Books like 'Dirt'

Readers who enjoyed Dirt by David Vann also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

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  • The Death Sculptor by Chris Carter

    The Death Sculptor by Chris Carter

    Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars
    · 25 ratings
    A student nurse has the shock of her life when she discovers her patient, prosecutor Derek Nicholson, brutally murdered in his bed. The act seems senseless - Nicholson was terminally ill with only weeks to live. But what most shocks Detective Robert Hunter is the calling card the killer left behind...
  • The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott

    The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 89 ratings
    First published in 1977, The Shining quickly became a benchmark in the literary career of Stephen King. This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to claim the very souls of the Torrance family...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  north-america  usa  20th-century  adult  audiobook  book
  • Our Stolen Pieces by James Hunt

    Our Stolen Pieces by James Hunt

    Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    When the morning after a slumber party reveals two missing girls, a newly minted Detective and a young veteran are assigned the case. Recently partnered, the pair of detectives must set aside their troubled pasts to recover the pair of girls who may have been coerced by a stranger who had kidnapped before...
  • The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter

    The Silent Wife by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Investigating the killing of a prisoner during a riot inside a state penitentiary, GBI investigator Will Trent is confronted with disturbing information. One of the inmates claims that he is innocent of a brutal attack for which he has always been the prime suspect...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  north-america  usa  abuse  adult  audiobook  book
  • The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

    The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

    Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars
    · 73 ratings
    Four decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence...
  • Bitter Falls by Rachel Caine

    Bitter Falls by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    She’s investigating a cold case no one else could—by going places no one else would dare.In spite of a harrowing past still haunting her, Gwen Proctor is trying to move forward. Until a new assignment gives her purpose: the cold-case disappearance of a young man in Tennessee. Three years missing, no clues. Just Ruth Landry, a tortured mother in limbo...
  • The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

    The Moonlight Child by Karen McQuestion

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

    Mystic River by Dennis Lehane

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever.Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store...
  • Untitled by Dot Hutchison

    Untitled by Dot Hutchison

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A fourth book is coming with a release date estimated Spring 2019...
  • Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

    Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine

    Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars
    · 43 ratings
    Gina Royal is the definition of average—a shy Midwestern housewife with a happy marriage and two adorable children. But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom.With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake...
  • Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

    Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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

    The Kept Woman by Karin Slaughter

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    Husbands and wives. Mothers and daughters. The past and the future. Secrets bind them. And secrets can destroy them. The author of Pretty Girls returns with an electrifying, emotionally complex thriller that plunges its fascinating protagonist into the darkest depths of a mystery that just might destroy him...
  • Wall of Silence by Tracy Buchanan

    Wall of Silence by Tracy Buchanan

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Her 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...
  • Invisible by James Patterson, David Ellis

    Invisible by James Patterson, David Ellis

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Everyone thinks Emmy Dockery is crazy. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emmy has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire...
  • Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

    Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    9 hours, 42 minutes In the tradition of 'Long Bright River' and 'The Mars Room', a gripping and atmospheric work of literary suspense that deconstructs the story of a serial killer on death row, told primarily through the eyes of the women in his life - from the best-selling author of 'Girl in Snow'.Ansel Packer is scheduled to die in twelve hours...
  • The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

    The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter

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

    The Haunting at Sebring Hotel by J.S. Donovan

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    Surrounded by autumn-touched trees, an ominous Art Deco-inspired 1923 hotel overlooks the raging Atlantic Ocean. A silhouetted figure stands behind one of its dark windows, eagerly awaiting his next guest.Anna Hall, a workaholic single mom, purchases the infamous and historically-rich Club Blue to fulfill her romanticized dream of being an independent hotel manager...
  • This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

    This Is Our Story by Ashley Elston

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

    Trespassing by Brandi Reeds

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In a novel of mounting psychological suspense, a young mother follows a dangerous path to find her missing husband.Veronica Cavanaugh’s grasp on the world is slipping. Her latest round of fertility treatments not only failed but left her on edge and unbalanced. And her three-year-old daughter, Elizabella, has a new imaginary friend, who seems much more devilish than playful...
  • Long Bright River by Liz Moore

