If you were drawn to Nance’s cures and the desperate rites to "put out" Micheál in The Good People, you’ll love how The Mercies cloaks everyday life in rumor and dread. On Vardø’s storm-scoured island, women rebuild after a tragedy while a zealot hunts for signs of the Devil—much like how talk of fairies and changelings turns neighbors against Nóra, Mary, and Nance. The atmosphere is just as briny and close, the threat of superstition just as palpable.

You enjoyed how life in the Kerry valley pressed in on Nóra, Mary, and Nance—kitchens, byres, fords, and hedges turning into a whole world. Burial Rites offers the same intimate confinement: Agnes Magnúsdóttir’s final months unfold inside a single croft, where gossip and faith weigh as heavily as law. If the fireside whispers around Micheál and the bean feasa gripped you, this slow, haunting close-up will too.

If you admired how Nóra and Mary refuse to be passive—and how Nance wields folk knowledge against a hostile parish—The Essex Serpent centers another indomitable woman, Cora Seaborne, who probes a coastal village’s fear of a sea serpent. The clash of curiosity, faith, and rumor echoes the tension between Priest Father Healy and the bean feasa, while giving you another richly drawn heroine to root for.

If Nóra’s torment, Mary’s conflicted loyalty, and the village’s conviction about a changeling kept you rapt, The Wonder mirrors that intimate unraveling. Nurse Lib Wright watches an Irish girl who seems to live without food, as priests, family, and neighbors interpret the "miracle" through faith. Like the trials around Micheál, every vigil and visit peels back motives until belief and harm become painfully entangled.

If Father Healy’s sermons, holy wells, and the parish’s judgment shaped your reading of The Good People, this novella’s moral crucible will resonate. Coal merchant Bill Furlong discovers cruelty hidden behind a convent’s respectability, and—much as whispers about fairies steer Nóra’s community—religious authority here dictates who is seen and who suffers. It’s quiet, piercing, and courage hinges on a single, costly choice.