Books like 'Dora: A Headcase'
Readers who enjoyed Dora: A Headcase by Lidia Yuknavitch also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Light Through the Leaves by Glendy Vanderah
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsOne unbearable mistake at the edge of the forest.In a moment of crisis, Ellis Abbey leaves her daughter, Viola, unattended—for just a few minutes. But when she returns, Viola is gone. A breaking point in an already fractured marriage, Viola’s abduction causes Ellis to disappear as well—into grief, guilt, and addiction...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark literary-fiction north-america usa washington action-adventure adult -
Collected Stories by Raymond Carver
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsRaymond Carver’s spare dramas of loneliness, despair, and troubled relationships breathed new life into the American short story of the 1970s and ’80s. In collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? and What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Carver wrote with unflinching exactness about men and women enduring lives on the knife-edge of poverty and other deprivations... -
Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly
Rated: 4.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGeoff Rickly’s debut novel Someone Who Isn’t Me is a feverish journey through the psyche of someone who no longer recognizes himself. When Geoff hears that a drug called ibogaine might be able to save him from his heroin addiction, he goes to a clinic in Mexico to confront the darkest and most destructive versions of himself...Categorized as:
literary-fiction dark lgbtq fiction contemporary substance-abuse mental-illness psychological -
Another Day in Winter: NEW from the No1 Bestselling Author. A perfect winter treat! (A Winter Day Book) by Shari Low
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsOne day, four lives, and a wintery web of secrets and lies. On a chilly morning in December forever friends Shauna and Lulu touch down at Glasgow Airport on a quest to find answers from the past... -
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Of Foster Homes and Flies by Chad Lutzke, Alberto Plumed
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA neglected 12-year-old boy does nothing to report the death of his mother in order to compete in a spelling bee. A tragic coming-of-age tale of horror and drama in the setting of a hot New Orleans summer. "Original, touching coming of age." ~Jack Ketchum, author of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR "With OF FOSTER HOMES & FLIES, Lutzke is firing on all cylinders. It's a lean mean emotional machine... -
The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAn alternative cover edition for the ISBN can be found here."Ned was beside me, his messages running easily through him, with space between each one, coming through him like water. He was the go-between, going between the animal kingdom and this one. I watched the waves as they rolled and crashed towards us, one after another, never stopping, always changing... -
Running the Light by Sam Tallent, Doug Stanhope
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA bona fide “instant classic” (Doug Stanhope) novel that tells the story of a road comic crashing and burning by acclaimed comedian Sam TallentBilly Ray Schafer stepped off the plane in Amarillo, Texas, with twenty-six hundred dollars tucked down the leg of his black ostrich-skin cowboy boot... -
Wallflower by Chad Lutzke
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAfter an encounter with a homeless man, a high school graduate becomes obsessed with the idea of doing heroin, challenging himself to try it just once. A bleak tale of addiction, delusion, and flowers."Bleak as hell and honestly horrific."~John Boden, author of JEDI SUMMER"Using his strong narrative, he (Lutzke) conveys the everyday realistic horror and pulls the reader right into the ugliness...Categorized as:
coming-of-age dark literary-fiction horror fiction psychological substance-abuse mental-illness -
Torture the Artist by Joey Goebel
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsVincent Spinetti is an archetypal tortured artist ? a sensitive young writer who falls victim to alienation, parental neglect, poverty, depression, alcoholism, illness, nervous breakdowns, and unrequited love... -
The House of Gazes by Daniele Mencarelli
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the 2019 John Fante First Novel Prize The critically acclaimed novel from the author of Everything Calls for Salvation , adapted into a Netflix Original series, is a powerful coming-of-age story about loss, identity, and rebirth Daniele is a young poet plagued by an unknown darkness, “an invisible disease of the heart, or of the mind...Categorized as:
literary-fiction coming-of-age fiction contemporary audiobook drama psychological book -
What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhat Makes Sammy Run?Everyone of us knows someone who runs. He is one of the symp-toms of our times—from the little man who shoves you out of the way on the street to the go-getter who shoves you out of a job in the office to the Fuehrer who shoves you out of the world. And all of us have stopped to wonder, at some time or another, what it is that makes these people tick... -
