6 Best thriller books like Penance by Eliza Clark

Cover of Penance by Eliza  Clark

Penance

By: Eliza Clark

3.90

Format: 336 pages, ebook

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you li…

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details of true crimes bring her to your attention? Did you see the article about her, buried in the chum box of an already disreputable website? Did you see the red-headed stock image model juxtaposed against an edited charred corpse, captioned, "You won't believe what they did to her?" Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Do you have a dark sense of humour? Did that make it okay? Or were they sensitive about it? Did they coo in the right places? Did they give you a content warning? Did you skip ahead? Did you see pictures? Did you look for them?"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details of true crimes bring her to your attention? Did you see the article about her, buried in the chum box of an already disreputable website? Did you see the red-headed stock image model juxtaposed against an edited charred corpse, captioned, "You won't believe what they did to her?" Did you listen to a podcast? Did the hosts make jokes? Do you have a dark sense of humour? Did that make it okay? Or were they sensitive about it? Did they coo in the right places? Did they give you a content warning? Did you skip ahead? Did you see pictures? Did you look for them?"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

If you liked the thriller plot in Penance by Eliza Clark , here is a list of 6 books like this:

Cover of I Who Have Never Known Men by Ros Schwartz, Jacqueline Harpman

1. I Who Have Never Known Men

By: Ros Schwartz , Jacqueline Harpman

4.22

Format: 208 pages, Paperback

"As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker." A young woman is kept in a cage underg… read more

Similar categories in Ros Schwartz's I Who Have Never Known Men book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
"Survival is never more than putting off the moment of death."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"I thought it was unfair, and then I understood that, alone and terrified, anger was my only weapon against the horror"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first."

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

"Only now, I tell myself that what I'd felt for her, the trust that slowly built up, the constant preference for her company and the joy each time I was reunited with her after an expedition were prob…"

-Ros Schwartz, I Who Have Never Known Men

Cover of Rouge by Mona Awad

2. Rouge

By: Mona Awad

3.56

Format: 383 pages, Kindle Edition

From the critically acclaimed author of Bunny comes a horror-tinted, gothic fairy tale about a lone… read more

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
  • contemporary
  • thriller
  • adult
  • audiobook
"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Cover of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

3. Our Wives Under the Sea

By: Julia Armfield

3.78

Format: 240 pages, Paperback

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ende… read more

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Our Wives Under the Sea book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"El océano profundo es una casa embrujada: un lugar donde se mueven en la oscuridad cosas que no deberían existir."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"She refused almost every aspect of my help, the way women will when they've been bred to accept little more than the baset civility."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"I don't know why I expected you to read my mind,' I say, when I call back to leave her a message, 'I was just doing what I always do, assuming the world revolves around me."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

"The space around us is a claw half grasped, holding tight without quite crushing, and I wish, in the idle way I always wish these days, that I felt more confident in my ability to breathe."

-Julia Armfield, Our Wives Under the Sea

Cover of My Husband by Maud Ventura

4. My Husband

By: Maud Ventura

3.68

Format: 272 pages, Hardcover

In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obse… read more

Similar categories in Maud Ventura's My Husband book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"When it comes to love, I’ve learned nothing: I love too intensely and I’m consumed by my own love (analysis, jealousy, doubt)—so much that when I’m in love, I always end up slightly extinguished and …"

-Maud Ventura, My Husband

Cover of Penance by Eliza  Clark

5. Penance

By: Eliza Clark

3.90

Format: 336 pages, ebook

Do you know what happened already? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did you li… read more

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • adult
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • crime
  • audiobook
"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Cover of Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

6. Blue Sisters

By: Coco Mellors

4.21

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

Three estranged siblings return to their family home in New York after their beloved sister's death… read more

Similar categories in Coco Mellors's Blue Sisters book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"A sister is not a friend. Who can explain the urge to take a relationship as primal and complex as a sibling and reduce it to something as replaceable, as banal as a friend? Yet this status is used a…"

-Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

Cover of The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

7. The Rachel Incident

By: Caroline O'Donoghue

4.09

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately tr… read more

Similar categories in Caroline O'Donoghue's The Rachel Incident book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"I was twenty and I needed two things: to be in love and to be taken seriously."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"He was a doctor and I was supposed to take what he said seriously; but he was a dentist and my dad so I didn’t."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"It's not that we weren't capable of warmth as a family. But we were regularly seduced by the concept of being wronged."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

"I thought of my parents as heads on Easter Island, and it took moving two miles away to realise they had been people all along."

