Books like 'When These Mountains Burn'

Readers who enjoyed When These Mountains Burn by David Joy also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

contemporary  mystery  thriller  crime  gothic  southern-gothic  literary-fiction  rural  noir  indigenous-mc 

  • Aue by Becky Manawatu

    Aue by Becky Manawatu

    Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    WINNER OF THE JANN MEDLICOTT ACORN PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE MITOQ BEST FIRST BOOK OF FICTIONWINNER OF THE NGAIO MARSH AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVELauē (verb) to cry, howl, groan, wail, bawl. (interjection) expression of astonishment or distress.Taukiri was born into sorrow...
  • Lost Angels by Stacy Green

    Lost Angels by Stacy Green

    Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    When Special Agent Nikki Hunt is called to the Boundary Waters near Stillwater, Minnesota, it’s not just the cold that shocks her to her core: the body of a young woman has been found frozen beside a remote lake...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  family  noir  suspense  thriller  adult  book
  • Mine to Hold by Ashley Nicole

    Mine to Hold by Ashley Nicole

    Rated: 4.63 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    For years, she maintained her composure and played the role of dutiful wife as her husband lied and cheated with more women than he could count. Now, Janie is fed up and ready to call it quits, but he wants to hold on. As secrets are revealed, Janie realizes her husband’s double life may just cost her own...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  poc-mc  suspense  adult  black-mc  book  contemporary
  • The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

    The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    A four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl goes missing from the blueberry fields of Maine, sparking a tragic mystery that haunts the survivors, unravels a community, and remains unsolved for nearly fifty years.July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes...
  • The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

    The Glass Rainbow by James Lee Burke

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    James Lee Burke's eagerly awaited new novel finds Detective Dave Robicheaux back in New Iberia, Louisiana, and embroiled in the most harrowing and dangerous case of his career. Seven young women in neighboring Jefferson Davis Parish have been brutally murdered...
  • I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay

    I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    William Gay established himself as "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit" (Esquire) with his debut novel, The Long Home, and his highly acclaimed follow-up, Provinces of Night. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls...
  • The Stepchild by Nicole Trope

    The Stepchild by Nicole Trope

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    Three-year-old Millie Everleigh disappears on a crisp winter’s day, and nothing is as it seems…It’s the phone call every mother dreads.I’m climbing into the car after a trip to the grocery store. As the engine starts, my phone rings. It’s my stepdaughter, Shelby, who is babysitting my three-year-old little girl Millie.‘I only went upstairs for a second,’ she says through her sobs. ‘She’s gone...
  • Tangled Web by Wendy Saunders

    Tangled Web by Wendy Saunders

    Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Cassandra Grayson leads a quiet life managing a library in Queens, NY. There's only one thing missing... her sister.Cassandra hasn't seen her sister since the night their wealthy, prominent father died from a massive heart attack. She had only been five years old at the time and can barely recall the events of that night...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  suspense  adult  book  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • Heaven's Keep by William Kent Krueger, Buck Schirner

    Heaven's Keep by William Kent Krueger, Buck Schirner

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    When a charter plane carrying Cork O’Connor’s wife, Jo, goes missing in a snowstorm over the Wyoming Rockies, Cork must accept the terrible truth that his wife is gone forever. But is she? In Heaven’s Keep, celebrated author William Kent Krueger puts his intrepid hero through the most harrowing mission of his life...
  • Faceless by Martina Cole

    Faceless by Martina Cole

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Eleven years ago Marie Carter was convicted of killing her two best friends. And she's paid the price. Now she is being released from prison. It's time to go home. But life has moved on, and Marie has nowhere to go. Her parents have disowned her; her friends have abandoned her; even her kids don't want to know...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  suspense  thriller  book  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • The Brighton Mermaid by Dorothy Koomson

