Read A-Likes September 2026
Do you ever finish reading a book and wonder what to try next?
Try these suggestions for popular titles.
Try these suggestions for popular titles.
Our Read-A-Like Suggestions This Month Are For:
Linwood Barclay, Callie Bates, Mark Billingham, Mike Blakely
Linwood Barclay, Callie Bates, Mark Billingham, Mike Blakely
Elevator Pitch
By Linwood Barclay
It all begins on a Monday, when four people board an elevator in a Manhattan office tower. Each presses a button for their floor, but the elevator proceeds, non-stop, to the top. Once there, it stops for a few seconds, and then plummets. Right to the bottom of the shaft.
It appears to be a horrific, random tragedy. But then, on Tuesday, it happens again, in a different Manhattan skyscraper. And when Wednesday brings yet another high-rise catastrophe, one of the most vertical cities in the world—and the nation’s capital of media, finance, and entertainment—is plunged into chaos.
Clearly, this is anything but random. This is a cold, calculated bid to terrorize the city. And it’s working. Fearing for their lives, thousands of men and women working in offices across the city refuse to leave their homes. Commerce has slowed to a trickle. Emergency calls to the top floors of apartment buildings go unanswered.
Who is behind this? Why are they doing it? What do these deadly acts of sabotage have to do with the fingerless body found on the High Line? Two seasoned New York detectives and a straight-shooting journalist must race against time to find the answers before the city’s newest, and tallest, residential tower has its ribbon-cutting on Thursday.
With each diabolical twist, Linwood Barclay ratchets up the suspense, building to a shattering finale. Pulsating with tension, Elevator Pitch is a riveting tale of psychological suspense that is all too plausible . . . and will chill readers to the bone.
By Linwood Barclay
It all begins on a Monday, when four people board an elevator in a Manhattan office tower. Each presses a button for their floor, but the elevator proceeds, non-stop, to the top. Once there, it stops for a few seconds, and then plummets. Right to the bottom of the shaft.
It appears to be a horrific, random tragedy. But then, on Tuesday, it happens again, in a different Manhattan skyscraper. And when Wednesday brings yet another high-rise catastrophe, one of the most vertical cities in the world—and the nation’s capital of media, finance, and entertainment—is plunged into chaos.
Clearly, this is anything but random. This is a cold, calculated bid to terrorize the city. And it’s working. Fearing for their lives, thousands of men and women working in offices across the city refuse to leave their homes. Commerce has slowed to a trickle. Emergency calls to the top floors of apartment buildings go unanswered.
Who is behind this? Why are they doing it? What do these deadly acts of sabotage have to do with the fingerless body found on the High Line? Two seasoned New York detectives and a straight-shooting journalist must race against time to find the answers before the city’s newest, and tallest, residential tower has its ribbon-cutting on Thursday.
With each diabolical twist, Linwood Barclay ratchets up the suspense, building to a shattering finale. Pulsating with tension, Elevator Pitch is a riveting tale of psychological suspense that is all too plausible . . . and will chill readers to the bone.
