Two young students locked into a magical competition, the rules of which neither understands, do battle with feats of astounding imagination powered by their ill-advised romance. Their stage is the mysterious Cirque des Rêves, a circus of dreams that appears only at night, and travels the world with no set schedule. Peopled with clockwork ciphers, the real heartbeat of Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel, The Night Circus, is not in the love affair between the doomed rivals turned lovers—each of whom can only win by killing the other—but in the circus itself. With its breathtaking displays of magic and sumptuous illusions, it’s a setting so richly detailed and beguiling it becomes an indelible character. The Night Circus, published in the U.S. in 2011, is being developed into a film by Lionsgate. —Aryn Baker
Buy Now: The Night Circus on Bookshop | Amazon
- Inside Ukraine's Push to Try Putin For War Crimes
- Bad Bunny's Next Move
- Elon Musk Signs Open Letter Urging AI Labs to Pump the Brakes
- Eliezer Yudkowsky: Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down
- 'How Is This Still Happening?' A Survivor Questions America's Gun Violence Problem
- Nicole Chung: The Person I Became After My Father's Death
- Cheryl Strayed Will Always Be Here for You
- Who Should Be on the 2023 TIME100? Vote Now