Books like 'The Lost Boy'

Readers who enjoyed The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

contemporary  psychological  horror  action / adventure  survival  sad  family  drama  true-crime  children 

  • Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 67 ratings
    From 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...
  • Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan

    Finding Claire Fletcher by Lisa Regan

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In the first book in bestselling author Lisa Regan’s new series, a one-night stand sets a detective on the trail of a terrifying unsolved crime.With his career on thin ice and fresh ink on his divorce papers, Sacramento PD Detective Connor Parks goes searching for solace at the bottom of a bottle…and winds up in the arms of a beautiful woman...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  abuse  action-adventure  adult
  • After the Fire by Will Hill

    After the Fire by Will Hill

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The 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 Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

    The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    A gripping and emotional novel that will leave you wondering about the neighbors next door...On a cold January night, Sharon Lemke heads outside to see a lunar eclipse when she notices something odd at the house behind her backyard. Through her neighbor's kitchen window, she sees what appears to be a little girl washing dishes late at night...
  • Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

    Killman Creek by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    Every time Gwen closed her eyes, she saw him in her nightmares. Now her eyes are open, and he’s not going away.Gwen Proctor won the battle to save her kids from her ex-husband, serial killer Melvin Royal, and his league of psychotic accomplices. But the war isn’t over. Not since Melvin broke out of prison. Not since she received a chilling text…You’re not safe anywhere now...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  abuse  action-adventure  adult
  • Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Andy Weir

    Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Andy Weir

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 87 ratings
    Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.- - -'Are you happy in your life?'Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious...
  • A Killer's Mind by Mike Omer

    A Killer's Mind by Mike Omer

    Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars
    · 32 ratings
    A chilling thriller of serial murder and dark secrets that will leave you wondering, is the past really in the past?Three Chicago women have been found strangled, embalmed, and posed as if still alive. Doubting the findings of the local PD’s profiler, The FBI calls on forensic psychologist Zoe Bentley to investigate...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  realistic  action-adventure  adult  audiobook  book
  • Find Her by Lisa Gardner

    Find Her by Lisa Gardner

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    Lisa Gardner's runaway New York Times bestseller--a fast-paced thrill ride featuring Detective D. D. Warren. Seven years ago, carefree college student Flora Dane was kidnapped while on spring break. For 472 days, Flora learned just how much one person can endure...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  abuse  action-adventure  adult
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

    The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 101 ratings
    Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of iniquity and corruption...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  21st-century  abuse
  • These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant

    These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    No 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...
  • The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

    The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A woman being held captive is willing to risk everything to save herself, her unborn child, and her captor’s latest victim in this claustrophobic thriller in the tradition of Misery and Room. On an isolated farm in the United Kingdom, a woman is trapped by the monster who kidnapped her seven years ago...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  survival  fiction  mystery  suspense  horror
  • Small Spaces by Sarah Epstein

    Small Spaces by Sarah Epstein

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    We don’t pick and choose what to be afraid of. Our fears pick us.Tash Carmody has been traumatised since childhood, when she witnessed her gruesome imaginary friend Sparrow lure young Mallory Fisher away from a carnival. At the time nobody believed Tash, and she has since come to accept that Sparrow wasn’t real. Now fifteen and mute, Mallory’s never spoken about the week she went missing...
  • When Smiles Fade by Paige Dearth

    When Smiles Fade by Paige Dearth

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Alternate cover edition.ASIN: B00B8XPVL6Young Emma Murphy kills people, but only if they deserve to die.Emma's father's coldblooded beatings and the ultimate abuse to which he subjects her, lays the foundation of the person she becomes. As she matures into a resourceful teenager, she is unwilling and unable to stifle her desire for revenge...
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. Inspired by his doctor's exasperated remark that insomnia is not suffering, the protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups. Then he meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy...
  • Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga

    Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 21 ratings
    Jazz Dent has never been closer to catching his father.Jazz has been shot and left to die in New York. His girlfriend, Connie, is in the clutches of Jazz's monstrous father, Billy--the world's most notorious serial killer. And his best friend, Howie, is bleeding to death on the floor of Jazz's new home...
  • No Exit by Taylor Adams

    No Exit by Taylor Adams

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 44 ratings
    A brilliant, edgy thriller about four strangers, a blizzard, a kidnapped child, and a determined young woman desperate to unmask and outwit a vicious psychopath.A kidnapped little girl locked in a stranger’s van. No help for miles. What would you do?On her way to Utah to see her dying mother, college student Darby Thorne gets caught in a fierce blizzard in the mountains of Colorado...
  • The Last Child by John Hart

    The Last Child by John Hart

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Thirteen year-old Johnny Merrimon had the perfect life: a warm home and loving parents; a twin sister, Alyssa, with whom he shared an irreplaceable bond. He knew nothing of loss, until the day Alyssa vanished from the side of a lonely street. Now, a year later, Johnny finds himself isolated and alone, failed by the people he'd been taught since birth to trust...
    Categorized as:
    children  coming-of-age  crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  abuse
  • The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

