Books like 'The Icepick Surgeon'
Readers who enjoyed The Icepick Surgeon by Sam Kean also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical mystery horror psychological crime true-crime medical politics religion humor
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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...Categorized as:
crime religion spirituality 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure audiobook book -
![None Left to Tell by Noelle W. Ihli]()
None Left to Tell by Noelle W. Ihli
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThree women, connected by one of the most brutal mass slayings in US history.Lucy is sick of turning the other cheek. Ten years ago, an anti-Mormon mob drove her family and friends from their homes in Illinois. But now, the tables have turned. Rumor has it, some of those same men are traveling through Utah on their way to California. And this time, Lucy won’t run... -
![Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith]()
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... -
![Bryant & May and the Burning Man by Christopher Fowler]()
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... -
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![Qb VII by Leon Uris]()
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... -
![The Bone Garden by Tess Gerritsen]()
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 Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James]()
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA true crime blogger gets more than she bargained for while interviewing the woman acquitted of two cold case slayings in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel. In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind... -
![Litani by Jess Lourey]()
Litani by Jess Lourey
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe Amazon Charts bestselling author of Unspeakable Things and Bloodline explores the darkness at the heart of the rural Midwest in a novel inspired by a chilling true crime.In the summer of ’84, fourteen-year-old Frankie Jubilee is shuttled off to Litani, Minnesota, to live with her estranged mother, a county prosecutor she barely knows... -
![The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor]()
The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsAn unconventional vicar moves to a remote corner of the English countryside, only to discover a community haunted by death and disappearances both past and present--and intent on keeping its dark secrets--in this explosive, unsettling thriller from acclaimed author C. J. Tudor.Welcome to Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here... -
![Ripper by Michael Slade]()
Ripper by Michael Slade
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom the bestselling author of Cutthroat comes a nerve-shattering thriller combining the legend of Jack the Ripper, the terrifying secrets of the Tarot, and a "mystery weekend" on a secluded Canadian island, whereurder becomes all too real... -
![The Devil's Prayer by Luke Gracias]()
The Devil's Prayer by Luke Gracias
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA nun commits suicide in front of thousands in Spain. In Australia, Siobhan Russo recognises that nun as her mother, Denise Russo, who disappeared six years ago. In search of answers, Siobhan travels to the isolated convent where her mother once lived... -
![Playing Saint by Zachary Bartels]()
Playing Saint by Zachary Bartels
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsRising mega-pastor Parker Saint was wrapped up in his ratings and his book deal. But that was before the cops and the serial killer, the Vatican operatives, and the centuries-old plot to conceal an ancient relic. Now he's just trying to stay alive.Parker Saint is an up-and-coming superstar pastor on the verge of achieving everything he's wanted--including a national TV program and major book deal... -
![The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick]()
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... -
![Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson]()
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... -
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![The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley]()
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... -
![A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan]()
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSet just after the Civil War, A Prayer for the Dying is the story of a small Wisconsin town gripped by a mysterious, deadly epidemic, and one man desperate to save it. Torn between his loyalty to his family, his faith in God, and his terror of this vicious disease, Jacob Hansen struggles to preserve his sanity amid the chaos and violence around him...Categorized as:
medical religion spirituality 20th-century adult american-civil-war apocalyptic book -
![The House on Foster Hill by Jaime Jo Wright]()
The House on Foster Hill by Jaime Jo Wright
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOutstanding Debut Novel from an Author to Watch Kaine Prescott is no stranger to death. When her husband died two years ago, her pleas for further investigation into his suspicious death fell on deaf ears. In desperate need of a fresh start, Kaine purchases an old house sight unseen in her grandfather's Wisconsin hometown... -
![The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman]()
The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratings“Rising horror star”* Christopher Buehlman, author of The Lesser Dead, returns with a chilling and thrilling tale of dark evil lurking on the lonely, open road... Bram Stoker, quoting the ballad “Lenore,” said, “The dead travel fast.” Those words have never rung more true.. -
![The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson]()
The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young... -
![In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka]()
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the Penal Colony is a short story by Franz Kafka. This story is set in a penal colony with no name. The book describes the last use of a torture and execution device developed sculpting condemned the judgment against her skin before you let him die, all in the course of twelve hours... -
![The Lost Girls of Willowbrook by Ellen Marie Wiseman]()
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... -
![Cutthroat by Michael Slade]()
