Books like 'Where All Light Tends to Go'
Readers who enjoyed Where All Light Tends to Go 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 coming-of-age literary-fiction family rural
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I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWilliam 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 ratingsThree-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... -
![Faceless by Martina Cole]()
Faceless by Martina Cole
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEleven 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... -
![La casa delle voci by Donato Carrisi]()
La casa delle voci by Donato Carrisi
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsPietro 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... -
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![Wall of Silence by Tracy Buchanan]()
Wall of Silence by Tracy Buchanan
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsHer children have a deadly secret. Can she uncover it before the police do?Melissa Byatt’s life in Forest Grove seems as perfect as can be: a doting husband, three loving children and a beautiful house in a close-knit community. But appearances can be deceiving... -
![The Baltimore Boys by Joël Dicker]()
The Baltimore Boys by Joël Dicker
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsSwiss 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 ratingsBrandon: 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... -
![The Devils' Cradle by Darcy Daniel]()
The Devils' Cradle by Darcy Daniel
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsOn 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... -
![Deserve To Die by Miranda Rijks]()
Deserve To Die by Miranda Rijks
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDom and Stacey have the perfect life. Until they meet Tamara. Brilliant, beautiful, she hides a horrifying secret. One that may destroy them all.Happily married with two wonderful children, Dom and Stacey are living the dream. He runs a successful design agency, she is finding fame as an author of children’s books.Everything is perfect... -
![Juste une ombre by Karine Giébel]()
Juste une ombre by Karine Giébel
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsCloé Beauchamp est une jeune femme à qui tout semble réussir; belle, brillante, sur le point d'être nommée à la tête d'une prestigieuse agence de publicité... Et amoureuse, depuis peu, d'un homme charmant. Elle cache à la perfection ses failles et les horreurs qui ont jalonné son passé. Mais lentement, sa vie va se transformer en cauchemar... -
![Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte]()
Joe by Larry Brown, Tom Stechschulte
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNearing 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... -
![Father and Son by Larry Brown]()
Father and Son by Larry Brown
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis 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... -
![The Silent Girl by Michael Hjorth, Hans Rosenfeldt]()
The Silent Girl by Michael Hjorth, Hans Rosenfeldt
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn 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... -
![Redemption Lake by Susan Clayton-Goldner]()
Redemption Lake by Susan Clayton-Goldner
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTucson, 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... -
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![Shadow Valley by Gwen Hunter]()
Shadow Valley by Gwen Hunter
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMackenzie 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... -
![Roses Are Blood Red by Novoneel Chakraborty]()
Roses Are Blood Red by Novoneel Chakraborty
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsI'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... -
![Things We Never Say by Caitlin Weaver]()
Things We Never Say by Caitlin Weaver
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThree mothers. Three secrets. One devastating scandal.Anna has always been the quiet one, the soft-spoken mother who kept her head down and her secrets close. But when she's thrown together with Maggie and Rhea on a PTA project, they begin to bond over wine and gossip, and slowly share the truths behind their picture-perfect lives... -
![The Perfect Family Man by M.M. DeLuca]()
The Perfect Family Man by M.M. DeLuca
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFive 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... -
![When These Mountains Burn by David Joy]()
When These Mountains Burn by David Joy
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAcclaimed author and "remarkably gifted storyteller" (The Charlotte Observer) David Joy returns with a fierce and tender tale of a father, an addict, a lawman, and the explosive events that come to unite them.When his addict son gets in deep with his dealer, it takes everything Raymond Mathis has to bail him out of trouble one last time... -
![A Family of Strangers by Emilie Richards]()
A Family of Strangers by Emilie Richards
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAll her life Ryan Gracey watched her perfect older sister from afar. Knowing she could never top Wendy’s achievements, she didn’t even try. Instead Ryan forged her own path while her family barely seemed to notice.Now Wendy shares two little girls with her perfect husband while Ryan mourns the man she lost after a nearly fatal mistake in judgment... -