Saint Richard Parker by Merlin Franco
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHis search for love and enlightenment across India, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia...Ace businessman, writer, and investigative journalist Richard Parker loses his job when he exposes the vegetarian CEO of his newspaper as a beef exporter. Accused of misconduct and forced to dissolve his company, he retreats to his wretched little village... -
The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis novel in verse about a group of California yuppies was one of the most highly praised books of 1986 and a bestseller on both coasts... -
More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA breathless, riveting novel about a young woman diagnosed with bipolar disorder who rejects the stability and approval found in a traditionally “normal” life for a career in stand-up comedy.Maddy Banks is just like any other stressed-out freshman at NYU. Between schoolwork, exams, navigating life in the city, and a recent breakup, it’s normal to be feeling overwhelmed...Categorized as:
north-america usa urban literary-fiction coming-of-age connecticut new-york-state fiction -
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Misfit by Kathryn C. Kelly
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe final book in the series tells the story of Cash "Ghost" McCall, Louis "Stretch" King, and the woman they allow in their relationship, Ophelia Donovan, who just happens to be Outlaw's little sister.Ophelia Donovan wants to move past the loves of her life, two badass bikers in her brother’s MC... -
His Brown-Eyed Girl by Liz Talley
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsShe's saving him from…the kids? Lucas Finlay is used to calling the shots. But looking after his two nephews and niece in New Orleans, he's entirely out of his league. Luckily help is next door. With almost no effort Addy Toussant manages to make order from the kid chaos. Lucas is beyond grateful…he's also very attracted to her. Images of an adults-only playdate are soon dancing in his head... -
The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsA sensational new novel from the best-selling author of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms that tracks a group of privileged Los Angeles high school friends as a serial killer strikes across the city... -
Killing Me by Michelle Gagnon
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsUtterly original and wildly entertaining, with a protagonist whose life is a total mess, Killing Me is the laugh-out-loud funny thriller we never knew we needed.She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird... -
Invisible Love by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEric-Emmanuel Schmitt is the author of three luminous collections of short stories published by Europa Editions, including the bestselling Most Beautiful Book in the World, and one novel, Three Women in a Mirror... -
Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? by Johan Harstad
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA pop-saturated epic novel about the second man on the moon, and the quiet thirty-year-old gardener who idolizes him. A story of unconventional psychiatry, the Faroe Islands, amateur boat building, and the journey across the space that divides us from other people: a journey as remote and dangerous as the trip to the moon itself... -
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrederick Exley's inimitable "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes has assumed the status of a classic since its first publication in 1968. Mordantly and poignantly, Exley describes the profound failures of his life; professional, sexual, and personal... -
Like Life by Lorrie Moore
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn Like Life's eight exquisite stories, Lorrie Moore's characters stumble through their daily existence. These men and women, unsettled and adrift and often frightened, can't quite understand how they arrived at their present situations. Harry has been reworking a play for years in his apartment near Times Square in New York. Jane is biding her time at a cheese shop in a Midwest mall... -
Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMy first collision with fame was hardly memorable. I was a busboy at Marx's Deli. The year was 1934. The place was Third and Hill, Los Angeles. I was twenty-one years old, living in a world bounded on the west by Bunker Hill, on the east by Los Angeles Street, on the south by Pershing Square, and on the north by Civic Center... -
Girls with Bright Futures by Tracy Dobmeier, Wendy Katzman
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThree women. Three daughters. And a promise that they'll each get what they deserve.College admissions season at Seattle's Elliott Bay Academy is marked by glowing acceptances from top-tier institutions, and students as impressive as their parents are ambitious... -
