Books like Already Dead by Denis Johnson

A weary father and his young son journey across a bleak, post‑apocalyptic America, battling cannibals, starvation, and a harsh winter in a desperate quest for safety and a glimpse of remaining civilization.

After being murdered at fourteen, Susie Salmon watches from heaven as her family, friends, and killer grapple with grief and justice, revealing how love and forgiveness shape a family's future.

Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens’s 1837-39 social novel, follows an orphan raised in a workhouse who flees to London, joins a gang of pickpockets, and uncovers family secrets while exposing child labour and exploitation.

Reporter Camille Preaker returns to her hometown after a brief stay in a psychiatric hospital to cover the murders of two preteen girls, and must confront the trauma of her own past to uncover the truth.

Jennifer Egan’s interlocking narratives weave the lives of Bennie Salazar, a former punk rocker turned record executive, and Sasha, a restless young woman, across decades and continents, exploring music, memory and the fragile threads that bind us.

A candid, semi‑autobiographical exploration of William S. Burroughs’ life as a heroin addict, spanning New York streets, a Kentucky rehab hospital, New Orleans bars, and Mexico, while confronting money troubles and homosexual relationships.

The Pale King follows IRS employees at the Peoria, Illinois, Regional Examination Center as they navigate the absurdities of bureaucracy in a sharp, observational narrative.

A Chilean woman embarks on a quest to find her lover in 1840s California's goldfields, facing numerous challenges and adventures along the way.

A raw portrait of a young African‑American man shaped by the harsh streets of the city, whose life is torn between survival and addiction.

An adrenaline-packed adventure thriller set in Egypt about the hunt for a fabulous lost treasure.In 523 BC, the Persian emperor Cambyses dispatched an army across Egypt's western desert to destroy the oracle of Amun at Siwa. Legend has it that somewhere in the middle of the Great Sand Sea his army was overwhelmed by a sandstorm and destroyed. Fifty thousand men were lost. Two and a half thousand years later a mutilated corpse is washed up on the banks of the Nile at Luxor, an antiques dealer is savagely murdered in Cairo, and an eminent British archaeologist is found dead at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara. At first the incidents appear unconnected. Inspector Yusuf Khalifa of the Luxor police is suspicious, however. And so too is the archaeologist's daughter, Tara Mullray. As each seeks to uncover the truth, they find themselves thrown together in a desperate race for survival - one that forces them to confront not only present-day adversaries but also ghosts from their own pasts. From a mysterious fragment of ancient hieroglyphic text to rumours of a fabulous lost tomb in the Theban Hills, from the shimmering waters of the Nile to the dusty backstreets of Cairo, Khalifa and Mullray are drawn ever deeper into a labyrinth of violence, intrigue and betrayal. It is a path that will eventually lead them into the forbidding, barren heart of the western desert, and the answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world . . . At once an adrenaline-packed thriller and a wonderfully evocative archaeological adventure, THE LOST ARMY OF CAMBYSES marks the debut of a great new storyteller.

Former detective Dave Robicheaux, a Vietnam vet and ex-cop, settles into Louisiana bayou life with his wife. A Gulf plane crash introduces a young girl and unravels a web of murder, deception and local crime.