Eliot Peper
Novelist and author of twelve books including Foundry, Bandwidth and Cumulus; writes a monthly book-recommendation newsletter.
Breakneck by Dan Wang
Breakneck by Dan Wang takes you on a fascinating journey through China's engineering state, juxtaposing it against America's lawyerly society in an effort to reveal what each country should learn from the other. I've been a keen reader of Dan's personal blog for many years and am delighted to report that this book, his first, features everything I love most about his writing: his unbounded curiosity, thoughtful analysis, compelling storytelling, self-awareness, offbeat sense of humor, and insights born of lived experience.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Ensorcelled by Eliot Peper
Ensorcelled is the best book I wrote in 2025, and if you enjoy this newsletter, you'll love it.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Ghostman by Roger Hobbs
Ghostman by Roger Hobbs is a crime thriller about robbing a Malaysian bank and an Atlantic City casino. Riveting characters. A gut-punch of a story. I love a good heist, and this one is bristling with technical details that make you wonder whether the author has some secrets of his own.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach is a beautiful fable about a seagull who wants to fly for the pure joy of flight, rather than simply to find food, as most gulls do. Ostracized from his flock for his eccentric behavior, Jonathan embarks on a quest for aerodynamic perfection that doubles as a moving spiritual allegory. You've never read a book quite like this one before, and it'll stick with you long after you reach the end.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton is a surprisingly weird and weirdly underrated novel given how many copies it sold and the popularity of the blockbuster franchise it spawned. The story weaves together many apparently disparate threads and there are extensive speculative digressions into the biotechnology, business interests, and institutional dynamics that make the park possible and its dissolution inevitable. If the movie is supremely entertaining, the book is supremely thought-provoking.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Playground by Richard Powers
Playground by Richard Powers is a strange and wonderful novel set (mostly) on a remote atoll in French Polynesia that follows the tangled lives of an environmental advocate, a sculptor, a tech entrepreneur, and a brilliant bookworm trying to escape the grinding poverty of Chicago's South Side. The richly drawn characters drive the story, but what I love most about the book is that it's a love letter to the ocean with prose that comes closer than anything else I've read to capturing what it feels like to, for example, dive a thriving coral reef.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is about a champion board-game player who gets roped into an espionage operation infiltrating an alien culture where political power is determined by the outcome of a uniquely complex strategy game. Set in a far-future human civilization run by a constellation of (mostly) benevolent and inscrutable AIs, Banks's science fiction is more relevant than ever.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
The Jean le Flambeur trilogy by Hannu Rajaniemi—The Quantum Thief, The Fractal Prince, and The Causal Angel—may be the most ambitious science-fiction story I've ever read.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carré is a perfect espionage novel: tight, taught, twisty, and thought-provoking. Le Carré brings the subtle machinations of intelligence operations to vivid life, illustrating their geopolitical ramifications and human cost with equal care.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman is a delightful whodunnit set at a retirement home in the English countryside. Great characters. Fun twists. An endearing sense of humor. Nothing fancy or experimental, just a pleasure to read (and what more can you ask from a book, really?). If, like me, you enjoy mysteries, you'll be in good hands with Osman.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm is a mind-bending psychological thriller about a secret agency tasked with fighting dangerous "antimemes"—ideas that refuse to be remembered. Plenty of stories start with a clever high-concept premise and just let it play out. This one pushes its premise to extremes I never imagined possible, ratcheting up an astonishing amount of tension along the way.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
Trust by Mary Sisson
Trust by Hernan Diaz is an onion of a novel in which every chapter peels back a layer to reveal yet more beneath. Following the meteoric rise of a Wall Street financier in the early 20th century, the intricately plotted story will seduce you, transport you, stimulate you, mislead you, and, ultimately, move you.
on eliotpeper.substack.com · 28 Dec 2025
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