Cutthroat by Michael Slade
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the mastermind behind Headhunter comes a thriller that compares to such classics as Psycho and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Three enigmatic story lines intertwine to culminate in an ultimate climax, as this horror whodunit follows the bloody footsteps of a serial killer through the streets of San Francisco--and through history--each chapter drawing readers closer to the secret behind Cutthroat... -
![The Savage Instinct by Marjorie DeLuca, M.M. DeLuca]()
The Savage Instinct by Marjorie DeLuca, M.M. DeLuca
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEngland, 1873. Clara Blackstone has just been released after one year in a private asylum for the insane. Clara has two goals: to reunite with her husband, Henry, and to never—ever—return to the asylum... -
![The Castle by Franz Kafka]()
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... -
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![Dante's Wood by Lynne Raimondo]()
Dante's Wood by Lynne Raimondo
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA troubled psychiatrist turns investigator when a young patient confesses to murder. Psychiatrist Mark Angelotti knows that genes don't lie. Or do they? Back at work after a devastating illness, Mark believes he has put his past behind him when he is asked to examine Charlie Dickerson, a mentally handicapped teenager whose wealthy mother insists he is a victim of sexual abuse... -
![The Cuts that Cure by Arthur Herbert]()
The Cuts that Cure by Arthur Herbert
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"A tale of intrigue and suspense, with a villain that will keep you awake. A page-turner you don't want to miss!" -NYT Bestselling Author Nick RussellAlex Brantley is a burned-out surgeon whose desperation to start a new life outside of medicine leads him to settle in a sleepy Texas town close to the Mexican border, a town that has a dark side... -
![Edge of Dark Water by Joe R. Lansdale]()
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... -
![The Asylum by Karen Coles]()
The Asylum by Karen Coles
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratings1906: Being a woman is dangerous, being different is deadly.Maud Lovell has been at Angelton Lunatic Asylum for five years. She is not sure how she came to be there and knows nothing beyond its four walls. She is hysterical, distressed, untrustworthy. Badly unstable and prone to violence. Or so she has been told... -
![Faust, Part One by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]()
Faust, Part One by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsThis new translation, in rhymed verse, of Goethe's Faust--one of the greatest dramatic and poetic masterpieces of European literature--preserves the essence of Goethe's meaning without resorting either to an overly literal, archaic translation or to an overly modern idiom. It remains the nearest equivalent rendering of the German ever achieved... -
![Roots of Evil by Sarah Rayne]()
Roots of Evil by Sarah Rayne
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLucy Trent is used to having the legend of her disreputable grandmother disinterred from time to time - the infamous silent-screen actress Lucretia von Wolff, whose lovers were legion, whose scandals were numerous, whose life ended abruptly in a bizarre double murder and suicide at the Ashwood film studios in 1952... -
![Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane, Barbie Wilde]()
Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell by Paul Kane, Barbie Wilde
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe World’s Greatest Detective Meets Horror’s Most Notorious Villains!Late 1895, and Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Dr John Watson are called upon to investigate a missing persons case. On the face of it, this seems like a mystery that Holmes might relish – as the person in question vanished from a locked room... -
![Hangman by Michael Slade]()
Hangman by Michael Slade
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe game begins in Seattle, where a hanged woman is found with one leg missing. Then, in Vancouver, a corpse is found with both legs missing. The clue that binds these horrific crimes together is a game of "Hangman" crudely drawn at each location--painted in the victim's blood.The victims, it seems, were jurors on a controversial case years ago, in which a man was sentenced to death--by hanging... -
![A Wicked Snow (Emily Kenyon #3) by Gregg Olsen, Kevin Foley]()
A Wicked Snow (Emily Kenyon #3) by Gregg Olsen, Kevin Foley
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHannah Griffin was a girl when tragedy struck on her family's farm. She still remembers the flames reflected against the newly fallen snow and the bodies the police dug upone of them her mother's. It was the nation's worst murder scene in decades and the killer was never found. Two decades later Hannah is a CSI investigating a case of child abuse when the past comes hurtling back... -
![Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James, Peter Kemp]()
Sleep No More: Six Murderous Tales by P.D. James, Peter Kemp
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA collectible gift for all P. D. James fans to stand alongside her bestselling The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories six previously uncollected stories from the beloved Queen of Crime--swift, cunning murder mysteries from throughout her extraordinary career. Put your feet up and enjoy a good read! Longtime P. D... -
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![Bloodline by Jess Lourey]()
Bloodline by Jess Lourey
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsPerfect town. Perfect homes. Perfect families. It’s enough to drive some women mad…In a tale inspired by real events, pregnant journalist Joan Harken is cautiously excited to follow her fiancé back to his Minnesota hometown. After spending a childhood on the move and chasing the screams and swirls of news-rich city life, she’s eager to settle down... -
![Thief of Souls by Ann Benson]()
Thief of Souls by Ann Benson
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWith her acclaimed novels The Plague Tales and The Burning Road, Ann Benson has carved out a unique place on the literary landscape with her fascinating alchemy of mystery, history, and psychological terror. Now this gifted storyteller returns with an astounding tale of two crime waves separated by nearly 600 years. In each, the victims are children... -
![Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom]()
Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Lizzie Borden took an axe . . ". Or did she? One hundred years ago, Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally murdered. Their youngest daughter Lizzie was arrested and tried for the killings and--shockingly to many--was found innocent... -
![Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown]()
Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars, Alan Brown
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAt once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Blaise Cendrars's Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it's a lot more entertaining to read. Heir to an immense aristocratic fortune, mental and physical mutant Moravagine is a monster, a man in pursuit of a theorem that will justify his every desire... -
![The Cypress House by Michael Koryta]()
The Cypress House by Michael Koryta
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA journey to Florida's coast becomes an inescapable nightmare in the newest supernatural thriller from international bestseller Michael Koryta.Arlen Wagner has seen it in men before--a trace of smoke in their eyes that promises imminent death. He is never wrong... -
![A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick]()
A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFourteen strangers come to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that treacherous planet, whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers tound that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations... -
![The Bloodletter's Daughter: A Novel of Old Bohemia by Linda Lafferty, Carrington MacDuffie]()
The Bloodletter's Daughter: A Novel of Old Bohemia by Linda Lafferty, Carrington MacDuffie
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWithin the glittering Hapsburg court in Prague lurks a darkness of which no one dares speak...In 1606, the city of Prague shines as a golden mecca of art and culture carefully cultivated by Emperor Rudolf II. But the emperor hides an ugly secret: his bastard son, Don Julius, is afflicted with a madness that pushes the young prince to unspeakable depravity... -
![Madness is Better than Defeat by Ned Beauman]()
Madness is Better than Defeat by Ned Beauman
Rated: 3.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn 1938, two rival expeditions set off for a lost Mayan temple in the jungles of Honduras, one intending to shoot a screwball comedy on location there, the other to disassemble the temple and ship it back to New York... -
![Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes by Patricia Highsmith]()
Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes by Patricia Highsmith
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThese ten stories chronicle a world gone slightly mad, with dark, inventive takes on environmental degradation, apocalyptic disaster, political chaos, religious conservatism, and more... -
![Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick]()
Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsWhile sightseeing at the Belmont Bevatron, Jack Hamilton, along with seven others, is caught in a lab accident. When he regains consciousness, he is in a fantasy world of Old Testament morality gone awry—a place of instant plagues, immediate damnations, and death to all perceived infidels... -
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![The Shimmer: A Novel by Carsten Stroud]()
The Shimmer: A Novel by Carsten Stroud
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHow do you hunt a killer who can go back in time and make sure you're never born?A police pursuit kicks Sergeant Jack Redding of the Florida Highway Patrol and his trainee, Julie Karras, into a shoot-out that ends with one girl dead and another in cuffs, and the driver of the SUV fleeing into the Intracoastal Waterway... -
![The Black House by Patricia Highsmith]()
The Black House by Patricia Highsmith
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHorrific tragedy becomes disturbingly ordinary in The Black House, a masterful collection of short stories, written during a particularly dark time in Patricia Highsmith's life. As readers will discover, the work eerily evokes the warm familiarities of suburban life: the manicured lawns, the white picket fences, and the local pubs, each providing the backbone for her chilling portraits... -
![The Girl Who Couldn't Read by John Harding]()
The Girl Who Couldn't Read by John Harding
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA sinister Gothic tale in the tradition of The Woman in Black and The Fall of the House of UsherNew England, the 1890s. A man calling himself Doctor John Shepherd arrives at an isolated women's mental hospital to begin work as assistant to the owner Dr Morgan. As Shepherd struggles to conceal his own dark secrets, he finds the asylum has plenty of its own... -
![The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea]()
The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratings1686, ICELAND. AN ISOLATED, WINDSWEPT LAND HAUNTED BY WITCH TRIALS AND STEEPED IN THE ANCIENT SAGAS.Betrothed unexpectedly to Jón Eiríksson, Rósa is sent to join her new husband in the remote village of Stykkishólmur. Here, the villagers are wary of outsiders.But Rósa harbours her own suspicions. Her husband buried his first wife alone in the dead of night. He will not talk of it... -
![The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason]()
The Darwin Affair by Tim Mason
Rated: 3.65 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsGet ready for one of the most inventive and entertaining novels of 2019—an edge-of-your-seat Victorian-era thriller, where the controversial publication On the Origin of Species sets off a string of unspeakable crimes... -
![Eat Him If You Like by Jean Teulé]()
Eat Him If You Like by Jean Teulé
Rated: 3.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA true story. Tuesday 16 August 1870, Alain de Money, makes his way to the village fair. He plans to buy a heifer for a needy neighbour and find a roofer to repair the roof of the barn of a poor acquaintance. He arrives at two o'clock. Two hours later, the crowd has gone crazy; they have lynched, tortured, burned and eaten him...
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