Specialized books to help read fiction

[character]

I'm curious what supplemental books people have found helpful in reading, esp. reading fiction.  Books which explicate common phrases or specific parts of the language, not general-purpose dictionaries.  Books, in short, to turn to when one is stuck trying to figure out the meaning of a sentence.

 

Some which seem like they might be useful:

 

500 Common Chinese Idioms, by Liwei Jiao, Cornelius C. Kubler, Weiguo Zhang

"Based on large corpora of authentic language data, it presents the 500 most commonly used Chinese idioms or chengyu, along with a variety of synonyms, antonyms and the most common structures, enabling the reader to make educated guesses about the meanings of hundreds of unfamiliar idioms." Note that the Kindle version has tiny images of the Chinese characters which can't be increased by increasing the font size; I recommend getting the paper book instead. forum mention

 

Dictionary for Readers of Modern Chinese Prose: Your Guide to the 250 Key Grammatical Markers in Chinese, by Stanley L. Mickel

"Organized in pinyin alphabetical order with simplified Chinese characters, the text also includes an illustrative explanation of 250 grammatical terms that are central to the understanding of modern Chinese." forum topic

 

A Student Handbook for Chinese Function Words, by Jiaying Howard

"When learning a foreign language, students always find function words, such as prepositions, auxiliaries, conjunctions, articles, etc. difficult to master.  The adaptability and ambiguity in function, usage, and meaning of function words cause students to make semantic and syntax errors..." forum mention

[Lu]

NTNU published a textbook for reading 张系国's 棋王, with vocab lists, questions and everything. It's mainly helpful for that specific book of course.