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The Glorious Heresies

Lisa McInerney · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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Clockers

Richard Price · 624 pages

Substance AbuseWorking-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeCrime
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Bee Sting

Paul Murray · 645 pages

IrelandDark ComedySubstance AbuseMultiple POV
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Where All Light Tends to Go

David Joy · 289 pages

"Set in North Carolina's Appalachian Mountains, eighteen-year-old Jacob McNeely is torn between appeasing his meth-dealing kingpin father and leaving the mountains forever with the girl he loves"--

Substance AbuseWorking-Class ProtagonistCrimeOrganized Crime
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The Guards

Ken Bruen · 304 pages

IrelandDark ComedySubstance AbuseCrime
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Death of a Bookseller

Alice Slater · 481 pages

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER! LONGLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS' CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024 *** SHORTLISTED FOR THE DEBUT OF THE YEAR at the FINGERPRINT AWARDS *** WOULD YOU KILL FOR A GOOD STORY? 'A confident, sassy, pitch-black debut' CAROLINE KEPNES 'Your new obsession' ERIN KELLY 'Savage, witty and all-consuming' ABIGAIL DEAN 'A dark masterpiece. It will work its way under your skin like

Working-Class ProtagonistSubstance AbuseCrimeDark Comedy
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Trainspotting

Irvine Welsh · 352 pages

Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's first novel, Trainspotting, is a collection of short-stories revolving around a group of friends, their drug use, and struggles in the city of Edinburgh.

Working-Class ProtagonistDark ComedySubstance AbuseMultiple POV
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Post Office

Charles Bukowski · 160 pages

"It began as a mistake." By middle age, Henry Chinaski has lost more than twelve years of his life to the U.S. Postal Service. In a world where his three true, bitter pleasures are women, booze, and racetrack betting, he somehow drags his hangover out of bed every dawn to lug waterlogged mailbags up mud-soaked mountains, outsmart vicious guard dogs, and pray to survive the day-to-day trials of sad

Working-Class ProtagonistDark ComedySubstance AbuseLiterary Fiction
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As God Commands

Niccolo Ammaniti · 406 pages

Despite his hope that the scheme of his alcoholic father, Rino, and his cronies will land a great fortune for the family, and the hand of the beautiful Fabiana for him, Cristiano finds his life changed in a single night, and not in the way he had hoped.

Working-Class ProtagonistCrimeDark ComedyLiterary Fiction
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City of Bohane

Kevin Barry · 277 pages

Set 40 years in the future, the once great city of Bohane on the west coast of Ireland is in terminal decline, with vice and tribal splits rife. Logan Hartnett, godfather of the Hartnett Fancy gang has been in charge but his nemesis has arrived back in town, his henchmen are becoming ambitious, his wife wants him to give it all up and go straight, and he has his mother to contend with.

IrelandOrganized CrimeCrimeDark Comedy
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When We Were Silent

Fiona McPhillips · 320 pages

IrelandWorking-Class ProtagonistCrimeDark
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The Marauders

Tom Cooper · 304 pages

When the BP oil spill devastates the Gulf coast, those who made a living by shrimping find themselves in dire straits. For the oddballs and lowlifes who inhabit the sleepy, working class bayou town of Jeannette, these desperate circumstances serve as the catalyst that pushes them to enact whatever risky schemes they can dream up to reverse their fortunes. At the center of it all is Gus Lindquist,

Working-Class ProtagonistDark ComedySubstance AbuseCrime
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White Lines

Tracy Brown · 512 pages

Fleeing her home to escape the abuse of her mother's boyfriend, Jada seeks refuge with Born, the neighborhood kingpin, but her new life is threatened by crack addiction, prostitution, a struggle to rebuild her life, and a stormy romance with a street hustler.

