Books like 'Runaway Train'

Readers who enjoyed Runaway Train by Lee Matthew Goldberg also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

contemporary  psychological  north-america  urban  california  usa  drama  coming-of-age

  • The Light Through the Leaves by Glendy Vanderah

    The Light Through the Leaves by Glendy Vanderah

    Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    One 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...
  • Sinister by Jana Deleon

    Sinister by Jana Deleon

    Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Street kids are disappearing, but how do you report that to the police when, from their standpoint, the missing people didn’t exist to begin with? Hustle is certain that something bad has happened to his friend Jinx, and the only person he can turn to for help is private investigator Shaye Archer...
    Categorized as:
    north-america  usa  urban  drama  louisiana  mystery  crime  fiction
  • 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...
  • Life After by Katie Ganshert

    Life After by Katie Ganshert

    Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    It could have been me. Snow whirls around an elevated train platform in Chicago. A distracted woman boards the train, takes her seat, and moments later a fiery explosion rips through the frigid air, tearing the car apart in a horrific attack on the city’s transit system. One life is spared. Twenty-two are lost...
    Categorized as:
    drama  north-america  urban  usa  adult  book  christian  contemporary
  • The Shadow Girl by Misty Mount

    The Shadow Girl by Misty Mount

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Shy, thirteen-year-old Zylia has always known she was different. Most teenagers feel unnoticed and unseen, but for Zylia, it's something much worse. She's disappearing from this world and doesn't know how to stop it. At times, she's not sure she wants to. Until she stumbles across a family mystery surrounding the disappearance of her great-aunt Angelica years earlier...
  • The Next Grave by Kendra Elliot

    The Next Grave by Kendra Elliot

    Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    A Wall Street Journal bestselling series.Following a murder and a woman’s sudden disappearance, investigations into old crimes and new collide in an alarming novel of suspense by a Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author.Detective Evan Bolton is gutted by his latest investigation...
    Categorized as:
    north-america  usa  drama  oregon  romance  mystery  crime  audiobook
  • I Know a Secret by Tess Gerritsen

    I Know a Secret by Tess Gerritsen

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In the twelfth gripping novel featuring Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, the crime-solving duo—featured in the smash-hit TNT series Rizzoli & Isles—are faced with the gruesomely staged murder of a horror film producer.The crime scene is unlike any that Detective Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles have ever before encountered...
  • We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

    We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create.Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released...
  • Suicide Watch by Kelley York

    Suicide Watch by Kelley York

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    18-year-old Vincent has spent his entire life being shuffled from one foster home to the next. His grades sucked. Making friends? Out of the question thanks to his nervous breakdowns and unpredictable moods. Still, Vince thought when Maggie Atkins took him in, he might've finally found a place to get his life--and his issues--in order.When Maggie dies, it all falls apart...
  • The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna

    The Eye of the Sheep by Sofie Laguna

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    An 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...
  • Genevieve by Eric Jerome Dickey

    Genevieve by Eric Jerome Dickey

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Genevieve is brilliant and beautiful. Her husband has a thriving career. Together, they have a beautiful home in Los Angeles. Together, they're crazy in love. Then one day a family tragedy brings Genevieve back to her Alabama hometown, back to a past she hoped her husband would never discover, and back to secrets shared by her sister Kenya-mysterious, teasing, and dangerously irresistible...
    Categorized as:
    drama  north-america  urban  usa  adult  alabama  angst  audiobook
  • Little Girls Sleeping by Jennifer Chase

    Little Girls Sleeping by Jennifer Chase

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    He looked down at the little girl, sleeping peacefully, her arms wrapped around a teddy bear. He knew he was the only one who could save her. He could let her sleep forever. An eight-year-old girl, Chelsea Compton, is missing in Pine Valley, California and for Detective Katie Scott it’s a cruel reminder of the friend who disappeared from summer camp twenty years ago...
  • The Perfect Block by Blake Pierce

    The Perfect Block by Blake Pierce

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    In THE PERFECT BLOCK (Book #2), rookie criminal profiler Jessie Hunt, 29, picks up the pieces of her broken life and leaves suburbia to start a new life in downtown Los Angeles. But when a wealthy socialite is murdered, Jessie, assigned the case, finds herself back in the world of picture-perfect suburbia, hunting a deranged killer amidst the false facades of normalcy and sociopathic women...
  • Absolute Fear by Lisa Jackson

    Absolute Fear by Lisa Jackson

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Every Serial Killer... A serial killer is stalking the streets of New Orleans. The victims are killed in a ritual fashion, a series of numbers tattooed into their bodies. There are no clues, no connections except one: a crumbling old asylum that was once the scene of unspeakable madness--and is now the calling card of a new kind of fear. Is Searching For..
    Categorized as:
    north-america  urban  usa  adult  audiobook  book  contemporary  crime
  • At First Light by Barbara Nickless