The Night Birds
By Christopher Golden Charlie Book and Ruby Cahill have history. After their love ended in heartbreak years ago, they never expected to see each other again. Now, as part of his work for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Book lives aboard the Christabel, a 19th century freighter half-sunken off the shore of Galveston. Over many years, a massive forest of mangrove trees has grown up through the deck of the ship, creating a startlingly beautiful enigma Book calls the Floating Forest. As a powerful storm churns through the Gulf, he intends to sleep on board as usual. But when he arrives at the dock, he's stunned to find Ruby there waiting for him. And she's not alone. With her are a mysterious woman and her infant child, asking Book to hide them safely aboard the Christabel while they're on the run. Only it isn't the police who are after them, it's a coven of witches the woman, Mae, has fled, stealing away the helpless infant for whom the coven had hideous plans...or so Mae claims. It's lunacy and Book wants nothing to do with it. But after the way he and Ruby ended things, and the unspoken pain between them, he can't refuse. Yet even as he brings them out to the ruined ship and its floating forest, there are shadowed figures looming back in Galveston, waiting out the storm. And despite the worsening wind and rain, the night birds are flying, scouring the coastline for their prey. |
If She Wakes
By Michael Koryta Tara Beckley is a senior at idyllic Hammel College in Maine. As she drives to deliver a visiting professor to a conference, a horrific car accident kills the professor and leaves Tara in a vegetative state. At least, so her doctors think. In fact, she's a prisoner of locked-in syndrome: fully alert but unable to move a muscle. Trapped in her body, she learns that someone powerful wants her dead―but why? And what can she do, lying in a hospital bed, to stop them? Abby Kaplan, an insurance investigator, is hired by the college to look in to Tara's case. A former stunt driver, Abby returned home after a disaster in Hollywood left an actor dead and her own reputation―and nerves―shattered. Despite the fog of trauma, she can tell that Tara's car crash was no accident. When she starts asking questions, things quickly spin out of control, leaving Abby on the run and a mysterious young hit man named Dax Blackwell hard on her heels. |
The Blood Doctor
By Barbara Vine When Martin Nanther, Hereditary Peer in the House of Lords, is choosing the subject of his next biography, he becomes intrigued by the life of his own great-grandfather, Henry Nanther. So grateful was Queen Victoria for Henry’s services as physician to the royal family that she granted him a peerage, making him a lord, the first doctor ever to be so honored. Henry had been especially attentive to hemophiliacs in the royal family, for he was obsessed with blood. As he recounted in his diary, “Red is my favorite color. To me a splash of blood is beautiful, and I profoundly lack understanding of those who flinch or even faint at the sight of it.” As his research deepens, Martin begins to uncover hints that his great-grandfather’s fascination with blood may have had its darker side. The murder of Henry’s fiancée, the death of his young son, the remarkable number of relatives and friends who died mysteriously—could all these have been mere coincidence? Martin scours England and America for relatives whose attics or memories might hold clues, until finally the tragic truth stands revealed. |
The Waking Land
By Callie Bates
Lady Elanna is fiercely devoted to the king who raised her like a daughter. But when he dies under mysterious circumstances, Elanna is accused of his murder--and must flee for her life. Returning to the homeland of magical legends she has forsaken, Elanna is forced to reckon with her despised, estranged father, branded a traitor long ago. Feeling a strange, deep connection to the natural world, she also must face the truth about the forces she has always denied or disdained as superstition--powers that suddenly stir within her. But an all-too-human threat is drawing near, determined to exact vengeance. Now Elanna has no choice but to lead a rebellion against the kingdom to which she once gave her allegiance. Trapped between divided loyalties, she must summon the courage to confront a destiny that could tear her apart.
Book of Night
By Holly Black Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn't pick, a book she couldn't steal, or a bad decision she wouldn't make. She's spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie. Now, she's trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn't easy. Bartending at a dive, she's still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she's up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world - all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more. |
And Now She's Gone
By Rachel Howzell Hall Grayson Sykes has been through a lot in her life, but now she has just become a full-fledged private investigator for Rader Consulting and she is on her first case. Her assignment is to track down their client’s missing girlfriend, who took the client’s dog when she suddenly left town several weeks ago. As there is no body, no signs of assault, kidnapping, or foul play, and it is not illegal to just walk away from your life, as an adult, the police have not been interested in this case. Grayson’s search for the missing Isabel Lincoln is nowhere near as simple and straightforward as she thought it might be. As first cases go, this one is intense! As Grayson starts talking to different people who fill various roles in Isabel’s life, instead of getting a clearer picture, things just get muddier with every step. Who is telling the truth and who isn’t? Some of the dangerous elements Grayson uncovers makes her, at times, think that maybe it would be best if she didn’t find Isabel at all. Along the way, we get to know Grayson, what she has been through, who she is, and how her life has led her to where she is right now. Grayson and Isabel are both fascinating, complicated characters, and Hall brings them both, along with a host of other characters, sharply to life with such themes as domestic violence, manipulation, extortion, religion, and familial ties. |
The Dark Archive
By Geneviere Cogman A professional spy for a mysterious Library that harvests fiction from different realities, Irene faces a series of assassination attempts that threaten to destroy her and everything for which she has worked. Irene is teaching her new assistant the fundamentals of a Librarian's job, and she is finding that training a young Fae is more difficult than she expected. But when they are the targets of kidnapping and assassination attempts, she decides that learning by doing is the only option they have left. . . . In order to protect themselves, Irene and her friends must do what they do best: search for information to defeat the overwhelming threat they face and identify their unseen enemy. To do that, Irene will have to delve deeper into her own history than she ever has before, face an ancient foe, and uncover secrets that will change her life and the course of the library forever. |
By Mark Billingham
From "one of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today" (Gillian Flynn), The Killing Habit again brings together favorite wild-card detective Tom Thorne and straight-laced DI Nicola Tanner on a pair of lethally high-stakes cases. While DI Nicola Tanner investigates the deadly spread of a dangerous new drug, Tom Thorne is handed a case that he doesn't take too seriously, until a spate of animal killings points to the work of a serial killer. When the two cases come together in a way that neither could have foreseen, both Thorne and Tanner must risk everything to catch two very different killers.
