9 Top contemporary books like The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy

Cover of The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy

The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

By: Cormac McCarthy

3.58

Format: 385 pages, Kindle Edition

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of…

"All of history [is] a rehearsal for its own extinction."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"All of history [is] a rehearsal for its own extinction."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"All of history [is] a rehearsal for its own extinction."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"...do you think if you died drunk you’d sober up before you met Jesus?"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

If you liked the contemporary plot in The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy , here is a list of 9 books like this:

1. Erasure

By: Percival Everett

3.62

Format: 280 pages, Paperback

"Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and … read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's Erasure book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

Cover of The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy

2. The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

By: Cormac McCarthy

3.58

Format: 385 pages, Kindle Edition

1980, PASS CHRISTIAN, MISSISSIPPI: It is three in the morning when Bobby Western zips the jacket of… read more

Similar categories in Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1) book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • audiobook
  • literary fiction
  • american
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • novels
  • historical fiction
"All of history [is] a rehearsal for its own extinction."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"...do you think if you died drunk you’d sober up before you met Jesus?"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"The evil has no alternate plan. It is simply incapable of assuming failure"

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

"She asked the girl what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said dead."

-Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

Cover of Prophet Song by Paul    Lynch

3. Prophet Song

By: Paul Lynch

4.10

Format: 259 pages, Kindle Edition

A fearless portrait of a society on the brink as a mother faces a terrible choice, from an internat… read more

Similar categories in Paul Lynch's Prophet Song book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"people are entitled to some small moment of peace."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"the child absorbing the mother’s trauma and storing it in his body for later use,"

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"... time is at once addition and subtraction, time adds one day to the next and always takes away from what's left..."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

"...knowing how it is so that all boys grow up and pull away from home to unmake the world in the guise of making it, nature decrees it so."

-Paul Lynch, Prophet Song

Cover of You Like It Darker by Stephen        King

4. You Like It Darker

By: Stephen King

4.32

Format: 502 pages, Hardcover

From legendary storyteller and master of short fiction Stephen King comes an extraordinary new coll… read more

Similar categories in Stephen King's You Like It Darker book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • mystery
  • thriller
  • fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson

5. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

By: Erik Larson

4.24

Format: 565 pages, Hardcover

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal fi… read more

Similar categories in Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • audiobook
"A house divided against itself cannot stand."

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"Lincoln on a sofa was like a ship's mast on a barstool, poised in an uneasy equilibrium between relaxation and structural collapse."

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"They were convinced that Britain, once confronted with the loss of Southern cotton, would ally itself with the Confederacy—the “cotton is king"

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

"South Carolina is too small for a Republic, and too big for an insane asylum. [James L. Petigru (1789-1863), following the state's vote to secede from the Union in 1860]"

-Erik Larson, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War

Cover of James by Percival Everett

6. James

By: Percival Everett

4.54

Format: 303 pages, Hardcover

A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , both harrowing and f… read more

Similar categories in Percival Everett's James book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie

7. Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

By: Salman Rushdie

4.10

Format: 209 pages, Hardcover

From internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply pers… read more

Similar categories in Salman Rushdie's Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • audiobook
"Waiting is thinking, and to think deeply is, very often, to change one’s mind."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"I don’t usually think of my books as prophecies. I’ve had some trouble with prophets in my life, and I’m not applying for the job."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"To have a room of one’s own, one must have money. (I don’t think Virginia Woolf ever went to India, but her dictum stands, even there, even for men.)"

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

"An intimacy of strangers. That's a phrase I've sometimes used to express the joyful thing that happens in the act of reading, that happy union of the interior lives of author and reader."

-Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Cover of The Maniac by Benjamín Labatut

8. The Maniac

By: Benjamín Labatut

4.34

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

From one of contemporary literature’s most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hu… read more

Similar categories in Benjamín Labatut's The Maniac book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
"[...] si nuestra especie iba a sobrevivir el siglo XX, necesitábamos llenar el enorme vacío dejado por la huida de los dioses, y la única candidata viable para realizar esa extraña y esotérica transf…"

-Benjamín Labatut, The Maniac

Cover of Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir by Werner Herzog

9. Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir

By: Werner Herzog

4.25

Format: 367 pages, Kindle Edition

Legendary filmmaker and celebrated author Werner Herzog tells in his inimitable voice the story of … read more

Similar categories in Werner Herzog's Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • audiobook
Cover of North Woods by Daniel       Mason

10. North Woods

By: Daniel Mason

4.15

Format: 372 pages, Hardcover

A sweeping novel about a single house in the woods of New England, told through the lives of those … read more

Similar categories in Daniel Mason's North Woods book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James   McBride

11. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

By: James McBride

4.00

Format: 385 pages, Hardcover

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing de… read more

Similar categories in James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • audiobook
Cover of Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange

12. Wandering Stars

By: Tommy Orange

3.89

Format: 315 pages, Hardcover

The eagerly awaited follow-up to Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange’s breakout best seller There … read more

Similar categories in Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"And in the year 1924 Indian citizenship will have been granted, even though they will mean to dissolve tribes by giving citizenship, dissolve being another word for disappearance, a kind of chemical …"

-Tommy Orange, Wandering Stars

Cover of Day by Michael Cunningham

13. Day

By: Michael Cunningham

3.57

Format: 273 pages, Hardcover

As the world changes around them, a family weathers the storms of growing up, growing older, fallin… read more

Similar categories in Michael Cunningham's Day book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Here, then, is the answer. A degree of cruelty is necessary because Garth, like most men, can only deposit his needs at her feet, can only declare his love—that romantic hallucination, which would be…"

-Michael Cunningham, Day

Cover of The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

14. The Bee Sting

By: Paul Murray

3.96

Format: 656 pages, Hardcover

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and … read more

Similar categories in Paul Murray's The Bee Sting book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
"It is for love. You are doing this for love."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"We all have problems. But often instead of accepting the truth about ourselves, we cover it up. We try to make ourselves the way we think we’re expected to be."

