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The ReadDown

Books to Read If You Love Motherless Brooklyn

Crackling dialogue, sly humor, dizzying plot twists – Motherless Brooklyn is a must-read and a must-see. If you’re already a fan of the book and can’t wait for the upcoming movie, get your fill of noir, crime mysteries, and historical fiction below.

  1. 1
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    Motherless Brooklyn

    by Jonathan Lethem

    If you haven’t yet read the book that led to the movie, start here! St. Vincent’s Home for Boys, Brooklyn, early 1970s. For Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. The Human Freakshow, a victim of Tourette’s syndrome (an uncontrollable urge to shout out nonsense, touch every surface in reach, rearrange objects), Frank Minna is a savior. The four grow up to be the Minna Men, a fly-by-night detective agency-cum-limo service, and their days and nights revolve around Frank, the prince of Brooklyn, who glides through life on street smarts, attitude, and secret knowledge. Then one dreadful night, Frank is knifed and thrown into a Dumpster, and Lionel must become a real detective to find the killer.
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    $19.00

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  2. 2
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    Tin Badges

    by Lorenzo Carcaterra

    A top NYPD detective is pulled out of retirement to take down a notorious drug dealer. But will he risk the only family he’s ever had to crack the case?
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    Mass Market Paperback
    $9.99

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  3. 3
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    Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

    by Haruki Murakami

    Across two parallel narratives, Murakami draws readers into a mind-bending universe in which Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters collide to dazzling effect. What emerges is a novel that is at once hilariously funny and a deeply serious meditation on the nature and uses of the mind.
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    $18.00

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  4. 4
    The Earthquake Bird Book Cover Picture
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    The Earthquake Bird

    by Susanna Jones

    The only suspect for a murder is Lucy Fly. Her friend is dead, her lover has disappeared, and as far as anyone is concerned, she’s as good as guilty. However, as she excavates the dangerous secrets–both past and present–that haunt her waking mind, Lucy relates an unsettling life story that spans bustling Tokyo, the British countryside, and remote Japanese islands, each step taking us closer to the chilling truth about her friend’s death.
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  5. 5
    The Big Sleep (Special Edition) Book Cover Picture
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    The Big Sleep (Special Edition)

    by Raymond Chandler

    A dying millionaire hires private eye Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, and Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.
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    $17.00

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  6. 6
    The New York Trilogy Book Cover Picture
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    The New York Trilogy

    by Paul Auster

    The New York Review of Books has called Paul Auster’s work “one of the most distinctive niches in contemporary literature.” Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels includes City of Glass, Ghosts, and The Locked Room.
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    $18.00

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  7. 7
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    A Ladder to the Sky

    by John Boyne

    Maurice Swift is handsome, charming, and hungry for fame. The one thing he doesn’t have is talent—but he’s not about to let a detail like that stand in his way. After all, a would-be writer can find stories anywhere. They don’t need to be his own. Sweeping across the late twentieth century, A Ladder to the Sky is a fascinating portrait of a relentlessly immoral man, a tour de force of storytelling, and the next great novel from an acclaimed literary virtuoso.
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    $18.00

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  8. 8
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    The Immortalists

    by Chloe Benjamin

    Both a dazzling family love story and a sweeping novel of remarkable ambition and depth, The Immortalists probes the line between destiny and choice, reality and illusion, this world and the next. It is a deeply moving testament to the power of story, the nature of belief, and the unrelenting pull of familial bonds.
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    $19.00

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  9. 9
    American Tabloid Book Cover Picture
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    American Tabloid

    by James Ellroy

    James Ellroy’s trademark nothing-spared rendering of reality, blistering language, and relentless narrative pace are here in electrifying abundance, put to work in a novel as shocking and daring as anything he’s written: a secret history that zeroes in on a time still shrouded in secrets and blows it wide open.
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    $20.00

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  10. 10
    The Mysterious Affair at Styles Book Cover Picture
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    The Mysterious Affair at Styles

    by Agatha Christie

    Agatha Christie’s debut novel was the first to feature Hercule Poirot, her famously eccentric Belgian detective. A refugee of the Great War, Poirot is settling in England near Styles Court, the country estate of his wealthy benefactress, the elderly Emily Inglethorp. When Emily is poisoned and the authorities are baffled, Poirot puts his prodigious sleuthing skills to work.
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    $11.00

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  11. 11
    The Maltese Falcon (Special Edition) Book Cover Picture
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    The Maltese Falcon (Special Edition)

    by Dashiell Hammett and Josephine Hammett Marshall

    A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O’Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett’s iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.
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    $17.00

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  12. 12
    Judgment Book Cover Picture
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    Judgment

    by Joseph Finder

    New York Times bestselling author Joseph Finder returns with an explosive new thriller about a female judge and the one personal misstep that could lead to her—and her family’s—downfall.
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    Mass Market Paperback
    $10.99

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