Books like 'John'
Readers who enjoyed John by Annie Baker also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical horror drama university magical-realism black-mc poc-mc
-
The Two Dead Girls by Stephen King
Rated: 4.52 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsThey were sisters, and the picture-perfect image of innocence. No one understood their brutal deaths, not even the man who killed them. But John Coffey is about to gain a new insight, about his life in prison, and about the one man who will walk him down that green mile . . . toward destiny.Prepare yourself for Stephen King's boldest exercise in nerve-twisting suspense... -
![Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson]()
Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsCalled “wholly engrossing” by New York Times bestselling author Kathleen Grissom, this “fully immersive” (Lisa Wingate, #1 bestselling author of Before We Were Yours) story follows an enslaved woman forced to barter love and freedom while living in the most infamous slave jail in Virginia.Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life... -
![Kindred by Octavia E. Butler]()
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsThe first science fiction written by a black woman, Kindred has become a cornerstone of black American literature. This combination of slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction is a novel of rich literary complexity. Having just celebrated her 26th birthday in 1976 California, Dana, an African-American woman, is suddenly and inexplicably wrenched through time into antebellum Maryland... -
![The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, Robin Miles]()
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James, Robin Miles
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe Book of Night Women is a sweeping, startling novel, a true tour de force of both voice and storytelling. It is the story of Lilith, born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century. Even at her birth, the slave women around her recognize a dark power that they and she will come to both revere and fear... -
-
![Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Boxed Set (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #1-3) by Ransom Riggs]()
Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children Boxed Set (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children #1-3) by Ransom Riggs
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe New York Times #1 best selling series Includes 3 hardcover novels by Ransom Riggs and 12 collectible peculiar photographs. The movie adaptation of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is in theaters December 2016...Categorized as:
drama magical-realism action-adventure book children fiction historical historical-fiction -
![Final Harvest: Poems by Emily Dickinson]()
Final Harvest: Poems by Emily Dickinson
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThough generally overlooked during her lifetime, Emily Dickinson's poetry has achieved acclaim due to her experiments in prosody, her tragic vision and the range of her emotional and intellectual explorations... -
![The Reign Of Greed by José Rizal]()
The Reign Of Greed by José Rizal
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"El Filibusterismo" ("The Subversive") is the second novel by Jose Rizal (1861-1896), national hero of the Philippines. Like its predecessor, the better-known "Noli Me Tangere", the "Fili" was written in Castilian while Rizal was traveling and studying in Europe. It was published in Ghent in 1891 and later translated into English, German, French, Japanese, Tagalog, Ilonggo, and other languages... -
![Malevolence by Smauggy]()
Malevolence by Smauggy
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Pretty princess who lives in tall towers built by slaves she calls 'monsters' thinks she knows what it's like to live in fear..."~Every young faerie girl fantasizes about her dream wedding.The beautiful gown with the lace train that trails behind her as she walks barefoot across the soft grass, holding a bouquet of daffodils and baby's breath...Categorized as:
black-mc poc-mc reverse-harem enemies-to-lovers poc-author fantasy harem sexual-assault -
![The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde]()
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 94 ratingsWritten in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work... -
![The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde]()
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFlamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzling personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written for the English stage... -
![The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale]()
The Bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe narrator of The Bottoms is Harry Collins, an old man obsessively reflecting on certain key experiences of his childhood. In 1933, the year that forms the centerpiece of the narrative, Harry is 11 years old and living with his mother, father, and younger sister on a farm outside of Marvel Creek, Texas, near the Sabine River bottoms... -
![The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy]()
The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFollowing All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought.In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events... -
![Human Acts by Han Kang, Alba Cunill Fulquet]()
Human Acts by Han Kang, Alba Cunill Fulquet
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsFrom the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, a rare and astonishing (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice.In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is shockingly killed... -
![Apex Magazine Issue 56, January 2014 by Sigrid Ellis, Ursula Vernon]()
Apex Magazine Issue 56, January 2014 by Sigrid Ellis, Ursula Vernon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsApex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field. New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month. We are a 2013 Hugo Award nominee for Best Semiprozine! FICTION Pale Skin, Gray Eyes by Gene O'Neill Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon [pseudonym: T... -
-
![The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol]()
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions... -
![The Veldt by Ray Bradbury]()
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThe advanced technology of a house first pleases then increasingly terrifies its occupants... -
![The Trees by Percival Everett]()
The Trees by Percival Everett
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPercival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk... -
![The Heart Of A Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov]()
The Heart Of A Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsA rich successful Moscow professor befriends a stray dog and attempts a scientific first by transplanting into it the testicles and pituitary gland of a recently deceased man. A distinctly worryingly human animal is now on the loose, and the professor's hitherto respectable life becomes a nightmare beyond endurance... -