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn’t know. When the kids ask, tell them…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

"Maybe that’s how it will go – instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of ‘anomalies’, each time lasting longer, with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apar…"

-Paul Murray, The Bee Sting

Cover of Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

15. Martyr!

By: Kaveh Akbar

4.24

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! is a paean to how we spend our lives seeking meaning—in faith, art, ourselves… read more

Similar categories in Kaveh Akbar's Martyr! book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook
Cover of Table for Two by Amor Towles

16. Table for Two

By: Amor Towles

4.26

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

From the bestselling author of The Lincoln Highway, A Gentleman in Moscow, and Rules of Civility, a… read more

Similar categories in Amor Towles's Table for Two book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • contemporary
  • audiobook
"And though she couldn’t remember the exact reference and whether it was from mythology or the Bible, she knew instinctively as they approached the pier’s limit she mustn’t look back."

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

"It is a funny aspect of life, thought Charlie, how a group of grown people can convince themselves to do something that none of them really want to do. They start by talking an idea into existence. O…"

-Amor Towles, Table for Two

Cover of The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2) by Tana French

17. The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2)

By: Tana French

4.12

Format: 467 pages, Hardcover

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is… read more

Similar categories in Tana French's The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2) book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • mystery
  • thriller
  • fiction
  • audiobook
"She'll bake bread and make jam, because she likes those made her way, but she says she cooked a good meal from scratch every night of her marriage, and now if she wants to live mainly off toasted san…"

-Tana French, The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2)

"Trey has a bone-deep mistrust of marriage or anything resembling it. She knows that Lena sometimes stays the night at Cal's place, but Lena also has a place of her own, which she can go back to whene…"

-Tana French, The Hunter (Cal Hooper, #2)

Cover of The Fraud by Zadie Smith

18. The Fraud

By: Zadie Smith

3.30

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The extraordinary first historical novel from bestselling author of White Teeth Zadie Smith It i… read more

Similar categories in Zadie Smith's The Fraud book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • novels
  • audiobook
"Eliza had long understood her cousin to be beyond the reach of editorial intervention."

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"What possesses people? Unhappiness, always. Happiness is otherwise occupied. It has an object on which to focus. It has daisies, it has snowdrifts. Unhappiness opens up the void, which then requires …"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"I know this country well. Well enough to understand that justice takes time, and that the freedoms of a minority are rarely self-evident to the majority. What is perfectly selfevident to God is – unf…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

"God preserve me from novel-writing, thought Mrs Touchet. God preserve me from that tragic indulgence, that useless vanity, that blindness! In a cold dormitory, two hundred miles away, three heartbrok…"

-Zadie Smith, The Fraud

Cover of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

19. The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

By: David Grann

4.19

Format: 331 pages, Hardcover

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a page-turning story o… read more

Similar categories in David Grann's The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • mystery
  • audiobook
Cover of America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien

20. America Fantastica

By: Tim O'Brien

3.45

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in No… read more

Similar categories in Tim O'Brien's America Fantastica book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • literature
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • historical fiction
  • audiobook
Cover of Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2) by Colson Whitehead

21. Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

By: Colson Whitehead

3.88

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Colson Whitehead continues his Harlem saga in a novel that summons 1970s New York in all its seedy … read more

Similar categories in Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2) book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • audiobook
"Misery is a money pit."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"Step away entirely or you haven't stepped away at all."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"White cops did as they pleased. Crooked white cops? Untouchable."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

"Simpler than conspiracy was Carney's take: In general, people were terrible."

-Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto (Ray Carney, #2)

Cover of Blackouts by Justin Torres

22. Blackouts

By: Justin Torres

3.77

Format: 306 pages, Hardcover

From the bestselling author of We the Animals, Blackouts mines lost histories--personal and collect… read more

Similar categories in Justin Torres's Blackouts book and Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • historical fiction
  • contemporary
  • novels
  • audiobook

17 Best fiction books like The Passenger (The Passenger #1) by Cormac McCarthy

Transform Your Habits

The Passenger (The Passenger #1)

Cormac McCarthy

3.58

Transform Your Habits

Prophet Song

Paul Lynch

4.10

Transform Your Habits

You Like It Darker

Stephen King

4.32

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

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21 must-read fiction books like Day by Michael Cunningham

Transform Your Habits

After Annie

Anna Quindlen

4.03

Transform Your Habits

The Wren, the Wren

Anne Enright

3.55

Transform Your Habits

James

Percival Everett

4.54

Transform Your Habits

Leaving

Roxana Robinson

3.87

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