Books like 'Sarah'
Readers who enjoyed Sarah by J.T. LeRoy also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary horror psychological lgbtq literary-fiction drama transgressive-mc dark realistic social-commentary
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The Grave Tender by Eliza Maxwell
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAt ten years old, Hadley Dixon's life changed forever. Since those few tragic weeks, she's tried to keep the past buried, but old bones have a way of rising up.Hadley can't hide any longer... -
Of Foster Homes and Flies by Chad Lutzke, Alberto Plumed
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA neglected 12-year-old boy does nothing to report the death of his mother in order to compete in a spelling bee. A tragic coming-of-age tale of horror and drama in the setting of a hot New Orleans summer. "Original, touching coming of age." ~Jack Ketchum, author of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR "With OF FOSTER HOMES & FLIES, Lutzke is firing on all cylinders. It's a lean mean emotional machine... -
Three Complete Novels: Heaven/Dawn/Ruby by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis volume features the first novels in three thrilling V.C. Andrews' series: "Heaven, Dawn, " and "Ruby"--an unprecedented hardcover collection--complete and unabridged--at an inviting price! Available... -
Untitled by Dot Hutchison
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA fourth book is coming with a release date estimated Spring 2019... -
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Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsArguably the masterpiece of a novelist as highly praised and scarcely read as any living writer, the Vintage Contemporaries reprint of Suttree should help to bring McCarthy the readers to match his many awards and voluminous reviews... -
These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNo electricity, no family, no connection to the outside world. For eight years, Cooper and his young daughter, Finch, have lived in isolation in a remote cabin in the northern Appalachian woods. And that's exactly the way Cooper wants it, because he's got a lot to hide. Finch has been raised on the books filling the cabin’s shelves and the beautiful but brutal code of life in the wilderness... -
Wallflower by Chad Lutzke
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAfter an encounter with a homeless man, a high school graduate becomes obsessed with the idea of doing heroin, challenging himself to try it just once. A bleak tale of addiction, delusion, and flowers."Bleak as hell and honestly horrific."~John Boden, author of JEDI SUMMER"Using his strong narrative, he (Lutzke) conveys the everyday realistic horror and pulls the reader right into the ugliness...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark literary-fiction horror fiction psychological substance-abuse mental-illness -
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:
coming-of-age dark drama humor literary-fiction realistic transgressive-mc 20th-century -
Bianca Torre Is Afraid of Everything by Justine Pucella Winans
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsMurder most fowl? In this sardonic and campy YA thriller, an anxious, introverted nonbinary teen birder somehow finds themself solving a murder mystery with their neighbor/fellow anime lover, all while falling for a cute girl from their birding group . . . and trying not to get murdered... -
The Elephant Tree by R.D. Ronald
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsMark Fallon is an overworked detective investigating a spate of attacks at a string of high profile city centre nightclubs. Scott is a dejected 24 year old struggling to make ends meet working for his brother and supplementing his income with a small-scale drug dealing operation... -
Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization) by David Fishelson, Aaron Leichter
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsNote - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The... -
My Mother's Eyes: A Short Story by Jeremy Ray
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“You’re wrong, Jordie. You’ll see. Draw me just one more time.”No one knows if his mother will come out of her coma, so fourteen-year-old Jordie memorializes her in the only way he knows how: by drawing her. His older brother doesn’t approve of these sketches, but Jordie’s determined to capture the person she used to be... -
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city... -
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever, Michael Crouch
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratings'The Secret History' meets 'Call Me by Your Name' in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence... -
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Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIrina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema... -
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... -
Asking For It by Louise O'Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn a small town, where everyone knows everyone, Emma O'Donovan is different. She is the special one - beautiful, popular, powerful. And she works hard to keep it that way.Until that night...Now, she's an embarrassment. Now, she is a slut. Now, she is nothing.And those pictures - those pictures that everyone has seen - mean she can never forget...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark drama family literary-fiction realistic social-commentary 21st-century -
Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhen the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers... -
Guide by Dennis Cooper
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsChris is a young porn star who wants to experience death at someone else's hand; Mason has lurid fantasies about members of British pop bands; Sniffles is a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life... -
Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsShe's a catwalk model who has everything: a boyfriend, a career, a loyal best friend. But when a sudden motor 'accident' leaves her disfigured and incapable of speech, she goes from being the beautiful centre of attention to being an invisible monster, so hideous that no one will acknowledge she exists... -
Obitelj s gornjeg kata by Lisa Jewell
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAn alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here.Soon after her twenty-fifth birthday, Libby Jones returns home from work to find the letter she’s been waiting for her entire life. She rips it open with one driving thought: I am finally going to know who I am... -
The Girl Before by Rena Olsen
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn this powerful psychological suspense debut, when a woman’s life is shattered, she is faced with a devastating question: What if everything she thought was normal and good and true . . . wasn’t? Clara Lawson is torn from her life in an instant. Without warning, her home is invaded by armed men, and she finds herself separated from her beloved husband and daughters... -
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... -
Putney by Sofka Zinovieff
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the spirit of Notes on a Scandal and Zoe Whittall's The Best Kind of People, an explosive, powerful and timely novel about the far-reaching repercussions of an illicit relationship between a young girl and a man twenty years her senior... -
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Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWake In Fright was first published in 1961 and the film version, The Outback, starring Donald Pleasance was released in 1971. Both the book and the film have achieved a cult status as the Australian answer to US and UK novels and films of 1960s youthful alienation... -
Secret Whispers by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThere's no place like home...On the eve of her graduation from an exclusive private school, shy wallflower Semantha Heavenstone is caught in a whirl of scandal and betrayal. Now, she's returned to the grand Kentucky mansion where painful memories of her mother and her older sister, Cassie, are as potent as newly mown bluegrass... -
Broken Glass by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThis second gothic novel in the dark Mirror Sisters trilogy continues the tale of sisterly love at its absolute worst—from the legendary New York Times bestselling author of Flowers in the Attic and My Sweet Audrina (now Lifetime movies). For fans of Ruth Ware (In a Dark, Dark Wood) and Liane Moriarty (The Husband’s Secret).Sisters until the end... Which may come sooner than they think... -
Beside the Sea by Véronique Olmi
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA single mother takes her two sons on a trip to the seaside. They stay in a hotel, drink hot chocolate, and go to the funfair. She wants to protect them from an uncaring and uncomprehending world. She knows that it will be the last trip for her boys... -
Silent Victim by Caroline Mitchell
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEmma’s darkest secrets are buried in the past. But the truth can’t stay hidden for long.Emma is a loving wife, a devoted mother…and an involuntary killer. For years she’s been hiding the dead body of the teacher who seduced her as a teen.It’s a secret that might have stayed buried if only her life had been less perfect... -
Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsA gripping thriller about three young girlfriends, a dark obsession and a chilling crime that shakes up a quiet Iowa town, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence .For twelve-year-old Cora Landry and her friends Violet and Jordyn, it was supposed to be an ordinary sleepover--movies and Ouija and talking about boys... -
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories by Carson McCullers
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers’s best stories, including her beloved novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café.” A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town’s gathering place... -
Me, Myself and Them by Dan Mooney
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA heart-wrenching, funny and fresh debut about human connection and the power of friendshipStruggling to cope with a tragic loss, Denis Murphy has, for the past seven years, learned to live differently. His friends are used to his strict routines, like ironing his socks and lighting his fireplace every Sunday (even in the summer)...Categorized as:
realistic social-commentary literary-fiction humor fiction mental-illness contemporary audiobook -
Mygale by Thierry Jonquet
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsRichard Lafargue is an eminent plastic surgeon haunted by dirty secrets. He has an operating theatre in the basement of his chateau and keeps his partner Eve imprisoned in her bedroom, a room he has equipped with an intercom and 300-watt speakers through which he bellows orders... -
The Best Girls by Min Jin Lee
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInspired by a true event, this powerful short story from the author of National Book Award finalist Pachinko explores the meaning of patriarchy and the cost of female silence through the eyes of a dutiful young girl.An excellent student from a poor, traditional family in Seoul, the narrator has absorbed the same message her whole life: Only a boy can provide the family with dignity and wealth... -
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The Necrophiliac by Gabrielle Wittkop
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFor more than three decades, Lucien — one of the most notorious characters in the history of the novel — has haunted the imaginations of readers around the world. Remarkably, the astounding protagonist of Gabrielle Wittkop’s lyrical 1972 novella, The Necrophiliac, has never appeared in English until now... -
