Books

Read These Books If You Want More WandaVision

Here are 10 stories of grief, loss, and confusing circumstances.

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Originally Published: 
Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda in Wandavision.
Disney+
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With its upcoming slate of series offerings, Disney+ is giving Marvel fans the chance to tune into their favorite characters' post-Endgame adventures. The first of the bunch, WandaVision, has taken the Internet by storm since its Jan. 15 premiere. We don't know when Scarlet Witch's story will return to Disney's streaming service after the Mar. 5 season finale, so now's the time to stock up on great books to read if you want more WandaVision.

Set after the events of Avengers: Endgame, WandaVision centers on Wanda Maximoff and Vision, who are now living in domestic bliss in Westview, New Jersey. There's just one problem: Thanos killed Vision to get the Mind Stone — the Infinity Stone that powers Vision's vibranium body — so that he could kill half of all life in the Universe. That was five years ago, but for Wanda, who was killed in the Snap, just three weeks have passed since she destroyed the Mind Stone — killing Vision — only to have Thanos rewind time to murder Vision and take the orange crystal for himself. So why is Vision alive, and why isn't anyone acknowledging recent events?

WandaVision has plenty of classic sitcom references that fans of black-and-white television will love, but the real story here is about grief, loss, magic, and redemption. With that in mind, here are 10 books to read if you can't get enough of WandaVision.

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1

Awkward twenty-something Gilda is downright preoccupied with death. When she stumbles into a receptionist gig at a nearby church — she was looking for the church's free therapy service — she finds herself carrying on a correspondence with her predecessor Grace's friend... who doesn't know the old receptionist is dead. Gilda's keeping her head above water, but an unexpected inquiry into Grace's death may change everything in Emily R. Austin's Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead.

2

Although it's technically a sequel to Patternmaster, Octavia E. Butler's Mind of My Mind works as a standalone novel. The story here centers on a community of nearly 2,000 people who share a common psychic bond. Led by a young telepath named Mary, the group faces an existential threat when an immortal with the power to ignite a war demands that their community stop growing... or else.

3

For anyone who identified with Darcy's fangirling over the meta-WandaVision, there's This Is Not the Jess Show, a YA thriller from Blackbird author Anna Carey. Your average high-school junior, Jess is stuck in the small town of Swickley in 1998, dealing with her family's problems while trying to assert her independence. But when she catches her BFF with an electronic device she's never seen before, Jess is forced to question everything she thought she knew about her life.

4

The narrator of Susanna Clarke's sophomore novel is pretty sure his name isn't Piranesi, but that's what the Other — the only other person alive in the world — calls him. Their world is a strange house full of endless hallways, unsettling statues, abandoned skeletons, and deadly tides. Seeking secret knowledge for the Other, the narrator meticulously documents his journey through the house in Piranesi.

5

Akwaeke Emezi's The Death of Vivek Oji makes no secret of the fact that its title character meets a tragic end. The novel weaves its way through the lives of people close to Vivek, from his parents to his cousin and best friend, Osita, examining their relationships to him both in life and after his death.

6

Left home alone with her newborn son following a traumatic birth, a mentally frayed doctoral candidate is haunted by her abandoned dissertation project and the ghost of beloved children's author Margaret Wise Brown in Julia Fine's The Upstairs House.

7

Raised in an isolated religious community, Immanuelle has always felt as if she's living in the shadow of her mother's sins. Born from her mother's forbidden relationship with a partner of a different race, she's spent her whole life trying to fit in. But Immanuelle has just discovered the spirits of four witches who were murdered in a nearby wood, and she's growing increasingly certain that she's the one with the power to set her world to rights.

8

Set in a picture-perfect Long Island suburb, Sarah Langan's Good Neighbors centers on next-door neighbors and new friends Gertie and Rhea. After learning one another's secrets one night, Gertie and Rhea quickly find themselves at odds when Rhea's daughter is lost in a natural disaster... and fingers begin to point at Gertie's family.

9

When things go missing, it's best to ignore them. You're not supposed to notice, anyway. People who notice have memories, and memories can be taken away. But when the Memory Police come for her editor, one writer takes it upon herself to protect him in this novel from The Housekeeper and the Professor author Yoko Ogawa.

10

Motherhood isn't turning out as expected for the woman at the center of Rachel Yoder's debut. Staying at home with her toddler son, she feels her body and mood altering, becoming more... feral. In her search for answers, the woman clings to an old textbook and rubs elbows with a mysterious local multilevel-marketing group in Nightbitch.

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