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Lolita

Vladimir Nabokov · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

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A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess · 188 pages

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Na

Villain ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorPsychological ManipulationSexual Assault Content
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The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison · 181 pages

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes. In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her. When someone finally did, it was her fath

Child AbuseLoss of InnocenceSexual Assault ContentChildhood Trauma
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A Thousand Acres

Jane Smiley · 377 pages

This powerful twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare’s *King Lear* centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters. When the youngest objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, *A Thousand Acres* takes on t

Child AbuseChildhood TraumaSexual Assault ContentTragic
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Sharp Objects

Gillian Flynn · 297 pages

WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker's troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille's first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her legSince she left town eight years a

Unreliable NarratorChild AbusePsychological ManipulationSexual Assault Content
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The End of Alice

A.M. Homes · 271 pages

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You

Caroline Kepnes · 424 pages

"Love hurts... When aspiring writer Guinevere Beck strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe works, he's instantly smitten. Beck is everything Joe has ever wanted: She's gorgeous, tough, razor-smart, and as sexy as his wildest dreams. Beck doesn't know it yet, but she's perfect for him, and soon she can't resist her feelings for a guy who seems custom made for her. But there's more to Joe

Villain ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorPsychological ManipulationChildhood Trauma
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The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath · 258 pages

The Bell Jar is a classic of American literature, with over two million copies sold in this country. This extraordinary work chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, successful - but slowly going under, and maybe for the last time. Step by careful step, Sylvia Plath takes us with Esther through a painful month in New York as a contest-winning junior

Unreliable NarratorLyrical ProseSexual Assault ContentTragic
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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Patrick Suskind · 272 pages

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Set in eighteenth-century France, the classic novel that provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder. In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors

Villain ProtagonistChildhood TraumaLyrical ProseChild Abuse
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Room

Emma Donoghue · 322 pages

To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world.... Told in the inventive, funny, and poignant voice of Jack, Room is a celebration of resilience—and a powerful story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At n

Loss of InnocenceChild AbuseSexual Assault ContentChildhood Trauma
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White Oleander

Janet Fitch · 390 pages

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes-each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned-becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Psychological ManipulationChildhood TraumaLyrical ProseSexual Assault Content
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Dark Places

Kate Grenville · 376 pages

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Wide Sargasso Sea

Jean Rhys · 189 pages

Jean Rhys's reputation was made upon publication of this passionate and heartbreaking novel, in which she brings into the light one of citsion's most mysterious characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre". A sensual and protected young woman, the narrator grows up in the lush, natural world of the Caribbean. She is sold into marriage to the cold-hearted and prideful R

Unreliable NarratorPsychological ManipulationLyrical ProseClassics
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The Collector

John Fowles · 288 pages

Fowles’ stunning debut is a study of a lonely young sociopath who kidnaps the woman he has fixated on, keeping her in his cellar in the belief that she will eventually come to love him. The story is narrated in turns by the young man and his captive, giving two opposing points of view.

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Sophie's Choice

William Styron · 625 pages

The gripping, unforgettable story of Stingo, a 22-year-old writer; Sophie, a Polish-Catholic beauty who survived the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz; and Nathan, her mercurial lover. The three friends share magical, heart-warming times until doom overtakes them as Sophie's and Nathan's darkest secrets are revealed.

Sexual Assault ContentDense ProsePsychological ManipulationLiterary Fiction
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey · 311 pages

An international bestseller and the basis for a hugely successful film, Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was one of the defining works of the 1960s. A mordant, wickedly subversive parable set in a mental ward, the novel chronicles the head-on collision between its hell-raising, life-affirming hero Randle Patrick McMurphy and the totalitarian rule of Big Nurse. McMurphy swaggers into

Psychological ManipulationUnreliable NarratorClassicsTragic
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The Color Purple

Alice Walker · 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentTragicClassics
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Macbeth

William Shakespeare · 135 pages

Villain ProtagonistPsychological ManipulationLyrical ProseDense Prose
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A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara · 736 pages

Child AbuseSexual Assault ContentChildhood TraumaTragic
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Moby-Dick or, The Whale

Herman Melville · 420 pages

A classic of the sea, telling of the pursuit of Moby Dick, the white whale who defied capture.

Villain ProtagonistLyrical ProseClassicsDark
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The Secret History

Donna Tartt · 557 pages

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last - inexorably - into evil.

Unreliable NarratorPsychological ManipulationDense ProseCharacter-Driven
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Fates and Furies

Lauren Groff · 400 pages

Every story has two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years. At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the env

Psychological ManipulationLyrical ProseUnreliable NarratorDense Prose
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In the Woods

Tana French · 560 pages

A gorgeously written novel that marks the debut of an astonishing new voice in psychological suspenseAs 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 one of the children gripping a tree trunk in terror, wearing blood

Psychological ManipulationChildhood TraumaUnreliable NarratorLyrical Prose
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The Book of Evidence

John Banville · 219 pages

Freddie Montgomery is a gentleman first and a murderer second. He committed two crimes - he stole a painting from a wealthy family friend and he killed a chambermaid who caught him in the act. Here he tells his story.

Villain ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorLyrical ProseLiterary Fiction
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Darkly Dreaming Dexter

Jeff Lindsay · 304 pages

Kriminalroman. Miamipolitiet og politiofficer Deborah Morgan prøver at finde en seriemorder. Deborah håber sagen vil fremme hendes karrieremuligheder, og hun får hjælp af sin bror Dexter, der arbejder for politiet. Han er også seriemorder - men det er ikke ham, sagen drejer sig om

Villain ProtagonistUnreliable NarratorChildhood TraumaDark
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