Here are 100 books that Long Bright River fans have personally recommended if you like
Long Bright River.
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I have just written my twelfth novel and quite possibly my last. I’ve returned to where my heart is. My first five crime novels came about through the generous help of some undercover California wildlife agents. Now, in a sense, I’m back where I started, except that my latest book is also a love story. We make plenty of mistakes in life, some much worse than others. My characters deal with them in their own way. I can understand that, and I like that. And hey, there’s always the possibility of redemption.
I remember summers growing up when we were out of the house seeking freedom from parents as we streamed toward our teenage years, so I can identify with this story’s start. We’d follow deer trails through brush and trees to spots up in the hills we’d claimed as our own. This book begins with a prologue made vivid with three children and Tana French’s gorgeous prose.
The children go up and over a rock wall and into “A summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silk skin blue…your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat…” “…long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways…” and the haunted last sentence, “These children will not be coming of age, this or any other summer.”
The bestselling debut, with over a million copies sold, that launched Tana French, author of the forthcoming novel The Searcher and "the most important crime novelist to emerge in the past 10 years" (The Washington Post).
"Required reading for anyone who appreciates tough, unflinching intelligence and ingenious plotting." -The New York Times
Now airing as a Starz series.
As dusk approaches a small Dublin suburb in the summer of 1984, mothers begin to call their children home. But on this warm evening, three children do not return from the dark and silent woods. When the police arrive, they find only…
Having known families affected by substance abuse, I’ve long been fascinated by the resiliency of addicts’ relatives and close friends. Equally compelling to me, as a one-time wannabe psychologist, was how living with substance abusers shaped people’s characters and lives. But while the search for a recovering addict drives Beyond Billicombe’s plot, the book is also an ode of sorts to North Devon, the area of England where I spent three of the happiest years of my life. Though I now live outside New York City, I haven’t given up hope on being able to move back there someday.
Shuggie Bain invades the senses: You smell the sour breath of Shuggie’s mum as she snores, open-mouthed, in a drunken stupor; you feel the stiffness of the rug where endless spilled drinks were left to dry. Just as important, you feel the push-and-pull of love and despair, hope and anger, as Shuggie grows up, the youngest child of an alcoholic who is ultimately abandoned by the rest of their family. The final chapters, as Shuggie moves into adolescence and struggles to break from the burden of becoming caretaker to the woman who should have been taking care of him, are exceptional.
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
A stunning debut novel by a masterful writer telling the heartwrenching story of a young boy and his alcoholic mother, whose love is only matched by her pride.
Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.
My usual answer, when someone asks me where I live in Philadelphia, is: “Have you seen the Rocky movies, where he’s running through that open fruit/vegetable market? I’m three blocks from there.”I’ve called Philadelphia home for more than 20 years. I’m clearly a big fan, having now written four books about the city. I include a reference to the city’s most famous fictional character in my children’s alphabet book Philadelphia A to Z. In More Philadelphia Murals and the Stories They Tell, I got to tell stories about the country’s largest public art program. In This Used To Be Philadelphia, I told the then and now stories of dozens of city locations.
More than 12,000 Philadelphia residents died when the Spanish Flu began global deaths in 1918. Although the virus had already wreaked havoc in New England, Philadelphia officials went ahead with plans for a scheduled parade designed to raise public funding for the Great War across the ocean. An estimated 200,000 people watched and cheered as soldiers, veterans, and workers involved in the war effort marched down Broad Street on Sept. 28, 1918. An article about the spectacle published that afternoon inThe Evening Bulletin, began “This is a great day in Philadelphia.”
But another article in the same edition noted that a police officer had died from the flu and more than 100 people had recently tested positive for the virus. The parade was what we now would call a “super spreader event.” Within weeks, “the grippe,” as many called the disease had killed thousands and shut down the…
From the acclaimed author of The Last Year of the War comes a novel set during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, telling the story of a family reborn through loss and love.
In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Even as its young men went off to fight in the Great War, there were opportunities for a fresh start on its cobblestone streets. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters—Evelyn, Maggie, and Willa—a chance at a better life.
Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.
It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…
While I appreciate a variety of genres, my love of psychological suspense and thriller novels has only intensified over time. I often devour these books in one sitting—eyes darting across each page as my mind tries to guess the next pivotal twist! As an author, I aspire to create the same electrifying rush for my readers that my favorite stories give me. My debut novel, Swearing Off Stars, was inspired by my travels and received an Independent Press Award, a Benjamin Franklin Award, and an International Book Award. My writing has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, HuffPost, PopSugar, and Writer’s Digest. I hope you enjoy the recommendations on this list!