    At First Light by Barbara Nickless

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Ritual murder. Archaic clues. A visionary killer. In this heart-stopping novel by the Wall Street Journal and Amazon Charts bestselling author of the Sydney Rose Parnell series, words can kill.On the muddy banks of the Calumet River, a body has been found posed next to a series of mysterious glyphs and bearing wounds from a ritualistic slaying...
    Categorized as:
    north-america  usa  urban  illinois  mystery  fiction  crime  suspense
  • Christina by Leanne Davis

    Christina by Leanne Davis

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    My entire life I’ve lived with shadows lurking behind what otherwise appears like the perfect family. My mother often disappears into her bedroom for days at a time because her life becomes too much to deal with. I never understood it. I know there are family secrets. I hear the whispers and innuendos. But no one wants me to know the truth. The thing is: I’m not a little girl anymore...
  • Hunger for Life by Andy Marr

    Hunger for Life by Andy Marr

    Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    On the day of his graduation, James says goodbye to the future and moves back to his parents’ house in Myreton, the sleepy village of his childhood. He’s not happy, but the thought of continuing his life anywhere else seems unthinkable while his sister, Emma, continues to suffer with the illness that’s plagued her since she was a child...
  • The House of Gazes by Daniele Mencarelli

    The House of Gazes by Daniele Mencarelli

    Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Winner 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...
  • More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova

    More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A 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...
  • The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 94 ratings
    Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanityEsther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time...
  • Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman

    Open Season by Jonathan Kellerman

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Psychologist Alex Delaware and Detective Milo Sturgis become embroiled in an all-out race against time to find a twisted assassin in this riveting thriller from the #1 New York Times bestselling “master of suspense” (Los Angeles Times).Los Angeles is a city of stars, a city of strivers and wannabes. Not everyone can shine bright, but they’ll burn themselves up for a glimpse of the high life...
  • My Mother's Eyes: A Short Story by Jeremy Ray

    My Mother's Eyes: A Short Story by Jeremy Ray

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    “You’re wrong, Jordie. You’ll see. Draw me just one more time.”No one knows if his mother will come out of her coma, so fourteen-year-old Jordie memorializes her in the only way he knows how: by drawing her. His older brother doesn’t approve of these sketches, but Jordie’s determined to capture the person she used to be...
  • His Brown-Eyed Girl by Liz Talley

    His Brown-Eyed Girl by Liz Talley

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    She'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 Third Grave by Lisa Jackson

    The Third Grave by Lisa Jackson

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    A thrilling new crime novel from the bestselling author of You Betrayed Me, perfect for fans of Sandra Brown and Iris Johansen! Return to the dark side of Savanna, Georgia where a crime writer and her detective husband are working a cold case, and hot on the trail of a killer who’s work isn’t done...
    Categorized as:
    north-america  urban  usa  adult  audiobook  book  contemporary  crime
  • Cherry Bomb by J.A. Konrath

    Cherry Bomb by J.A. Konrath

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    At the end of Fuzzy Navel, J. A. Konrath surprised readers with an agonizing cliff-hanger: One of Lieutenant Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels's loved ones is dead. But who Readers were left clamoring to know more.Cherry Bomb, the sixth Jack Daniels mystery, opens at the funeral. While Jack stands graveside, tears in her eyes, her cell phone rings...
  • Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

    Dreams from Bunker Hill by John Fante

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    My 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...
  • Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr.

    Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr.

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Once a Runner captures the essence of what it means to be a competitive runner; to devote your entire existence to a single-minded pursuit of excellence. It has become one of the most beloved sports novels ever written...
  • Girls with Bright Futures by Tracy Dobmeier, Wendy Katzman

    Girls with Bright Futures by Tracy Dobmeier, Wendy Katzman

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Three 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...
    Categorized as:
    drama  north-america  urban  usa  audiobook  book  contemporary  crime
  • The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber

    The Shop on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Bestselling romance author and ardent knitter Debbie Macomber combines both her skills in this novel about a newly opened Seattle yarn shop and the knitting class that brings four women together to make baby blankets. The owner of the shop and her three students produce more than blankets, knitting together bonds of solidarity, friendship, love, hope, and renewal...
  • Split by Swati Avasthi

    Split by Swati Avasthi

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Sixteen-Year-Old Jace Witherspoon arrives at the doorstep of his estranged brother Christian with a re-landscaped face (courtesy of his father’s fist), $3.84, and a secret...
  • The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson

    The Lucky Ones by Liz Lawson

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    For fans of Thirteen Reasons Why, This Is How It Ends, and All the Bright Places, comes a new novel about life after. How do you put yourself back together when it seems like you've lost it all?May is a survivor. But she doesn't feel like one. She feels angry. And lost. And alone...
  • Among the Missing by Dan Chaon

