More like Murmur
anchored on:literary & generallate 20th centurynorth americabig city
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- Girlfriend in a Coma
Douglas Couplandstandalone novel1998
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth americabig cityreflective
Girlfriend in a Coma is a novel by Canadian writer and artist Douglas Coupland. It was first published by HarperCollins Canada in 1998. The novel tells the story of a group of friends growing up in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the late 1970s. On the night of a teenage house-wrecking party, one of the protagonists, Karen, falls into a coma. Peculiarly, she seemed to expect it, having given her boyfriend, Richard, a letter detailing the vivid dreams of the future she had experienced and how she wanted to sleep for a thousand years to avoid that dystopia.
- White Noise
Don DeLillostandalone novel1985
similar byliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth america+1 more
White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, published by Viking Press in 1985. It won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.
- American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellisstandalone novel1991
similar bydarkliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth americabig city
American Psycho is a horror novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first-person by Patrick Bateman, a wealthy, narcissistic, and vain Manhattan investment banker who lives a double life as a serial killer. Alison Kelly of The Observer notes that while "Some countries [deem it] so potentially controversial that it only to be sold as shrink-wrapped", "critics rave about it" and "academics revel in its transgressive and postmodern qualities".
- The Mad Man
Samuel R. Delanystandalone novel1994
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth americabig city
The Mad Man is a literary novel by Samuel R. Delany, first published in 1994 by Richard Kasak. In a disclaimer that appears at the beginning of the book, Delany describes it as a "pornotopic fantasy". It was originally published in 1994, republished and slightly revised in 1996, and republished again with significant changes in 2002 and again in an e-book version with further corrections in 2015. Delany considers the 2015 version the definitive edition.
- King of the City
Michael Moorcockstandalone novel2000
similar byliterary & generallate 20th centurybig city+1 more
King of the City (2000) is a novel by Michael Moorcock. It is a satire on modern London and its literary scene and, in part, a sequel to Mother London. Narrated by celebrity photographer and erstwhile rock star Dennis Dover, it charts a chaotic ride through London from the sixties to the end of the century.
- Mazes and Monsters
Rona Jaffestandalone novel1981
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth america+1 more
Mazes and Monsters is a 1981 novel by Rona Jaffe. The novel is a cautionary tale regarding the then-new hobby of fantasy role-playing games. The book was adapted into a made-for-television movie by the same name in 1982 starring Tom Hanks.
- Voices from the Street
Philip K. Dickstandalone novel2007
similar byliterary & generaldarknorth americabig city+1 more
A young salesman in a San Francisco radio and electronics store in 1952 feels a vague dissatisfaction with his job, his wife, and newborn son, wishing for better things. He encounters religious revivalists, Nazi magazine editors, socialists, and spirited women, but rather than provide an answer they just exacerbate his emotional pain, and he finally has a complete emotional breakdown.
- Pulp
Charles Bukowskistandalone novel1994
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth america
Pulp is the last completed novel by Los Angeles poet and writer Charles Bukowski. It was published in 1994, shortly before Bukowski's death. He began writing it in 1991 and encountered several problems during its creation. He fell ill during the spring of 1993, only three-quarters of the way through Pulp.
- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Junot Díazstandalone novel2007
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th century+1 more
Dark fantasy novel. A young man who dreams of being “the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien” is doomed by a family curse, traced across generations.
- Black & White
Lewis Shinerstandalone novel2008
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth americareflective
When Michael follows his dying father to North Carolina, a lifetime of lies begins to unravel. His pursuit of his father's past--haunted by voodoo, adultery and murder--takes him to a place called Hayti, once the most prosperous black community in the South. Now the mysteries of Michael's own heritage become a matter of life and death, as racial conflicts barely restrained since the 1960s erupt again.
- Roadwork
Stephen Kingstandalone novel1981
similar bydarkliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth americabig city
Roadwork is a thriller novel by American writer Stephen King, published in 1981 under the pseudonym Richard Bachman as a paperback original. It was collected in 1985 in the hardcover omnibus The Bachman Books. The story takes place in an unnamed city of the Midwestern United States in 1972–1974. Grieving over the death of his son and the disintegration of his marriage, a man is driven to mental instability when he learns that both his home and his workplace will be demolished to make way for an extension to an interstate highway.
- 1982 Janine
Alasdair Graystandalone novel1984
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th century+1 more
1982, Janine is a novel by the Scottish author Alasdair Gray. His second, it was published in 1984, and remains his most controversial work. Its use of pornography as a narrative device attracted much criticism, although others, including Gray himself, consider it his best work.
- Hogg
Samuel R. Delanystandalone novel1995
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth america
Hogg is a novel by American author Samuel R. Delany, written in 1969 and completed in 1995. The novel deals graphically with themes of murder, child molestation, incest, coprophilia, coprophagia, urolagnia, anal-oral contact, necrophilia and rape. It was conceptualized and written in 1969, with a further draft completed in 1973, and it was finally published with some further, though relatively minor, rewrites in 1995 by Black Ice Books. Two later editions have featured some corrections, the last of which, published by Fiction Collective Two in 2004, carries a note from Delany stating that it is definitive.