While this novel is a suspenseful psychological thriller in its own right, the story also tackles racial tensions and contemporary family dynamics. I admire the way Steph Cha explores grief, revenge, violence, racism, and justice over the course of Your House Will Pay’s fast-paced plot. This is absolutely a must-read.
Two families. One desperate to remember, the other to forget.
Winner of the LA Times Book Prize, Best Mystery/Thriller Winner of the California Book Awards' Gold Medal for Fiction Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Shortlisted for the Macavity Awards, Best Mystery Novel Shortlisted for the Anthony Awards, Best Novel Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
'Masterful.' Ruth Ware
'A searing examination of racial and family politics that is also an immaculately constructed whodunit.' Daily Telegraph, Summer Reads
'Writing a page-turner about racial politics in the U.S. is a delicate enterprise fraught with pitfalls, but Cha…
I love crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, espionage, you name it, plots and puzzles that excite and confound and ultimately gratify. I also love the non-genre called literary fiction, sharply observed and beautifully written books that move me, and leave me with a slightly better understanding of humanity. And I think the sweetest spot of all is the intersection of the two, with sparkling prose, fully realized characters, and interesting settings combined with an insistent, credible plot that makes it a matter of urgency to turn the page, presenting the exquisite dilemma of wanting to race through the excitement but also the opposite urge to slow down and enjoy it all.
This bighearted, heartbreaking story about the abortion wars is also paradoxically one of the funniest books I’ve ever read; there’s a page in the middle that I’ll reread again and again whenever I need a smile. The plot revolves around Claudia, a longtime employee of a Boston clinic that’s besieged by protesters who threaten the sort of political violence that’s become all too commonplace in polarized America, creating an insistent drumbeat of menace. But Mercy Streetis not a polemic, and the antagonists are treated with deep empathy and humanity. Possibly my favorite novel of the past few years.
"Ms. Haigh is an expertly nuanced storyteller long overdue for major attention. Her work is gripping, real, and totally immersive, akin to that of writers as different as Richard Price, Richard Ford, and Richard Russo."-Janet Maslin, New York Times
The highly praised, "extraordinary" (New York Times Book Review) novel about the disparate lives that intersect at a women's clinic in Boston, by New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Haigh
For almost a decade, Claudia has counseled patients at Mercy Street, a clinic in the heart of the city. The work is consuming, the unending dramas of women in…
I love crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, espionage, you name it, plots and puzzles that excite and confound and ultimately gratify. I also love the non-genre called literary fiction, sharply observed and beautifully written books that move me, and leave me with a slightly better understanding of humanity. And I think the sweetest spot of all is the intersection of the two, with sparkling prose, fully realized characters, and interesting settings combined with an insistent, credible plot that makes it a matter of urgency to turn the page, presenting the exquisite dilemma of wanting to race through the excitement but also the opposite urge to slow down and enjoy it all.
Richard Price’s propulsive plots revolve around crime, but the novels are always about something much bigger, andLush Life merges many of his favorite themes into one masterpiece: ambition and compromise, race and class, gentrification and crime, the push-and-pull of a city’s progressive leanings against reactionary forces for law and order and property values. Price’s city is constructed on a bedrock of conflict between those who’ve come to New York struggling to create art, those who were born here struggling to get by, and the cops struggling to hold the middle, in a spectacular kaleidoscope of a downtown scene at the turn of the millennium, of hipsters and gangsters, housing projects and trendy restaurants, all these subcultures clashing in one microcosm of urban life.
'So, what do you do?' Whenever people asked him, Eric Cash used to have a dozen answers. Artist, actor, screenwriter But now he's thirty-five years old and he's still living on the Lower East Side, still in the restaurant business, still serving the people he wanted to be. What does Eric do? He manages. Not like Ike Marcus. Ike was young, good-looking, people liked him. Ask him what he did, he wouldn't say tending bar. He was going places - until two street kids stepped up to him and Eric one night and pulled a gun. At least, that's Eric's…
My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.
It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to…
I love crime fiction—mysteries, thrillers, espionage, you name it, plots and puzzles that excite and confound and ultimately gratify. I also love the non-genre called literary fiction, sharply observed and beautifully written books that move me, and leave me with a slightly better understanding of humanity. And I think the sweetest spot of all is the intersection of the two, with sparkling prose, fully realized characters, and interesting settings combined with an insistent, credible plot that makes it a matter of urgency to turn the page, presenting the exquisite dilemma of wanting to race through the excitement but also the opposite urge to slow down and enjoy it all.
A rumor about teenage sexual assault has long-term repercussions on a handful of characters in this superb novel that toggles among different genres—thriller, mystery, women’s fiction, coming-of-age literary, even screenplays—with voices in first, second, and third person, a fascinating way of looking at a single event from every angle. The characters are astoundingly well-drawn, in particular the spot-on portraits of teenaged boys, which are a master class on how to write credible, realistic, and true characters that are well beyond the novelist’s own experience. Even the title itself is a clever subversion.
