83 Books Like The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels

This is an outstanding book on healing from trauma, and I've read literally hundreds. This book transformed the way I practice psychotherapy; it transformed the way I understand what trauma does to the mind and body, and it transformed my relationship with myself. Fisher gets right to the heart of what brings most people into psychotherapy: self-alienation. Lots of people say, "I'm beating myself up," casually, without realizing the price they are paying for how habitually critical, punitive, discouraging, and condemning they are toward themselves!

Most people have compassion for others, but can't imagine how they could use that compassion internally. Internal compassion is what heals trauma, and this book, like no other I know, lays out, with depth and complexity, how to get there. 

This is a follow-up to Snyder's book On Tyranny, which I read when a friend gave me the graphic novel version. That one was great, this one really blew me away. My 1-year-old mother and her family escaped from Ukraine in 1919 after a pogrom in their village killed 1600 other Jews.

In America, my grandparents, free from persecution, worked hard, and the country that took them in gave my mother and her brothers opportunities that, in turn, gave me and my children more and more opportunities. Snyder, a Yale historian, knows Eastern European history inside out. He's a close observer of how tyranny is brought down and how freedom is constructed. Freedom has never been more fragile in the U.S. and around the world as authoritarianism and autocracies rise. I wish Snyder's book could be taught to every child and every adult in America today. 

You don't have to be a cult survivor to have been abused by a traumatizing narcissist, but if you are a survivor, this book is essential and indispensable. I've recommended it countless times, not just to cult survivors for whom it is written, but to others who have broken free from abusive relationships.

When I left a cult in 1994, my shame and my feeling of isolation felt like a prison. This book put me on the road to freedom. It has everything you need to know about what to expect and how to navigate re-entry into your own life, a life that can be free from undue influence and control. 

Stein puts her finger on one of the most important things I learned about the power of charismatic, narcissistic abusers: with love-bombing and seduction, they create dependence in their victim. Then, the belittling and humiliating begins, and the victim is now both dependent on the abuser and constantly intimidated by the abuser.

This is the essence of disorganized attachment, which creates a sense of powerlessness and fright without solution. Victims feel unable to leave, exhaust themselves trying to assuage the narcissist, and dissociation becomes the automatic survival response. Knowing this helps victims and their therapists understand why recovering the ability to think clearly is so difficult and so crucial for victims recovering from traumatic abuse.

This is a great book because love makes Mulligan reevaluate what matters most.

Mulligan isn’t a villain exactly, but he does less than admirable things. He believes money is the way to accrue power, and he tries to fix Justine’s problems with bribery. She can’t accept his methods as a way to solve problems, and he is faced with the choice to either rule the criminal world or love the girl.

Obviously, he picks the girl. His story arc is so satisfying because he will do anything for her!

Whistleblowers rely on the press to disseminate their disclosures. In matters of national security, however, the press has a long history of close personal and professional bonds with the government that has curbed revelations. The Georgetown Set offers a fascinating glimpse into the small circle of elite officials, journalists, publishers, and public intellectuals who gathered for cocktail and dinner parties in their high-end neighborhood of Washington, DC. In addition to giving a fly-on-the-wall sense of how Cold War policies and public opinion were made, Herken’s book illuminates the individual and cultural shifts that contributed to the rise of national security disclosures in the 1960s and 1970s. This history is essential for understanding how the evolving dynamics between elite politicians and the press continue to shape the culture of whistleblowing and accountability today.

I’ve always been confused by the longstanding misconception that thrillers can’t be thematically complex and literary novels can’t be briskly plotted page turners. Birnam Wood is one of many excellent examples of a book that accomplishes both.

Catton’s novel covers activism, climate change, class struggle, idealism vs pragmatism, and a range of other related themes all while moving at a cracking pace and unleashing a thrilling, pulse-pounding plot. Some characters are lying by omission, others for the sake of preservation, others for the sake of self-interest. The result is a deliciously deceptive story where you aren’t sure who to trust or who the villains and heroes are until well into the second act.

Birnam Wood will have you alternating between thoughtfully stroking your chin, gasping in shock, and screaming in horror.

I recommend The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez because I found it an absorbing portrait of a friendship in which I wasn’t sure if the two people in it even liked each other. Georgette, called George, is from a working-class family, and Ann is her wealthy college roommate. It is the late 1960s. For me, the book had a fresh angle on the protest movements. George’s focus in college is trying to pull herself up.

To me, George and Ann’s friendship is like a house on a cliff–dangerous, depending on what door you open. This book has stayed with me because it explores why people remain friends, even if the relationship is difficult to the point of pain. 

Jane Austen is unparalleled in her depiction of good and evil on a domestic level. While the situations are slightly less dramatic than in the other books I have selected, Mansfield Park compellingly presents the consequences of habituated action. Fanny Price is not perfect and certainly not most people’s cup of tea, but, like all Austen heroines, represents virtue and a growing self-knowledge over the course of the novel. The Crawford siblings are vivid examples of dulled moral vision. Without committing the literary sin of giving away the end, I will say that the “anti-romance” trajectory of the plot is wonderfully satisfying. Further, Sir Thomas Bertram may be my favorite male Austen character of all.

And you thought your family was crazy! Set in Malaysia, this fascinating story combines family drama with class issues, ethnic tensions, the effects of colonial rule, and even ghosts. I love how writer Preeta Samarasan evokes a mysterious, almost magical feel to the setting and characters, as the reader gets acquainted with the wealthy, yet deeply dysfunctional family at the center of the story. No matter how bitter, enraging, or disappointing these characters feel towards each other, they are still bonded together, and the story ends on a hopeful note. This family can redeem itself-even if it takes moving to another country to do it.