Books by Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett was a prolific author of fantasy books. He died in 2015 after suffering from Alzheimer’s. At 13 he had his first story published and he has now sold over 85 million books worldwide, in 37 languages. Terry Pratchett was best known for his Discworld series of 41 books. The first Discworld novel, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. He won the 2001 Carnegie Medal for his Discworld children’s book The Amazing Maurice.
“Terry Pratchett is – or was, I have to say, unfortunately – he was one of the most dynamic and beautiful writers I have ever read. Earlier I talked about turn of phrase: nobody, absolutely nobody, can play with words like Terry Pratchett.” Read more...
T.J. Klune, Novelist
“Monstrous Regiment is a standalone Discworld book. It’s a dark book. It kind of comes out of nowhere. It doesn’t really fit with any of the other Discworld books, although there are a couple of recurring characters that pop in. But you see them from another angle, as you are viewing them through the eyes of different characters. I think it could easily have been that book set during the Napoleonic Wars. It has those big hats, red hats on the battlefield. And although there is some really funny stuff in it—war movie cliches and Apocalypse Now references—it’s probably the least funny of his books, and the most serious. It’s really good, and it’s another one that I return to again and again.” Read more...
The Best Terry Pratchett Books
Marc Burrows, Biographer
“Once he got so famous he could basically do what he wanted, his first instinct was to write a children’s book. And the plot for Truckers actually comes out of those short stories he was writing in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s the story of a group of tiny gnomes who live in a roadside café. For various reasons, their food supplies are drying up, the hunting is bad. Almost all of them have died out; there are only around five of them left. So they decide to stowaway on the back of a truck and see where it takes them.” Read more...
The Best Terry Pratchett Books
Marc Burrows, Biographer
“After his Alzheimer’s diagnosis in late 2007—when he didn’t know how long he had left, how many more books he was going to be able to write, the first thing he did was clear everything to finish Nation, in case it was the last book he ever got to write. This was a story that was incredibly important to him. I think Terry would say it was his best book, and I don’t disagree. If you come to Terry Pratchett expecting swords and hobbits and nerdy stuff, Nation is not that book. But it’s completely gorgeous.” Read more...
The Best Terry Pratchett Books
Marc Burrows, Biographer
“Mort is the first book that Terry Pratchett wrote that is entirely about Death, who is by far my favourite character – and many other people’s favourite character – in the Discworld series. It’s about Death taking a holiday and bringing on an apprentice named Mort, which is short for Mortimer, to take over for him. It’s split into two parts: one where Mort is bumbling around and learning to become Death, messing things up apocalyptically; and one where Death is spending some time thinking about life and death in a way that’s sort of philosophical. And like all of Pratchett’s stuff, it’s very, very funny, but it also feels like one of his deeper books.” Read more...
Travis Baldree, Novelist
“In Discworld, Pratchett has set up a world where the power of faith is something that humans have but don’t fully understand, and it can literally create things. So the gods in Discworld are a function of the strength of the belief of their followers. This is a beautiful, crazy concept, and Discworld is full of these beautiful, crazy concepts. And yet, it’s not that farfetched, because when you have a particular format in which you squeeze your idea of deity, the larger the church or the religion, the more you are able to continue to perpetuate and enforce it. So it’s not coming out of nowhere.” Read more...
The Best Speculative Fiction About Gods and Godlike Beings
Karen Lord, Novelist
“Most people will have heard of Discworld. There are 41 books in the series. Pratchett was an amazing and prolific writer…Snuff is one of those great ones, and it stands alone quite well. It is a cozy murder mystery set in a stately manor in the equivalent of the English countryside—a place called The Shire, in which the local magistrates are the great and the good, and in which they are all complicit in a murder…The hero of this book is Sam Vimes. He’s one of the most important heroes of the Pratchett canon. He’s a cop and he’s on vacation. A delightful trope of the police procedural is the cop on vacation who stumbles upon a murder, and this novel has some of the best little tasty elements of that. His loving and quite well-drawn wife, Sybil, has told him he’s overworked and has conspired with his colleagues and his boss (who’s effectively the dictator of the city for which he is chief of police) to force him to go on vacation. Of course, Vimes immediately literally stumbles upon a murder.” Read more...
Cory Doctorow, Novelist
A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories
by Terry Pratchett
A Stroke of the Pen collects together 20 stories Terry Pratchett wrote early in his career for a newspaper, under a pseudonym.
“Terry Pratchett is a master world builder. This is a standalone book, not part of his Discworld series, and it’s an absolute joy to read. I’m a big fan of all Pratchett, and for me Nation stands out because it is so oceanic in its topic, in its breadth and in its storytelling. It’s an alternative history set in the Great Southern Pelagic Ocean. It’s a book about cultures coming together and learning from each other. It’s about environmental disasters, and how people adapt and cope with them. It’s incredibly rich with details of the world that we’re exploring, a realistic but slightly different version of our world. The characters are glorious, and it’s a brilliantly funny book but deeply thoughtful as well, which is what you always get from Pratchett.” Read more...
