seven sons, guilt and hardship as the world shifts around them and her early choices return to weigh on her.