![Daughters of Jubilation by Kara Lee Corthron]()
Daughters of Jubilation by Kara Lee Corthron
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFollow a black teen as she finds her place among a family of women gifted with magical abilities.In the Jim Crow South, white supremacy reigns and tensions are high. But Evalene Deschamps has other things to worry about. She has two little sisters to look after, an overworked single mother, and a longtime crush who is finally making a move... -
![The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquín, Gina Apostol]()
The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquín, Gina Apostol
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. With the post-colonial sensibilities of Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri and an ironic perspective of colonial history resonant with Marques and Llosa, Joaquin is a long-neglected writer ready to join the ranks of the world classics... -
![Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia]()
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau and Mexican Gothic comes a fabulous meld of Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism: a dark thriller about the curse that haunts a legendary lost film--and awakens one woman's hidden powers.Montserrat has always been overlooked... -
![Grandmother Spider: A Charlie Moon Mystery by James D. Doss]()
Grandmother Spider: A Charlie Moon Mystery by James D. Doss
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA lawman with a hardy appetite for life and an unshakable faith in the explicable, Southern Ute Acting Chief of Police Charlie Moon is not prepared to accept a purely supernatural explanation for the recent strange events of April 1... -
![The Between by Tananarive Due]()
The Between by Tananarive Due
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Hilton was just a boy, his aged grandmother saved him from drowning by pulling him out of a treacherous ocean current, sacrificing her life for his. Now, thirty years later, Hilton begins to think his borrowed time is running out... -
![Jilo by J.D. Horn]()
Jilo by J.D. Horn
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAged Mother Jilo is wise in the ways of magic…but once upon a time, she was just a girl.1950s Georgia: King Cotton has fallen. Savannah is known as the “beautiful woman with a dirty face,” its stately elegance faded by neglect, its soul withering from racial injustice and political corruption... -
-
![The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan]()
The Moon, the Stars, and Madame Burova by Ruth Hogan
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the wildly popular bestselling author of The Keeper of Lost Things--an uplifting, slightly magical story about how it's never too late to find out who you really are.Madame Burova--beloved Tarot reader, palmist, and clairvoyant--is retiring and leaving her booth on the Brighton seafront... -
![Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones]()
Leaving Atlanta by Tayari Jones
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn award-winning author makes her fiction debut with the coming-of-age story of three young black children during the Atlanta child murders of 1979.Its summer in Atlanta and black children are disappearing. By the time the heinous killing spree is over, 29 will be dead... -
![The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury]()
The Golden Apples of the Sun by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsSet the controls for the heart of the sun.The Captain bent in the warm air, cursing, felt his hands run over the cold machine, and while he worked he saw a future which was removed from them by the merest breath. He saw the skin peel from the rocket beehive, men thus revealed running, running, mouths shrieking, soundless. Space was a black mossed well where life drowned its roars and terrors...Categorized as:
drama magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics -
![The City of Mist: Stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafón]()
The City of Mist: Stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsReturn to the mythical Barcelona library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in this posthumous collection of stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits... -
![The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead]()
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsCora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape...Categorized as:
drama magical-realism poc-mc 21st-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook -
![Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann]()
Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThomas Mann's last great novel, first published in 1947 and now rendered into English by acclaimed translator John E. Woods, is a modern reworking of the Faust legend, in which Germany sells its soul to the Devil... -
![The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin]()
The Queen of Spades and Other Stories by Alexander Pushkin
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThis volume contains new translations of four of Pushkin's best works of fiction. The Queen of Spades has long been acknowledged as one of the world's greatest short stories, in which Pushkin explores the nature of obsession. The Tales of Belkin are witty parodies of sentimentalism, while Peter the Great's Blackamoor is an early experiment with recreating the past... -
![Marat Sade by Peter Weiss]()
Marat Sade by Peter Weiss
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsThis extraordinary play, which swept Europe before coming to America, is based on two historical truths: the infamous Marquis de Sade was confined in the lunatic asylum of Charenton, where he staged plays; and the revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was stabbed in a bathtub by Charlotte Corday at the height of the Terror during the French Revolution. But this play-within-a-play is not historical drama... -
![Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker]()
Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead...Categorized as:
drama magical-realism poc-mc 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
![In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner]()
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsDisplaying the author's extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is testament to the transcendent power of narrative and a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience... -
-
![The Complete Plays by Christopher Marlowe]()
The Complete Plays by Christopher Marlowe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsMarlowe's seven plays dramatise the fatal lure of potent forces, whether religious, occult or erotic. In the victories of Tamburlaine, Faustus's encounters with the demonic, the irreverence of Barabas in THE JEW OF MALTA, and the humiliation of Edward II in his fall from power and influence, Marlowe explores the shifting balance between power and helplessness, the sacred and its desecration... -
