100 books like In the Dark We Forget

In the opening pages of Bury Your Dead, Penny gives us a heart-pounding glimpse into a moment that went horribly wrong.

Right away, she lays bare the terrible incident in the past that now haunts her beloved character, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in the present. He’s come to Quebec City to get his head straight, to walk his friend’s dog, to disappear for a while. But nothing’s ever that simple.

A mystery bubbles up and Gamache can’t resist getting involved. It’s in his blood, despite still struggling with past demons. What I love about this novel is the snowy, history-laden atmosphere Penny creates that beautifully mirrors Gamache’s desire to hide away from the world, making it a wonderful book to snuggle up with on a cozy winter’s night.

I picked up Tector’s novel because it’s set in my hometown of Ottawa, and I kept reading because she’s crafted a wonderfully flawed character who just won’t quit.

Cate Spencer is a coroner who relies on two things: her instincts and too much scotch to numb her painful past. When a woman is found hanging in the vaults of an archives building, Cate arrives on the scene.

It looks like suicide, but Cate can’t bring herself to rule the death accidental. Not yet. Something’s not right. The more she digs, the more menace stalks her, and the more the past threatens to derail her world completely.

Was the death a murder and if so, why? Dripping with long-buried secrets, this thriller kept me reading long into the night.

Clare is on the run and on the hunt for a missing girl.

What kept me reading was the tumult of questions that kept bubbling to the surface as Clare reluctantly and relentlessly searches—so many questions followed her on her solo journey. Who is she really running from and who is she working for? What is her end game? Where is the missing girl, Shayna and who doesn’t want her to discover the truth?

Clare is a woman with a very messy past—which is why she’s perfect for the job. She’s got nothing to lose. But she’s also got the past hot on her heels. There’s nothing like a strong, female character haunted by her past to get me turning the pages.

What I loved about McKinnon’s thriller was the darkly twisted and funny ride she takes you on from the get-go.

In the opening pages, Lucas admits he had his wife murdered, so this is not so much a “whodunnit” as a “will-he-get-away-with-it” story.

McKinnon gives the reader a peek inside the mind of her very messy, down-right vile protagonist. Lucas shares all the details of his devious plan—how his heart-breaking past justifies what he did, how he charmed his way into his wealthy wife’s life, married her, then carefully executed her demise.

The most compelling thing about the novel is that Lucas is kind of hard not to love, despite being utterly despicable. That’s not easy to pull off and McKinnon does it delightfully.

A young adult novel that no one would call horror. What makes this scary? The plot will bend your mind like watching The Matrix for the first time. Pick up this book if you want to see how to write scary and easy-to-read science fiction that isn't horror from a world-class author.

This is my favourite book from my all-time favourite author. I will never forget reading this for the first time, in my then-boyfriend’s flat at the start of our relationship. I ignored him all day (it’s ok, we ended up married) until I’d read it cover to cover. Marian Keyes knows how to pack a devastating emotional punch within her witty, entertaining novels and this is one of the most brutal. It’s a crystal-clear insight into grief, a book that made me sob uncontrollably, and there is no one better at presenting the frustrations and comforting joy of family dynamics and friendships. I don’t think there is any other book that has wrought so many tears from me, both of sadness and laughter.  

Moon Brow describes the social tensions between ideals of freedom, religion, and authoritarianism that provoked Iran’s 1978 revolution, but only increased under Islamic rule. Amir, a formerly rich, wild playboy, flogged by the morality police after a drunken orgy, joins the army to escape shame and find meaning for his life in the brutal and futile 10-year war against Iraq. Commanding artillery in the borderland, he encounters the mysterious, sprite-like woman he calls “Moon Brow,” who, after an Iraqi shell maims him, becomes a magical force in his PTSD hallucinations. Her true identity will come as a rebuke for his comparatively pointless existence, while his sister’s spurning of her rich, pretentious suitor will be another rebuke, of his machismo. A brilliant evocation of the illusions that sustain violence.

The future Dr. Lawrence sustains two traumatic brain injuries right before starting medical school. After inexplicably not taking any time off to recover, he trundles ahead despite short-term memory loss. What follows is an entertaining and chaotic four years of surmounting formidable obstacles while suffering an imposter syndrome that lingers throughout his training.

I think every medical student aside from the most incurable narcissist feels they are playing doctor much of the time. This memoir is highly relatable.

Seriously, I’m not exaggerating, and I say this as someone who’s read all the works of Philip K. Dick: Wallflower Assassin is without exception the weirdest, wildest, most psychedelic, and gleefully anarchistic book it’s ever been my pleasure to encounter. Our narrator, Jack, has near-total amnesia, induced by a trauma he can’t remember (because amnesia). He’s stumbling randomly between alternate universes, stalked and manipulated by agents of the sinister Reality Patrol. Oh, and he’s not in his own body––his mind has somehow been transferred into the body of a deadly former Reality Patrol assassin named Max. And Max’s mind is still in there, too, disoriented and annoyed at Jack’s presence... And all of this only just begins to scratch the surface of how weird it gets.

Corkin, a research psychologist, presents a fascinating case study of her patient, Henry Molaison, a man with no memory. Molaison—or H.M., as he was known in the scientific literature until his death in 2008—was a 27-year-old with severe epilepsy when he underwent radical brain surgery in 1953 to cure his intractable seizures.

Though Molaison’s seizures largely abated after the operation, he developed an even bigger problem, which manifested almost immediately after his surgery. Daily events vanished from his mind almost as soon as they had occurred.

Like most patients living with dementia, he could form no new long-term memories. With no new memories, he lived in a perpetual present, disconnected from his past (or at least the past after his surgery) and his future.