-Caroline O'Donoghue, The Rachel Incident

Cover of I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel

8. I'm a Fan

By: Sheena Patel

3.32

Format: 207 pages, None

In I'm A Fan, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithfu… read more

Similar categories in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"It is toxic. I am familiar"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"Happiness or safety. Or isn't that the same thing?"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"I never came with him. I never felt safe enough to."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"The world is made for couples. Even the unhappy ones."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

Cover of Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

9. Ordinary Human Failings

By: Megan Nolan

3.78

Format: 224 pages, Hardcover

When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about thei… read more

Similar categories in Megan Nolan's Ordinary Human Failings book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • adult
  • audiobook
"She loved the feeling of doing something on her own, and doing it in a routine. It felt thrillingly adult and affirmed her most cherished hope, the hope that she might have an actual inner life of su…"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

"He had the sort of bland, agreeable, rosy face which could disappear into whatever context he wished it to. He was blond but not provocatively so. The naturally dull Kent accent could be clipped and …"

-Megan Nolan, Ordinary Human Failings

Cover of Death Valley by Melissa Broder

10. Death Valley

By: Melissa Broder

3.49

Format: 240 pages, Hardcover

A woman arrives alone at a Best Western seeking respite from an emptiness that plagues her. She has… read more

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Cover of Brutes by Dizz Tate

11. Brutes

By: Dizz Tate

3.18

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut—a coming-of-age story a… read more

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • horror
  • adult
  • audiobook
"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Cover of Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna

12. Evenings and Weekends

By: Oisín McKenna

3.96

Format: 352 pages, Hardcover

For fans of Sally Rooney and Torrey Peters, a taut and profoundly moving debut that follows a cast … read more

Similar categories in Oisín McKenna's Evenings and Weekends book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of Piglet by Lottie Hazell

13. Piglet

By: Lottie Hazell

3.47

Format: 320 pages, Hardcover

An elegant, razor-sharp debut about women's ambitions and appetites—and the truth about having it a… read more

Similar categories in Lottie Hazell's Piglet book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"She picked up salted butter, thick Greek yoghurt, and cream. The menu was not modest. Her basket was already heavy with Charlotte potatoes, fresh herbs, and a Duchy chicken. It was too hot for a roas…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"She opened the capers, green and freckled as amphibians, and with a teaspoon eased them from their brine. The olives were next, and she pushed pits from the aubergine-dark fruits, dropping their fles…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

"On the platter before her there was a bowl of beef bourguignon, the sauce dark with merlot; the corner of dauphinoise potatoes, gruyère-crusted top browned, bubbled with heat; there was a small plate…"

-Lottie Hazell, Piglet

Cover of Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth

14. Sunburn

By: Chloe Michelle Howarth

4.33

Format: 288 pages, Paperback

Selected as an Evening Standard 'one to watch in 2023' It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish vi… read more

Similar categories in Chloe Michelle Howarth's Sunburn book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
"It's a shame that you can't even come out to me."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"People say 'lesbian' sometimes, they say 'dyke' more."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"I hope your bed is warm and you sleep well. See you tomorrow, Lucy x"

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

"My heart lurches, as if it wants to leave my awful body and go make a home in her."

-Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn

Cover of Kala by Colin Walsh

15. Kala

By: Colin Walsh

3.99

Format: 416 pages, Hardcover

A gripping literary page-turner from a rising Irish talent in which former friends, estranged for t… read more

Similar categories in Colin Walsh's Kala book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • mystery thriller
  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • crime
  • audiobook
"Vapers are cunt wands,' Donna snaps."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"I just want to switch myself off. Disconnect from everything."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"So much of the night's vague. A film strip with half the frames missing."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

"Who drinks a decaf cappuccino? Be honest with yourself and get a cup of warm milk."

-Colin Walsh, Kala

Cover of Butter by Asako Yuzuki

16. Butter

By: Asako Yuzuki

3.60

Format: 464 pages, Hardcover

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist inten… read more

Similar categories in Asako Yuzuki's Butter book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • mystery thriller
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • mystery
  • thriller
  • crime
  • audiobook
"Dessert was home-made candied chestnuts, chiffon cake baked with amazake and rice flour, and cups of gingery chai. Biting into the cake, Rika discovered that it was perfectly fluffy, with a pleasing …"

-Asako Yuzuki, Butter

"Soon after, Rika heard the sizzle of butter melting in a hot frying pan. It smelt to her like life itself. Maybe because it was animal fat, there was rough, raw depth and fragrance to its smell, whic…"

-Asako Yuzuki, Butter

"Milk was originally blood. In that case, was the butter in the Babaji story actually a metaphor for all the carnage that took place under the cover of the jungle? What seemed pure, white and creamy h…"

-Asako Yuzuki, Butter

"The whipped butter had already started melting across the waffles' latticed brown surface, creating a golden trickling waterfall that pooled in their hollows. Rika bit into the dough, savoring how ju…"

-Asako Yuzuki, Butter

Cover of Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

17. Big Swiss

By: Jen Beagin

3.68

Format: 336 pages, Hardcover

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house is … read more

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Cover of Good Material by Dolly Alderton

18. Good Material

By: Dolly Alderton

3.91

Format: 345 pages, Paperback

From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and f… read more

Similar categories in Dolly Alderton's Good Material book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"Thirty-five is the youth of middle age."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Remember, a broken heart is a jester's greatest prop."

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"You know how to be along without being lonely. Do you know how rare that is?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

"Why is it that London always seems the most alive and full of possibility on the nights when you've got no plans?"

-Dolly Alderton, Good Material

Cover of Bellies by Nicola Dinan

19. Bellies

By: Nicola Dinan

4.07

Format: 368 pages, Hardcover

I wore a dress on the night I first met Ming.It begins as your typical boy meets boy. While out wit… read more

Similar categories in Nicola Dinan's Bellies book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
Cover of Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

20. Ripe

By: Sarah Rose Etter

3.63

Format: 288 pages, Hardcover

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a … read more

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • contemporary
  • adult
  • audiobook
"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Cover of Private Rites by Julia Armfield

21. Private Rites

By: Julia Armfield

3.92

Format: 304 pages, Hardcover

From the award-winning author of Our Wives Under the Sea, a speculative reimagining of King Lear, c… read more

Similar categories in Julia Armfield's Private Rites book and Eliza Clark's Penance

  • literary fiction
  • fiction
  • horror
  • contemporary
  • adult
"To be misunderstood is one thing, but the curious hostility of a sibling's approach lies less in what they miss than in the strange backdated nature of the things they choose to know. A person can be…"

-Julia Armfield, Private Rites

6 Best horror books like Penance by Eliza Clark

Transform Your Habits

Rouge

Mona Awad

3.56

Transform Your Habits

Our Wives Under the Sea

Julia Armfield

3.78

Transform Your Habits

My Husband

Maud Ventura

3.68

Transform Your Habits

Penance

Eliza Clark

3.90

View all the books

5 best-selling japan books like Butter by Asako Yuzuki

Transform Your Habits

More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop (Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, #2)

Satoshi Yagisawa

3.87

Transform Your Habits

The Kamogawa Food Detectives (Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1)

Hisashi Kashiwai

3.70

Transform Your Habits

Butter

Asako Yuzuki

3.60

Transform Your Habits

Mongrel

Hanako Footman

4.38

View all the books

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