Books like 'A Drink Before the War'
Readers who enjoyed A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary mystery action / adventure 20th century horror thriller crime law-enforcement suspense noir
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Coffey's Hands by Stephen King
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWelcome back to E Block, the deadliest place this side of the electric chair, where assaults are a daily grind and miracles are about to happen. Paul Edgecombe has become increasingly curious about John Coffey, the brutal killer of two girls. But Coffey is about to reveal something extraordinary, and life on the Green Mile may never be the same again...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Different Seasons by Stephen King]()
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... -
![The Mouse on the Mile by Stephen King]()
The Mouse on the Mile by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsCold Mountain Penitentiary has been home to many troubled souls. E Block, where the electric chair waits for those who must pay the ultimate price, has been home to the most troubled of all. And here, not all the evil is behind bars. Sometimes it carries a gun and wears a badge.Cold Mountain is a place of the damned, but it can also be a place where salvation comes from the most unlikely source...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult animals audiobook -
![The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Kathy Bates]()
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Kathy Bates
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 80 ratingsHannibal Lecter. The ultimate villain of modern fiction who scared the world silent. A young FBI trainee. An evil genius locked away for unspeakable crimes. A plunge into the darkest chambers of a psychopath's mind -- in the deadly search for a serial killer . . .An instant classic of chilling psychological suspense . . . a critically acclaimed audio production of unforgettable intensity . .Categorized as:
crime dark law-enforcement police-procedural suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
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![It by Stephen King]()
It by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 90 ratingsWelcome to Derry, Maine ...It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness... -
![After the Fire by Will Hill]()
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 Waste Lands by Stephen King]()
The Waste Lands by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsSeveral months have passed, and Roland’s two new tet-mates have become proficient gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But while battling The Pusher in 1977 New York, Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s where and when—has already died... -
![Wizard and Glass by Stephen King]()
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsRoland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake’s pet bumbler survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, one that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, they hear the atonal squalling of a thinny, a place where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away... -
![The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King]()
The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsWhile pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters three mysterious doorways on the beach. Each one enters into the life of a different person living in contemporary New York... -
![The Body by Robin Waterfield, Stephen King]()
The Body by Robin Waterfield, Stephen King
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsFrom Different Seasons The Body, as a media tie-in for the movie starring River Phoenix, Kiefer Sutherland, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O'Connell...Categorized as:
crime dark historical-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
![Blindness by José Saramago]()
Blindness by José Saramago
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsFrom Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of lossA city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women... -
![The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies]()
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe complete volume of Robertson Davies's acclaimed trilogy, featuring Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Fifth Business Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics contemporary -
![Watchers by Dean Koontz]()
Watchers by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsOn his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life... -
![Misery by Stephen King]()
Misery by Stephen King
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsNovelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident... -
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![Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane]()
Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsMaster of new noir Dennis Lehane magnificently evokes the dignity and savagery of working-class Boston in Darkness, Take My Hand, a terrifying tale of redemption.Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro’s latest client is a prominent Boston psychiatrist, running scared from a vengeful Irish mob. The private investigators know about cold-blooded retribution... -
![Ubik by Philip K. Dick]()
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsGlen Runciter runs a lucrative business—deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation... -
![The Golden Apple by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson]()
The Golden Apple by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNausea, then microamnesia, then the laughing jag, then sex. Be patient. The clear light comes next. Then we can discuss Truth. As if we haven't been discussing it all along. -Hagbard Celine, The Golden Apple Illuminatus! Part II, from the original and genuine trilogy of conspiracies, is performed in all its unabridged brilliance by a full ensemble cast...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
![Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk]()
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsIt 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... -
![Crimson Rivers by Jean-Christophe Grangé]()
Crimson Rivers by Jean-Christophe Grangé
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA horrifically mutilated corpse is discovered wedged in an isolated crevice. The highly-regarded but unpredictable ex-commando Pierre NiTmans is sent from Paris to the French Alps to investigate. Meanwhile, Karim Abdouf, a young Arab policeman, is trying to find out why the tomb of a young child has been desecrated... -
![No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy]()
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... -
![The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King]()
The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsOmnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was... -
![The Talisman by Stephen King, Peter Straub]()
The Talisman by Stephen King, Peter Straub
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsOn a brisk autumn day, a twelve-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change...Categorized as:
dark suspense 20th-century action-adventure alternate-universe audiobook book classics -
![Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky]()
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... -
![Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh]()
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... -
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![Replay by Ken Grimwood]()
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...Categorized as:
historical-fiction male-mc suspense 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book -
![Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl]()
Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsA wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate... -
![Along Came a Spider by James Patterson]()
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... -
![Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker]()
Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy... -
![Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton]()
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 85 ratingsAn astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . -
![Vamphyri! by Brian Lumley]()
Vamphyri! by Brian Lumley
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNot the end of life, Harry Keogh discovered--and not the end of his battle against he terrible evil of vampires. — In a secluded English village, Yulian Bodescu plots his takeover of the world. Imbued with a vampire's powers before his birth, Bodescu rules men's minds and bodies with supernatural ease...Categorized as:
