Books like The Torturer's Apprentice by John Biguenet

First‑person memoir of Neo‑classical Manhattan investment banker Patrick Bateman, whose glossy façade masks a brutal, psychopathic descent into violence.

A tense psychological thriller that pits FBI agent Clarice Starling against the notorious cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter as they collaborate to catch a new predator.

The first book in Gene Wolfe’s *The Book of the New Sun* follows Severian, a young torturer’s apprentice who, after showing mercy, is exiled from the city of Nessus on the world Urth and embarks on a fateful journey.

Set in a quiet 1950s American suburb, two orphaned sisters, Meg and Susan, are held captive in their aunt’s basement as her deteriorating mental health begins to poison their family and the surrounding community.

In Victorian London, Sugar, a young prostitute, struggles to climb out of poverty while navigating the harsh social realities of the era.

A harrowing tale of a lonely sociopath who kidnaps a young woman, holding her in a cellar while he persuades her to love him, narrated from both perspectives.

A collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff that explores American themes and manners.

Dennis Lehane’s gripping collection of five short stories and a play, “Coronado,” blends suspense, romance, and dark humor to explore American myths of class, gender, and violence.

A collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff that explore fathers‑to‑sons, mothers‑to‑sons, and first loves, painting American life with simple, evocative scenes that capture the quiet weight of growing up.

A collection of short stories showcasing Benjamin Alire Sáenz's exploration of LGBTQ+ themes in the Kentucky Club, a place of fluidity and crossroads between the American South and Mexico.

When reclusive novelist Vida Winter’s health wanes, she tasks biographer Margaret Lea with revealing the truth of her life, though Margaret must sift through Winter’s penchant for exaggeration to arrive at facts.

"Torture is banned because it is cruel and inhumane. But as Shane O'Mara writes in this account of the human brain under stress, another reason torture should never be condoned is because it does not work the way torturers assume it does. In countless films and TV shows such as Homeland and 24, torture is portrayed as a harsh necessity. If cruelty can extract secrets that will save lives, so be it. CIA officers and others conducted torture using precisely this justification. But does torture accomplish what its defenders say it does? For ethical reasons, there are no scientific studies of torture. But neuroscientists know a lot about how the brain reacts to fear, extreme temperatures, starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, and immersion in freezing water, all tools of the torturer's trade. These stressors create problems for memory, mood, and thinking, and sufferers predictably produce information that is deeply unreliable--and, for intelligence purposes, even counterproductive. As O'Mara guides us through the neuroscience of suffering, he reveals the brain to be much more complex than the brute calculations of torturers have allowed, and he points the way to a humane approach to interrogation, founded in the science of brain and behavior. Torture may be effective in forcing confessions, as in Stalin's Russia. But if we want information that we can depend on to save lives, O'Mara writes, our model should be Napoleon: 'It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile.'" -- Publisher's description

A collection of Jim Shepard’s short stories that has earned recognition in The New York Times.