10 Delightfully Tricksy Stories

Puzzles, Riddles, and Tricks

In the spirit of April Fool's Day, we are spotlighting stories that will make you gasp out loud and ask yourself, "What the %#!& is going on here!?" These ten books represent a range of genres and styles, but what they have in common is that they will keep you guessing until the end and leave you thinking about them long after you've read the last page.

Pale Fire

This richly inventive gem from the virtuosic Vladimir Nabakov offers a cornucopia of deceptive pleasures. Brilliantly structured, the story is an intriguing whodunit that will take you down a wild rabbit hole. It's a darkly witty tale of madness and suspense—a glorious literary conundrum.

Trust Exercise

Provocative and timely, Susan Choi's National Book Award winner has been described as a "literary performance." A group of students at a competitive performing arts high school struggle and thrive in a rarefied bubble. As the story unspools, shocking revelations burst forth. What is true and what is fiction?

If on a winter's night a traveller

Italo Calvino has created a work of art with this meta-masterpiece. The evolving narrative takes on endless mutations, forming a labyrinth of literatures, known and unknown, alive and extinct, through which two readers, a male and a female, pursue the storylines that intrigue them and one another.

Hopscotch

This dazzling, freewheeling novel by Julio Cortázar actually includes a "Table of Instructions" for help in navigating the narrative. Highly influenced by Henry Miller's reckless and relentless search for truth and D. T. Suzuki's teachings on Zen Buddhism, this story takes you on a wild ride.

Midwinterblood

Award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick spins seven chilling tales that all take place on a remote Scandinavian island where a curiously powerful plant grows. What binds these stories together? What secrets lurk beneath the surface of this idyllic countryside? And what might be powerful enough to break the cycle?

The Power

Naomi Alderman's novel-within-a-novel reads like a fever dream and will leave you questioning everything you ever thought was true. What would happen if young women suddenly developed the ability to create electric currents with their bare hands? Darkly humorous, this powerful fantasy will leave you breathless.

Cloud Atlas

This brilliant work has been described as the literary equivalent of Russian nesting dolls. In a series of interlinking novellas, David Mitchell employs daring artistry to explore fundamental questions of reality. Gradually the pieces of the puzzle click together to form a probing examination of connection and identity.

House of Leaves

In what has become a cult classic, Mark Z. Danielewski pulls out all the stops with multiple narrators, inventive typography, and bountiful footnotes. It's the story of a young family who move into a new home where they soon discover something is terribly wrong: the house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Runaway

Alice Munro may seem an odd candidate for this list with her meticulous, hyperreal brand of fiction. But this extraordinary collection of stories plumbs the depths of love and its infinite potential for betrayal and surprise. "Tricks" is particularly apt with riffs on Shakespearean narratives of mistaken identity.

Lanark

Alasdair Gray's 1981 novel is organized into four unconventionally ordered books: Three, One, Two, Four. A work of extraordinary imagination and wide range, its playful narrative conveys a profound message, both personal and political, about humankind's inability to love, and yet our compulsion to go on trying.

Well, there you have it. Happy April Fool's Day from us! Hopefully we haven't ruined any of the surprises for you. Let us know if we've missed any of your favorite literary tricks.

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Read more by Ashly Moore Sheldon