Books like 'On, Off'
Readers who enjoyed On, Off by Colleen McCullough also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical mystery horror psychological action / adventure thriller crime law-enforcement historical-fiction suspense
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.46 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsUniversally acclaimed as the maestro of horror and the morbid, Edgar Allan Poe's dark gift has for more than a century and a half set the standard for the genre.Now, Caedmon Audio presents a classic collection of Poe's most terrifying tales performed by two of the most brilliant interpreters of his work ever to be recorded: Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone... -
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome stories live forever . . .Sage Singer is a baker. She works through the night, preparing the day’s breads and pastries, trying to escape a reality of loneliness, bad memories, and the shadow of her mother’s death. When Josef Weber, an elderly man in Sage’s grief support group, begins stopping by the bakery, they strike up an unlikely friendship... -
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 86 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
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And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 87 ratingsFirst, there were ten—a curious assortment of strangers summoned as weekend guests to a little private island off the coast of Devon. Their host, an eccentric millionaire unknown to all of them, is nowhere to be found. All that the guests have in common is a wicked past they're unwilling to reveal—and a secret that will seal their fate. For each has been marked for murder... -
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw... -
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsThe eerie tales of Edgar Allan Poe, from the 1830s and 40s, remain among the most brilliant and influential works in American literature...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook -
The Isle of Blood by Rick Yancey
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsWhen Dr. Warthrop goes hunting the "Holy Grail of Monstrumology" with his eager new assistant, Arkwright, he leaves Will Henry in New York. Finally, Will can enjoy something that always seemed out of reach: a normal life with a real family. But part of Will can't let go of Dr. Warthrop, and when Arkwright returns claiming that the doctor is dead, Will is devastated--and not convinced... -
Bryant & May and the Burning Man by Christopher Fowler
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNo case is too curious for Arthur Bryant and John May, London’s most ingenious detectives. But with their beloved city engulfed in turmoil, they’ll have to work fast to hold a sinister killer’s feet to the fire. In the week before Guy Fawkes Night, London’s peaceful streets break out in sudden unrest...Categorized as:
crime law-enforcement police-procedural suspense thriller action-adventure adult audiobook -
Fail-Safe by Eugene Burdick, Harvey Wheeler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSomething has gone wrong. A group of American bombers armed with nuclear weapons is streaking past the fail-safe point, beyond recall, and no one knows why. Their destination—Moscow.In a bomb shelter beneath the White House, the calm young president turns to his Russian translator and says, "I think we are ready to talk to Premier Kruschchev... -
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsAll those who enjoyed shuddering their way through Alvin Schwartz's first volume of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark will find a satisfyingly spooky sequel in this new collection of the macabre, the funny, and the fantastic...Categorized as:
crime suspense 20th-century action-adventure anthologies audiobook children children-books -
Qb VII by Leon Uris
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsIn Queen’s Bench Courtroom Number Seven, famous author Abraham Cady stands trial. In his book The Holocaust—born of the terrible revelation that the Jadwiga Concentration Camp was the site of his family’s extermination—Cady shook the consciousness of the human race. He also named eminent surgeon Sir Adam Kelno as one of Jadwiga’s most sadistic inmate/doctors... -
I Am The River by T.E. Grau
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratings~ Nominated for the 2018 Bram Stoker Award® for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. ~During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war... -
Sherlock Holmes 35: Der Hund der Baskervilles by Marc Gruppe, Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsAus einem alten Dokument geht hervor, dass die Familie Baskerville, deren Stammsitz in Dartmoor liegt, verflucht ist und von einem dämonischen Hund verfolgt wird... -
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The Dollhouse by Sara Ennis
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAlfred needs Dolls. Blonde, blue-eyed human dolls that will help him rewrite his past and change his future.When Peter Baden's daughter Olivia was abducted nearly a year ago, he left his career as a respected journalist to find her... -
A Rose for Emily and Other Stories by William Faulkner, Washington Irving
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEmily is a member of a family in the antebellum Southern aristocracy; after the Civil War, the family has fallen on hard times... -
Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThey were watching...and waitingAt twelve, Maggie had been thrown out of more boarding schools than she cared to remember. "Impossible to handle," they said nasty, mean, disobedient, rebellious, thieving anything they could say to explain why she must be removed from the school.Maggie was thin and pale, with shabby clothes and stringy hair, when she arrived at her new home...Categorized as:
family historical-fiction suspense action-adventure book children children-books classics -
Cape Fear by John D. MacDonald
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsHow far would you go to save your family? In John D. MacDonald's iconic masterwork of suspense, the inspiration for not one but two Hollywood hits, a mild-mannered family is tormented by an obsessed criminal--and with the authorities powerless to protect them, they must take the law into their own hands... -
