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Reservoir 13

Jon McGregor · 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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Disappearing Earth

Julia Phillips · 312 pages

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSlow-PacedEnsemble Cast
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Everything I Never Told You

Celeste Ng · 300 pages

"Lydia is dead. But they don't know this yet. So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother's bright blue eyes and her father's jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unabl

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonOmniscient NarratorSlow-Paced
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Cannery Row

John Steinbeck · 183 pages

Cannery Row is a novel by American author John Steinbeck, published in 1945. It is set during the Great Depression in Monterey, California, on a street lined with sardine canneries that is known as Cannery Row. The story revolves around the people living there. Steinbeck revisited these characters and this milieu nine years later in his novel Sweet Thursday.

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedSmall TownEnsemble Cast
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The God of the Woods

Liz Moore · 496 pages

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disa

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSlow-PacedEnsemble Cast
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The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton · 834 pages

This novel is a murder mystery set in a remote gold-mining frontier town in 19th-century New Zealand. Arriving in New Zealand in 1866 a weary Englishman, Walter Moody, lands in a gold-mining frontier town on the coast of New Zealand to make his fortune and forever leave behind his family's shame. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men who have met in secret to investi

Missing PersonOmniscient NarratorSlow-PacedEnsemble Cast
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Sycamore

Bryn Chancellor · 344 pages

"In the tradition of EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU, and with echoes of OLIVE KITTERIDGE, comes a stunning debut from Bryn Chancellor, an award-winning writer hailed as "amazing, sensitive, and thoughtful" by Kevin Wilson"-- Out for a hike one scorching afternoon in Sycamore, Arizona, a newcomer to town stumbles across what appear to be human remains embedded in the wall of a dry desert ravine. As n

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonCharacter-DrivenSmall Town
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Songs for the Missing

Stewart O'Nan

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSlow-PacedCharacter-Driven
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The Church of Dead Girls

Stephen Dobyns · 410 pages

Despite its superficial resemblance to a whodunit, The Church of Dead Girls is not a conventional thriller. Don't expect it to be suspenseful. This is a literary horror tale--slow paced, contemplative, meticulous in its descriptions--about a formerly sleepy small town in which the crucial distinction between public and private life is dissolving as suspicion spreads like a toxin. The reader's guid

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSmall TownSlow-Paced
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The False Friend

Myla Goldberg · 262 pages

Celia and Djuna ruled their clique of friends with dual iron fists. But when Djuna disappeared while the duo was walking home together, Celia buried the terrible truth of that day deep down inside. Now, twenty years later, Celia is unable to consciously keep her secret any longer. Despite her success, her personal life has fallen stagnant, and, buried under the weight of her awful past, Celia retu

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonCharacter-DrivenLiterary Fiction
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Primeval and Other Times

Olga Tokarczuk; Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedEnsemble CastLiterary Fiction
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The World Before Us

Aislinn Hunter · 386 pages

"Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, fifteen-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated. Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum t

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSlow-PacedLiterary Fiction
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The Zahir

Paulo Coelho · 320 pages

Set in Paris and in the enchanting landscape of central Asia, this new novel by the author of the international bestsellers The Alchemist and Eleven Minutes follows the journey of a man obsessed with finding the wife who left him without an explanation.The narrator of The Zahir is a bestselling novelist who lives in Paris and enjoys all the privileges that money and celebrity bring. His wife of te

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSlow-PacedCharacter-Driven
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers · 334 pages

Set in 1930s Georgia, the novel centers around a deaf and mute man, John Singer. Singer has been devastated by the loss of his dear friend, Antonapoulos, who was committed to an asylum for bad behavior

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedSmall TownEnsemble Cast
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The Casual Vacancy

J.K. Rowling · 512 pages

When Barry Fairbrother dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty façade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…. Pagford is no

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedEnsemble CastCharacter-Driven
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Orbital

Samantha Harvey · 224 pages

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedEnsemble CastCharacter-Driven
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The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne · 272 pages

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedSmall TownCharacter-Driven
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Middlemarch

George Eliot · 795 pages

Eliot’s epic of 19th century provincial social life, set in a fictitious Midlands town in the years 1830-32, has several interlocking storylines blended effortlessly together to form a fully coherent narrative. Its main themes are the status of women, social expectations and hypocrisy, religion, political reform and education. It has often been called the greatest novel in the English language.

Small TownSlow-PacedOmniscient NarratorEnsemble Cast
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Case Histories

Kate Atkinson · 336 pages

"Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. More than thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters, each achingly lonely in her own way, reunite when their cruel and distant father dies. There, among the clutter of their childhood home, they unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance." "Case Two: All of Theo's h

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonEnsemble CastCharacter-Driven
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One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez · 422 pages

Tells the story of the Buendia family, set against the background of the evolution and eventual decadence of a small South American town.

Slow-PacedOmniscient NarratorSmall TownLiterary Fiction
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The Long Way Home

Louise Penny · 392 pages

At first enjoying a peaceful retirement, former Quebec homicide detective Armand Gamache reluctantly agrees to help a neighbor search for her missing estranged husband and teams up with two former colleagues on a search that reveals the workings of a psychologically damaged mind.

Missing PersonSlow-PacedSmall TownCharacter-Driven
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Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Maggie Stiefvater · 400 pages

Blue Sargent has found things. For the first time in her life, she has friends she can trust, a group to which she can belong. The Raven Boys have taken her in as one of their own. Their problems have become hers, and her problems have become theirs. The trick with found things, though, is how easily they can be lost.

Missing PersonOmniscient NarratorEnsemble CastSmall Town
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Titus Groan

Mervyn Peake · 512 pages

Omniscient NarratorEnsemble CastSlow-PacedCharacter-Driven
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Bleak House

Charles Dickens · 815 pages

As the interminable case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce grinds its way through the Court of Chancery, it draws together a disparate group of people: Ada and Richard Clare, whose inheritance is gradually being devoured by legal costs; Esther Summerson, a ward of court, whose parentage is a source of deepening mystery; the menacing lawyer Tulkinghorn; the determined sleuth Inspector Bucket; and even Jo, t

Omniscient NarratorSlow-PacedCharacter-DrivenEnsemble Cast
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Goodwood

Holly Throsby · 378 pages

Goodwood is a small town where everyone knows everything about everyone. It's a place where it's impossible to keep a secret. In 1992, when Jean Brown is seventeen, a terrible thing happens. Two terrible things. Rosie White, the coolest girl in town, vanishes overnight. One week later, Goodwood's most popular resident, Bart McDonald, sets off on a fishing trip and never comes home.People die in Go

Unsolved DisappearanceMissing PersonSmall TownAtmospheric
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