15 Of The Best Books That Begin In Medias Res

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“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”

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Some stories take their time setting the scene, but others love chucking readers straight into the action. One of the most effective storytelling techniques for creating an instant connection with readers is in medias res, a narrative tool that starts a story in the middle of events rather than the true beginning. Many of the best books that begin in medias res use this approach to create intrigue, establish conflict, and encourage readers to keep turning pages from the very get-go. From literary classics to modern bestsellers, novels that start in the middle of the action typically feature some of the most memorable openings in fiction. Whether the protagonist is confronting a life-changing choice, caught in a dangerous situation, or already dealing with the consequences of past events, these in medias res books showcase just how powerful starting in the middle of the action can be. 

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Piranesi – Susanna Clarke

First up on our list of in medias res books is Susanna Clarke’s acclaimed global bestseller, Piranesi. Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, and its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth. He lives to explore the house. 

There is one other person in the house – a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known. 

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One Hundred Years Of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

Probably Gabriel García Márquez’s finest and most famous book, One Hundred Years of Solitude, famously opens in the midst of a pivotal moment. The story charts the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. 

Inventive,  amusing, magnetic, sad, alive with unforgettable men and women, and with a truth and understanding that strike the soul, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a shining masterpiece in the art of fiction. 

Beloved – Toni Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, the protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later, she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. 

And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as rope, Beloved is a towering accomplishment by Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison.

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The Blade Itself – Joe Abercrombie

Infamous barbarian Logen Ninefingers has finally run out of luck. Caught in one feud too many, he’s on the verge of becoming a dead barbarian. Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North, they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta would like nothing more than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it. Enter the wizard Bayaz. A bald man with a terrible temper who is about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal and Glokta a whole lot more difficult. Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood. 

The Fifth Season – N.K. Jemisin

Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, the world-spanning Sanze Empire collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman’s vengeance. And, worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing enough ash to darken the sky for years. 

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power, but just enough basic supplies to make it through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She’ll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter. 

The Secret Life Of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees is a story that begins in the middle of the action and tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted black “stand-in mother,” Rosealeen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. 

They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina – a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerising world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable in medias res novel about divine female power, a story women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come. 

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Rosewater – Tade Thompson

Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry, and the helpless – people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumoured healing powers. 

Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome and doesn’t care to again – but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realisation about a horrifying future. 

Killing Floor – Lee Child

Jack Reacher jumps off a bus and walks fourteen miles down a country road into Margrave, Georgia. An arbitrary decision he’s about to sorely regret. Reacher is the only stranger in town on the day they have had their first homicide in over three decades. The cops arrest Reacher, and the police chief turns an eyewitness to place him at the scene. As nasty secrets begin to leak out, and the body count continues to rise, one thing is for certain: They picked the wrong guy to take the fall. 

Dead Silence – S.A. Barnes

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate. What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that disappeared on its maiden tour of the solar system twenty years ago. 

A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn’t right. Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate. 

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Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

Another one of the most iconic in medias res books, Catch-22 is the story of the incomparable, malingering bombardier, Yossarian, a hero who is furious because thousands of people he has never met are trying to kill him. But his real problem is not his enemy – it’s his own army, which keeps increasing the number of missions they must fly to complete their service. 

Yet if Yossarian makes any attempt to excuse himself from the perilous missions he’s assigned to, he’ll be in violation of Catch-22, a hilariously sinister bureaucratic rule: a man is considered insane if he willingly continues to fly dangerous combat missions, but if he makes a formal request to be removed from duty, he is proven sane, therefore ineligible to be relieved. 

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Gideon The Ninth – Tamsyn Muir

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines and prepares to launch a daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. 

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Revered Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhard succeeds, she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. Of course, some things are better left dead. 

Life Of Pi – Yann Martel

Life of Pi tells the story of Piscine “Pi” Patel, a young Indian boy who survives a shipwreck and is stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days. He is accompanied by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. Through Pi’s in medias res narration, readers experience his fear, ingenuity, and spiritual reflections as he navigates the vast ocean, battling hunger, storms, and the psychological strains of being so isolated. 

Dropping us readers into an incredible survival story already well underway, Life of Pi explores issues of spirituality and practicality from an early age, making it one of the best picks if you’re looking for a novel that drops you right into the good stuff. 

The Last Werewolf – Glen Duncan

Jacob Marlowe has lost the will to live. For two hundred years, he has wandered the world, enslaved by his lunatic appetites and tormented by the memory of his first and most monstrous crime. Now, the last of his kind, he knows he cannot go on. 

But as Jake counts down to suicide, a violent murder and an extraordinary meeting plunge him straight back into the desperate pursuits of life – and love. Sexy, smart, and heartbreaking, The Last Werewolf is a horror-fantasy in medias res novel that takes literature by the throat. 

Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace

Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy, and featuring the most endearingly screwed-up family to come along in modern fiction, Infinite Jest explores essential questions about what entertainment is and why it has come to dominate our lives; about how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with other people; and about what the pleasures we choose say about who we are. 

Equal parts philosophical quest and screwball commentary, Infinite Jest bends every rule of fiction without sacrificing for a moment its own entertainment value. It is an exuberant in medias res book and a uniquely American exploration of the passions that make us human – and one of those rare books that renew the idea of what a novel can do. 

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Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

As a child, Kathy lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory. 

And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fuelled her adolescent crush on Tommy start to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood – and their lives now. 

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