LitQueuelitqueue

After

Snowdrops

Andrew Miller2011

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

cold → tense, still noir

1 more ↓

Denser prose

3 more ↓

  • As I Lay Dying

    William Faulkner1915

    The Bundren family travels by wagon to bury their matriarch. Fifteen different narrators describe the journey as the corpse decomposes.

    cold → sardonic, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Gravity's Rainbow

    Thomas Pynchon1973

    During the end of WWII, an American lieutenant's sexual encounters seem to predict where German V-2 rockets will fall. The narrative is fragmented.

    cold → sardonic, still unreliable narrator

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • Briefing for a Descent into Hell

    Doris Lessing1971

    A man is found wandering London and placed in a psychiatric ward. The narrative shifts between the hospital and his internal cosmic hallucinations.

    cold → dreamlike, still unreliable narrator

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

To recover

cold → propulsive, still thriller

3 more ↓

  • The Rooster Bar

    John Grisham2017

    Three law students realize their school is a scam and drop out to pose as lawyers. They steal identities to survive and pay off their debts.

    cold → sardonic

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Thraxas

    Martin Millar

    An overweight, beer-drinking private investigator with minor magical abilities solves crimes in a corrupt fantasy city.

    cold → wry

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Sea of Greed

    Clive Cussler2018

    Kurt Austin investigates the destruction of oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. The trail leads to a billionaire with a plan to end the oil age.

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Persuader

    Lee Child2003

    Jack Reacher goes undercover to infiltrate a drug kingpin's coastal estate. He seeks revenge for a colleague murdered ten years prior.

    cold → propulsive, still thriller

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Dead Fall

    Brad Thor2023

    Scot Harvath tracks a rogue Russian unit through war-torn Ukraine to exact revenge. He operates alone in a landscape of shifting loyalties.

    cold → propulsive, still thriller

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

  • Adrenaline

    Jeff Abbott2010

    A CIA agent’s life is destroyed when his wife warns him of a bombing and then vanishes. He must find her while being interrogated as a suspect.

    cold → propulsive, still thriller

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Slower

3 more ↓

  • Blackouts

    Justin Torres2023

    A young man cares for a dying elder in a medical facility. They use a 1930s study on homosexuality to reconstruct their personal histories.

    cold → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

  • Umbrella

    Will Self2013

    A psychiatrist in 1971 treats a woman who has been catatonic for decades. The prose shifts between eras and consciousnesses without paragraph breaks.

    cold → clinical

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

  • The English Patient

    Michael Ondaatje1992

    Four people shelter in a ruined Italian villa at the end of WWII. They care for a burned, anonymous man who recounts his past in the desert.

    cold → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace-2·prose+1·bleak0

Heavier

3 more ↓

  • Narcopolis

    Jeet Thayil2012

    A cast of addicts and dealers frequent an opium den in 1970s Bombay. The narrative follows the city’s transformation over three decades.

    cold → dreamlike, still noir

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • A Little Life

    Hanya Yanagihara2015

    Four friends in New York over thirty years. One of them is being destroyed, and the book does not look away.

    cold → bleak, still literary fiction

    pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • The Nickel Boys

    Colson Whitehead2019

    A studious black teenager in 1960s Florida is sent to a brutal reform school where physical abuse is systemic.

    cold → elegiac, still literary fiction

    pace0·prose+1·bleak+1