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Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsFrom the creator and executive producer of the beloved and universally acclaimed television series BoJack Horseman, a fabulously off-beat collection of short stories about love--the best and worst thing in the universeWritten with all the scathing dark humor that is a hallmark of BoJack Horseman, Raphael Bob-Waksberg's stories will make readers laugh, weep, and shiver in uncomfortably delicious... -
Among the Missing by Dan Chaon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn this haunting, bracing new collection, Dan Chaon shares stories of men, women, and children who live far outside the American Dream, while wondering which decision, which path, or which accident brought them to this place. Chaon mines the psychological landscape of his characters to dazzling effect. Each story radiates with sharp humor, mystery, wonder, and startling compassion... -
Mama's Boy by David Goudreault
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the 2016 Grand Prix littéraire ArchambaultWritten with gritty humour in the form of a confession, Mama's Boy recounts the family drama of a young man who sets out in search of his mother after a childhood spent shuffling from one foster home to another. A bizarre character with a skewed view of the world, he leads the reader on a quest that is both tender and violent... -
Guide by Dennis Cooper
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsChris is a young porn star who wants to experience death at someone else's hand; Mason has lurid fantasies about members of British pop bands; Sniffles is a teenage runaway whose need for love outweighs his attachment to life... -
The Understory by Pamela Erens
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWinner of the Ironweed Press Fiction Prize... -
War Against the Animals by Paul Russell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsCameron Barnes, formerly of New York City, lives in a small town in upstate New York. After having nearly succumbed to AIDS, he's recently regained a measure of his health but his long-term lover has moved away, and Cameron faces the daunting prospect of learning how to live with the idea of a future in mind again... -
Sticky Fingers 2 by J.T. Lawrence
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDiverse, dark-humoured, and deliciously bite-sized, this compelling collection of 12 short stories by JT Lawrence include:GATSBY'S DOUBLEAn artist's Pomeranian has been replaced by an imposter.COURT, MARRY, KILLWhose body ends up being unzipped by fish on the ocean floor?ROCKABYE BABYA female-only cult has a very dark side... -
Runaway Train by Lee Matthew Goldberg
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey told me I was an out-of-control train about to crash…Everything changed when the police officer knocked on the door to tell me – a 16-year-old – that my older sister Kristen had died of a brain aneurysm. Cue the start of my parents neglecting me and my whole life spiraling out of control.I decided now was the perfect time to skip town... -
Deliver Me by Elle Nash
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“To read the work of Elle Nash is to be restored to faith in the wildness, wetness, and visceral power of contemporary American fiction. Deliver Me is a barbed liturgy of bugs, babies, meat, the gospel, women lusting women, women lusting men, and the human body. Get saved.” — MELISSA BRODER, author of Milk Fed , The Pisces , and Death Valley “.. -
Exposure by Ava Dellaira
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA life-changing moment encompasses conflicting truths that echo across time, in this powerful, provocative debut.One night, two people, four sides of a story.In 2004, Juliette Marker, a white college freshman, and Noah King, a Black high school senior, are two lonely souls who enter each other’s orbit, forge a connection, and, after a chance meeting, go home together...Categorized as:
literary-fiction lgbtq coming-of-age fiction audiobook contemporary season-spring friendship -
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The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound... -
You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn his bestselling and lavishly praised first book of stories, Adam Haslett explores lives that appear shuttered by loss and discovers entire worlds hidden inside them. The impact is at once harrowing and thrilling.An elderly inventor, burning with manic creativity, tries to reconcile with his estranged gay son... -
Good Kings Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsInside the halls of ILLC, an institution for juveniles with disabilities, we discover a place that is deeply different from and yet remarkably the same as the world outside. Nussbaum crafts a multifaceted portrait of a way of life hidden from most of us. In this isolated place on Chicago's South Side, friendships are forged, trust is built, and love affairs begin... -
Your Voice Is All I Hear by Leah Scheier
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsI was the one he trusted. I was the one he loved, the only one who believed him, even when his own mother had locked him up and thrown away the key.And now, I was going to pass down the white tiled hallway, knock on his doctor’s office door, slam his secret notebook on her desk and make her read it, make her understand what he was hiding, make her see what only I had seen... -
