Books like 'The Orchard Keeper'
Readers who enjoyed The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical 20th century horror psychological action / adventure gothic southern-gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction classics
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult]()
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome stories live forever . . .Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship...Categorized as:
crime dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century 21st-century -
![And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie]()
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 86 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
![And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie]()
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 87 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
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![Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Cindy Sheehan]()
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo, Cindy Sheehan
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAn immediate bestseller upon its original publication in 1939, Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo is a searing portrayal of war that has stunned and galvanized generations of readers...Categorized as:
classics dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics satire 20th-century -
![Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith]()
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw... -
![Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler]()
Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSomething has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction politics suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult apocalyptic -
![More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz]()
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsAll those who enjoyed shuddering their way through Alvin Schwartz's first volume of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark will find a satisfyingly spooky sequel in this new collection of the macabre, the funny, and the fantastic... -
![Qb VII by Leon Uris]()
Qb VII by Leon Uris
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsIn Queen’s Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust—born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration Camp was the site of his family’s extermination—Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga’s most sadistic inmate/doctors...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics suspense 20th-century -
![Human Acts by Han Kang, Alba Cunill Fulquet]()
Human Acts by Han Kang, Alba Cunill Fulquet
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, a rare and astonishing (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed...Categorized as:
dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
![A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving]()
A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEmily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age dark drama gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction southern-gothic -
![The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon]()
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsAs compelling and disturbing as when it was first published in the midst of the Cold War, The Manchurian Candidate continues to enthrall readers with its electrifying action and shocking climax....Sgt. Raymond Shaw is a hero of the first order. He's an ex-prisoner of war who saved the life of his entire outfit, a winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor, the stepson of an influential senator.. -
![Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald]()
Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHow far would you go to save your family? In John D. MacDonald's iconic masterwork of suspense, the inspiration for not one but two Hollywood hits, a mild-mannered family is tormented by an obsessed criminal--and with the authorities powerless to protect them, they must take the law into their own hands... -
![The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin]()
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAlive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed... -
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![The Plague by Albert Camus]()
The Plague by Albert Camus
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsA gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people...Categorized as:
classics dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft]()
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsOne of the feature stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft's 'the Call of Cthulhu' is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world... -
![The Alienist by Caleb Carr]()
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsWhen The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.The year is 1896. The city is New York... -
![The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy]()
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale set in a war-torn world. In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century -
![The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima]()
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, celebrated Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima creates a haunting and vivid portrait of a young man’s obsession with idealized beauty and his destructive quest to possess it fully.Mizoguchi, an ostracized stutterer, develops a childhood fascination with Kyoto’s famous Golden Temple... -
![The Bad Seed (P.S.) by William March]()
The Bad Seed (P.S.) by William March
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNow reissued – William March's 1954 classic thriller that's as chilling, intelligent and timely as ever before. This paperback reissue includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested reading and more.What happens to ordinary families into whose midst a child serial killer is born? This is the question at the center of William March's classic thriller... -
![The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier]()
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBy chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared... -
![The Last Man Alive by A.S. Neill]()
The Last Man Alive by A.S. Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe adventures of a group who survived a poisonous cloud that turned everyone else into stone... -
![The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick]()
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsIn the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the drug Can-D, which enables users to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z... -
![The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr]()
The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIn The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr brings back the vivid world of his bestselling The Alienist but with a twist: this story is told by the former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has given him wisdom beyond his years. Thus New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew. It is June 1897. A year has passed since Dr...Categorized as:
crime dark drama historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction suspense 20th-century -
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![Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle]()
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsBefore you see the movie, read the original novel! First published more than thirty-five years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history, from the classic 1968 movie starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, through four sequels and two television series . . . and now the newest film adaptation directed by Tim Burton...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley]()
The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLiving decades apart, two women get caught in the web of an infamous serial killer. In 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, a madman hunts his victims through the hobo jungles of Cleveland, terrorizing the city...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones]()
Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Chilling . . . A neo-gothic treat; original, richly imagined, and powerfully told." --The Guardian (UK) for The String Diaries See the girl. Leah Wilde is twenty-four, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town... -
![The Castle by Franz Kafka]()
The Castle by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsTranslated and with a preface by Mark HarmanLeft unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle... -
![Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Lights On by Alfred Hitchcock, Roald Dahl]()
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Lights On by Alfred Hitchcock, Roald Dahl
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:Introduction by Alfred HitchcockDeath Out of Season by Mary BarrettWitness in the Dark by Fredric BrownShadows on the Road by Robert ColbyMr. Mappin Forecloses by Zena CollierGranny by Ron GoulartThe Landlady by Roald DahlThree Ways to Rob a Bank by Harold R. DanielsNo Loose Ends by Miriam Allen deFordGoodbye, Pops by Joe GoresPin Money by James CrossSocial Climber by Robert J... -