    The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    Two girls are forced into the woods at gunpoint. One runs for her life. One is left behind.Twenty-eight years ago, Charlotte and Samantha Quinn's happy small-town family life was torn apart by a terrifying attack on their family home. It left their mother dead. It left their father—Pikeville's notorious defense attorney—devastated...
  • Game by Barry Lyga

    Game by Barry Lyga

    Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Billy grinned. “Oh, New York,” he whispered. “We’re gonna have so much fun.”I Hunt Killers introduced the world to Jazz, the son of history’s most infamous serial killer, Billy Dent.In an effort to prove murder didn’t run in the family, Jazz teamed with the police in the small town of Lobo’s Nod to solve a deadly case...
  • Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

    Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    Brace 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...
  • Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    What 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...
  • Devils Within by S.F. Henson

    Devils Within by S.F. Henson

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    Killing isn’t supposed to be easy. But it is. It’s the after that’s hard to deal with.Nate was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces—a prize for spilling blood for “the cause...
  • This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

    This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Five went in. Four came out.No one knows what happened that morning at River Point. Five boys went hunting. Four came back. The boys won’t say who fired the shot that killed their friend; the evidence shows it could have been any one of them...
  • Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher

    Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    When reclusive novelist Senna Richards wakes up on her thirty-third birthday, everything has changed. Caged behind an electrical fence, locked in a house in the middle of the snow, Senna is left to decode the clues to find out why she was taken. If she wants her freedom, she has to take a close look at her past. But, her past has a heartbeat... and her kidnapper is nowhere to be found...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  realistic  sad  survival  abuse  action-adventure
  • The Blackhouse by Peter May

    The Blackhouse by Peter May

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    A brutal killing takes place on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland: a land of harsh beauty and inhabitants of deep-rooted faith.A MURDERDetective Inspector Fin Macleod is sent from Edinburgh to investigate. For Lewis-born Macleod, the case represents a journey both home and into his past.A SECRETSomething lurks within the close-knit island community. Something sinister...
  • Room by Emma Donoghue

    Room by Emma Donoghue

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 85 ratings
    To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world....Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible.To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play...
  • I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

    I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn't have prevented it. Could she?In a split second, Jenna Gray's world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from everything she knows to start afresh...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  grief  realistic  survival  21st-century
  • The Tywi Estuary Killings by John Nicholl

    The Tywi Estuary Killings by John Nicholl

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    Is it revenge or is it justice?DI Gravel is supposed to be on mandatory leave, but when a severed head washes up on the estuary beach his holiday is cut short. Back on the job, he’s shocked when the case leads him to the victim from an old caseSeventeen years ago, the system failed Rebecca. They let the abuser of a six-year-old girl walk free...
  • The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

    The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    “Take her out back and finish her off.”She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know where she is, or why. All she knows when she comes to in a ransacked cabin is that there are two men arguing over whether or not to kill her.And that she must run.In her riveting style, April Henry crafts a nail-biting thriller involving murder, identity theft, and biological warfare...
  • Dear Child: A Novel by Romy Hausmann

    Dear Child: A Novel by Romy Hausmann

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    A woman held captive finally escapes—but can she ever really get away?Gone Girl meets Room in this page-turning, #1 internationally bestselling thriller from one of Germany’s hottest new talentsA windowless shack in the woods. A dash to safety. But when a woman finally escapes her captor, the end of the story is only the beginning of her nightmare.She says her name is Lena...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  survival  abuse  action-adventure  adult
  • Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    Wake up, genius. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising...
  • The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent

    The Stillwater Girls by Minka Kent

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 29 ratings
    Two sisters raised in fear are about to find out why in a chilling novel of psychological suspense from the author of The Thinnest Air.Ignorant of civilization and cautioned against its evils, nineteen-year-old Wren and her two sisters, Sage and Evie, were raised in off-the-grid isolation in a primitive cabin in upstate New York...
  • The Woods by Harlan Coben

    The Woods by Harlan Coben

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    Twenty years ago at summer camp, Paul Copeland's sister died in the woods, the alleged victim of a serial killer. Her body was never found. Now, Paul is the prosecutor for Essex County, New Jersey, immersed in one of the biggest cases of his career-a case that will change everything he believes about the past...and the truth...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  action-adventure  adult  audiobook  book
  • Deadly Little Games by Laurie Faria Stolarz

    Deadly Little Games by Laurie Faria Stolarz

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    High school juniors Camelia and Ben have discovered a powerful bond: They both possess the power of psychometry, the ability to see the future through touch. For Ben, the gift is a frightening liability. When he senses a strong threat or betrayal, he risks losing control. Camelia's gift is more mysterious. When she works with clay, her hands sculpt messages her mind doesn't yet comprehend...
  • The Tied Man by Tabitha McGowan

    The Tied Man by Tabitha McGowan

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    An alternate cover edition for this ASIN can be found here. Lilith Bresson, an independent, successful young artist, is forced to travel from her home in Spain to the wild borderlands of northern England, to repay her feckless father’s latest debt by painting a portrait of the enigmatic Lady Blaine Albermarle...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  realistic  sad  survival  abuse  action-adventure
  • Right Behind You by Gail Giles

