Here are 62 books that The Devil's Teardrop fans have personally recommended if you like
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I love including social issues and controversial topics in my plots. I love underdogs and the downtrodden. I enjoy unique and quirky characters with excellent, appropriate, and sometimes noir-ish voices. Twists and major reveals in genre books and movies are also very important to me. I’m not a subject matter expert in much of anything I write about (thank goodness for the internet), except for one novel yet to be published, which is a major catharsis for me.
I was overwhelmed by this crazy, lovable, frightening novel. It fit right in with my paranormal/horror bend when I read it many years ago, and it provoked my interest in writing a few titles in the genre.
It fits the unique, quirky character theme perfectly with a first person narrative by a young, charismatic fry cook-writer-memoirist named Odd (real name) Thomas with a sixth sense, able to see demons when they arrive just before tragedy occurs. Yowza. His accomplice is his girlfriend and love interest, aptly named Stormy, who is not similarly gifted and seems to have more common sense than Odd.
Meet Odd Thomas, the unassuming young hero of Dean Koontz’s dazzling New York Times bestseller, a gallant sentinel at the crossroads of life and death who offers up his heart in these pages and will forever capture yours.
“The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why.” But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different.
A stranger comes to Pico Mundo, accompanied by a horde…
Two small-time journalists take on an international cartel who try a hostile takeover of a Canadian mining company.
Lucas, a veteran journalist, sees a big story brewing within a strike at a local mining company when explosions rip through the plant, but he gets bumped by Jamie, a junior reporter.…
I love including social issues and controversial topics in my plots. I love underdogs and the downtrodden. I enjoy unique and quirky characters with excellent, appropriate, and sometimes noir-ish voices. Twists and major reveals in genre books and movies are also very important to me. I’m not a subject matter expert in much of anything I write about (thank goodness for the internet), except for one novel yet to be published, which is a major catharsis for me.
According to the story, a certain “double whammy” fishing lure is guaranteed to produce outlandish success in pro bass fishing tournaments. The characters in this water-logged action/murder mystery were wonderful and outlandish, and there were many of them, part of Hiaasen’s appeal as an author.
This is an ensemble of crazy “Florida” people before “Florida man” became a thing. I loved the delivery, the slick prose, the humor, and the plot, and it made me read other novels by Hiaasen. It introduced me to one of the most memorable fictional characters I have ever read: Skink, no last name, a half-blind hermit, a roadkill delicacy aficionado, and an eco-terrorist. He perseveres through a lot on the way to becoming a great character in seven novels in the series.
"Follow the adventures of a news-photographer-turned-private-eye as he seeks truth, justice, and an affair with his ex-wife" (The New York Times) in this hilarious caper from bestselling author Carl Hiaasen.
R.J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman's scam that's anything but sportsmanlike, there's a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida-and a lot that's rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments.
Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while…
I love including social issues and controversial topics in my plots. I love underdogs and the downtrodden. I enjoy unique and quirky characters with excellent, appropriate, and sometimes noir-ish voices. Twists and major reveals in genre books and movies are also very important to me. I’m not a subject matter expert in much of anything I write about (thank goodness for the internet), except for one novel yet to be published, which is a major catharsis for me.
The bestest novel I have ever read! The first-person narrative and humor just blew me away and helped me develop my own writer's voice. I was drawn in by the first few lines, and my interest never let up. First page: “Okay, here’s the deal. This is a book about a baseball player. Do you care? If you don’t care, read it anyway. There’s some other stuff in it, too.”
The narrator identifies himself as an “old weird guy poet” and remains nameless. How can you not like that, and him? There are excellent major twists. This is an obscure little novel. So obscure that it has only two reviews on Amazon, and one of them is mine. I do wish more people had discovered it. It is not available as an ebook; get the hardcover. It's cheap.
Wondering whether Nabokov might have left any unpublished manuscripts behind and if so, did they have baseball themes? If anyone reading this knows the answer, please check the files to see if there's a manuscript for a novel named Chance. . . . It's a very good one, full of wit, good humor, and baseball. And if you don't care about the latter, take the advice the book offers in its first paragraph and 'Read it anyway. There's other stuff in it, too.' -Allen Barra, The Palm Beach Post
Rusty Allen is an Iraqi War veteran with PTSD. He moves to his grandfather's cabin in the mountains to find some peace and go back to wilderness training.