    The Brighton Mermaid by Dorothy Koomson

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Brighton Beach, 1993Teenagers Nell and Jude find the body of a young woman and when no one comes to claim her, she becomes known as the Brighton Mermaid. Nell is still struggling to move on when, three weeks later, Jude disappears.Twenty-five years on, Nell is forced to quit her job to find out who the Brighton Mermaid really was - and what happened to her best friend that summer...
    Categorized as:
    crime  family  poc-mc  suspense  thriller  adult  book  contemporary
  • La casa delle voci by Donato Carrisi

    La casa delle voci by Donato Carrisi

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Pietro Gerber non è uno psicologo come gli altri. La sua specializzazione è l'ipnosi e i suoi pazienti hanno una cosa in comune: sono bambini. Pietro è il migliore di tutta Firenze, dove è conosciuto come l'addormentatore di bambini. Ma quando riceve una telefonata da parte di una collega australiana che gli raccomanda una paziente, Pietro reagisce con perplessità e diffidenza...
    Categorized as:
    crime  noir  suspense  thriller  adult  audiobook  book  contemporary
  • The Baltimore Boys by Joël Dicker

    The Baltimore Boys by Joël Dicker

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Swiss Sensation Joel Dicker's compulsive follow-up to the phenomenally bestselling The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair...
  • Discord by Drethi Anis

    Discord by Drethi Anis

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 7 ratings
    Brandon: The unthinkable happened; a possibility I had been avoiding my entire life. I should give her up but leaving her behind was no longer an option. Mia: Brandon Cooper was bad news; plain and simple. I should have been scared straight and sworn off my previous obsession. Instead, I turned to him during a vulnerable moment, only to spark his sinful ways all over again...
    Categorized as:
    dark  family  gothic  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • The Insider by Craig Schaefer

    The Insider by Craig Schaefer

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    Move over, Jack Reacher and Kinsey Millhone: cast-iron bodyguard Charlie McCabe is back in Craig Schaefer’s gritty sequel to The Loot.Hard-bitten bodyguard Charlie McCabe is lucky to be alive after her recent foray into Boston's criminal underworld...
  • The List by Velvet Vaughn

    The List by Velvet Vaughn

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    From the author of The Fan and Committed is the first romantic suspense novel in the COBRA Securities series. The List is an intriguing mixture of pulse-pounding suspense and sizzling passion. It was just supposed to be a game... What started out as a harmless game between friends has turned deadly real. Fourteen men are dead, all from apparent accidents...
    Categorized as:
    crime  suspense  thriller  adult  book  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • The Devils' Cradle by Darcy Daniel

    The Devils' Cradle by Darcy Daniel

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    On Australia’s island state, more than one species of Tasmanian Devil exists... Beneath the surface of Nina Holt’s perfect marriage lurks a life of terror inflicted upon her by her politically powerful husband Michael and his brother Greg, a sadistic detective. For over a decade they have managed to keep Nina imprisoned, using her to satisfy their every whim...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  suspense  thriller  abuse  adult  book
  • Hell's Half Acre by Will Christopher Baer

    Hell's Half Acre by Will Christopher Baer

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    Kidnapping, snuff films, amputee geeks and a requiem of lost love.Cast adrift after the blood symphony of Penny Dreadful, Phineas Poe is looking for answers in the form of a woman. He tracks Jude to San Francisco, where he finds her involved with John Ransom Miller, a wealthy sociopath with a mysterious hold over her...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  family  noir  suspense  thriller  book  children-books
  • Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte

    Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Nearing fifty, Joe Ransom won't slow down, not in his pickup, not with a gun-and certainly not with women. But all the fast living in Mississippi won't fill the hunger Joe can't name. At fifteen, Gary Jones is already slipping through the cracks. Part of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, he's desperate for a way out. He finds it in Joe...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  gothic  literary-fiction  noir  rural
  • Father and Son by Larry Brown

    Father and Son by Larry Brown

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    This classic story of good and evil takes place in the rural American South of 1968. After being released from prison, Glen Davis returns to his hometown only to commit double homicide within forty-eight hours of his return...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  gothic  literary-fiction  noir  rural
  • The Silent Girl by Michael Hjorth, Hans Rosenfeldt