Organized CrimeSubstance AbuseWorking-Class ProtagonistCrime
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Hell to Pay

George P. Pelecanos · 368 pages

Derek Strange and Terry Quinn, the team of private investigators who made their stunning debut in Right As Rain, are hired to find a 14-year-old white girl from the suburbs who's run away from home and is now working as a prostitute. The two ex-cops think they know D.C.'s dangers, but nothing in their experience has prepared them for Worldwide Wilson, the pimp whose territory they're intruding upo

Working-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeCrimeSubstance Abuse
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The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Charlie Huston · 319 pages

With a style that is razor sharp, an eye that never shies from the gritty details, and a taste for stories that simultaneously shock, disturb, and entertain, Charlie Huston is one of a kind. And The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death is the type of story--swift, twisted, hilarious, somehow hopeful--that only he could dream up.The fact is, whether it's a dog hit by a train or an old lady who

Dark ComedyOrganized CrimeWorking-Class ProtagonistCrime
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Gun Street Girl

Adrian McKinty · 313 pages

"Belfast, 1985, amidst the "Troubles": Detective Sean Duffy, a Catholic cop in the Protestant RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), struggles with burn-out as he investigates a brutal double murder and suicide. Did Michael Kelly really shoot his parents at point blank and then jump off a nearby cliff? A suicide note points to this conclusion, but Duffy suspects even more sinister circumstances. He soon

IrelandDark ComedyCrimeSubstance Abuse
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Resolution

Denise Mina · 421 pages

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year"Resolution can stand alone, battered and proud, as a class-conscious crime novel that dares to tell the ugly truth." -New York Times Book ReviewJust as Maureen O'Donnell is struggling to give up drinking, she faces her most formidable challenges yet: testifying against her boyfriend's murderer and the return of her abusive father. Irresistibly blending

Working-Class ProtagonistSubstance AbuseCrimeDark Comedy
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Long Bright River

Liz Moore · 473 pages

A female cop begins to fear for her addicted sister. A serial murder is targeting homeless female prostitutes. Can Mickey find her sister before the killer does ?

Working-Class ProtagonistSubstance AbuseCrimeDark
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The Elephant Tree

R.D. Ronald · 258 pages

The Elephant Tree is the 2010 debut novel by British crime and transgressive fiction author R.D. Ronald. Set in the fictional city of Garden Heights, the novel follows Scott, a 24-year-old working for his brother while running a small-scale drug dealing operation; Angela, 23, whose father, a career criminal, supplies Scott with cannabis; and Mark Fallon, a detective investigating a spate of attack

Working-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeSubstance AbuseCrime
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Out

Natsuo Kirino · 394 pages

In the Tokyo suburbs four women work the draining graveyard shift at a boxed-lunch factory. Burdened with chores and heavy debts and isolated from husbands and children, they all secretly dream of a way out of their dead-end lives.

Working-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeCrimeMultiple POV
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Age of Vice

Deepti Kapoor · 544 pages

Organized CrimeCrimeSubstance AbuseMultiple POV
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No Country for Old Men

Cormac McCarthy · 320 pages

In his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of his famed *Border Trilogy.* The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in th

Organized CrimeCrimeMultiple POVLiterary Fiction
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Mystic River

Dennis Lehane · 487 pages

When they were children, Sean Devine, Jimmy Marcus, and Dave Boyle were friends. But then a strange car pulled up to their street. One boy got into the car, two did not, and something terrible happened -- something that ended their friendship and changed all three boys forever. Twenty-five years later, Sean is a homicide detective. Jimmy is an ex-con who owns a corner store. And Dave is trying to

Working-Class ProtagonistOrganized CrimeCrimeLiterary Fiction
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Faithful Place

Tana French · 448 pages

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was a nineteen-year-old kid with a dream of escaping hisi family’s cramped flat on Faithful Place and running away to London with his girl, Rosie Daly. But on the night they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn’t show. Frank took it for granted that she’d dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went

IrelandWorking-Class ProtagonistCrimeSubstance Abuse
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The Last Four Days of Paddy Buckley

Jeremy Massey · 292 pages

"A dark and unexpected novel about a Dublin undertaker who finds himself on the wrong side of the Irish mob"--

IrelandOrganized CrimeDark ComedyCrime
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