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After

Our Mutual Friend

Charles Dickens1800

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More like it

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  • Wizard and Glass

    Stephen King1997

    After escaping a sentient train, Roland tells his companions a long story about his youth and his first love. Most of the book is a flashback.

    satirical → elegiac

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Denser prose

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  • Blood on the dining-room floor

    Gertrude Stein1948

    A repetitive, circular narrative about a death in a country house. It uses experimental prose to obscure the facts of a traditional mystery.

    satirical → playful

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  • The Doves Necklace

    Raja Alem2014

    A detective investigates an unidentified woman's body found in a Mecca alleyway. The city itself narrates parts of the story.

    satirical → dreamlike

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  • American Psycho

    Bret Easton Ellis1991

    A wealthy investment banker details his daily routines, consumer habits, and graphic murders. The narrative is cold and repetitive.

    satirical → cold

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To recover

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  • Fifty Shades of Grey

    E.L. James2000

    A college student enters a sexual contract with a wealthy businessman. The story focuses on their power dynamics and BDSM encounters.

    satirical → earnest

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

  • The Martian

    Andy Weir2011

    A man does arithmetic to stay alive on Mars. Problem, attempt, result, repeat.

    satirical → wry

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  • Ready Player One

    Ernest Cline2008

    A teenager in a dystopian future hunts for a digital easter egg inside a massive simulation. The quest relies on 1980s pop culture trivia.

    satirical → propulsive

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Faster

satirical → propulsive

3 more ↓

  • Behind Closed Doors

    B.A. Paris2016

    A woman is held captive by her husband in a high-security home. She must find a way to escape before her sister moves in with them.

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  • Kiss the Girls

    James Patterson1995

    Detective Alex Cross tracks two serial killers operating on opposite coasts who are communicating and competing with one another.

    satirical → tense

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  • Verity

    Colleen Hoover2018

    A ghostwriter moves into a secluded estate to finish a series for an injured author and finds a hidden, disturbing autobiography.

    satirical → tense

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Slower

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  • A Passage North

    Anuk Arudpragasam2021

    Krishan travels by train from Colombo to a funeral in northern Sri Lanka. He spends the journey reflecting on a past love and the civil war.

    satirical → meditative, still literary

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  • Dhalgren

    Samuel R. Delany1975

    An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

    satirical → dreamlike

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  • Gödel, Escher, Bach

    Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

    An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

    satirical → playful

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Heavier

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  • In Cold Blood

    Truman Capote1965

    A reconstruction of the 1959 murder of a Kansas family and the subsequent investigation. It follows both the victims and the killers.

    satirical → clinical

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  • Lord of the Flies

    William Golding1954

    Schoolboys are stranded on an island and try to organize a society. Order collapses into tribalism and violence.

    satirical → tense

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  • Shutter Island

    Dennis Lehane2003

    satirical → tense

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1