The Best Ocean Novels for 10-14 Year Olds
Helen Scales, Biologist
“This book is Pratchett at his best, for me. It’s a really solid thriller. What he does with the Vimes character is that he makes a policeman: just any copper. He’s a copper who thinks like a copper. He doesn’t trust clues. And because it’s the Discworld, he’s a copper who knows his frame of reference: he knows about Raymond Chandler, he knows about Poirot. He’s the type of character who’s constantly winking at the genre that he’s also a part of. Somehow, despite all that winking, he’s an actual brilliant character, who solves the mystery by being dogged, in the same way that Marlowe does, but has Sherlock Holmes-like abilities of deduction. He can also sit down and ponder things through like Poirot. So he’s got elements of all the best detectives. But then, it’s a fantasy. It’s also a time travel book. And Pratchett does all these things brilliantly. He gives you everything you’d want from a time travel book – like, he goes back in time and intersects with a younger version of himself, who he has to train up to be the man he’s going to become.” Read more...
Stuart Turton, Novelist
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Assorted
by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
I enjoy reading Good Omens more than reading anything else I’ve done because I laugh at all the bits that Terry Pratchett wrote. I get to appreciate Terry’s genius and the mingling of our efforts into something greater.
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents
by Terry Pratchett
Discworld Series Book 28
🏆 Winner of the 2001 Carnegie Medal
“The Amazing Maurice is a retelling of ‘The Pied Piper.’ In The Amazing Maurice, the rats can talk, they’re intelligent. It’s all a scam: they come in, the rats take over, then the kid comes in and offers to get rid of them. And because the rats are in on it, they follow the kid out. It’s beautifully put together. Pratchett described it himself as the story based on the novel concept that people can talk out their problems. I love that! It doesn’t always have to be the big heroic battle at the end.” Read more...
Fantasy Books Based on Fairy Tales
Ursula Vernon, Novelist
“The Colour of Magic—the first Discworld book but actually his fourth book—hasn’t aged spectacularly. It’s a novel that needs a certain amount of context to understand the jokes about nerdy 1970s fantasy. But the book still works because the main character, Rincewind, is brilliant and is still a completely relatable character. He’s somebody who is frustrated by the sheer unfairness of the universe, and that’s something I think most people have felt at some time. Every Pratchett book has something like that: something that links it to the human experience…Because Pratchett was so astonishingly prolific (publishing two books a year, for much of his life) he got so much better as time went on. The more you do something, the better you get, right? By the time he wrote Mort in 1987, he was ten times the writer he was when he wrote The Colour of Magic in 1983. So, once you’re a fan, go back and read the first three books later.” Read more...
The Best Terry Pratchett Books
Marc Burrows, Biographer
Interviews where books by Terry Pratchett were recommended
The Best Terry Pratchett Books, recommended by Marc Burrows
The beloved British author Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) sold millions of copies of his 41-book Discworld series. But he also wrote standalone novels, children’s stories, and shorter fantasy series—all works of comic genius that drew from his polymathic knowledge and omnivorous reading habits. Here, Pratchett biographer Marc Burrows highlights five of Terry Pratchett’s best books. Read more fantasy book recommendations on Five Books
Fantasy Books Based on Fairy Tales, recommended by Ursula Vernon
Fairy tale retellings are nothing new: the same stories have been told in various forms across centuries and cultures. Modern fantasy is making new use of these timeless tales, specialising in unlikely heroes and playful subversions. We asked Ursula Vernon, the Hugo Award-winning author, to recommend her top five fantasy books based on fairy tales.
The Best Murder Mystery Books, recommended by Stuart Turton
The best murder mysteries set up their stories like a game between the reader and the writer, says Stuart Turton, bestselling author and lifelong mystery fan. Here he highlights five of his favourites, in which detectives make miraculous deductions, or doggedly chase clues until they meet with satisfying solutions.
The Best Ocean Novels for 10-14 Year Olds, recommended by Helen Scales
Marine biologist Helen Scales reflects on the power of stories to bring all kinds of readers into the ocean realm. She recommends books for children and young adults, and explains why her selection focuses on novels for readers age 10-14.
The Best Noir Crime Thrillers, recommended by Cory Doctorow
If you like your crime novels with a good dose of black humor, Canadian activist and author Cory Doctorow has some recommendations for you. He picks out five of his favorite noir thrillers, from urban fantasy to Jewish alt-history by way of ‘Vantablack’ noir.
The Best Speculative Fiction About Gods and Godlike Beings, recommended by Karen Lord
Many works of science fiction and fantasy involve a character changed forever after they meet a powerful being—sometimes a god, sometimes a not-quite-god. Karen Lord, an award-winning sci-fi author whose latest novel combines the seductive powers of celebrity and alien contact, recommends five books where gods or god-like beings turn the hero’s world upside down.
Humorous Fantasy Novels, recommended by Travis Baldree
What makes fantasy worlds so ripe for comedy? Hugo nominee Travis Baldree points toward our shared humanity, our love of anti-heros, and the power of back-to-front archetypes. He recommends the five best fantastical adventures to get us laughing – mostly at ourselves.
The Best Cozy Fantasy Books, recommended by T.J. Klune
Low-stakes 'cozy' fantasy is very popular right now, says the bestselling author TJ Klune—and as a result it's a very exciting time to be working in the genre. Here he recommends five cozy fantasy novels, all with magical worlds to get lost inside: from moving castles to coffee shops at the end of the world.
The Best Hard Science Fiction Books, recommended by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Hard sci fi books build fantastical worlds underpinned by rigorous science. This constraint actually provokes originality, explains multi-award winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky. He talks us through his five favourites, and shows how every story exploring science must also explore politics, philosophy and humanity.
