Books like All the King's Men
A political aide rises with a populist Southern governor modelled on Huey Long, watching idealism curdle into corruption and violence.
Explore books like this on the map12 books for readers of All the King's Men
The Quiet American
A jaded British journalist in 1950s Vietnam befriends an idealistic American aid worker, not realising the American's quiet mission will cost innocent lives.
John Henry Days
A freelance junket writer covers a 1996 West Virginia festival for a John Henry postage stamp, while the novel roams across a century of people who sang, studied and sold the legend.
Freedom
A liberal Minnesota couple and the rock-musician friend who comes between them spend three decades disappointing each other in Bush-era America.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
In a Georgia mill town in the late 1930s, a deaf man named John Singer becomes the confidant of four lonely people, among them a tomboy who dreams of music and a Black doctor worn down by his fight for his people.
Ironweed
Francis Phelan, a former major league ballplayer turned drunk, comes home to 1930s Albany at Halloween, haunted by the ghosts of the people he has failed, including the baby son he dropped.
Go Tell It on the Mountain
On his fourteenth birthday in 1930s Harlem, John Grimes struggles with his stern preacher father, the church and his own desires, while the prayers of his family reveal the histories that shaped them.
The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter
Porter's stories and short novels, among them Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Noon Wine and Flowering Judas, set in Texas, Mexico and the South.
The Prince of Tides
A Southern football coach goes to New York to help his suicidal twin sister's psychiatrist understand the family, and the family turns out to be much worse than either of them told.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Janie Crawford comes back to her Florida town and tells her friend the story of her three marriages, from a loveless arranged match to a short, joyous, doomed love in the Everglades.
The Honourable Schoolboy
After the mole's exposure, George Smiley directs a counterattack against Karla from London, while his field agent Jerry Westerby, the honourable schoolboy, follows a money trail through Hong Kong and Southeast Asia in the last days of the Vietnam War.
The Orchard Keeper
A young man in 1930s east Tennessee discovers a dead man's belongings in a decaying orchard, and the mystery draws him into a world of moonshiners and outlaws.
Shadow Country
The life and death of E. J. Watson, a sugar planter in the Florida Everglades at the turn of the century, shot dead by his neighbours in 1910, told by them, by his son and by Watson himself.