Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Long and Faraway Gone | 2015 | Lou Berney | Buy |
| 2 | November Road | 2018 | Lou Berney | Buy |
| 3 | Dark Ride | 2023 | Lou Berney | Buy |
| 4 | Crooks | 2025 | Lou Berney | Buy |
Lou Berney’s standalone novels are where he does his most ambitious work. The Long and Faraway Gone (2015) follows two people haunted by separate violent crimes from their childhood in 1980s Oklahoma City. It won the Edgar Award along with four other major mystery prizes and established Berney as one of the strongest voices in American crime fiction.
November Road (2018) is set during the week after the Kennedy assassination and follows a New Orleans mob operative who goes on the run when he suspects his boss wants him silenced. Dark Ride (2022) centers on a low-level criminal in an Arkansas tourist town who discovers that two neglected children need his help, forcing him to choose between self-preservation and doing the right thing. Crooks (2025) continues Berney’s focus on characters operating at the margins of the law. Across all four books, Berney writes criminals and bystanders with equal care, and his plots balance suspense with the kind of emotional weight more often found in literary fiction.