"Spellbinding." -Megan Abbott, The New York Times Book Review
Tracing the fifteen-year fallout of a toxic high school rumor, a riveting, astonishingly original debut novel about the power of stories-and who gets to tell them
2015. A gifted and reclusive ghostwriter, Alice Lovett makes a living helping other people tell their stories. But she is haunted by the one story she can't tell: the story of, as she puts it, "the things that happened while I was asleep."
1999. Nick Brothers and his lacrosse teammates return for their senior year at their wealthy Maryland high…
I have always been intrigued by missing persons. I wonder how their family copes with having no closure on the situation and how they can live wondering where their loved one is and whether they are dead or alive. I have read these recommended books many times to satisfy this craving. I enjoy a sense of the macabre even though the story may be about mundane everyday topics. This only adds to the sense of dread and wonder. I enjoy the intriguing twists and turns, keeping me on my toes and wanting more until the end. I hope you enjoy the books on this list as much as I have.
I recommend this book and the author’s fabulous writing, comprising of
dread and humour (which I love), all rolled into one. Three separate case
histories, interlinked, each littered with fabulous, memorable
characters. Jackson Brodie, the Detective trying to solve the case, is one of the best, with brilliant detective skills and a haunting
personal life.
An intriguing mix of family drama and mystery, giving it
more depth than just an ordinary thriller. I have read this book many
times, and it’s always new, never boring, and the ending is still a surprise.
Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night. Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac's apparently random attack. Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making - with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband - until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge ...
As a career journalist/communications specialist and historical suspense novelist, the intersection of fact and fiction has always been a fascination and an inspiration. In journalism and nonfiction reportage, the best we can hope to ascertain are likely facts. But in fiction—particularly fiction melded with history—I believe we can come closest to depicting something at least in the neighborhood of truth. My own novels have consistently employed real people and events, and as a reader, I’m particularly drawn to books that feature a factual/fictional mix, something which all five of my recommended novels excel in delivering with bracing bravado.
James Ellroy’s 1987 novel exploring the infamous unsolved and ghoulish murder of Elizabeth Short, the so-called “Black Dahlia,” gripped me with its chilling portrayal of two very different cops who become obsessed with solving the 1947 murder.
Although this is a relatively early work of Ellroy’s and extremely visceral owing to the nature of the historical crime, it’s arguably the author’s first mature novel, proved to be his breakout book, and pre-dates the rather alliterative, staccato prose style he would adopt not long after.
Post-war Los Angeles is seedily, disturbingly rendered in surreal and gothic relief, while Ellroy also masterfully portrays many of the haunted LAPD detectives who actually worked the case.
The highly acclaimed novel based on America's most infamous unsolved murder case. Dive into 1940s Los Angeles as two cops spiral out of control in their hunt for The Black Dahlia's killer in this powerful thriller that is "brutal and at the same time believable" (New York Times). On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a Los Angeles vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia -- and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants Squad cops,…
Emmitt’s plans collapse when his wife, Mirai, suddenly backs out of purchasing their dream home. Disappointed, he’s surprised to discover her subtle pursuit of a life and career in Tokyo.
In his search for a meaningful life in Japan, and after quitting his job, he finds himself helping his mother-in-law…
At heart, I just love a juicy story. For about three years of my life, I read nothing but non-fiction and textbooks on psychology, psychotherapy, and analyses of the human condition—everything from case studies to scientific papers. Cross that with an NYPD detective for a husband, and my obsession with the criminal mind, the detective mind, and everything in between was born. I am especially drawn to stories that show how working with the underbelly of society affects a police officer’s psyche. Nobody is unscathed. It is this vision of humanity on the razor’s edge between law and crime that I find most compelling to write and read.
Being a New Yorker, I’m a sucker for any true New York books, and this one is as authentic as they come. I also really appreciated how believable Chiara Corelli is. She has all the right mix of ethical and tough, but she is also a fully realized person with both external and internal goals and needs. Really good police procedural with a healthy dose of humanity.
Just back from her second tour in Afghanistan, NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli goes undercover to expose a ring of dirty cops. But when she’s ordered to kill to prove her loyalty, she aborts the operation without having identified the leaders. Now, Corelli is the one exposed. With her brothers and sisters in blue ostracizing her, can she trust Detective P.J. Parker to watch her back?
Parker is the daughter of a vehement critic of the NYPD. But that doesn’t stop her from wanting to work in the homicide division. And wanting to learn from the best. Unfortunately, Chiara Corelli is…
