Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Dumb. Occasionally beautiful.

The Judge could hardly be more obvious and grotesque, in a bad way.

Yes, ok, Cormac, modern man's defining animus is the will to violence, maybe systems building, and maybe they're the same thing. Put it in a fucking short story. Then write your field manual of southwest flora and fauna, which might actually be worth reading.

Tehanu by Ursula Le Guin

Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

The Farthest Shore by Ursula Le Guin

The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

Decoding the Heavens by Jo Marchant

Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

Kim by Rudyard Kipling

Kipling wrote fiction for children, even when writing for adults. That's the British Empire for you - a nation of posturing preteens, too caught up in their narratives to guess the audacity of their undertaking, too callous and amoral to consider the harm. The same might apply to all empire builders, sometimes literal children, all the same, successful species of stupid presently filling mass graves in Iraq and Syria and Libya.

Ubik by Philip K Dick

Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl Ernest Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac

Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia by Alexander Cooley