High Anxiety by Charlotte Hughes
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsReaders will go crazy for the latest Kate Holly case... Kate Holly needs a temporary secretary. Amanda Davis is a competent worker with a friendly personality and-after altering her hairstyle and fashion sense to identically match Kate's-more issues than a lifetime subscription to Psychology Today... -
The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNorman Moonbloom is a loser, a drop-out who can't even make it as a deadbeat. His brother, a slumlord, hires him to collect rent in the buildings he owns in Manhattan... -
Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn NPR Best Book of 2015Love and sacrifice intertwine in this brilliant debut of rare beauty about a girl dealing with her mother’s schizophrenia and her own mental illness.Fig’s world lies somewhere between reality and fantasy.But as she watches Mama slowly come undone, it becomes hard to tell what is real and what is not, what is fun and what is frightening...Categorized as:
north-america usa coming-of-age literary-fiction arkansas kansas young-adult mental-illness -
Everything Changes by Jonathan Tropper
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsJonathan Tropper’s novel The Book of Joe dazzled critics and readers alike with its heartfelt blend of humor and pathos. Now Tropper brings all that—and more—to an irresistible new novel. In Everything Changes , Tropper delivers a touching, wickedly funny new tale about love, loss, and the perils of a well-planned life. To all appearances, Zachary King is a man with luck on his side... -
Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsSixteen-year-old Solomon is agoraphobic. He hasn’t left the house in three years, which is fine by him.Ambitious Lisa desperately wants to get into the second-best psychology program for college (she’s being realistic). But is ambition alone enough to get her in?Enter Lisa... -
All the Little Animals by Walker Hamilton
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA beguiling, unsettling and ultimately moving modern fable set on the byways of rural Cornwall; a story about running away, the search for acceptance and burying road-kill.Bobby is a 31 year old man with the mind of a small, frightened boy. He has run away from his privileged but abusive London home to rural Cornwall...Categorized as:
coming-of-age literary-fiction action-adventure adult book contemporary drama fiction -
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The Allegations by Mark Lawson
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOn the morning after he has celebrated his 60th birthday party at a celebrity-filled party, Ned Marriott is in bed with his partner, Emma, when there's a knock on the door. Detectives from the London police force's 'Operation Millpond' have come to arrest him over an allegation of sexual assault... -
Now You See Me by Lesley Glaister
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwo strangers who should never have met make an unusual connection in this dazzling novel by Lesley Glaister At sixteen, Lamb walked out on her life. It wasn’t much to walk away from: Her parents were dead and she had no brothers or sisters—no one in the world who cared if she lived or died... -
The Measure of the Moon by Lisa Preston
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“If you ever say anything to anyone, they all die.” When eight-year-old Greer Donner falls off his horse in the Washington wilderness, he braces himself to face the long hike home alone. But screams pierce the darkness, and he stumbles upon a dead-end road where a man is beating a woman—nearly to death... -
A Billionaire's First Love by Mya Grey
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA Mya Grey's short story packed with travel, mixed martial arts, and contemporary romance."Tap if you don't want to get hurt!" he hears as he opens his eyes to see her beautiful face close to his as he lay flat on his back on the mat.The last thing he remembered was his face between her thighs as she cut off his circulation... -
Spadework for a Palace by László Krasznahorkai
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSpadework for a Palace bears the subtitle “Entering the Madness of Others” and offers an epigraph: “Reality is no obstacle.” Indeed...Categorized as:
literary-fiction humor urban fiction contemporary philosophy existentialism psychological -
Bear by Julia Phillips
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA mesmerising novel of two sisters on a Pacific Northwest island whose lives are upended by an unexpected visitor — a tale of family, obsession, and a mysterious creature in the woods, by the celebrated, bestselling author of Disappearing Earth.They were sisters and they would last past the end of time.Sam and her sister, Elena, dream of another life...Categorized as:
north-america usa washington literary-fiction washington-dc fiction contemporary outdoors
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