AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

A Fine Dark Line

Joe R. Lansdale · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

The Round House

Louise Erdrich · 352 pages

A young man is upended after a violent attack on his mother, which leaves his family in turmoil. Well-written page turner that is hard to put down!

Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeRacismSmall Town
❤️

Let Me Die in His Footsteps

Lori Roy · 352 pages

On a dark Kentucky night in 1952 halfway between her fifteenth and sixteenth birthdays, Annie Holleran runs through the lavender fields to the well on the Baines' place. Hollerans don't go near Baines since Joseph Carl was buried two decades ago. At the stroke of midnight, she gazes into the water in search of her future. When the body she sees there in the moonlight is discovered come morning, An

Small Town SecretsLoss of InnocenceAmerican SouthComing of Age
❤️
Loss of InnocenceAmerican SouthComing of AgeRacism
❤️

Jasper Jones

Craig Silvey · 304 pages

Small Town SecretsRacismLoss of InnocenceComing of Age
❤️

The Quiet Game

Greg Iles · 564 pages

Widower Penn Cage returns to his hometown of Natchez, Mississippi, where, finding that his father is being blackmailed, he reopens a notorious murder case that involves powerfully dangerous town forces, the FBI, and his own past.

Small Town SecretsCold CaseRacismAmerican South
❤️

Zora and Me

Victoria Bond, T.R. Simon

A fictionalized account of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood with her best friend Carrie, in Eatonville, Florida, as they learn about life, death, and the differences between truth, lies, and pretending. Includes an annotated bibliography of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, a short biography of the author, and information about Eatonville, Florida.

Loss of InnocenceRacismComing of AgeAmerican South
❤️

The Silver Star

Jeannette Walls · 304 pages

Two motherless sisters--Bean and Liz--are shuttled to Virginia, where their Uncle Tinsley lives in the decaying mansion that's been in their family for generations. When school starts in the fall, Bean easily adjusts and makes friends, and Liz becomes increasingly withdrawn. Then something happens to Liz and Bean is left to challenge the injustice of the adult world.

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthLoss of InnocenceSmall Town
❤️

A Painted House

John Grisham · 465 pages

Using his own childhood for inspiration (and leaving the lawyers behind), bestselling author John Grisham sets A Painted House in 1950s rural Arkansas. During harvest time, together with hired Mexicans and hill people, seven-year-old Luke Chandler picks cotton on his family's rented 80 acres. But racial tension, a forbidden love affair, and murder cause Luke to grow up before he's ready.

Loss of InnocenceAmerican SouthComing of AgeRacism
❤️
Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeAtmosphericSmall Town
❤️

The Dry Grass of August

Anna Jean Mayhew · 320 pages

Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeAmerican SouthRacism
❤️

The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963

Christopher Paul Curtis · 239 pages

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeAmerican SouthRacism
🙂

Bluebird, Bluebird

Attica Locke · 320 pages

When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules--a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger, knows all too well. Deeply ambivalent about growing up black in the lone star state, he was the first in his family to get as far away from Texas as he could. Until duty called him home. When his allegiance to his roots puts his job in jeopardy, he travels up Highway 59 to the small

Small Town SecretsAmerican SouthRacismSmall Town
🙂

The Learning Tree

Gordon Parks · 303 pages

Autobiographical novel about a boy entering his teens in a racially segregated Kansas town in the 1920s.

Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeRacismSmall Town
🙂

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

Tom Franklin · 305 pages

"In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas '32' Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and sh

Small Town SecretsAmerican SouthRacismSmall Town
🙂

The Chatham School Affair

Thomas H. Cook · 303 pages

When Malcolm Gaines asks his attorney to prepare his will, he resurrects the long-buried secret behind a tragedy at Chatham School, which destroyed lives and shattered a quiet community.

Loss of InnocenceSmall TownComing of AgeAtmospheric
🙂

The Wiregrass

Pam Webber · 352 pages

Loss of InnocenceComing of AgeSmall Town SecretsAmerican South
🙂

Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands

Susan Carol McCarthy · 281 pages

Loss of InnocenceRacismComing of AgeAmerican South
🙂

Cold Sassy Tree

Olive Ann Burns · 395 pages

Had difficulty with the unfamiliar language spoken by the characters, but once I was able to figure it out I enjoyed the family dynamics. Upon finishing this book, I immediately borrowed "Leaving Cold Sassy".

Coming of AgeLoss of InnocenceAmerican SouthSmall Town
🙂

Fireflies in December

Jennifer Erin Valent

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthRacismSmall Town
🙂

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

Holly Jackson · 400 pages

Everyone is talking about A Good Girl's Guide to Murder! With shades of Serial and Making a Murderer this is the story about an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect. Everyone in Fairview knows the story. Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyo

Small Town SecretsCold CaseSmall TownRacism
🙂

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"--

American SouthComing of AgeAtmosphericSmall Town
🙂

The Jealous Kind

James Lee Burke · 383 pages

Intervening when he sees the beautiful and gifted Valerie Epstein fighting with her boyfriend, Aaron Holland Broussard inadvertently challenges the power of the Mob in his Korean War-era Texas community.

Coming of AgeAmerican SouthAtmosphericTeen Protagonist
🙂

Beautiful Creatures

Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl · 563 pages

In a small South Carolina town, where it seems little has changed since the Civil War, sixteen-year-old Ethan is powerfully drawn to Lena, a new classmate with whom he shares a psychic connection and whose family hides a dark secret that may be revealed on her sixteenth birthday.

Small Town SecretsAmerican SouthSmall TownAtmospheric
🙂

Wimmera

Mark Brandi

Small Town SecretsLoss of InnocenceComing of AgeSmall Town

In the works

To be read SpinnerCan’t pick your next book? Spin your Want to read.Blind date with a bookPick a mood, unwrap a surprise.Add a tiny librarySnap a little free library and its books.