![I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, Angela Y. Davis]()
I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, Angela Y. Davis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Stunning... Maryse Condé's imaginative subversion of historical records forms a critique of contemporary American society and its ingrained racism and sexism." —THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBEAt the age of seven, Tituba watched as her mother was hanged for daring to wound a plantation owner who tried to rape her... -
![Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin]()
Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA collection of eight of Chopin's best stories of Louisiana, including Desiree's Baby, which is concerned with slavery and racism, and the intriguing story, The Godmother, of a murder and an older woman's attempt to protect the son of the man she had loved... -
![Three Souls by Janie Chang]()
Three Souls by Janie Chang
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAn absorbing novel of romance and revolution, loyalty and family, sacrifice and undying loveWe have three souls, or so I'd been told. But only in death could I confirm this ... So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife...Categorized as:
drama magical-realism poc-mc 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult afterlife -
![Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden]()
Gathering of Waters by Bernice L. McFadden
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsGathering of Waters is a deeply engrossing tale narrated by the town of Money, Mississippi--a site both significant and infamous in our collective story as a nation. Money is personified in this haunting story, which chronicles its troubled history following the arrival of the Hilson and Bryant families.Tass Hilson and Emmett Till were young and in love when Emmett was brutally murdered in 1955... -
![The Listener by Robert McCammon]()
The Listener by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratings1934. Businesses went under by the hundreds, debt and foreclosures boomed, and breadlines grew in many American cities. In the midst of this misery, some folks explored unscrupulous ways to make money. Angel-faced John Partlow and carnival huckster Ginger LaFrance are among the worst of this lot... -
![Remember Me Lib/E by Chelsea Bobulski]()
Remember Me Lib/E by Chelsea Bobulski
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn this eerie and suspenseful YA, a teen girl discovers what connects her to the hotel she calls home as horrifying visions lead her to the truth.Nell Martin is moving again, this time to the Winslow Grand Hotel, built in 1878. As Nell is settling in, strange things begin to happen... -
![The Hollow Girl by Hillary Monahan]()
The Hollow Girl by Hillary Monahan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFor fans of Asylum, Anna Dressed in Blood, and The Haunting of Sunshine Girl comes a new feminist horror novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Mary: The Summoning. Five boys attacked her. Now they must repay her with their blood and flesh. Bethan is the apprentice to a green healer named Drina in a clan of Welsh Romanies... -
![Fyneshade by Kate Griffin]()
Fyneshade by Kate Griffin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMany would find much to fear in Fyneshade's dark and crumbling corridors, its unseen master and silent servants. But not I. For they have far more to fear from me...On the day of her grandmother's funeral, Marta discovers that she is to be sent to be governess at Fyneshade, her charge the young daughter of the owner, Sir William Pritchard.All is not well at Fyneshade... -
![Rootwork by Tracy Cross]()
Rootwork by Tracy Cross
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsSet in a small parish in Louisiana in 1889, Rootwork follows sisters, Betty, Ann and Pee Wee. When school lets out for the summer, the girls head off to stay with their hoodoo-practicing aunt, Theodora, an empowered woman equally feared and revered by the local townspeople. They learn how to make “hot foot powder” and the secrets of a good “black cat bone”...Categorized as:
poc-mc black-mc magical-realism horror historical-fiction fiction fantasy historical -
-
![The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories by Oscar Wilde]()
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 23 ratings"The Picture of Dorian Gray, " Wilde's only full-length novel, is the enduringly eerie fable of a portrait that ages and decays as its model remains ever young and beautiful. Dorian Gray, a naive and irresistible young man, is lured by decadent Lord Henry Wotton into a life of depravity... -
![A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney]()
A Spectral Hue by Craig Laurance Gidney
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor generations, the marsh-surrounded town of Shimmer, Maryland has played host to a loose movement of African-American artists, all working in different media, but all utilizing the same haunting color... -
![Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams, Not Yet Available]()
Mirror Girls by Kelly McWilliams, Not Yet Available
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA thrilling gothic horror novel about biracial twin sisters separated at birth, perfect for fans of Lovecraft Country and The Vanishing Half As infants, twin sisters Charlie Yates and Magnolia Heathwood were secretly separated after the brutal lynching of their parents, who died for loving across the color line... -
![Where They Burn Books, They Also Burn People by Marcos Antonio Hernandez]()
Where They Burn Books, They Also Burn People by Marcos Antonio Hernandez
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwo standalone books with alternating chapters—the way the combination is meant to be read.They’re devoted to God. But will doing the Lord’s work lead them into darkness?1549. Convinced he’s destined to fulfill a whispered prophecy, Friar Diego de Landa labors to convert the Maya of the Yucatán Peninsula...Categorized as:
poc-mc magical-realism historical-fiction fiction horror historical literary-fiction latinx-mc -
![Song Yet Sung by James McBride]()
Song Yet Sung by James McBride
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Lord Bird, winner of the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction...Categorized as:
black-mc drama magical-realism poc-mc 21st-century action-adventure american-civil-war audiobook -
![Hell and Back by Craig Johnson]()
Hell and Back by Craig Johnson
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA new novel in the beloved New York Times bestselling Longmire series. Picking up where Daughter of the Morning Star left off, the next Longmire novel finds the sheriff digging further into the mysteries of the wandering without--a mythical all-knowing spiritual being that devours souls...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.