dark historical-fiction politics suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane]()
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsThe year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance... -
![Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky]()
Roadside Picnic by Arkady Strugatsky, Boris Strugatsky
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsRed Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products... -
![Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn]()
Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBeware of Helen... Heather is such a whiny little brat. Always getting Michael and me into trouble. But since our mother married her father, we're stuck with her ... our "poor stepsister" who lost her real mother in a mysterious fire. But now something terrible has happened... -
![If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon]()
If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsThis is a story of intrigue and revenge. Tracy Whitney is young, beautiful and intelligent - and about to marry into wealth and glamour. Until, suddenly, she is betrayed, framed by a ruthless Mafia gang, abandoned by the man she loves. Only her ingenuity saves her and helps her fight back...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement pulp suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
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![Thunderhead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child]()
Thunderhead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsSince the days of Coronado, explorers have been captivated by the search for Quivira, the fabled Lost City of Gold. Now, guided by a mysterious letter, archaeologist Nora Kelly is about to remount an expedition her father conducted 16 years earlier -- before mysteriously vanishing in the remote canyon country of southeast Utah...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement pulp suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
![Red Dragon by Thomas Harris]()
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsA second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened "The Tooth Fairy" Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement... -
![The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket]()
The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 52 ratingsDear Reader,I'm sorry to say that the book you are holding in your hands is extremely unpleasant. It tells an unhappy tale about three very unlucky children. Even though they are charming and clever, the Baudelaire siblings lead lives filled with misery and woe...Categorized as:
crime dark family historical-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
![Leviathan by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson]()
Leviathan by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences. - Hagbard Celine, LeviathanIlluminatus! Part III cheerfully ushers in the apocalyptic high-camp conclusion of the Illuminatus! Trilogy...Categorized as:
historical-fiction politics 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
![Les aventures de Johnny Dixon: Le crâne du sorcier by John Bellairs]()
Les aventures de Johnny Dixon: Le crâne du sorcier by John Bellairs
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen Johnny Dixon and his friend Professor Childermass discover an old heirloom clock, the terror begins. The professor suddenly vanishes, and Johnny is left to solve the mystery--alone.Inside the clock Johnny discovers a miniature room, a room exactly like the one in which a murder took place long ago. And from the inside the little room Johnny pockets a tiny skull with magical powers...Categorized as:
dark historical-fiction law-enforcement 20th-century action-adventure book children children-books -
![The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur]()
The Secret of Terror Castle by Robert Arthur
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFinding a genuine haunted house for a movie set sounds like fun -- and a great way to generate publicity for the Three Investigators' new detective agency...Categorized as:
crime law-enforcement 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children children-books -
![Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman]()
Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNavajo Tribal Police Officer Jim Chee and Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn investigate murders that lead them into spine-tingling and mystical world of Navajo witchcraft. Three unsolved homicides and an attempt on Chee's life have left the Navajo Tribal Police baffled...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction law-enforcement noir police-procedural suspense thriller 20th-century -
![From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang]()
From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsTwelve cassettes, 21 hrs.Read by Stephen Lang Bartholomew Lampion is born in Bright Beach, California, on a day of tragedy and terror, when the lives of everyone in his family are changed forever. Remarkable events accompany his birth, and everyone agrees that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen... -
![Killing Floor by Lee Child, Dick Hill]()
Killing Floor by Lee Child, Dick Hill
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 73 ratings3 Compact Discs / 3 hoursWhen Jack Reacher suddenly decides to ask a Greyhound bus driver to let him off near the town of Margrave, Georgia, he thinks it's because his brother once mentioned that the famed blues guitarist Blind Blake died there... -
![When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman]()
When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsThe first Alex Delaware novel. It's a good one!We meet Dr. Morton Handler who practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible witness: seven-year-old Melody Quinn.Psychologist Dr...Categorized as:
crime law-enforcement police-procedural suspense whodunit thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
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![Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson]()
Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsDetective Alex Cross is back-and he's in love. But his happiness is threatened by a series of chilling murders in Washington, D.C., murders with a pattern so twisted they leave investigators reeling. Cross's pursuit of the killer produces a suspect, a British diplomat named Geoffrey Shafer. But proving he's the murderer becomes a potentially deadly task...Categorized as:
crime hard-boiled law-enforcement police-procedural suspense whodunit thriller 20th-century -
![Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child]()
Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsWhen police find two skeletons locked in a bony embrace deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, Natural History Museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid in the investigation. She soon realizes that the expertise the cops want is the result of her ordeal last year, battling the horrific beast loose in the basement corridors of the Museum...Categorized as:
crime law-enforcement police-procedural suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko]()
Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsThe second in a blockbuster series of novels from Russia's most popular science fiction author, Day Watch brings us back into the hyperimaginative world of Sergei Lukyanenko and continues the dramatic battle between good and evil, light and dark, day and night... -
![The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges]()
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsJorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious... -
![Cat & Mouse by James Patterson]()
Cat & Mouse by James Patterson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsIn this New York Times bestseller, two killers-one operating in America, one in Europe-believe Alex Cross is the only worthy opponent in the deadly game each has planned. Gary Soneji, a dying prison escapee, is looking for revenge on Cross, while another insane killer is pursued by Thomas Augustine Pierce-a brilliant and relentless detective who may even be better than Cross...Categorized as:
crime law-enforcement police-procedural suspense whodunit thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
![Relic by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child]()
Relic by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsJust days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders...Categorized as:
crime dark historical-fiction law-enforcement suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure
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