Books like “Where the Crawdads Sing”

What to read after “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens: 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 Silent Sister
Diane Chamberlain · 2014
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
After her father's death, Riley returns to their North Carolina house to settle his estate. Sorting through his papers, she finds evidence that her older sister, long believed to have killed herself as a teenager, may be alive and living under another name.
2
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder
Holly Jackson · 2019
Same genre: “Mystery”
- Small Town Secrets
- 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
In the Woods
Tana French · 2007
Same genre: “Mystery”
- Small Town Secrets
When a girl is found dead in a wood outside Dublin, detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox take the case. For Rob the woods hold an old horror: as a child he was found there after two friends vanished, and he has never told anyone the full truth.
4
A Flicker in the Dark
Stacy Willingham · 2022
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
As a child she helped put her father away for killing girls. Twenty years later she is a therapist about to marry, when young women in her town begin to disappear again and the old case follows her into the present.
5
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones · 2021
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
Jade, a high-school senior obsessed with slasher films, is sure a killer has come to her small Idaho town. Nobody believes her, so she pins her hopes on a new classmate she thinks is destined to be the final girl who survives. Her theory is also a way of outlasting her own life.
6
The Little Friend
Donna Tartt · 2002
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Years after a boy was found hanged in the family garden, his younger sister sets out to learn who killed him. Her amateur sleuthing among the town's odd characters pulls her from her grieving family into a dangerous, half-understood world.
7
Dark Places
Gillian Flynn · 2009
Same genre: “Mystery”
- Small Town Secrets
Years after her mother and sisters were killed and her teenage brother was convicted, Libby Day is approached by a group of true-crime enthusiasts who believe he is innocent. Short of money, she agrees to ask questions, and the answers force her to revisit what she remembers of that night.
8
The Vanishing Half
Brit Bennett · 2020
Same genre: “Literary fiction”
- Small Town Secrets
- Coming of Age
Twin sisters from a small Southern town where everyone is light-skinned choose opposite lives: one returns to raise a Black daughter, the other passes as white and hides her past. Across the decades, their daughters' paths unexpectedly cross.
9
The Dry
Jane Harper · 2016
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
A federal agent returns to the drought-stricken town he left twenty years ago, for the funeral of a childhood friend believed to have killed his family. Old questions about the death that drove him away surface again while he helps the local police look into a new one.
10
Sharp Objects
Gillian Flynn · 2006
Same genre: “Mystery”
- Small Town Secrets
Reporter Camille Preaker returns to her small hometown to cover the murders of two girls. She must face her mother and half-sister, and her own memories, while the pressure of the assignment pushes her back toward the habits she has tried to leave behind.
11
The Killer Inside Me
Jim Thompson · 1952
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
Deputy sheriff Lou Ford seems like an ordinary small-town man, but his mild manner hides a violence he has carried since childhood. When old secrets and a woman from his past resurface, his two selves begin to pull him toward more killing.
12
Still Life
Louise Penny · 2005
Similar setting: “Small Town Secrets”
- Small Town Secrets
In the village of Three Pines, the body of a well-liked woman is found in the woods with an arrow through her heart. Chief Inspector Armand Gamache is drawn into a community where old friendships and hidden resentments make almost everyone a suspect.