- We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jacksonstandalone novel1962
similar byliterary & generalnorth america+1 more
A young woman lives with her older sister and sickly uncle in their old family house, after a mysterious tragedy turns the townsfolk against them.
- Crash
J. G. Ballardstandalone novel1973
similar byliterary & generaldarkbig city
Crash is a novel by J. G. Ballard, first published in 1973 with a cover designed by Bill Botten. It follows a group of car-crash fetishists who, inspired by the famous crashes of celebrities, become sexually aroused by staging and participating in car accidents.
- The Robber Bride
Margaret Atwoodstandalone novel1993
similar byliterary & generalnorth americareflective+1 more
The Robber Bride is a novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1993.
- London Fields
Martin Amisstandalone novel1989
similar bydarkliterary & generallate 20th centurybig city
London Fields is a black comedy murder mystery novel by the British writer Martin Amis, published in 1989. The tone gradually shifts from high comedy, interspersed with deep personal introspections, to a dark sense of foreboding and eventually panic at the approach of the deadline, or "horrorday", the climactic scene alluded to on the very first page.
- The Snowman's Children
Glen Hirshbergstandalone novel2002
similar byliterary & generaldarklate 20th centurynorth americabig city
"In the mid-1970s, as a serial killer called the Snowman stalks the streets of suburban Detroit and the racial tension that had ripped the city in half a decade earlier continues to underscore every aspect of daily life, Mattie and Spencer, two exceptionally bright eleven year-old boys, wage an increasingly desperate and misguided campaign to save their friend Theresa, a brilliant, cryptic, troubled young girl, from descending into terrifying mental illness. The final, grand act of that campaign has shattering effects on many lives, drives Mattie's family from their home, and ultimately lures him, seventeen years later, back to Detroit to seek out his lost friends and make one last attempt to set things right."--BOOK JACKET.
- Slaughterhouse-Five or the Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1969
similar byliterary & generaldarkreflective
Vonnegut opens in his own voice, describing the twenty years it took him to face writing about surviving the firebombing of Dresden as a POW. He then hands the story to Billy Pilgrim, an awkward, fatalistic American chaplain's assistant swept into the Battle of the Bulge and captured by German forces alongside a soldier who dies blaming him for it. Imprisoned in a disused slaughterhouse in Dresden, Billy survives the firebombing that follows, and, we're told upfront, has also come 'unstuck in time,' living his life out of order, including a stretch on the alien world of Tralfamadore. Vonnegut's best-known novel folds war memoir into science fiction and black comedy.
- Running Dog
Don DeLillostandalone novel1978
similar byliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth america+1 more
Running Dog is a 1978 novel by Don DeLillo. The book concerns Moll Robbins, a reporter for the eponymous magazine – a fictional underground, once-radical magazine which satirizes Rolling Stone – whose investigation into the suspicious activities of a member of the U.S. Senate uncover the possible existence of a pornographic film of Adolf Hitler, purportedly filmed in his bunker in the climactic days of Berlin's fall. As Robbins digs deeper into the film's existence and whereabouts, more and more individuals become obsessed with finding it, including underground art collectors and the Mafia, leading to a surreal and violent series of events.
- The Edible Woman
Margaret Atwoodstandalone novel1969
similar byliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth americareflective
The Edible Woman is the first published novel by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, published in 1969. It is the story of a young woman, Marian, whose sane, structured, consumer-oriented world starts to slip out of focus. Following her engagement, Marian feels her body and her self are becoming separated. Marian begins endowing food with human qualities that cause her to identify with it, and finds herself unable to eat, repelled by metaphorical cannibalism. In a foreword written in 1979 for the Virago edition of the novel, Atwood described it as a protofeminist rather than feminist work.
- Mother Night
Kurt Vonnegut & Jr.standalone novel1962
similar byliterary & generaldarkreflective
Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright who grew up in Germany, writes his memoirs from an Israeli prison cell awaiting trial for war crimes. As the Nazis rose to power, Campbell stayed on, married a German actress, and was recruited by an American agent to serve as a double agent, broadcasting Nazi propaganda over the radio while secretly passing coded intelligence to the Allies. The catch, as Campbell tells it, is that he became one of the war's most effective propagandists in the process, whatever his loyalties. Kurt Vonnegut's darkest novel asks what a person becomes when the mask he wears for a cause is indistinguishable from his face.
- Flicker
Theodore Roszakstandalone novel1991
similar byliterary & generallate 20th centurynorth america+1 more
Flicker is a novel by Theodore Roszak published in 1991. The novel follows film scholar Jonathan Gates, whose academic investigations draw him into the world of esoteric conspiracy that underlies the work of the fictional B movie director Max Castle.