    Right Behind You by Gail Giles

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    When he was nine, Kip set another child on fire. Now, after years in a juvenile ward, he is ready for a fresh start. But the ghosts of his past soon demand justice, and he must reveal his painful secret...
  • Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

    Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    She'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...
  • The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood

    The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud by Ben Sherwood

    Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars
    · 50 ratings
    The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud tells the haunting story of a young man who narrowly survives a terrible car wreck that kills his little brother. Years later, the brothers’ bond remains so strong that it transcends the normal boundaries separating life and death. Charlie St. Cloud lives in a snug New England fishing village...
  • Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

    Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 38 ratings
    On the day she was abducted, Annie O’Sullivan, a 32-year-old realtor, had three goals - sell a house, forget about a recent argument with her mother, and be on time for dinner with her ever-patient boyfriend. The open house is slow, but when her last visitor pulls up in a van as she's about to leave, Annie thinks it just might be her lucky day after all...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  sad  survival  abuse
  • Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon

    Tell Me Your Dreams by Sidney Sheldon

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    She had read about stalkers, but they belonged in a different, faraway world. She had no idea who it could be, who would want to harm her. She was trying desperately not to panic, but lately her sleep had been filled with nightmares, and she had awakened each morning with a feeling of impending doom.Thus begins Sidney Sheldon's chilling new novel, Tell Me Your Dreams...
  • No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke one morning to discover that her entire family, mother, father, brother had vanished. No note, no trace, no return. Ever. Now, twenty-five years later, she'll learn the devastating truthSometimes better not to know. . . Cynthia is happily married with a young daughter, a new family. But the story of her old family isn't over...
  • Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

    Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Eleven years ago, Lindsey Nash escaped into the night with her young daughter and left an abusive relationship. Her ex-husband, Andrew, was sent to jail and Lindsey started over with a new life.Now, Lindsey is older and wiser, with her own business and a teenage daughter who needs her more than ever...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  grief  realistic  survival  abuse
  • Don't Look For Me by Wendy Walker

    Don't Look For Me by Wendy Walker

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    "In Wendy Walker's thrilling novel Don't Look for Me, the greatest risk isn’t running away. It’s running out of time.One night, Molly Clarke walked away from her life.She doesn't want to be found.Or at least, that's the story.The car abandoned miles from home.The note found at a nearby hotel.The shattered family that couldn’t be put back together.They called it a “walk away...
  • Obitelj s gornjeg kata by Lisa Jewell

    Obitelj s gornjeg kata by Lisa Jewell

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    An 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...
    Categorized as:
    coming-of-age  crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  survival  abuse
  • The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes

    The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A hard-hitting and hopeful story about the dangers of blind faith—and the power of having faith in yourself The Kevinian cult has taken everything from seventeen-year-old Minnow: twelve years of her life, her family, her ability to trust. And when she rebelled, they took away her hands, too...
    Categorized as:
    coming-of-age  crime  dark  drama  family  realistic  survival  abuse
  • I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

    I Hunt Killers by Barry Lyga

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    What if the world's worst serial killer...was your dad?Jasper "Jazz" Dent is a likable teenager. A charmer, one might say.But he's also the son of the world's most infamous serial killer, and for Dear Old Dad, Take Your Son to Work Day was year-round. Jazz has witnessed crime scenes the way cops wish they could—from the criminal's point of view.And now bodies are piling up in Lobo's Nod...
  • Nearly Gone by Elle Cosimano

    Nearly Gone by Elle Cosimano

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Keeping secrets is second nature to Nearly Boswell. Living in a trailer park outside Washington, DC, with a mom who works as an exotic dancer, she knows better than to share anything that would make her a target with her classmates...
  • Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf

    Dead Girls Don't Lie by Jennifer Shaw Wolf

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Rachel died at two a.m . . . Three hours after Skyler kissed me for the first time. Forty-five minutes after she sent me her last text. Jaycee and Rachel were best friends. But that was before. . .before that terrible night at the old house. Before Rachel shut Jaycee out. Before Jaycee chose Skyler over Rachel. Then Rachel is found dead...
  • Dead Woman Walking by Sharon J. Bolton

    Dead Woman Walking by Sharon J. Bolton

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    In Dead Woman Walking, from master of suspense Sharon Bolton, the sole survivor of a hot-air balloon crash witnesses a murder as the balloon is falling.Just before dawn in the hills near the Scottish border, a man murders a young woman. At the same time, a hot-air balloon crashes out of the sky. There's just one survivor. She's seen the killer's face - but he's also seen hers...
  • How to Lead a Life of Crime by Kirsten Miller

    How to Lead a Life of Crime by Kirsten Miller

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 17 ratings
    A meth dealer. A prostitute. A serial killer.Anywhere else, they’d be vermin. At the Mandel Academy, they’re called prodigies. The most exclusive school in New York City has been training young criminals for over a century. Only the most ruthless students are allowed to graduate. The rest disappear.Flick, a teenage pickpocket, has risen to the top of his class...
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