From "one of the most consistently entertaining, insightful crime writers working today" (Gillian Flynn), The Killing Habit again brings together favorite wild-card detective Tom Thorne and straight-laced DI Nicola Tanner on a pair of lethally high-stakes cases. While DI Nicola Tanner investigates the deadly spread of a dangerous new drug, Tom Thorne is handed a case that he doesn't take too seriously, until a spate of animal killings points to the work of a serial killer. When the two cases come together in a way that neither could have foreseen, both Thorne and Tanner must risk everything to catch two very different killers.
Chain of Evidence
By Gary Disher Inspector Hal Challis has been summoned to Mawson’s Bluff, his childhood home in the Australian Outback, where his father is dying. Sergeant Ellen Destry is left to head an investigation into a ring of pedophiles that has descended on the peaceful Mornington Peninsula, a resort community near Melbourne. A little girl has been abducted from the fairgrounds at the annual Waterloo Show; it takes her mother twenty-four hours to report her missing. By then, hope is slim that the police will find the child before it is too late. Challis’ sister’s difficult husband disappeared from the Bluff four years ago; since then Meg has received nuisance mail that she assumes comes from him. While Challis is in town, an extra buried body is discovered when a new grave is dug in the local graveyard. A black plastic bag containing the corpse of Meg’s husband is found on top of a coffin that was interred four years earlier. With two very different crimes to solve, Challis and Destry have their work cut out for them. |
Not Yet Dark
By Peter Robinson When property developer Connor Clive Blaydon is found dead, Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his Yorkshire team dive into the investigation. As luck would have it, someone had installed a cache of spy-cams all around his luxurious home. The team hope that they’ll find answers—and the culprit—among the video recordings. Instead of discovering Connor’s murderer, however, the grainy and blurred footage reveals another crime: a brutal rape. If they can discover the woman’s identity, it could lead to more than justice for the victim; it could change everything the police think they know about Connor and why anyone would want him dead. Meanwhile, tensions are rising between Banks and his friend, Zelda. A super recognizer—able to recognize faces significantly better than most people—Zelda is determined to bring the men who abused her to justice. But stirring up the murky waters of the past will put her in far greater danger than ever before, and Banks worries that he won’t be able to stop her from plunging too deep before it’s too late. |
Past Lying
By Val McDermid Britain’s reigning “Queen of Crime” (The Scotsman), Val McDermid is the award-winning, internationally bestselling author of over thirty novels. The long-awaited seventh novel in the acclaimed series that has captivated audiences for twenty years, both on the page and now in the Edgar Award–nominated ITV/BritBox show, Past Lying is a full tilt novel of ego, retribution, deceit, and just how far one will go to settle the score. It’s April 2020 and Edinburgh is in lockdown. It would seem like a strange time for a cold case to go hot—the streets all but empty, an hour’s outdoor exercise the maximum allowed—but a mere pandemic doesn’t mean crime takes a holiday. When a source at the National Library contacts DCI Karen Pirie’s team about documents in the archive of a recently deceased crime novelist, it seems it’s game on again. At the center of it, a novel: two crime novelists facing off over a chessboard. But it quickly emerges that their real-life competition is drawing blood. What unspools is a twisted game of betrayal and revenge, and as Karen and her team attempt to disentangle fact from fiction, it becomes clear that their investigation is more complicated than they ever imagined. |
By Mike Blakely
Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874 well. Ben would fall in love for the first time that summer during one of the last great rushes of the nineteenth century, a rush that could not have come at a better time for the riverboat community of Port Caddo.
