Books like 'Tsotsi'
Readers who enjoyed Tsotsi by Athol Fugard also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary mystery 20th century psychological historical-fiction crime classics drama family literary-fiction
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Different Seasons by Stephen King
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the Magical Pen of Stephen King, Four Mesmerizing Novellas…“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge…the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsFrom the acclaimed international bestseller Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X) comes a sweeping novel in the tradition of Les Miserables and Crime and Punishment...Categorized as:
crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
After the Fire by Will Hill
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe things I've seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.Before, she lived inside the fence. Before, she was never allowed to leave the property, never allowed to talk to Outsiders, never allowed to speak her mind. Because Father John controlled everything—and Father John liked rules. Disobeying Father John came with terrible consequences... -
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsPAT CONROY has created a huge, brash thunderstorm of a novel, stinging with honesty and resounding with drama. Spanning forty years, this is the story of turbulent Tom Wingo, his gifted and troubled twin sister Savannah, and their struggle to triumph over the dark and tragic legacy of the extraordinary family into which they were born... -
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I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThis powerful, heartwrenching drama draws on the deepest human emotions - the need to know oneself, the responsibility to the family, and the influence of hidden history. The result is a highly acclaimed novel of survival and great sensitivity...Categorized as:
classics drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century abuse audiobook -
What's Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsFrancis Cornish was always good at keeping secrets. From the well-hidden family secret of his childhood to his mysterious encounters with a small-town embalmer, an expert art restorer, a Bavarian countess, and various masters of espionage, the events in Francis's life were not always what they seemed...Categorized as:
classics family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
Night in Question by Tobias Wolff
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAuthor most recently of a stunningly clear-eyed memoir, This Boy's Life, Tobias Wolff's new collection of short stories maintains a similar steady gaze on his fictional creations. The author steels himself with a fine sense of irony and an awareness of moral ambiguity against the unjust suffering that is part of life...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsIn his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn Coney Island, Brooklyn, Sarah Goldfarb, a lonely widow, wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century abuse action-adventure -
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBrace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain. Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
Replay by Ken Grimwood
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAt forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow ...But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that... -
The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mulisch
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsHarry Mulisch's magnum opus, is a rich mosaic of twentieth-century trauma in which many themes—friendship, loyalty, family, art, technology, religion, fate, good, and evil—suffuse a suspenseful and resplendent narrative.The Discovery of Heaven begins with the meeting of Onno and Max, two complicated individuals whom fate has mysteriously and magically brought together...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsWhat have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose . . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured... -
The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he’s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he’s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair... -
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Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsA collection of linked stories narrated by a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, Jesus' Son is a disturbing portrayal of loneliness and hope. He travels through an American underworld of burnt-out sports stars, hospital waiting rooms, doomed relationships and senseless violence... -
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 55 ratingsAn alternate cover edition for the ISBN 9780385338608 can be found here.Before "The Firm" and "The Pelican Brief" made him a superstar, John Grisham wrote this riveting story of retribution and justice...Categorized as:
classics crime drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure -
White Oleander by Janet Fitch
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsAlternate cover for this ISBN can be found hereEverywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes--each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned--becomes a redeeming... -
The Secret of Villa Alba by Louise Douglas
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 20 ratings1968, Sicily. Just months after a terrible earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba del Ciliegio, on roads overlooked by the eerie backdrop of the flattened ghost town. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene... -
The Client by John Grisham
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 47 ratingsIn a weedy clearing on the outskirts of Memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb...Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarette when a chance encounter with a suicidal lawyer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America... -
I'm Not Stiller by Max Frisch
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsArrested and imprisoned in a small Swiss town, a prisoner begins this book with an exclamation: "I'm not Stiller!" He claims that his name is Jim White, that he has been jailed under false charges and under the wrong identity... -
The High Window by Raymond Chandler
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune—the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
The Pact by Jodi Picoult
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsFor eighteen years the Hartes and the Golds have lived next door to each other, sharing everything from Chinese food to chicken pox to carpool duty—they've grown so close it seems they have always been a part of each other's lives. Parents and children alike have been best friends, so it's no surprise that in high school Chris and Emily's friendship blossoms into something more... -
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 58 ratingsThe Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies audiobook -
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsHailed by the Washington Post Book World as "a modern classic," Robertson Davies’s acclaimed Deptford Trilogy is a glittering, fantastical, cunningly contrived series of novels, around which a mysterious death is woven...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult book coming-of-age -