He gets wrapped up in a kidnapping first, as a suspect and then as a guide. He tolerates the sheriff's deputy with…
I love including social issues and controversial topics in my plots. I love underdogs and the downtrodden. I enjoy unique and quirky characters with excellent, appropriate, and sometimes noir-ish voices. Twists and major reveals in genre books and movies are also very important to me. I’m not a subject matter expert in much of anything I write about (thank goodness for the internet), except for one novel yet to be published, which is a major catharsis for me.
This book is so freakin’ clever. Its realistic near-future aspects are outstanding, and it fits with my concerns about climate contamination and what the Earth might experience in just a few generations because of it. “In a world (read this in your deepest male announcer movie trailer voice) where sea level has risen enough to obsolete the first five or so floors of all the world’s skyscrapers—and there is no internet, so all business is done in cash—and no one trusts anyone…”
I liked the post-apocalyptic feel of it, the action, and the unique protagonist: a courier whose attaché case is grafted to the bones of his wrist via a titanium handcuff; an incredible visual. Also, a love story. But whose side is the courier’s love interest on?
Corporations fall, gangsters are killed, but no-one messes with the Couriers Guild.
When Armand Pierce first became a courier ten years ago, he had an attache case connected to a titanium cuff grafted into the bones of his wrist, and took an oath: the delivery is everything. He can run, fight-kill, if he needs to-but the package gets where it's going. It's the Guild's guarantee, and since the internet went down in the Cyber Wars, all business, legitimate or otherwise, depends on it. Otherwise, he dies.
So Pierce knows he's in deep trouble when he arrives at his latest destination…
I was able to read before I went to school and have never been without a book since; frequenly having several novels on the go at one time. I started with adventures and classics, moved on to fantasy and later discovered crime fiction. Having been educated at an all-girls school where we assumed we could do everything, it was a shock to enter the world of science and engineering in the 1970s and find that women were not considered as strong and powerful as men, and certainly not as good. Even though times have changed somewhat, I still love finding books (especially series) where crime solving and sisterhood go hand-in-hand.
This book made me realise that women’s role in fiction didn’t have to be the ‘little woman’ or the ‘love interest’.
It was published back in 2001 when female protagonists were a rarity, but James Patterson gives us not one, but four strong women who get together to solve crimes that the police alone cannot. I love the fact that these women are willing to break the rules in order to succeed in a man’s world. But at the same time, they are a club in the traditional sense: they eat, drink, and have fun together, while watching each other’s backs.
It was a wonderfully empowering experience to discover this book (and even more so when I realised there were a whole series of books about the same group of women).
As the only woman homicide inspector in San Francisco, Lindsay Boxer has to be tough. But nothing she has seen prepares her for the horror of the honeymoon murders, when a brutal maniac begins viciously slaughtering newly wed couples on their wedding nights. Lindsay is sickened by the deaths, but her determination to bring the murderer to justice is threatened by her own personal tragedy. So she turns to Claire, a leading coroner, Cindy, a journalist and Jill, a top attorney, for help with both her crises, and the Women's Murder Club is born.
I grew up hearing Scottish folklore told as truth, stories of spirits, warnings, and strange kindnesses passed off as everyday fact. I have always been fascinated by the idea that there is something more, something hidden just out of sight. As a child I was scared of everything, so I forced myself to watch old Hammer horror films to toughen up. It worked a bit too well and left me with a lifelong love of the dark underside of things. Now, as a stand-up comedian and writer, I have learned there can be humour in anything, and sometimes the best way to make something real is to laugh at the awful.
This isn’t fantasy or supernatural, but the book really delves into the strangeness of people.
It starts as something mundane and ordinary until you scratch the surface. Full twists that genuinely caught me completely unaware, this book is a horror masterpiece that isn’t technically a horror.
And it has one scene that made me feel physically ill—that is amazing writing.
The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath.
Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least:
Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.
That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.…
When we speak in real life, much of what we say out loud doesn't have any real meaning. But when authors write, each word a character says must convey meaning to drive the scene forward. The words must exhibit some form of information—emotion, advancement of an idea, or even be the action itself—otherwise, they're just wasted words on the page. The true challenge of writing dialogue is to convey as much as possible with as few words as possible. I love a book in which I'm yearning for specific characters to return just so I can hear the carefully crafted, intelligent, and tight words they employ when speaking, especially when two characters are verbally dueling.
The book is centered around an FBI trainee (Clarice) sent to interview an imprisoned, sophisticated, cannibalistic psychiatrist (Hannibal Lecter) to help her catch an active serial killer.
Their meetings are brilliant and tense exchanges within a psychological game in which Lecter will only offer clues if Clarice reveals deeply personal details about herself. The tone of these conversations, using dialogue to navigate an intellectual and emotional battlefield, was brilliantly crafted.