    Long Bright River by Liz Moore

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 38 ratings
    Two sisters travel the same streets, though their lives couldn't be more different. Then, one of them goes missing.In a Philadelphia neighborhood rocked by the opioid crisis, two once-inseparable sisters find themselves at odds. One, Kacey, lives on the streets in the vise of addiction. The other, Mickey, walks those same blocks on her police beat...
  • Don't Scream by Wendy Corsi Staub

    Don't Scream by Wendy Corsi Staub

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    Don't Tell A Soul. . . In a remote, heavily wooded area near the Berkshires of Massachusetts, Rachel Lorant died on her birthday. But she didn't die alone. That night, her four sorority sisters make a solemn, trembling pledge. They will never reveal what has just happened in those woods--ever. Instead, they will take their terrible secret to their graves. . . Don't Think About The Past. .
    Categorized as:
    family  north-america  usa  adult  book  contemporary  crime  female-mc
  • Afraid to Die by Lisa Jackson, Natalie Ross

    Afraid to Die by Lisa Jackson, Natalie Ross

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    AFRAID TO SCREAMOthers may dread the chill of winter, but he relishes it. The way the frigid water preserves his victims, the feel of their icy skin beneath his fingers... And soon the world will see their beauty—and his vengeance.AFRAID TO RUN The town of Grizzly Falls is on edge in the wake of a serial killer, and Detective Selena Alvarez is no exception...
    Categorized as:
    drama  north-america  usa  adult  audiobook  book  contemporary  crime
  • 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 Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

    The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die by April Henry

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

    After the End by Clare Mackintosh

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Max and Pip are the strongest couple you know. They're best friends, lovers—unshakable. But then their son gets sick and the doctors put the question of his survival into their hands. For the first time, Max and Pip can't agree. They each want a different future for their son...
  • Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbott

    Only the Innocent by Rachel Abbott

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    Every moment of Sir Hugo Fletcher’s life has been chronicled in the British press: his privileged upbringing, his high-profile charity work to end human trafficking, even his two marriages. But when the billionaire philanthropist is discovered murdered in his London home, tied naked to a bed, the scandal is only a shadow of the darkness lurking off-camera...
  • The Good Samaritan by John Marrs

    The Good Samaritan by John Marrs

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    She’s a friendly voice on the phone. But can you trust her?The people who call End of the Line need hope. They need reassurance that life is worth living. But some are unlucky enough to get through to Laura. Laura doesn’t want them to hope. She wants them to die.Laura hasn’t had it easy: she’s survived sickness and a difficult marriage only to find herself heading for forty, unsettled and angry...
  • A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

    A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    From debut author Stacy Willingham comes a masterfully done, lyrical thriller, certain to be the launch of an amazing career. A Flicker in the Dark is eerily compelling to the very last page.When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  north-america  usa  adult  audiobook  book  contemporary
  • The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

    The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 35 ratings
    After the first season of her true crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  north-america  usa  abuse  adult  audiobook  book
  • Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott

    Sleep Tight by Rachel Abbott

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    How far would you go to hold on to the people you love?When Olivia Brookes calls the police to report that her husband and children are missing, she believes she will never see them again. She has reason to fear the worst; this isn’t the first tragedy that Olivia has experienced...
  • The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker

    The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    "So that was all it took," I thought. "That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world. One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn't so much after all."Meet Chrissie... Chrissie is eight and she has a secret: she has just killed a boy. The feeling made her belly fizz like soda pop...
  • Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins

    Magpie Lane by Lucy Atkins

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    When the eight-year-old daughter of an Oxford College Master vanishes in the middle of the night, police turn to the Scottish nanny, Dee, for answers...
  • Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán, Sophie Hughes

    Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán, Sophie Hughes

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER!From a global star and International Booker Prize finalist, a razor-sharp, unforgettable novel about a maid who’s seen too much and a family at a breaking pointA young girl has died and the family’s maid is being interrogated. She must tell the whole story before arriving at the girl’s death...
  • In Silence by Erica Spindler

    In Silence by Erica Spindler

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    When Avery Chauvin returns to her Louisiana hometown after her father's suicide, she discovers clippings of a fifteen-year-old murder and learns about recent disappearances and murders that lead her to start an investigation...
    Categorized as:
    north-america  usa  adult  book  contemporary  crime  fiction  horror
  • The Antarctica of Love by Sara Stridsberg

    The Antarctica of Love by Sara Stridsberg

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    The international star Sara Stridsberg returns with The Antarctica of Love, an unnamed woman's tale of her murder, her brief life, and the world that moves on after she left itThey say you die three times...
  • The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