    The Silent Girl by Michael Hjorth, Hans Rosenfeldt

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    An idyllic white, two-storey, beautiful house in Sweden. Inside, a family has been brutally murdered – mother, father and two young children all shot in broad daylight. And the killer has got away.Sebastian Bergman has been brought in to solve the crime, but with no credible suspects, he is at a dead end.Until he discovers that there was a witness to the crime...
  • The Ex-Wife by Jess Ryder

    The Ex-Wife by Jess Ryder

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    You’ve got everything she wants …Newly married Natasha has the perfect house, a loving husband and a beautiful little girl called Emily. She’d have it all if it wasn’t for Jen, her husband’s ex-wife who just won’t leave them alone …Then Natasha returns home one day to find her husband and Emily gone without trace...
    Categorized as:
    crime  drama  family  suspense  thriller  adult  audiobook  book
  • Redemption Lake by Susan Clayton-Goldner

    Redemption Lake by Susan Clayton-Goldner

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Tucson, Arizona – Eighteen-year-old Matt Garrison is harboring two terrible secrets: his involvement in the drowning death of his 12-year-old cousin, and a night of drunken sex with his best friend’s mother, Crystal, whom he finds dead in a bathtub of blood. Guilt forces Matt to act on impulse and hide his involvement with Crystal.Detective Winston Radhauser knows Matt is hiding something...
  • Shadow Valley by Gwen Hunter

    Shadow Valley by Gwen Hunter

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Mackenzie Morgan thinks she's doing the right thing by taking her teenaged daughter, Bella, into the Appalachians on a photography shoot. Fleeing a crumbling marriage, Mac needs some time to bond with her daughter and escape the betrayal that still leaves her numb...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  rural  suspense  adult  book  contemporary  fiction
  • Stone Girl by Eleni Hale

    Stone Girl by Eleni Hale

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    I’m at the police station. There’s blood splattered across my face and clothes. In this tiny room with walls the colour of winter sky I hug a black backpack full of treasures. Only one thing is certain . . . no one can ever forgive me for what I’ve done.An unspeakable event changes everything. No more Mum, school or bed of her own...
    Categorized as:
    family  dark  crime  grief  young-adult  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • Roses Are Blood Red by Novoneel Chakraborty

    Roses Are Blood Red by Novoneel Chakraborty

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    I'll gift you a love story that every girl desires, but few get to live.'He'd told me once. And boy, did he stick to his words! Vanav Thakur is the perfect boyfriend that any girl can have. He ticks every box you can ever have for your Mr Right. Trust me on this...
  • Hard Time by A.J. Carella

    Hard Time by A.J. Carella

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    When it comes to family, Kat will do anything. Even if that means going against everything she believes in, and risking her already fragile relationship with the man she loves. Faced with a problem that is too much for her alone, she enlists the help of her one time partner, Kyle. Together they must uncover a deadly secret before any more innocent lives are lost...
    Categorized as:
    crime  suspense  thriller  adult  book  contemporary  fiction  mystery
  • The Perfect Family Man by M.M. DeLuca

    The Perfect Family Man by M.M. DeLuca

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    Five years ago, my little boy went missing. Now my husband’s vanished, too.I wish I could say that the tragedy of little Jack disappearing brought me and Nate closer together. But my husband is more distant from me now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why I don’t ask him exactly where he’s going when he sets off on another business trip...
  • Around The Bend by Britney King

    Around The Bend by Britney King

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    If you were to pass me on the street, you probably wouldn’t even look twice. I’m that normal. I’m just like you, only wealthier. I have it all. The kids, the family, the dog, a house on the hill. Hell—I’m so cliché, I even have a white picket fence. I guess you could say that I’ve dotted my I’s and crossed my T’s...
    Categorized as:
    crime  drama  literary-fiction  noir  suspense  thriller  adult  book
  • Burning Bright by Ron Rash

