50 books like Rest in Pink

As someone who has never been to Chicago and knew nothing about the Great Lakes shipping industry, the book was fascinating in so many ways. Sara Paretsky has a compelling, strong female lead but also takes us places we never conceived of. Paretsky’s murder investigation is thrilling, and the characters are well crafted and ones that the reader will care about. It is an excellent book that has stayed in my memory for decades.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. It’s about a neurotic, hypochondriacal, middle-aged college professor in a small town who does one absurd thing after another as he attempts to sort his life out. 

His wife, daughter, and father are all as much of a wreck as he is, as are his lunatic colleagues in the English department. Being a middle-aged, neurotic, and hypochondriacal man myself—and having grown up in a small, claustrophobic college town with maladjusted academic types much like these—this novel had me crying with laughter. (There’s an over-the-top scene with a goose and a news reporter that almost made me wet myself.) 

But as often happens in a Richard Russo novel, there are also tons of lovely, sweet, and insightful moments. This is a great book.

Perhaps from the outside Detroit might look like a humorless place. A native of the city, Foley shows us just how untrue that is. Boys follows three Black gay millennial men looking for love, friendship, and professional success in the Motor City, with a narrative both hilarious and touching.

Published by Belt Publishing, a relatively new publisher focusing on the Rust Belt, Boys gives readers an inside view of the city and Black culture that can be radically different from the ones often portrayed in the media. This book can take you to a world much more beautiful and strange.

Jon Allen’s coming out and growing up story in his ongoing Ohio Is For Sale series, The Lonesome Era is, so far, his most complex and affecting work, but that’s not saying much for a cartoonist who expands his abilities and repertoire with each new book. The Lonesome Era is a rites-of-passage tale that showcases Allen’s customarily bleak outlook and dry wit, and it is, by turns, hilarious and poignant. I’ve called his work “Kafkaesque situation comedies” in the past, but that description belies the mordant emotional and observational sophistication on show here. He is simply one of the best young visual storytellers around.

This book is set in the small city of Ithaca in Upstate New York and provides an engaging account of people living there before and during the anti-migrant policies of Donald Trump’s Presidency.

Despite the overwhelming majority of refugees being hosted in the Global South, some do receive third-country resettlement to countries such as the United States. As Hartman’s book shows us, challenges and issues don’t stop upon resettlement, and often, resettled refugees face new obstacles.

The book is also an important reminder that while most studies of urban refugees tend to focus on mega- and other large cities like Istanbul, Bangkok, and Beirut, smaller urban areas–like Ithaca, with a population of little over 30,000–are also key sites of refuge.

It opens with the most brilliant disclaimer I've ever seen: "Warning. This is a novel. Everything is true and everything is false."

Dominique Manotti is a grande dame of French crime fiction, and a friend and mentor to me. Lorraine Connection is widely considered her masterpiece.

It's a sweeping 21st-century epic that starts in what might be considered a French rust belt town, in the region called Lorraine, where the old steel and iron works have been bought by the Korean firm Daewoo and transformed into a cathode-ray factory.

An industrial accident is the triggering event in this novel that explores the murderous effects of the globalized economy on a universe of characters from different classes, ethnicities, and nationalities. Virtuoso writing.

As much as I love foreign-set thrillers, I love cross-genre thrillers even more. And horror thrillers top the list. This book grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go until the last page. 

I love how the woods in the book are a sinister place with teeth and a creeping sense of dread every time Liz enters it. Although there were times I wanted to slap Liz for her poor decisions, I breathlessly followed her investigation to uncover her own connection to what lurks in the woods and the mystery of decades of missing and murdered black girls in her hometown.

This book is a thought-provoking exploration of evil and just how easy it is for fear and hatred to grow into something truly terrifying.

I am an avid romance reader. I love all different tropes and I constantly have a book in my hand. Reckless Miles is my favorite of all the books I’ve read and out of all the characters, Cooper Miles is my favorite character. The entire Miles series, about a family vineyard, is worth checking out because not only are they fantastic stories that will leave your sides hurting from laughter, and swooning from the happily ever after, but there is also a mystery woven in. 

Cooper Miles is unique. He’s very comfortable in his skin. Whatever he thinks comes straight out of his mouth and it is drop-dead hilarious. He takes life as it comes and doesn’t stress, something I wish I could learn to do. When he latches onto someone, he loves them deeply, whether it’s a family member, best friend, or a girl who is dropped into his… show more.

I really enjoy characters who are trying to overcome personal flaws, and Karlie Brighton has plenty of those.

When she decides a one-night stand is just what the doctor ordered, she manages to pick the one man that she shouldn’t, her brother’s best friend.

The fallout is realistic but fun. I found the characters to be irresistible, making this an easy and fun read.

Levig’s characters in Embracing the Dawn leap from the page. They’re fully realized, three-dimensional women with interesting backstories. It’s an unusual pairing, but that doesn’t decrease the swoon-worthy component any.

I’ve heard readers are fascinated with either E.J. or Jinx, myself no exception. Like in my last recommendation, I adore when a character can’t help herself from showing up time and time again, and this romance provides. 

Levig supplements her love interests with intriguing and complex side characters who are just as loveable as the main characters. Levig doesn’t shy away from difficult subjects, and how E.J. and Jinx support and strengthen each other makes their romance even more swoon worthy.

You’ll be ordering the second book in the series before you’re done with the first.