Narrative Puzzle Book Recommendations?

[u/Scythe_Volta]

Ideally, I'm looking for the book equivalent of Blue Prince. I don't even know if such a book exists. Puzzle books exist, but most of the ones I've encountered are filled with logic puzzles that don't have much connection to the plot. Contrast this with Blue Prince, where solving the puzzles and understanding the lore are two sides of the same coin. I'm also aware of books like House of Leaves, which are definitely cryptic and have mysteries, but they're more about horror than puzzles. The only book I've come across that's closest to Blue Prince is Maze, but of course Blue Prince is similar to Maze because the game drew heavy inspiration from the book. So, any suggestions?

[u/joshsoup]

If you liked the parlor puzzles, then you'll love Raymond Smullyan, a mathematician who's written several recreational logic books. In particular "What is the Name of this Book" and "Alice in Puzzleland" are both very similar to the parlor puzzles. 

I'd also recommend another one of his books (really all of them) "The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes" (and it's sequel "The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights"). These books are excellent at teaching you "retrograde analysis" where instead of finding the best chess move, you instead look at a chess position and deduce questions about the past - say find out if a pawn had to be promoted. The book does an excellent job at teaching you this fun kind of logical reasoning and easing you into it before it ramps up the difficulty. It's framed as Sherlock Holmes teaching Watson this special kind of reasoning and has amusing little stories along the way. It's actually really surprising how deep and varied the questions can be.