![Burning Bright by Ron Rash]()
Burning Bright by Ron Rash
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNew 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 ratingsA 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... -
![Dear Mother by Angela Marsons]()
Dear Mother by Angela Marsons
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA story about three sisters brought together by the death of their cruel and abusive mother. Alex, the youngest, is a bitter, unforgiving woman who refuses to face the events of her childhood. She hides in a bottle and destroys any chance of happiness that comes her way. Her life is spiralling dangerously out of control but she doesn't have the strength to stop it... -
![The Halo Effect by Anne D. LeClaire]()
The Halo Effect by Anne D. LeClaire
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn 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... -
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![The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth]()
The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsGet ready for a thrilling, addictive novel about marriage, betrayal, and the secrets that push us to the edge in Sally Hepworth's The Soulmate.There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives... -
![She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper]()
She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEleven-year-old Polly is smart far beyond her years. But she's a loner. Her mother tells her she has 'gunfighter eyes', like the father she's never met. In prison, about to be released, Nate runs afoul of the powerful leader of the Aryan Brotherhood. Marked for death on his release, Nate soon realizes that everyone he has ever loved is a target - including his daughter, Polly... -
![What It Seems by Emily Bleeker]()
What It Seems by Emily Bleeker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA page-turning novel of suspense about the perfect family, and the perfect lies, by the bestselling author of When I’m Gone and The Waiting Room.Adopted by her controlling foster mother at the age of eight, twenty-year-old Tara has seen little of the outside world. Lonely, punished for the slightest offense, her only distraction comes from watching the Feely family’s online videos... -
![Fay by Larry Brown]()
Fay by Larry Brown
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsShe'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 ratingsIn 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... -
![I Made a Mistake by Jane Corry]()
I Made a Mistake by Jane Corry
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIT 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... -
![The Mother by Jane Caro]()
The Mother by Jane Caro
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJust like the garden, the fuse box, the bills, bin night and blown light bulbs, this was just something else she'd now have to take care of herself.Recently widowed, Miriam Duffy is a respectable North Shore real estate agent and devoted mother and grandmother... -
![Beasts of the Earth: A Novel by James Wade]()
Beasts of the Earth: A Novel by James Wade
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsJames Wade, whose first two novels were praised as rhapsodic and haunting, delivers his most powerful work to date--a chilling parable about the impossible demands of hate and love, trauma and goodness, vividly set in the landscapes of Texas and Louisiana... -
![Unwritten Laws by Greg Iles]()
Unwritten Laws by Greg Iles
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsproduct...Categorized as:
gothic southern-gothic suspense literary-fiction fiction mystery male-author contemporary -
![Dark Ride by Lou Berney]()
Dark Ride by Lou Berney
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSometimes 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... -
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![Scrublands by Chris Hammer]()
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn 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... -
![The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope, Taryn Ryan]()
The Family Across the Street by Nicole Trope, Taryn Ryan
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratings8 hours, 5 minutes In a normal family, in a normal house, on a normal street, everything is about to go horribly wrong…Today was meant to be an ordinary day.A perfect summer morning, the weatherman predicting record highs. The children getting ready for school, five-year-old George packing his marbles and his twin sister Sophie, younger by three minutes, cradling her Polly Pocket doll... -
![Working Fire by Emily Bleeker]()
Working Fire by Emily Bleeker
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFrom the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of When I’m Gone comes a compelling novel of a bond between sisters, tested by tragedy…Ellie Brown thought she’d finally escaped her stifling hometown of Broadlands, Illinois; med school was supposed to be her ticket out... -
![The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel by Patry Francis]()
The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel by Patry Francis
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSet on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a suspenseful page-turning saga of love, murder, and the true meaning of faith from the author of the acclaimed The Liar’s Diary... -
![Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato]()
Edgar and Lucy by Victor Lodato
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"I love this book." —Lena DunhamEdgar and Lucy is a page-turning literary masterpiece—a stunning examination of family love and betrayal. Eight-year-old Edgar Fini remembers nothing of the accident people still whisper about. He only knows that his father is gone, his mother has a limp, and his grandmother believes in ghosts... -
![The Couple in the Cabin by Daniel Hurst]()
The Couple in the Cabin by Daniel Hurst
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThey’ll do anything to get out. She’ll do anything to keep them in.When happily married Grace comes home early one night and catches her husband, Dominic, with another woman in the cabin at the bottom of their garden, she is shocked, angry, and most of all, hell-bent on revenge. That’s why she acts quickly, locking the pair in the cabin while she decides what she wants to do to them... -
![Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper]()
Love and Other Wounds by Jordan Harper
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn 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... -
![The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell, Dennis Lehane]()
The Death of Sweet Mister by Daniel Woodrell, Dennis Lehane
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWoodrell, author of Tomato Red, delivers his most powerful work to date in The Death of Sweet Mister. Like Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn, Shuggie Akins tells his story of a reluctant descent into the world of adults in this unforgettable and ultimately moving novel... -
![American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell]()
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA lush and rowdy collection of short stories set in a rural Michigan landscape, where wildlife, jobs, and ways of life are vanishing... -
![Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock]()
Volt: Stories by Alan Heathcock
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsA blistering collection of stories from an exhilarating new voiceOne man kills another after neither will move his pickup truck from the road. A female sheriff in a flooded town attempts to cover up a murder. When a farmer harvesting a field accidentally runs over his son, his grief sets him off walking, mile after mile. A band of teens bent on destruction runs amok in a deserted town at night... -
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![Lasi maitoa, kiitos by Herbjørg Wassmo, Katriina Huttunen]()
Lasi maitoa, kiitos by Herbjørg Wassmo, Katriina Huttunen
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Finnish version of "Et glass melk takk".Kymmenen yli viisi. Se ei ainakaan ollut oikein. Dorte riisuu isän kellon kädestään. Ehkä Jumala oli päättänyt ettei tätä osaa elämästä mitattaisi? Kohta hän lähtisi kotiin. Syömään äidin tulikuumaa borssikeittoa. Mutta ensin hän tarvitsisi rahat kotimatkaa varten. Ja passinsa.Tätä kirjaa et unohda ikinä... -
![Poachers: Stories by Tom Franklin]()
Poachers: Stories by Tom Franklin
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIn ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen... -
![The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt]()
The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA literary master across genres, award-winning author Chris Offutt's latest novel, The Killing Hills, is a compelling, propulsive thriller in which a suspicious death exposes the loyalties and rivalries of a deep-rooted and fiercely private community in the Kentucky backwoods.Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done... -
![The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston]()
The Shotgun Rule by Charlie Huston
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe first stand-alone thriller by critically acclaimed author Charlie Huston, The Shotgun Rule is a raw tale of four teenage friends who go looking for a little trouble–and find it.Blood spilled on the asphalt of this town long years gone has left a stain, and it’s spreading.Not that a thing like that matters to teenagers like George, Hector, Paul, and Andy... -
![Last One to Lie by J.M. Winchester]()
Last One to Lie by J.M. Winchester
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMoving to a new city was supposed to be a fresh start for her family. Now it’s a nightmare. Her little girl was supposed to be at day care when Kelsey arrived to pick her up. But they have no record of her daughter ever being there. And to make matters worse, her husband is missing too—he won’t pick up his phone, and the school he supposedly works at says he never accepted their job offer... -
![In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings, Kate Rawson]()
In Her Wake by Amanda Jennings, Kate Rawson
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA tragic family event reveals devastating news that rips apart Bella's comfortable existence. Embarking on a personal journey to uncover the truth, she faces a series of traumatic discoveries that take her to the ruggedly beautiful Cornish coast, where hidden truths, past betrayals and a 25-year-old mystery threaten not just her identity but her life...
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