Books like “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time”

What to read after “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Outsiders
S.E. Hinton · 1967
Similar plot moves: “Outcast Hero” and “Coming of Age”
- Outcast Hero
- Coming of Age
Ponyboy Curtis is a greaser in a city divided between poor kids and the richer Socs. After a fight turns deadly, he and his friend go into hiding, and he begins to see the people around him beyond their labels.
2
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
Holly Jackson · 2019
Similar plot moves: “Missing Person” and “Coming of Age”
- Missing Person
- Coming of Age
For a school project, Pip reopens the closed case of Andie Bell, a local girl murdered five years ago, and her boyfriend Sal, who confessed and then died. As she records interviews with the people involved, the tidy story everyone accepted begins to come apart.
3
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón · 2001
Same genre: “Bildungsroman”
- Missing Person
- Coming of Age
In 1945 Barcelona, young Daniel is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and chooses a novel called The Shadow of the Wind. He becomes obsessed with its vanished author, Julián Carax, and his search through a scarred city uncovers a decades-old story of doomed love, madness and revenge.
4
Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers · 1923
Similar plot moves: “Missing Person”
- Missing Person
Lord Peter Wimsey is intrigued when a corpse is found in a bathtub wearing nothing but a pair of gold pince-nez, while a financier has gone missing. Aided by his butler Bunter and a Scotland Yard inspector, he works out how the body came to be there.
5
Thirteen Reasons Why
Jay Asher · 2007
Similar plot moves: “Outcast Hero” and “Coming of Age”
- Outcast Hero
- Coming of Age
Clay Jensen receives a box of tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, a classmate who has taken her own life. As he follows her voice around town, she explains the thirteen reasons behind her decision, and Clay learns his own place in her story.
6
The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger · 1951
Same genre: “Bildungsroman”
- Outcast Hero
- Coming of Age
Expelled from prep school and drifting through New York before going home, teenager Holden Caulfield narrates a few days of restless encounters. He rails against adults he calls phonies while quietly grieving a brother and his own place in the world.
7
The Daughter of Time
Josephine Tey · 1951
Similar plot moves: “Missing Person”
- Missing Person
Laid up in hospital with a broken leg, Inspector Alan Grant is bored until he is given a portrait of Richard III. Wondering whether the king really murdered the princes in the Tower, he reopens a five-hundred-year-old case from his bed, working only from books.
8
The Red House Mystery
A. A. Milne · 1922
Shared in the plot: detects, storys
- Missing Person
At a country house party, the host's brother is found shot in a locked room and the host has vanished. Antony Gillingham, a guest with a taste for detective stories, and his friend Bill play at being Holmes and Watson, poking into the household's secrets before the police arrive.
9
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Shared in the plot: neighbour, family
- Missing Person
- Coming of Age
Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered near her home and watches from her own heaven as her family and her killer's neighbours try to carry on. From that distance she follows her parents' grief, her sister growing up and a small town's slow reckoning with what happened.
10
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins · 2015
Similar plot moves: “Missing Person”
- Missing Person
Rachel rides the same commuter train every day and invents stories about a couple she sees from the window, until she learns the woman has vanished. Her memory of the night in question is full of gaps, and she cannot tell how much of what she believes is real.
11
Eleanor & Park
Rainbow Rowell · 2012
Similar plot moves: “Outcast Hero” and “Coming of Age”
- Outcast Hero
- Coming of Age
Eleanor is the new girl on the bus, with mismatched clothes and a chaotic home life; Park is the quiet boy who lets her sit beside him. Their friendship grows through shared comics and mix tapes into a cautious first love, threatened by her abusive stepfather.
12
Speak
Laurie Halse Anderson · 1999
Similar plot moves: “Outcast Hero” and “Coming of Age”
- Outcast Hero
- Coming of Age
Melinda begins high school as an outcast after calling the police at a summer party, and barely speaks. Through art class and small moments she slowly confronts what happened to her that night and finds the words to name it.