Books like Lonesome Dove, according to Reddit

The read-alike list

Ranked by co-mention strength — how often each book shares a thread with Lonesome Dove, normalized so ubiquitous books don't dominate.

#1

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Three brothers, a murdered father, and a murder trial become the frame Dostoevsky uses to argue about God, guilt, and free will for nearly a thousand pages.

4 shared threads

#2

Blood Meridian

Cormac McCarthy

A teenage drifter joins a scalp-hunting militia across the Texas-Mexico borderlands, led by a hairless giant who may not be entirely human.

9 shared threads

#3

Shōgun

James Clavell

A shipwrecked English pilot washes up in feudal Japan and gets pulled between warlords, Jesuit priests, and Spanish traders, and has to pick a side to survive.

4 shared threads

#4

The Master and Margarita

Mikhail Bulgakov

The devil arrives in 1930s Moscow with a talking cat and a magic show, and the story keeps detouring into Pontius Pilate's Jerusalem.

4 shared threads

#5

The Remains of the Day

Kazuo Ishiguro

An English butler spends his one vacation reviewing thirty years of service and realizing, too late, what proper restraint cost him.

4 shared threads

#6

Catch-22

Joseph Heller

A WWII bombardier tries to get grounded for insanity, only to learn that wanting out of combat proves he's sane enough to keep flying it.

3 shared threads

#7

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

A prideful landowner insults a woman at a dance, then spends the rest of the book making it up to her.

3 shared threads

#8

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas

A falsely imprisoned sailor spends fourteen years in a fortress, learns of a hidden fortune, and returns to make sure everyone who wronged him pays for it.

4 shared threads

#9

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Gabriel García Márquez

A colonel facing a firing squad remembers the day his father showed him ice, one scene in a hundred years of a family that keeps repeating its own names.

3 shared threads

#10

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

Six lives across centuries, from a dying composer to a cloned waitress, each get half their story told before the book loops back to finish every one.

5 shared threads

#11

Gardens of the Moon

Steven Erikson

A continent-spanning empire's mage-soldiers besiege a city that might already be doomed by gods playing a board game with human pieces.

6 shared threads

#12

The Lord of the Rings

J. R. R. Tolkien

A gardener and three friends carry a cursed ring across a continent at war, because the only way to destroy it is to walk it into the volcano that forged it.

6 shared threads

The overlap, in numbers

Where each pairing actually shows up. Click through for the full Reddit verdict on each book.

1. #1 The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
2. #2 Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy — 9 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
3. #3 Shōgun by James Clavell — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
4. #4 The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
5. #5 The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
6. #6 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
7. #7 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
8. #8 The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas — 4 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
9. #9 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez — 3 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
10. #10 Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell — 5 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
11. #11 Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson — 6 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF
12. #12 The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien — 6 shared threads , mostly in r/printSF