    Among the Missing by Dan Chaon

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    In 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...
  • The Red Sheet by Mia Kerick, C. Kennedy

    The Red Sheet by Mia Kerick, C. Kennedy

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    One October morning, high school junior Bryan Dennison wakes up a different person helpful, generous, and chivalrous a person whose new admirable qualities he doesn't recognize. Stranger still is the urge to tie a red sheet around his neck like a cape.Bryan soon realizes this compulsion to wear a red cape is accompanied by more unusual behavior...
    Categorized as:
    coming-of-age  drama  north-america  usa  abuse  amnesia  angst  book
  • Ten Birthdays by Kerry Wilkinson

    Ten Birthdays by Kerry Wilkinson

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 8 ratings
    *Winner of the Romantic Novelists' Association Young Adult Novel of the Year 2018*"There are going to be so many things I wish I could’ve told you in person, Poppy. I won’t get the chance to do that, so perhaps this is my only way…"It’s Poppy Kinsey’s birthday...
  • 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 Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

    The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    The 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...
    Categorized as:
    drama  north-america  urban  usa  audiobook  book  contemporary  dark
  • The Speed of Light: A Novel by Elissa Grossell Dickey

    The Speed of Light: A Novel by Elissa Grossell Dickey

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Simone is trying her best not to think of what she’s lost. Diagnosed with MS, she awaits the results of another anxiety-inducing MRI. She’s just walked away from Connor, “a fixer” but possibly the love of her life. And nearing the holidays, the sights and sounds of winter in South Dakota only prick memories of better years gone by...
  • Leaving Las Vegas by John O'Brien

    Leaving Las Vegas by John O'Brien

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Leaving Las Vegas, the first novel by John O’Brien, is a disturbing and emotionally wrenching story of a woman who embraces life and a man who rejects it. Sera, a prostitute, and Ben, an alcoholic, stumble together and discover in each other a respite from their unforgiving lives...
    Categorized as:
    california  drama  north-america  urban  usa  adult  audiobook  book
  • The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay

    The First Rule of Ten by Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay

    Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    “Don’t ignore intuitive tickles lest they reappear as sledgehammers.” That’s the first rule of Ten. Tenzing Norbu (“Ten” for short)—ex-monk and soon-to-be ex-cop—is a protagonist unique to our times...
  • The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave

    The First Time I Saw Him by Laura Dave

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall’s pulse-pounding journey in the riveting and deeply moving sequel to the #1 New York Times bestselling blockbuster and Apple TV+ show, The Last Thing He Told Me.Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California...
  • Your Voice Is All I Hear by Leah Scheier

    Your Voice Is All I Hear by Leah Scheier

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 13 ratings
    I 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...
  • Sara in Montana - A Christmas Wish by Morris Fenris

    Sara in Montana - A Christmas Wish by Morris Fenris

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    What happens when a California girl meets a Montana guy in the middle of a crisis? Sara wished for a husband for Christmas this year and then married her boss. Now she is running for her life from him with a warrant out for her arrest, doesn’t want to be married anymore, and really needs a miracle to save her...
  • The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

    The Edge of Anything by Nora Shalaway Carpenter

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    A *Kirkus Reviews* Best Book of 2020One of A Mighty Girl's Best Books of the YearFinalist for the Cybils AwardsLen is a loner teen photographer haunted by a past that’s stagnated her work and left her terrified she’s losing her mind. Sage is a high school volleyball star desperate to find a way around her sudden medical disqualification. Both girls need college scholarships...
  • Can't Look Away by Carola Lovering

    Can't Look Away by Carola Lovering

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    From the author of Tell Me Lies and Too Good to Be True comes Carola Lovering's Can't Look Away, a sexy suspense novel about the kind of addictive, obsessive love that keeps you coming back––no matter how hard you try to look away.In 2013, twenty-three-year old Molly Diamond is a barista, dreaming of becoming a writer...
  • Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

    Fig by Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

    Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    An 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...
  • Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

    Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    Sixteen-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...
  • The Museum of Desire by Jonathan Kellerman

    The Museum of Desire by Jonathan Kellerman

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    ONE NIGHT OF HEDONISM. FOUR MURDER VICTIMS.A run-down mansion nestled between Beverley Hills and the San Fernando Valley is leased out for one night to house a party big enough to herald the end of days.When a limo is discovered in the grounds of the house the morning after with four dead bodies inside, a mind-bending case begins...
  • All the Little Animals by Walker Hamilton

    All the Little Animals by Walker Hamilton

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 6 ratings
    A 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...
  • The Measure of the Moon by Lisa Preston

    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...
  • The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

    The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 76 ratings
    Alternate cover editions for this ISBN can be found here and here.The instant #1 New York Times bestselling mystery and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick that’s captivated more than a million readers about a woman searching for the truth about her husband’s disappearance…at any cost.Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her...
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