Books like The Kid by Ron Hansen

A chilling, factual account of the 1959 shotgun murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, where four members were killed with no clear motive or clues.

In 1862, Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie dies and finds himself in a Tibetan bardo, where ghosts, grief and battle over a young boy’s soul blend absurdity with the horror of loss.

A Pulitzer‑winning historical novel that dramatizes the four‑day Battle of Gettysburg from the viewpoints of Union and Confederate leaders.

James Ellroy’s hard‑boiled crime novel follows detectives as they unravel Los Angeles’s darkest mystery, the unsolved murder of the Black Dahlia, blending gritty police work with atmospheric noir.

Set during the French Indochina War, the novel follows British journalist Thomas Fowler, his mistress Phuong, and American idealist Pyle, whose ambitions and tragic fate reshape their lives amid political turmoil.

Julian Barnes’s concise portrait of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, tracing his early struggles, political pressures, and artistic choices in the 1930s and beyond.

Eddie Coyle, a small‑time gun runner in Boston, must decide whether to betray his boss, Jimmy Scalisi, when police officer Foley presses him for cooperation while bartender‑turned contract killer Dillon pretends to be his ally.

Follow CIA counterterrorism specialist Mitch Rapp as he tackles his first explosive assignment in "American Assassin."

"Arizona Territory Ranger Sam Burrack rides the border badlands to Iron Point, hoping to capture Ozzie Cord, a mercenary who killed a sheriff back in Mesa Grande. Cord has escaped jail once, but he won't get away this time ..."--Back cover.

A poignant WWII tale of an Irish writer who travels to Paris, forging deep friendships, engaging in the French Resistance, and navigating the horrors of Nazi occupation, all while chronicling the turbulent era with literary grace.

In 1855 Lucy Lobdell cuts her hair, adopts a male persona, and boldly gains freedoms forbidden to women—traveling solo, carrying a rifle, drinking in bars, and forming same‑gender relationships—while confronting public scorn and a nascent understanding of her own sexual identity.

Stewart O'Nan’s historical novel portrays F. Scott Fitzgerald’s final years in Hollywood as he struggles, writes screenplays, and navigates romance with columnist Sheilah Graham, amid the glitter of 1930s studio life.

A riveting historical novel about the rise of a young queen in 16th-century Spain, from the acclaimed author of "The Queen's Vow"

Robert Marshall Utley traces the rise and fall of Billy the Kid, a youthful outlaw whose exploits and death epitomize the brutal violence of the American frontier.

History has treated Billy the Kid like a homicidal psychopath, a brazen madman responsible for as many as 21 murders. Steeped in legend, shrouded in folklore and outright lies, Billy the Kid has been portrayed for over 125 years as one of the most savage killers in American folklore. Yet for others, particularly the Hispanic people of the Southwest, the Kid was an avenging angel and a sagebrush Robin Hood. For them and many others, the Kid embodied youth, nobility, humanity, romance, and tragedy. He was the symbolic transition between the old and the new, with a blazing sixgun in hand. Now along comes Michael Wallis's sympathetic yet completely authoritative biography, which challenges and debunks many of the myths that have hounded this young man since his death at the age of 21 in New Mexico Territory. By scrupulously retelling Billy the Kid's brief but compelling story in an effort to set the record straight,Wallis -- renowned for his social histories of the West -- has created a new portrait of this outlaw. Countless books have been published about the Lincoln County War, including Billy the Kid's role in that conflict and the aftermath, but few authors have analyzed the Kid's crimes in the larger context of the political and social corruption that had become a way of life in New Mexico Territory. Wallis describes how the outlaw legend was deliberately manufactured and manipulated -- in fact, really the kid only became known by that name in the last year of his life. Furthermore, we learn how the few killings in which the Kid was actually implicated were used to divert attention from much larger societal corruption and crimes committed by a brotherhood of cunning politicians and power brokers. Wallis's Billy the Kid is more than a riveting story; the book is an extraordinary evocation of the reality of the Old West. With fascinating details of 19th century life, Wallis presents the brief, unhappy ballad of a rootless young man, most likely born to an immigrant Irish woman in New York just before the Civil War. Wallis then uses the story of Billy the Kid to explain the history of the violent settlement of the West and the development of frontier life between 1865 and 1881. We learn of the rise of the gun culture, the dangerous criminal world of New Mexico's Lincoln County, and everyday life at remote frontier outposts. We also meet many of the legendary heroes and antiheroes who, like the Kid, have been mythologized over time. - Jacket flap.

A biographical historical novel that follows the budding friendship between a teenage Louise Brooks and a middle‑aged chaperone as they travel to New York City in 1922, showing how the journey reshapes their lives.