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Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsBroad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook book -
The Rainmaker by John Grisham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsInThe Rainmaker, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam... -
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 55 ratingsIn a small American town, the local residents are abuzz with excitement and nervousness when they wake on the morning of the twenty-seventh of June. Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual tradition—a lottery in which every family must participate, and no one wants to win. “The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century audiobook book contemporary -
A Heart So White by Javier Marías
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn alternate cover of this ISBN can be found here.Javier Marías's A Heart So White chronicles with unnerving insistence the relentless power of the past. Juan knows little of the interior life of his father Ranz; but when Juan marries, he begins to consider the past anew, and begins to ponder what he doesn't really want to know...Categorized as:
classics crime drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure -
The Summer Guest by Justin Cronin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOn an evening in late summer, the great financier Harry Wainwright, nearing the end of his life, arrives at a rustic fishing camp in a remote area of Maine. He comes bearing two things: his wish for a day of fishing in a place that has brought him solace for thirty years, and an astonishing bequest that will forever change the lives of those around him... -
First Blood by David Morrell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFirst came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of First Blood to take his place in the American cultural landscape...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work... -
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsHow long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew...A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world...Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult animals anthologies -
Nightwork by Irwin Shaw
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA dead man’s briefcase presents a down-on-his-luck pilot with the chance of a lifetime.Pilot Douglas Grimes’s best days are long behind him. Grounded due to a medical condition, Douglas has resigned himself to menial work as a desk clerk at a seedy hotel. But his fortune flips when he discovers a hotel guest dead from a heart attack and, next to him, a tube jammed with hundred-dollar bills... -
The Outsider by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 85 ratingsMeursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
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Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 83 ratingsMelinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe... -
The Other by Thomas Tryon
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEntranced and terrified, the reader of The Other is swept up in the life of a Connecticut country town in the thirties—and in the fearful mysteries that slowly darken and overwhelm it.Originally published in 1971, The Other is one of the most influential horror novels ever written...Categorized as:
classics crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
Las huellas imborrables by Camilla Läckberg
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe SandMan Sandman: Overture Deluxe Edition"So the spirit of the universe will cease to think, and everything will cease to exist." "That is not something I care about, glory. The stars burn and fall. People live and die. Someday, even "eternity" will come to an end. I am responsible for it all the time. "" Did not you care, the king of dreams? Maybe. It may not be your responsibility...Categorized as:
crime drama family historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsWritten in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka’s death, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
Proof by David Auburn
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsProof is the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.One of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science.It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help... -
V. by Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men—one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose—and "V.," the unknown woman of the title...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
Post Office by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 40 ratings"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service... -
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsOne of the great short novels of the twentieth century—in an edition marking the 100th anniversary of the author's birth.An unforgettable psychological novel of obsessive love, The Tunnel was championed by Albert Camus, Thomas Mann, and Graham Greene upon its publication in 1948 and went on to become an international bestseller... -
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKerr, in the NY Herald-Tribune, describes: "This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror... -
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, Martha C. Nussbaum
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBradley Pearson, an unsuccessful novelist in his late fifties, has finally left his dull office job as an Inspector of Taxes. Bradley hopes to retire to the country, but predatory friends and relations dash his hopes of a peaceful retirement... -
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Ghost Story by Peter Straub
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsIn life, not every sin goes unpunished.GHOST STORYFor four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder... -
The Trial by Franz Kafka, Arthur H. Samuelson
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsWritten in 1914 but not published until 1925, a year after Kafka's death, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century absurdism adult -
Factotum by Charles Bukowski
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsOne of Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith, Татьяна Телегина
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsSince his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century adult audiobook -
The Woman Chaser by Charles Willeford
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"A pitilessly hilarious dissection of the American male psyche."--Chicago Tribune Richard Hudson, an inveterate woman-chaser and gifted used car salesman, possesses a pimp's understanding of the ways in which women (and men) are most vulnerable -- and justifies his seductions with a highly perverse logic. By day, he works his crooked car lot with much success... -
A Wreath of Roses by Elizabeth Taylor
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSpending the holiday with friends, as she has for many years, Camilla finds that their private absorptions - Frances with her painting and Liz with her baby - seem to exclude her from the gossipy intimacies of previous summers...
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