The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsPresent day: Julia Hamill has made a horrifying discovery on the grounds of her new home in rural Massachusetts: a skull buried in the rocky soil–human, female, and, according to the trained eye of Boston medical examiner Maura Isles, scarred with the unmistakable marks of murder. But whoever this nameless woman was, and whatever befell her, is knowledge lost to another time. . . -
The Boys from Brazil by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsAlive and hiding in South America, the fiendish Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele gathers a group of former colleagues for a horrifying project—the creation of the Fourth Reich. Barry Kohler, a young investigative journalist, gets wind of the project and informs famed Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman, but before he can relay the evidence, Kohler is killed... -
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsOne of the feature stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft's 'the Call of Cthulhu' is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world... -
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsWhen The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.The year is 1896. The city is New York... -
The Bad Seed (P.S.) by William March
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsNow reissued – William March's 1954 classic thriller that's as chilling, intelligent and timely as ever before. This paperback reissue includes a new P.S. section with author interviews, insights, features, suggested reading and more.What happens to ordinary families into whose midst a child serial killer is born? This is the question at the center of William March's classic thriller... -
The Seventh Plague by James Rollins, Джеймс Ролинс
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIf the biblical plagues of Egypt truly happened—could they happen again—on a global scale?Two years after vanishing into the Sudanese desert, the leader of a British archeological expedition, Professor Harold McCabe, comes stumbling out of the sands, frantic and delirious, but he dies before he can tell his story...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction medical political-intrigue suspense thriller 21st-century action-adventure -
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None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsA psychological thriller about two teenagers teaming up with the FBI to track down juvenile serial killers.In 1982, two teenagers—serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell—are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction law-enforcement suspense thriller action-adventure audiobook -
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBy chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
Folly by Laurie R. King
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn acclaimed master of suspense creates a heroine you will never forget in this superbly chilling novel of a woman who begins a desperate undertaking that may transform her life--or end it.WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR WORST FEARS AREN’T ALL IN YOUR MIND?Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world...Categorized as:
crime family historical-fiction law-enforcement literary-fiction suspense action-adventure adult -
Dark Voyage by Helen Susan Swift
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn alternate cover edition can be found here.It’s 1914, and fear and paranoia rule the high seas.Iain Cosgrove is newly married to Jennifer Manson, daughter of a wealthy Scottish merchant. But Iain must soon leave for a research trip aboard the Lady Balgay, last of Dundee’s once-grand sealing fleet...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense action-adventure adult book female-author fiction -
Steel Breeze by Douglas Wynne
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA BLACK WIND BLOWS AND LIFE HANGS IN THE BALANCE. It’s been a year since novelist Desmond Carmichael's wife Sandy was brutally murdered. Now, with someone stalking him and his four-year-old son, he fears that the wrong man has been imprisoned for the crime...Categorized as:
crime kidnapping law-enforcement police-procedural suspense thriller action-adventure adult -
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsIn the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the drug Can-D, which enables users to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z... -
The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsIn The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr brings back the vivid world of his bestselling The Alienist but with a twist: this story is told by the former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has given him wisdom beyond his years. Thus New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew. It is June 1897. A year has passed since Dr... -
Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsBefore you see the movie, read the original novel! First published more than thirty-five years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history, from the classic 1968 movie starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, through four sequels and two television series . . . and now the newest film adaptation directed by Tim Burton... -
All Shall Mourn by Ellie Marney
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe third and final book in the None Shall Sleep Sequence.Simon Gutmunsson is on the loose... Since the disastrous events of the College Killer case, the FBI is coming to terms with the fact that while catching one sociopath, they've released another. Chillingly manipulative, frighteningly intelligent, and wholly insane, Simon Gutmunsson is the worst of the worst... -
The Lighthouse Witches by C.J. Cooke
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsTwo sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found--but she's still the same age as when she disappeared. The secrets of witches have reached across the centuries in this chilling Gothic thriller from the author of the acclaimed The Nesting... -
