Books like The North Water
12 books with a reading profile close to The North Water by Ian McGuire. Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
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1
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.
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2
No Country for Old Men
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.
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3
Birnam Wood
thriller, narrative
Mira Bunting leads Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective in New Zealand that plants crops on private land to challenge property rights.
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4
The Beach
by Alex Garland
thriller, narrative
Alex Garland’s novel follows Richard, a young British backpacker in Bangkok who acquires a hand-drawn map promising a hidden coastal paradise.
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5
A Burning
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.
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6
Notes on an Execution
thriller, narrative
Ansel Packer sits on Texas death row with twelve hours left before his lethal injection.
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7
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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8
White Ivy
by Susie Yang
thriller, narrative
Ivy Lin grew up in Chinese immigrant poverty in suburban America, raised by a mother who steals and a grandmother who pushes her to succeed.
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9
The River
by Peter Heller
thriller, narrative
College friends Wynn and Jack embark on a canoe expedition down the Maskwa River in northern Canada, seeking a wilderness escape before returning to society.
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10
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.
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11
Penance
by Eliza Clark
thriller, narrative
Set in the seaside town of Crow-on-Sea, this novel uses a fictional true-crime format to document the murder of sixteen-year-old Joan Wilson.
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12
The Other Black Girl
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.
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