Books like Pain Killers by Jerry Stahl

Candide: A Tale of Conviviality and Optimism in a Wretched World

Eighteen‑year‑old Susanna Kaysen is admitted to McLean Hospital in 1967, where she documents life in the psychiatric ward, exploring mental illness, recovery, and the cultural landscape of the late 1960s.

Nick Hornby's second bestselling novel about sex, manliness, and fatherhood, about Will, a 36-year-old man child-free, discovering a way to meet women through single-parent groups, and Marcus, a 12-year-old boy dealing with a mother who makes him listen to Joni Mitchell rather than Nirvana.

James Frey's raw, first‑person memoir of addiction and recovery, offering an unflinching look at his struggle with opioids and the brutal path to sobriety.

A sharp-tongued thief, a washed-up detective, and a swindle so heinous it's best left unsaid.

A tale of moral ambiguity and marital upheaval.

David Carr, a New York Times reporter and columnist, chronicles his own descent into cocaine addiction, weaving personal memoir with over 50 videotaped interviews to reveal a harrowing past he had long denied.

Permanent Midnight is not just the story of how success destroyed Jerry Stahl, but how Stahl destroyed his own success. Starting life as the prototypical "middle-class kid," he endured his father's early death, his mother's descent into major depression, and life on his own from the age of sixteen. In spite of his own bad habits, he penetrated the far-flung, sometimes exotic worlds of magazines, movies, pornography, and television. His byline appeared everywhere from Esquire and Playboy to L.A. Style, Hustler, and The Village Voice, while he penned scripts for twisted cult film classics like Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari. Eventually, he ended up in the big-buck world of network television, banging out shows for mega-hits like Moonlighting, ALF, and thirtysomething. But even when he was making five grand a week, he was shooting six. . Beneath the successful front ran a toxic undercurrent of betrayal and madness, hard narcotics and hardcore sex. Permanent Midnight captures the crazed reality of this double and triple life. Careening daily from his luxury home to L.A.'s most hellacious neighborhoods, from the rankest methadone clinic to the backlot at Twentieth Century-Fox, he financed a heroin habit that brought on the soothing hiss of oblivion, even as it stole his health and trashed his career. Until, in a private apocalypse straight out of Day of the Locusts, Jerry Stahl kicked smack and emerged clean.

A darkly comic novel exploring the corrupting influence of politics and media in modern Britain.

After a career as a top New York ad copywriter, Augusten Burroughs must confront his own alcoholism while navigating the challenges of sobriety and a troubled relationship in this candid memoir.

A heartwarming tale of friendship and the unexpected impact of time passing and life's tragedies.

Matt Browning is offered a chance to steal $10 million in gold and diamonds from al-Qaeda.

Commissario Brunetti investigates a mysterious death of a young girl in Venice, tracing her identity and uncovering hidden family secrets amid prejudice and crime.

A self-defense instructor is forced to confront her own limitations when she takes on a fraud investigation in Seattle, leading to unexpected complications.