![The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell]()
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThe Most Dangerous Game features a big-game hunter from New York who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat... -
![Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee]()
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsFor decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war...Categorized as:
classics dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure -
![Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo, Helen Oyeyemi]()
Thus Were Their Faces by Silvina Ocampo, Helen Oyeyemi
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAn NYRB Classics OriginalSilvina Ocampo is undoubtedly one of the twentieth century’s great masters of the short story. Italo Calvino once said about her, “I don’t know another writer who better captures the magic inside everyday rituals, the forbidden or hidden face that our mirrors don’t show us...Categorized as:
classics dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
![Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen]()
Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA beautiful violinist is haunted by a very old piece of music she finds in a strange antique shop in Rome. The first time Julia Ansdell picks up The Incendio Waltz, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence...Categorized as:
crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
![The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell]()
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNamed one of the "100 Best Books of the Decade" by The Times of London "Oh my human brothers, let me tell you how it happened." A former Nazi officer, Dr. Maximilien Aue has reinvented himself, many years after the war, as a middle-class family man and factory owner in France...Categorized as:
classics dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century 21st-century -
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![The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński]()
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosiński
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA harrowing story that follows the wanderings of a boy abandoned by his parents during World War II, The Painted Bird is a dark novel that examines the proximity of terror and savagery to innocence and love...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century abuse -
![The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont]()
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWho Knows What Evil Lurks in the Hearts of Men?Take a journey back to the desperate days of America post the Great Depression, when the country turned to the pulp novels for relief, for hope and for heroes. Meet Walter Gibson, the mind behind The Shadow, and Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage, as they challenge one another to discover what is real and what is pulp... -
![Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons]()
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsTHE PAST... Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves...THE PRESENT..Categorized as:
classics crime dark gothic historical-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
![Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick]()
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsJason Tavener woke up one morning to find himself completely unknown. The night before he had been the top-rated television star with millions of devoted watchers. The next day he was just an unidentified walking object, whose face nobody recognised, of whom no one had heard, and without the I.D. papers required in that near future...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![House of Stairs by William Sleator]()
House of Stairs by William Sleator
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsOne by one, five sixteen-year-old orphans are brought to a strange building. It is not a prison, not a hospital; it has no walls, no ceiling, no floor. Nothing but endless flights of stairs leading nowhere, except back to a strange red machine. The five must learn to love the machine and let it rule their lives... -
![The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood]()
The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlgernon Blackwood's classic tale, The Wendigo. An influential novella by one of the most best-known writers of fantasy and horror, set in a place and time Blackwood knew well...Categorized as:
classics dark gothic historical-fiction industrial-era literary-fiction rural suspense -
![La Chambre forte by D.M. Pulley, Laure Valentin]()
La Chambre forte by D.M. Pulley, Laure Valentin
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 26 ratings2014 Winner — Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award — Grand Prize and Mystery & Thriller Fiction Winner It’s 1998, and for years the old First Bank of Cleveland has sat abandoned, perfectly preserved, its secrets only speculated on by the outside world...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult amateur-sleuth audiobook -
![The Body Snatchers (Stephen King Horror Library) by Jack Finney, Stephen King]()
The Body Snatchers (Stephen King Horror Library) by Jack Finney, Stephen King
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsThis edition of Finney's horror classic contains an introduction by Stephen King as well as a modernized text... -
![Mischling by Affinity Konar]()
Mischling by Affinity Konar
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPearl is in charge of: the sad, the good, the past.Stasha must care for: the funny, the future, the bad.It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood... -
![Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac]()
Vertigo by Boileau-Narcejac
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsTrans. from the French "D'entre les Morts" by Geoffrey Sainsbury. First published as "The Living and the Dead" in Great Britain in 1956...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
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![Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown]()
Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAt once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire...Categorized as:
classics crime humor literary-fiction politics suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
![Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Wanda McCaddon]()
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, Wanda McCaddon
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe coachman tried to warn her away from the ruined, forbidding place on the rainswept Cornish coast. But young Mary Yellan chose instead to honor her mother's dying request that she join her frightened Aunt Patience and huge, hulking Uncle Joss Merlyn at Jamaica Inn. From her first glimpse on that raw November eve, she could sense the inn's dark power... -
![Midnight by Dean Koontz]()
Midnight by Dean Koontz
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsDean Koontz, the bestselling master of suspense, invites you into the shocking world of Moonlight Cove--where four unlikely survivors confront the darkest realms of human nature.The citizens of Moonlight Cove, California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their deepest emotions. Others are surrendering to their wildest urges... -
![The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans]()
The Darkroom of Damocles by Willem Frederik Hermans
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsDuring the German occupation of Holland, tobacconist Henri Osewoudt is visited by Dorbeck. Dorbeck is Osewoudt's spitting image in reverse. Henri is blond and beardless, with a high voice; Dorbeck is dark-haired, and his voice deep.Dorbeck gives Osewoudt a series of dangerous assignments: helping British agents and eliminating traitors. But the assassinations get out of hand..Categorized as:
classics crime historical-fiction literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
![Dawn by Elie Wiesel]()
Dawn by Elie Wiesel
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsElisha is a young Jewish man, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli freedom fighter in British-controlled Palestine; John Dawson is the captured English officer he will murder at dawn in retribution for the British execution of a fellow freedom fighter. The night-long wait for morning and death provides Dawn, Elie Wiesel's ever more timely novel, with its harrowingly taut, hour-by-hour narrative...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
![Day by Elie Wiesel]()
Day by Elie Wiesel
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"Not since Albert Camus has there been such an eloquent spokesman for man." --The New York Times Book ReviewThe publication of Day restores Elie Wiesel's original title to the novel initially published in English as The Accident and clearly establishes it as the powerful conclusion to the author's classic trilogy of Holocaust literature, which includes his memoir Night and novel Dawn...Categorized as:
classics drama historical-fiction literary-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure audiobook
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