Brazil Crime Fiction Mystery Novels Portuguese Literature

City of God

Name: City of God
Rating: 3.96 (3072 reviews)
Author: Paulo Lins

Paulo Lins January 1, 1997

3.96 3.1k Ratings

Ongoing Status

37 Views

Start Reading

Synopsis

The searing novel on which the internationally acclaimed hit film was based, City of God is a gritty, gorgeous tour de force from the Brazilian street. Cicade de Deus, the City of God, is one of Rio’s most notorious slums. Yet it is also a place where samba rocks till dawn, where the women are the most beautiful on earth, and where one young man wants to escape his background and become a photographer. City of God is a sprawling, magnificently told epic about gang life in Rio’s favelas, based on years of research and Pualo Lins’s firsthand experience growing up in Cicade de Deus. A book that gives voice to the dispossessed of multiethnic Brazil, City of God will earn Paulo Lins more well-deserved international acclaim.

Books similar to City of God

American Tabloid

★ 4.19

James Ellroy

We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK's presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination—in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C....

Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy...

Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man's loyalty...

Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history....

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.

Chosen by Time magazine as one of the ten best books of the year.

"Hard-bitten ... ingenious ... Ellroy segues into political intrigue without missing a beat." —The New York Times

"Vastly entertaining." —Los Angeles Times

"One hellishly exciting ride." —Detroit Free Press

"A supremely controlled work of art." —The New York Times Book Review

Clockers

★ 4.09

Richard Price

Award-winning author Richard Price here offers a viscerally affecting and accomplished portrait of inner-city America.

Veteran homicide detective Rocco Klein's passion for the job gave way long ago. His beat is a rough New Jersey neighborhood where the drug murders blur together, until the day Victor Dunham — a twenty-year-old with a steady job and a clean record — confesses to a shooting outside a fast-food joint. It doesn't take long for Rocco's attention to turn to Victor's brother, a street-corner crack dealer named Strike who seems a more likely suspect for the crime.

At once an intense mystery, and a revealing study of two men on opposite sides of an unwinnable war, Clockers is a stunningly well-rendered chronicle of modern life on the streets.

Death Leaves a Shadow

★ 4.3

Gabriel F.W. Koch

Then comes the brutal announcement that his pregnant fiancée has committed suicide. Marlowe simply cannot accept the official verdict, and as anguish and rage replace the love he once felt, he is driven by a madness that forces him to question his own integrity while he hunts an elusive killer.

The Alchemy Fire Murder

★ 4.3

Susan Rowland

Former Archivist Mary Wandwalker hates bringing bad news. Nevertheless, she confirms to her alma mater that their prized medieval alchemy scroll, is, in fact, a seventeenth century copy. She learns that the original vanished to colonial Connecticut with alchemist, Robert Le More. Later the genuine scroll surfaces in Los Angeles. Given that the authentic artifact is needed for her Oxford college to survive, retrieving it is essential.

Mary agrees to get the real scroll back as part of a commission for her three-person Enquiry Agency. However, tragedy strikes in Los Angeles. Before Mary can legally obtain the scroll, a young man is murdered, and the treasure stolen.

Murder and theft are complicated by the disappearance in the UK of a witch mysteriously connected to the scroll. While Mary's colleague, Caroline, risks her sanity to go undercover in a dodgy mental hospital, her lover, Anna resorts to desperate measures. These, and Anna's silence over blackmail, threaten the survival of the Agency. Mary teams up with the victim's brother to track the killer, and the real alchemy scroll. Solving crimes on two continents will involve a rogue pharmaceutical corporation, Janet the witch, the Holywell Retreat Center near Oxford, plus the trafficked women they support, a graduate school in California, and a life-threatening mountain-consuming wildfire. Can these inexperienced detectives triumph over corrupt professors and racist attempts to rewrite history? Can they remake their fragile family? Will the extraordinary story of Robert Le More prove a source of hope for today?

False Flag

★ 4.53

Jack Slater

The gripping second instalment in the Jason Trapp thriller series!

They say revenge is a dish best served cold.

But Jason Trapp is losing his taste for it. For six months, his personal crusade has taken him around the world, mopping up the last of the Bloody Monday conspirators. There's only one left, and after the crooked financier Emmanuel Alstyne meets his maker, Trapp's debt will be paid in full. He vows he's done with the business of death.

Unfortunately, it isn't done with him.

After a simple kill mission goes sideways in Macau, leaving a CIA spy kidnapped, half a dozen Chinese agents dead, and America's satellites burning in the skies, Trapp is propelled back into the game. Eliza Ikeda was taken on his watch, and he's determined to get her back–no matter the cost. The problem is, he has no idea who took her, why, or what they plan to do next.

Trapp knows he's being played. And with the world's only two superpowers hurtling toward the precipice of war, time is running out...

Retirement will have to wait.
Trapp is back in action. And this time, it's personal.

Sidewinder

★ 4.52

L.T. Ryan

In a shadowy world where covert operations and secret agendas rule, a top-tier team of private contractors vanishes. They leave behind a chilling trail of breadcrumbs that point to a cache of advanced, portable missiles gone rogue.

Rachel Hatch, a warrior with a steel spine and a heart of grit, is called upon to find the lost operatives. As she peels back layers of deception, she realizes that the stakes are far higher than anyone could have guessed. Lives hang precariously in the balance, and a malevolent organization emerges from the shadows, hungry for the lethal firepower.

With every tick of the clock, Hatch races to outmaneuver her relentless adversaries. When an innocent family is dragged into the whirlwind of chaos, Hatch senses a connection. To expose it, she must shield them from a deranged mastermind who shows no mercy.

She is a woman caught between duty and danger, ethics and survival. A treacherous conspiracy webs around her, and with every step, the truth seems to slip further away.

Her father’s creed, to put others' lives above her own, is the compass guiding her every move. But in this deadly game, her unwavering loyalty could become her downfall.

Beneath the sweeping sands of the southwest, a vicious enemy waits, ready to strike when least expected.

SIDEWINDER is a pulse-pounding thriller that will grip Rachel Hatch's fans to the very last page. In this nerve-fraying adventure, Hatch is pushed to the edge, testing the very limits of her endurance. With each twist and turn, prepare to question everything you thought you knew about bravery, loyalty, and sacrifice.

On Her Watch

★ 4.5

Melinda Leigh

Sheriff Bree Taggert becomes a target when she follows the twisting trail of a serial killer in a bone-chilling novel of suspense by #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author Melinda Leigh.

A pair of hikers find a tarp-wrapped body in a clearing in the woods. When a search in the surrounding area yields two more, Sheriff Bree Taggert knows they’ve stumbled onto a serial killer’s dumping ground.

With the help of investigator Matt Flynn, Bree works the case. They go to interview Jana, the best friend of one of the victims. But when they arrive at her apartment, it’s been ransacked and set on fire. And Jana is missing.

It’s clear the killer is escalating. To make matters worse, he threatens Bree’s family and a young mother vanishes. Will Bree and Matt uncover the link between the victims before more women die?

Black Eagle

★ 4.51

Jack Slater

Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

Siberia in April isn't in any tourist guidebook. But that is where Trapp finds himself. It's cold, dark, and the vodka tastes like gasoline.

After brawling with half a dozen corrupt Russian cops, he's taken to the infamous penal colony marked on maps as IK-29, but known to inmates as the Black Eagle. The guards are brutes, their prisoners little better than animals. It's hell on earth.

And this time, he's on his own. The Agency has no knowledge of his mission. They wouldn't back him if they did. Because men like Trapp are tools. They aren't supposed to get ideas of their own.

It's dangerous when they do.