Family Storms by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn the eye of the storm . . . Living on the streets with her destitute mother, selling knickknacks and trinkets just to survive, Sasha Porter dreams of someday having a normal life, with a real house and family... -
Broken Wings by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThree girls from different worlds with one thing in common: They were born to be wild. Robin...With a mom who's more absorbed in her singing career than in her own daughter, Robin's left to her own devices when the two move to Nashville. That's where her mom hopes to strike gold -- and where Robin finds nothing but trouble. Teal...This rich girl will do anything to get her parents' attention.. -
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFew novels have caused as much debate as Hubert Selby Jr.'s notorious masterpiece, Last Exit to Brooklyn, and this Penguin Modern Classics edition includes an introduction by Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting.Described by various reviewers as hellish and obscene, Last Exit to Brooklyn tells the stories of New Yorkers who at every turn confront the worst excesses in human nature... -
Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsFrom the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean...Categorized as:
dark drama humor literary-fiction realistic social-commentary transgressive-mc 20th-century -
Try Not to Breathe by Holly Seddon
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFor fans of Lianne Moriarty, Paula Hawkins, and Tana French, an arresting debut novel of psychological suspense: a young journalist struggles to keep the demons of her alcoholism at bay as she finds her purpose again in tackling the mystery of a shocking headline-making crime, still unsolved after fifteen years.Amy Stevenson was the biggest news story of 1995... -
Cloudburst by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe follow-up to Family Storms from New York Times bestselling author V.C. Andrews features high school senior Sasha Porter in search of her sister—but instead she learns secrets that could tear her family apart.Sasha is a popular senior in high school, with excellent grades and no more secrets to hide... -
Fake Like Me by Barbara Bourland
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhat really happened to Carey Logan?After a fire decimates her studio, including the seven billboard-size paintings for her next show, a young, no-name painter is left with an impossible task: recreate her art in three months - or ruin her fledgling career. Homeless and desperate, she flees to an exclusive retreat in upstate New York famous for its outrageous revelries and glamorous artists... -
Daughter by Kate McLaughlin
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsScarlet’s life is pretty average. Overly protective mom. Great friends. Cute boy she’s interested in. And a father she’s never known – until she does.When the FBI show up at Scarlet’s door, she is shocked to learn her father is infamous serial killer Jeffrey Robert Lake... -
Apt Pupil by Stephen King
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsTodd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's dark past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn't want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark drama literary-fiction realistic transgressive-mc 20th-century anthologies -
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You Don't Know Me by David Klass
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsJohn ("My father named me after a toilet!") wrestles with the certainty that no one really knows him—not in his miserable home, and certainly not at school. It's true that no one can guess his hidden thoughts, which are hilarious, razor-sharp observations about lust, love, tubas, algebra, everything... -
Period by Dennis Cooper
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe stunning conclusion to Dennis Cooper's five-book cycle, Period earned its author the accolade "a disquieting genius" by Vanity Fair and praise for his "elegant prose and literary lawlessness" by The New York Times... -
Roxy's Story by V.C. Andrews
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe thrilling sequel to "Forbidden Sister," featuring a high-priced escort whose goal is to reunite her sister with their relatives, but instead finds unexpected love. Kicked out of her house because her father can no longer tolerate her constant delinquency, Roxy wanders the streets of New York, living in a fleabag hotel... -
A Density of Souls by Christopher Rice
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA gripping and hauntingly atmospheric debut novel from Anne Rice's son. In the brooding milieu of New Orleans, four friends are about to recognise the fragile boundaries between loyalty and betrayal. Once inseparable, Meredith, Brandon, Stephen and Greg enter high school only to learn that their friendship cannot withstand the envy and rage of adolescence...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark drama gothic lgbtq literary-fiction southern-gothic transgressive-mc -
Stunden der Nacht by V.C. Andrews, Uschi Gnade
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsLillian's world is as thrilling as the fairy tales Mama spins for her and her little sister, Eugenia. No one, not even her cold, stern Papa and her Bible spouting sister Emily, can crush her spirits — until the day Emily reveals the shattering secret at Lillian's birth. Still Lillian refuses to believe Emily's hateful claim that she is evil, a curse... -
Melody by V.C. Andrews, Laurel Lefkow
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsMelody Logan knew her beautiful mother, Haille, was unhappy in their hardscrabble mining town....But with her wonderful father's unwavering love, Melody always felt safe until a dreadful mine accident ripped her from her family's moorings.She was still devastated by her father's death when she left West Virginia with Haille to follow her mother's dream of becoming a model or actress...
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