    Burning Bright by Ron Rash

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Ron Rash is "a storyteller of the highest rank" (Jeffrey Lent) and has won comparisons to John Steinbeck, Cormac McCarthy, and Gabriel García Márquez...
  • Like Lions by Brian Panowich

    Like Lions by Brian Panowich

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    A powerful follow up to multiple award-winning debut Bull Mountain. Brian Panowich burst onto the crime fiction scene in 2015, winning awards and accolades from readers and critics alike for his smoldering debut, Bull Mountain. Now with Like Lions, he cements his place as one of the outstanding new voices in crime fiction...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  family  gothic  noir  rural  southern-gothic  suspense
  • The Halo Effect by Anne D. LeClaire

    The Halo Effect by Anne D. LeClaire

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    In this tour de force, a father, shaken by tragedy, tries to avenge his daughter’s murder—and restore his family’s shattered life. It was supposed to be a typical October evening for renowned portrait artist Will Light...
    Categorized as:
    crime  drama  family  literary-fiction  suspense  thriller  adult  book
  • You Let Me In by Lucy Clarke

    You Let Me In by Lucy Clarke

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Spine-tingling, chilling, and utterly compulsive, YOU LET ME IN is the stunning new novel from Richard & Judy Book Club author, Lucy Clarke Nothing has felt right since Elle rented out her house . . . I’M IN YOUR HOUSE There’s a new coldness. A shift in the atmosphere. The prickling feeling that someone is watching her every move from the shadows...
  • The Heaviness of Things That Float by Jennifer Manuel

    The Heaviness of Things That Float by Jennifer Manuel

    Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    Jennifer Manuel skilfully depicts the lonely world of Bernadette, a woman who has spent the last forty years living alone on the periphery of a remote West Coast First Nations reserve, serving as a nurse for the community...
  • Fay by Larry Brown

    Fay by Larry Brown

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    She's had no education, and you can't call what her father's been trying to give her "love." So at seventeen, Fay Jones leaves home, carrying a purse with half a pack of cigarettes and two dollar bills. She's headed for the bright lights and big times of Biloxi, and even she knows she needs help getting there. But help's not hard to come by when you look like Fay...
  • Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith

    Desperation Road by Michael Farris Smith

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    In the vein of Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone and the works of Ron Rash, an Amazon Best Book of the Month set in a tough-and-tumble Mississippi town where drugs, whiskey, guns, and the desire for revenge violently intersect. For eleven years the clock has been ticking for Russell Gaines as he sits in Parchman Penitentiary in the Mississippi Delta...
  • Little Friends by Jane Shemilt

    Little Friends by Jane Shemilt

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    THE STUNNING NEW PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF RICHARD & JUDY BOOK CLUB SENSATION DAUGHTERTheir children are friends first. They hit it off immediately, as kids do. And so the parents are forced to get to know each other. Three wildly different couples. Three marriages, floundering.There are barbecues, dinner parties, a holiday in Greece...
    Categorized as:
    crime  family  poc-mc  suspense  thriller  adult  audiobook  book
  • I Made a Mistake by Jane Corry

    I Made a Mistake by Jane Corry

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    IT STARTED WITH A KISS... AND ENDED WITH MURDER. The darkly addictive new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of I Looked Away, Blood Sisters and My Husband's Wife. --------------------------------------------------------In Poppy Page's mind, there are two types of women in this world: those who are faithful to their husbands, and those who are not...
    Categorized as:
    crime  drama  family  suspense  thriller  adult  audiobook  book
  • No Hiding in Boise by Kim Hooper

    No Hiding in Boise by Kim Hooper

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    When Angie is awakened by a midnight call from an officer with the Boise Police Department, she thinks there must be a misunderstanding. The officer tells her that her husband was involved in a shooting at a local bar, but how can that be possible when her husband is sleeping right next to her? Except when she turns to wake him, he isn’t there...
  • Every Moment Since: A Novel by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