    The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf

    Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    A woman receives an unexpected visitor during a deadly snowstorm in this chilling thriller from New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf She thought she was alone...True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn't mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she's retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence...
  • Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

    Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 54 ratings
    Loop me in, odd one.The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature...
  • No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge woke one morning to discover that her entire family, mother, father, brother had vanished. No note, no trace, no return. Ever. Now, twenty-five years later, she'll learn the devastating truthSometimes better not to know. . . Cynthia is happily married with a young daughter, a new family. But the story of her old family isn't over...
  • Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

    Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    In one of the year’s most anticipated debut psychological thrillers, a family made infamous by a true crime documentary is found dead, leaving their surviving son to uncover the truth about their final days.“They found the bodies on a Tuesday...
  • The Night Bird by Brian Freeman

    The Night Bird by Brian Freeman

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Homicide detective Frost Easton doesn’t like coincidences. When a series of bizarre deaths rock San Francisco—as seemingly random women suffer violent psychotic breaks—Frost looks for a connection that leads him to psychiatrist Francesca Stein. Frankie’s controversial therapy helps people erase their most terrifying memories…and all the victims were her patients...
  • The Whalestoe Letters by Mark Z. Danielewski

    The Whalestoe Letters by Mark Z. Danielewski

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 23 ratings
    Between 1982 and 1989, Pelafina H. Lièvre sent her son, Johnny Truant, a series of letters from The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute, a psychiatric facility in Ohio where she spent the final years of her life...
  • Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

    Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Kerr, in the NY Herald-Tribune, describes: "This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror...
  • Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

    Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

    Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars
    · 86 ratings
    Gillian Flynn is TV critic for US magazine Entertainment Weekly, but after the highly impressive thriller debut that is Sharp Objects, she may have to re-think the day job - particularly as such masters of the thriller as Harlan Coben and Stephen King are falling over each other to praise her novel...
  • One of the Boys by Jayne Cowie

    One of the Boys by Jayne Cowie

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    If you could test your son for a gene that predicts violence, would you do it?Antonia and Bea are sisters, and doting mothers to their sons. But that is where their similarities end.Antonia had her son tested to make sure he didn’t possess the "violent" M gene.Bea refuses to let her son take the test. His life should not be determined by a positive or negative result...
  • Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf

    Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 25 ratings
    A gripping thriller about three young girlfriends, a dark obsession and a chilling crime that shakes up a quiet Iowa town, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence .For twelve-year-old Cora Landry and her friends Violet and Jordyn, it was supposed to be an ordinary sleepover--movies and Ouija and talking about boys...
  • The Chateau by Jaclyn Goldis

    The Chateau by Jaclyn Goldis

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    A dream girls trip to a luxurious French chateau devolves into a deadly nightmare of secrets and murder in this stylish, twisty thriller for fans of Lucy Foley, Ruth Ware, and Lisa Jewell.Welcome to picturesque Provence, where the Lady of the Chateau, Séraphine Demargelasse, has opened its elegant doors to her granddaughter Darcy and three friends...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  book  contemporary  crime  female-mc  fiction  horror
  • Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

    Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instang of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and swithc you into a new and terrifying world...
  • The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan

    The Doll House by Phoebe Morgan

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    You never know who’s watching…Corinne’s life might look perfect on the outside, but after three failed IVF attempts it’s her last chance to have a baby. And when she finds a tiny part of a doll house outside her flat, it feels as if it’s a sign.But as more pieces begin to turn up, Corinne realises that they are far too familiar...
  • The Watcher by Jo Robertson

    The Watcher by Jo Robertson

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins Forensic psychiatrist Kate Myers believes the killer of two teenage girls in Bigler County, California, is the same man who savagely murdered her twin sister over fifteen years ago.Deputy Sheriff Ben Slater hides his personal pain behind the job, but Kate's arrival in his county knocks his world on its axis...
  • Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce

    Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    A young lawyer's outwardly perfect life spirals out of control as she takes on her first murder case in this dark and twisty debut thriller for readers of Paula Hawkins, A.J. Finn, or Shari Lapena.Alison has it all. A doting husband, adorable daughter, and a career on the rise--she's just been given her first murder case to defend. But all is never as it seems... Just one more night...
    Categorized as:
    drama  family  literary-fiction  abuse  adult  audiobook  book  breakup
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