What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorLong 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 ?
Factotum
Charles Bukowski · 205 pages
One of Charles Bukowski's best, this beer-soaked, deliciously degenerate novel follows the wanderings of aspiring writer Henry Chinaski across World War II-era America. Deferred from military service, Chinaski travels from city to city, moving listlessly from one odd job to another, always needing money but never badly enough to keep a job. His day-to-day existence spirals into an endless litany o
Bright Lights, Big City
Jay McInerney · 182 pages
Written entirely in the second person, McInerney's first novel is a vivid account of cocaine addiction.
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.
Problems
Jade Sharma · 187 pages
"Dark, raw, and very funny, [this book] introduces us to Maya, a young woman with a smart mouth, time to kill, and a heroin hobby that isn't much fun anymore. Maya's been able to get by in New York on her wits and a dead-end bookstore job for years, but when her husband leaves her and her favorite professor ends their affair, her barely-calibrated life descends into chaos, and she has to make some
The Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn · 456 pages
"It isn't paranoia if it's really happening ... Anna Fox lives alone -- a recluse in her New York City home, drinking too much wine, watching old movies ... and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move next door: a father, a mother, their teenaged son. The perfect family. But when Anna sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble -- and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt · 817 pages
"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson · 204 pages
Maverick author Hunter S. Thompson introduced the world to "gonzo journalism" with this cult classic that shot back up the best seller lists after Thompson's suicide in 2005. No book ever written has more perfectly captured the spirit of the 1960s counterculture. In Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, Raoul Duke (Thompson) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (inspired by a friend of Thompson) are quickly
Narcopolis
Jeet Thayil · 292 pages
Shuklaji Street, in Old Bombay. In Rashid's opium room the air is thick and potent. A beautiful young woman leans to hold a long-stemmed pipe over a flame, her hair falling across her dark eyes. Around her, men sprawl and mutter in the gloom, each one drifting with his own tide. Here, people say that you introduce only your worst enemy to opium. Outside, stray dogs lope in packs. Street vendors hu
Ballads of Suburbia
Stephanie Kuehnert
Ballads are the kind of songs that Kara McNaughton likes best. Not the clichéd ones where a diva hits her dramatic high note or a rock band tones it down a couple of notches for the ladies, but the true ballads: the punk rocker or the country crooner reminding their listeners of the numerous ways to screw things up. In high school, Kara helped maintain the "Stories of Suburbia" notebook, which con
The Empty Room
Lauren B. Davis · 314 pages
Colleen Kerrigan wakes up sick and bruised, with no clear memory of the night before. She vows to quit drinking. It's Monday morning, and she is late for work again. She's shocked to see the near-empty vodka bottle on her kitchen counter. As she struggles out the door to the bus, she fights the urge to have a sip, just to take the edge off. But no, she's not going to drink today. But today is the
Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver · 560 pages
"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in hi
Maya's Notebook
Isabel Allende · 408 pages
After the death of her beloved grandfather, nineteen-year-old Maya Vidal, turning to drugs, alcohol, and petty crimes, becomes trapped in a war between assassins, the police, the FBI, and Interpol, until her grandmother helps her escape to a remote island off the coast of Chile where she tries to make sense of her life. After the death of her grandfather, teenager Maya falls into depression, drug
The Warmest December
Bernice L. McFadden · 256 pages
"Childhood can be rough. But for Kenzie growing up in the Lowe home means opening the bottom drawer of her father's dresser to choose which of the three belts coiled, waiting like snakes, she wants to get whipped with; trips to Beehive Liquors for her father's vodka; and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment 5A. She goes to school, she holds odd jobs, and develops her own craving for the bo
Animals
Emma Jane Unsworth · 249 pages
You know how it is. Saturday afternoon. You wake up and you can't move. I blinked and the floaters on my eyeballs shifted to reveal Tyler in her ratty old kimono over in the doorway. 'Way I see it,' she said, glass in one hand, lit cigarette in the other, 'girls are tied to beds for two reasons: sex and exorcisms. So, which was it with you?' Laura and Tyler are best friends who live together, angr
Tristessa
Jack Kerouac · 112 pages
Tristessa is a novella by Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac set in Mexico City. It is based on his relationship with a Mexican prostitute (the title character). The woman's real name was Esperanza ("hope" in Spanish); Kerouac changed her name to Tristessa ("tristeza" means sadness in Spanish and Portuguese).
Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.
Christiane F., Kai Hermann, Horst Rieck · 366 pages
In 1978 Christiane F. testified against a man who had traded heroin for sex with teenage girls at Berlin's notorious Zoo Station. In the course of that trial, Christiane F. became connected with two journalists who helped to turn her story, which begins with a dysfunctional but otherwise fairly normal childhood, into an acclaimed bestseller.
Any Woman's Blues
Erica Jong · 373 pages
Any Woman's Blues, first published in 1990, is a tale of addiction and narcissism-the twin obsessions of ourage. World-famous folk singer Leila Sand emerged from the sixties and seventies with addictions to drugs and booze. Leila's latest addiction is to a younger man who leaves her sexually ecstatic but emotionally bereft. The orgasmic frenzies trump the betrayals, so she keeps coming back for mo
Father of the Rain
Lily King · 354 pages
"Gardiner Amory is a New England WASP who is beginning to feel the cracks in his empire. Nixon is about to be impeached, his wife is leaving him, and his worldview is rapidly becoming outdated. His daughter, Daley, has spent the first eleven years of her life carefully negotiating her parents' conflicting worlds: the liberal, socially committed realm of her mother and the conservative, decadent, l
The Basketball Diaries
Jim Carroll · 210 pages
The Basketball Diaries is a 1978 memoir written by author and musician Jim Carroll. It is an edited collection of the diaries he kept between the ages of twelve and sixteen. The original classic story about growing up with drugs and sex and about learning to survive on the streets of New York--once again in print. An urban classic of coming of age.