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Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsWHAT BEGAN AS A SIMPLESCHOLARLY PURSUIT ENDS IN AWAKING NIGHTMARE...Sir John Babcock, endowed with wealth and a healthy dose of curiosity, has stumbled on to an ancient order. With what he now knows, there will be no turning back. Even if he wants to. Not after he is trained as an initiate and knows of their perverted lusts—and their murders...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction political-intrigue action-adventure adult book conspiracies cosmic-horror -
Anima Rising by Christopher Moore
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore comes a hilariously deranged tale of a mad scientist, a famous painter, and an undead woman’s electrifying journey of self-discovery.Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman’s nude body in the Danube canal...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction fantasy fiction humor audiobook historical comedy -
Savage by Richard Laymon, Peter Bishop
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 17 ratings"If you've missed Laymon, you've missed a treat." —Stephen KingWhitechapel, November 1888: Jack the Ripper is committing his last known murder and beneath the bed on which he's butchering his victim cowers a fifteen-year-old boy...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction thriller action-adventure adult audiobook book coming-of-age -
The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLiving decades apart, two women get caught in the web of an infamous serial killer. In 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, a madman hunts his victims through the hobo jungles of Cleveland, terrorizing the city... -
Rovers by Richard Lange
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTwo immortal brothers crisscross the American Southwest to elude a murderous biker gang and protect a young woman in this “utter triumph and delight” from award-winning author Richard Lange (Jonathan Ames, author of A Man Named Doll ). Summer, 1976. Jesse and his brother, Edgar, are on the road in search of victims... -
An Old Friend of the Family by Fred Saberhagen
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Southerland family left the old world to start anew in America, but little did they know that a blood-feud, older than history itself, would follow them through the generations to come.Kate Southerland, the first born of the latest generation of Southerlands, has been murdered, but she is not dead. Her little brother, Johnny, has also vanished, a severed, bloody finger the only clue...Categorized as:
crime family law-enforcement police-procedural suspense action-adventure adult amateur-sleuth -
The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsFact, fiction, and urban legend blend in this haunting story about a young woman mistakenly imprisoned at Willowbrook State School, the real-life institution later shuttered for its horrendous abuses.Sage Winters always knew her sister was a little different even though they were identical twins... -
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 65 ratings"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Stevenson's famous exploration of humanity's basest capacity for evil, has become synonymous with the idea of a split personality. More than a moral tale, this dark psychological fantasy is also a product of its time, drawing on contemporary theories of class, evolution, criminality, and secret lives... -
Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Chilling . . . A neo-gothic treat; original, richly imagined, and powerfully told." --The Guardian (UK) for The String Diaries See the girl. Leah Wilde is twenty-four, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town... -
Girl Divided by Willow Rose
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThey think she's a monster, but she's their only hope… In a divided nation, 14-year-old Jetta belongs nowhere. Her face is split right down the middle: half-black and half-white. The non-white residents of her New Orleans camp call her a demon... -
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The Castle by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsTranslated and with a preface by Mark HarmanLeft unfinished by Kafka in 1922 and not published until 1926, two years after his death, The Castle is the haunting tale of K.’s relentless, unavailing struggle with an inscrutable authority in order to gain access to the Castle... -
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read With the Lights On by Alfred Hitchcock, Roald Dahl
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsContents:Introduction by Alfred HitchcockDeath Out of Season by Mary BarrettWitness in the Dark by Fredric BrownShadows on the Road by Robert ColbyMr. Mappin Forecloses by Zena CollierGranny by Ron GoulartThe Landlady by Roald DahlThree Ways to Rob a Bank by Harold R. DanielsNo Loose Ends by Miriam Allen deFordGoodbye, Pops by Joe GoresPin Money by James CrossSocial Climber by Robert J... -
Escape from Asylum by Madeleine Roux
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe nightmare is just beginning.Ricky Desmond has been through this all before. If he could just get through to his mother, he could convince her that he doesn’t belong at Brookline. From the man who thinks he can fly to the woman who killed her husband, the other patients are nothing like him; all he did was lose his temper just a little bit, just the once... -
The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsThe Most Dangerous Game features a big-game hunter from New York who becomes shipwrecked on an isolated island in the Caribbean and is hunted by a Russian aristocrat...Categorized as:
crime historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMay Lynn was a pretty girl from a mean family who dreamed of becoming a film star. Now she's dead - her body dredged up from the Sabine River, bound with wire and weighted down. Her best friend, Sue Ellen, wants to take her ashes to Hollywood. But May Lynn's diary holds a secret: the location of a large sum of money... -
Playing with Fire by Tess Gerritsen
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA beautiful violinist is haunted by a very old piece of music she finds in a strange antique shop in Rome. The first time Julia Ansdell picks up The Incendio Waltz, she knows it’s a strikingly unusual composition. But while playing the piece, Julia blacks out and awakens to find her young daughter implicated in acts of surprising violence...
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