    Every Moment Since: A Novel by Marybeth Mayhew Whalen

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    A small Southern town. An ordinary Saturday night. A little boy disappears without a trace.Everyone in Wynotte, North Carolina, knows the name Davy Malcor. Knows the video clip of him juggling four balls, "All at the very same time!" Knows the Marty McFly jacket his mother made for his birthday that he wore proudly, and often...
  • Unwritten Laws by Greg Iles

    Unwritten Laws by Greg Iles

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    product...
  • When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley

    When We Fell Apart by Soon Wiley

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    A drama that untangles the complicated ties that bind families together--or break them apart--as a young Korean American man's search for answers about his girlfriend's mysterious death becomes a soul-searching journey into his own bi-cultural identity When the Seoul police inform Min that his girlfriend Yu-jin has committed suicide, he's sure it can't be true...
  • Speak of the Devil by Britney King

    Speak of the Devil by Britney King

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    In the upscale suburb where Vanessa Bolton lives, she's your average suburban housewife.She does her grocery shopping on Tuesday, Thursday mornings are reserved for Pilates, Sundays for church. At home, she's an impeccable housekeeper and a mother with a mediocre track record...
  • Dark Ride by Lou Berney

    Dark Ride by Lou Berney

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Sometimes the person you least expect is just the hero you needTwenty-one-year-old Hardy “Hardly” Reed—good-natured, easygoing, usually stoned—is drifting through life. A minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, he avoids unnecessary effort and unrealistic ambitions. Then one day he notices two children, around six or seven, sitting all alone on a bench...
  • The Ninth Session by Deborah Serani

    The Ninth Session by Deborah Serani

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    An edge-of-your-seat psychological thriller that brings a unique mix of Psychotherapy, American Sign Language and Coda Culture. Just when you think you have it figured out, think again! Dr. Alicia Reese takes on a new patient. Lucas Ferro suffers with crippling anxiety, and as sessions progress, he begins to share the reasons why he's struggling...
    Categorized as:
    suspense  family  grief  dark  crime  thriller  fiction  psychological
  • Scrublands by Chris Hammer

    Scrublands by Chris Hammer

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In an isolated country town afflicted by interminable drought, a charismatic and dedicated young priest calmly opens fire on his congregation, shooting dead five parishioners before being gunned down himself. A year later, accompanied by his own demons from war-time reporting, journalist Martin Scarsden arrives in Riversend...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  literary-fiction  noir  rural  suspense  thriller
  • Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

    Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations, the Burroughs clan has made its home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family’s criminal empire, Clayton took the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can...
    Categorized as:
    crime  dark  drama  family  gothic  literary-fiction  noir  rural
  • Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan

    Prince of Thieves by Chuck Hogan

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The men wear masks. Their guns are drawn on the bank manager. She nervously recites the alarm code, and the tumblers within the huge vault fall. The timing and execution are brilliant. It could be the perfect heist. But as the huge sum of cash is stolen, so too is one man's heart -- and that man is the Prince of Thieves..
  • The Secrets Mothers Keep by Jacquie Underdown

    The Secrets Mothers Keep by Jacquie Underdown

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    In the enchanting landscapes of Tasmania, "The Secrets Mothers Keep" unravels a captivating tale of three generations bound by a shared purpose—to restore the family manor into a charming bed and breakfast. But beneath the surface lies a lifetime of concealed truths that threaten to tear them apart...
  • Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper

    Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    In the hard-edged tradition of Hubert Selby Jr., Daniel Woodrell, and Donald Ray Pollock, and with the fresh, complex humanity of Breaking Bad and Reservoir Dogs, a blistering debut collection that unsparingly confronts the extreme, brutal parts of the human heart.A man runs away from his grave and into a maelstrom of bullets and fire...
Fantastic book recommendations by book lovers for book lovers.
Find out more about thebooknaut.com.



Looking for more inspiration? Enter another book title to get more suggestions on what to read next.


Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.