Just a few months earlier the town had been dying. The railroads that were cutting across the country made the riverboat meaningless, and those same railroads didn't stop anywhere near Port Caddo. By the end of the summer, the pearl rush was over, and the mystery about who killed Judd Kelso, a local riverboat owner, had begun.
It took Ben forty years to solve the mystery, and when he did, the proof came for him alone to witness. He is the only living soul who knows what happened that September night in 1874.
Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874 well. Ben would fall in love for the first time that summer during one of the last great rushes of the nineteenth century, a rush that could not have come at a better time for the riverboat community of Port Caddo.
Just a few months earlier the town had been dying. The railroads that were cutting across the country made the riverboat meaningless, and those same railroads didn't stop anywhere near Port Caddo. By the end of the summer, the pearl rush was over, and the mystery about who killed Judd Kelso, a local riverboat owner, had begun.
It took Ben forty years to solve the mystery, and when he did, the proof came for him alone to witness. He is the only living soul who knows what happened that September night in 1874.
Precipice
By Robert Harris Summer 1914. A world on the brink of catastrophe. In London, twenty-six-year-old Venetia Stanley--aristocratic, clever, bored, reckless--is part of a fast group of upper-crust bohemians and socialites known as "The Coterie." She's also engaged in a clandestine love affair with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, a man more than twice her age. He writes to her obsessively, sharing the most sensitive matters of state. As Asquith reluctantly leads the country into war with Germany, a young intelligence officer with Scotland Yard is assigned to investigate a leak of top-secret documents. Suddenly, what was a sexual intrigue becomes a matter of national security that could topple the British government--and will alter the course of political history. |
An Echo in the Bone
By Dianna Babaldon Jamie Fraser, former Jacobite and reluctant rebel, is already certain of three things about the American rebellion: The Americans will win, fighting on the side of victory is no guarantee of survival, and he’d rather die than have to face his illegitimate son—a young lieutenant in the British army—across the barrel of a gun. Claire Randall knows that the Americans will win, too, but not what the ultimate price may be. That price won’t include Jamie’s life or his happiness, though—not if she has anything to say about it. Meanwhile, in the relative safety of the twentieth century, Jamie and Claire’s daughter, Brianna, and her husband, Roger MacKenzie, have resettled in a historic Scottish home where, across a chasm of two centuries, the unfolding drama of Brianna’s parents’ story comes to life through Claire’s letters. The fragile pages reveal Claire’s love for battle-scarred Jamie Fraser and their flight from North Carolina to the high seas, where they encounter privateers and ocean battles—as Brianna and Roger search for clues not only to Claire’s fate but to their own. Because the future of the MacKenzie family in the Highlands is mysteriously, irrevocably, and intimately entwined with life and death in war-torn colonial America. |
Massacre of Eagles
By William W. Johnstone A long way from Montana Territory, Falcon MacCallister is back east, visiting his family, with Buffalo Bill Cody by his side. When the government asks both men to take a break from being famous to get back to fighting, Falcon and Buffalo Bill head west-into a hornet's nest of trouble. A renegade Indian has followed his vision of bloodshed on a once peaceable territory. A land baron uses the slaughter as an excuse to clear out a valley. And the U.S. Army, trying to keep the peace, is backstabbed by a traitor. Now, Falcon and Cody are headed into this beautiful, vast and deadly land. A place where history, spirits, greed, and guns have come together-and hot lead is roaring like a prairie fire. . . |
