Books like

Books like Penance

12 books with a reading profile close to Penance by Eliza Clark. Balanced in tone; a moderate read.

  1. 1 The Guest

    The Guest

    by Emma Cline

    thriller, narrative

    Twenty-two-year-old Alex is cast out of her older boyfriend Simon’s wealthy Long Island home after a breach of etiquette.

  2. 2 Leave the World Behind

    Leave the World Behind

    by Rumaan Alam

    thriller, narrative

    Amanda and Clay, a white middle-class couple from Brooklyn, rent a remote vacation home in Long Island with their two teenage children.

  3. 3 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

    by Patrick Süskind

    thriller, narrative

    In eighteenth-century France, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born among fish guts with an absolute sense of smell but no natural body odor of his own.

  4. 4 Notes on an Execution

    Notes on an Execution

    by Danya Kukafka

    thriller, narrative

    Ansel Packer sits on Texas death row with twelve hours left before his lethal injection.

  5. 5 No Country for Old Men

    No Country for Old Men

    by Cormac McCarthy

    thriller, narrative

    Llewellyn Moss, a welder and Vietnam veteran, discovers two million dollars in cash while hunting near the Rio Grande, leftovers from a botched drug deal.

  6. 6 Once There Were Wolves

    Once There Were Wolves

    by Charlotte McConaghy

    thriller, narrative

    Inti Flynn leads a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the Scottish Highlands to restore the landscape's ecological balance.

  7. 7 State of Wonder

    State of Wonder

    by Ann Patchett

    thriller, narrative

    Pharmacology researcher Marina Singh travels from Minnesota to the Amazon basin to investigate the death of a colleague and the status of a long-delayed drug project.

  8. 8 The North Water

    The North Water

    by Ian McGuire

    thriller, narrative

    In 1859, Patrick Sumner, a disgraced former army surgeon from the Indian Mutiny, signs on as medic aboard the whaling ship Volunteer, bound for the Arctic.

  9. 9 Birnam Wood

    Birnam Wood

    by Eleanor Catton

    thriller, narrative

    Mira Bunting leads Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective in New Zealand that plants crops on private land to challenge property rights.

  10. 10 The Other Black Girl

    The Other Black Girl

    by Zakiya Dalila Harris

    thriller, narrative

    Nella Rogers is an editorial assistant and the only Black employee at Wagner Books, a prestigious but white-dominated publishing house in New York City.

  11. 11 A Burning

    A Burning

    by Megha Majumdar

    thriller, narrative

    Set in contemporary Kolkata, the story begins when Jivan, a young Muslim woman living in the slums, posts a comment on Facebook questioning the government’s response to a deadly terrorist attack on a train.

  12. 12 A Ladder to the Sky

    A Ladder to the Sky

    by John Boyne

    thriller, narrative

    Maurice Swift is a young waiter with immense literary ambition but zero original ideas.

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