"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti." In lesser hands, this single spoken sentence might have been replaced with several paragraphs of exposition to describe Hannibal Lecter.
As part of the search for a serial murderer nicknames "Buffalo Bill," FBI trainee Clarice Starling is given an assignment. She must visit a man confined to a high-security facility for the criminally insane and interview him.
That man, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, is a former psychiatrist with unusual tastes and an intense curiosity about the darker corners of the mind. His intimate understanding of the killer and of Clarice herself form the core of Thomas Harris' The Silence of the Lambs--an unforgettable classic of suspense fiction.
I am a writer and novelist who comes to storytelling via several curious paths. I am a historian trained in archival research and the collection of oral histories. I also come from a long line of ghost magnets–all of the women in my family have been for generations. And while I am living in blissful exile on the West Coast, my heart remains bound to my childhood home, the Great State of Texas.
I have always loved gritty mysteries and Joe. R. Lansdale’s book did not disappoint. I was first pulled in by the curious and clipped cadence of the voice of the narrator, an older Harry Collins recalling a brutal murder from his youth. You could almost hear Harry’s voice jump off the page.
I was also particularly drawn to the finely crafted setting on the rugged Texas frontier, dripping with eerie foreboding. The land is as rotten as the characters who inhabit the narrative. Add in an East Texas setting and the bleak and desperate themes of racism at the turn of the 20th century, and you have a compelling read that is hard to put down.
The Great Depression, East Texas. The woods are thick, the rivers wild, the weather ripe with tornadoes, and the Crane family, like most families in that neck of the woods, are eking out a thin living. When young Harry Crane discovers a mutilated body bound to a tree with barbed wire in the river bottoms, the underbelly of East Texas is exposed. Whites fear a renegade Negro. Blacks fear a vengeful massacre, or, if the killer is white, that the law will let him slip through their fingers. Harry believes the murderer is the Goat Man, an East Texas monster…
Unlike most authors, who only write one genre, I write mystery/suspense, thriller, fantasy, and dystopian. I love plotting and naming stories. I studied Criminal Justice & Legal Studies in college and absolutely loved it. I've also been reading these genres since I was little. I certainly never thought I’d be a writer, but the ideas kept coming so I guess the writing chose me. As a self-published writer, I get to make every decision concerning my books and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I write my books, design the covers, make the trailers, market the books, and everything else. I enjoy using my writing to point to the things I believe are important.
This series captured me from the very first page of the first book.
The Bishop isn’t the first book, but it was my favorite one from the series. Finally, my favorite serial killer has returned. (Yes, I pick my favorite killers in novels.) The paramedic is back but this time he’s left his career behind and teamed up with my newest favorite killer.
It quickly became clear that the killers weren’t really in love especially when the guy chains the girl to a dead body. However, it was a pretty gruesome yet intriguing scene. As a graduate who studied Criminal Justice & Legal Studies, I can attest, these books don’t disappoint.
FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers's cutting-edge 21st-century geospatial investigative techniques and impeccable logic have helped him track some of the country's most grisly killers. But those skills are pushed to the limit in this new installment of the highly-acclaimed, award-winning The Bowers Files series.
This time it's a congressman's daughter who is found dead even as her killers launch a spree of perfect murders in the Northeast. With nothing to link the crimes to each other, Agent Bowers faces his most difficult case yet--even as his personal life begins to crumble around him.
Known for his intricately woven, masterfully plotted…
While the pacing, suspense, and twists of a well-crafted modern-day thriller can bring their own rewards, I find that when the thriller is enriched by the cultures of the past, the story can become one of powerful depth. Exploring modern-day morals, laws, or customs can be the start of a canvas painted with far more vivid contrasts. Reading some of these mixed-genre marvels inspired me to write The Book of Judges.
This story plays on actual US history, with protagonist, Beecher White, an archivist, finding a hidden artifact leading him to discover that the Culper Ring, a spy network established to provide intel for George Washington, is still operating.
Besides the usual thriller elements, the search for the truth behind the Culper Ring is fascinating.
The darkest secret of the U.S. Presidency is about to be revealed.
Beecher White, a young archivist for the US government, has always been the keeper of other people's stories, never a part of the story himself . . . Until now.
While Beecher is showing Clementine Kaye, his first childhood crush, around the National Archives, they accidentally uncover a priceless artefact - a two-hundred-year-old dictionary once belonging to George Washington. Suddenly Beecher and Clementine are entangled in a web of conspiracy and murder.
Beecher's race to learn the truth behind this mysterious treasure will lead to a code that…
