If you like The Alienist by Caleb Carr

The Alienist by Caleb Carr: "The year is 1896, the place, New York City. On a cold March night New York Times reporter John Schuyler Moore is summoned to the East River by his friend and former Harvard classmate Dr. Laszlo Kreizler, a psychologist, or "alienist." On the unfinished Williamsburg Bridge, they view the horribly mutilated body of an adolescent boy, a prostitute from one of Manhattan's infamous brothels. The newly appointed police commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, in a highly unorthodox move, enlists the two men in the murder investigation, counting on the reserved Kreizler's intellect and Moore's knowledge of New York's vast criminal underworld. They are joined by Sara Howard, a brave and determined woman who works as a secretary in the police department. Laboring in secret (for alienists, and the emerging discipline of psychology, are viewed by the public with skepticism at best), the unlikely team embarks on what is a revolutionary effort in criminology-- amassing a psychological profile of the man they're looking for based on the details of his crimes. Their dangerous quest takes them into the tortured past and twisted mind of a murderer who has killed before. and will kill again before the hunt is over." (Book description)

 

These titles are literary, well-written and match the mood of Caleb Carr's The Alienist.

 

Buckskin Line by Elmer Kelton
”From a six-time Spur Award winner comes the story of a Texas Ranger who carries heavy burdens. The father and brother of the woman he loves have been lynched, and he is fated to meet the Comanche warrior whose band killed his family.”—catalog summary

 

 

 

City of Light by Lauren Belfer
”In the grand tradition of ‘Ragtime’ and ‘The Alienist’ comes a dazzling historical novel bursting with vibrant characters both real and imagined. At once a thriller, a love story, and a rich portrait of an American city poised for glory at the turn of the century, ‘City of Light’ is a human drama wrought with remarkable depth and intelligence.”—catalog summary

 
 

 

 

Dreamland by Kevin Baker
"A literary tour de force, a magnificent chronicle of a remarkable era and a place of dreams.  In a stunning work of imagination and memory, author Kevin Baker brings to mesmerizing life a vibrant, colorful, thrilling, and dangerous New York City in the earliest years of the twentieth century. A novel breathtaking in its scope and ambition, it is the epic saga of newcomers drawn to the promise of America--gangsters and laborers, hucksters and politicians, radicals, reformers, murderers, and sideshow oddities--whose stories of love, revenge, and tragedy interweave and shine in the artificial electric dazzle of a wondrous place called Dreamland.”—catalog summary
 

 

 

 
 

 

itler's Niece by Ron Hansen
”’Hitler's Niece’ tells the story of the intense and disturbing relationship between Adolf Hitler and the daughter of his only half-sister, Angela, a drama that evolves against the backdrop of Hitler's rise to prominence and power from particularly inauspicious beginnings. The story follows Geli from her birth in Linz, Austria, through the years in Berchtesgaden and Munich, to her tragic death in 1932 in Hitler's apartment in Munich. Through the eyes of a favorite niece who has been all but lost to history, we see the frightening rise in prestige and political power of a vain, vulgar, sinister man who thrived on cruelty and hate and would stop at nothing to keep the horror of his inner life hidden from the world.”—catalog summary

 

Night Inspector by Frederick Busch
”In post-Civil War New York, an investor mounts an operation to free a group of children held as slaves in Florida. The investor is William Bartholomew who served in the Union army as a sniper and he does it at the behest of his Creole girlfriend.”—catalog summary

 

 

 
 

 

The Journal of Mrs. Pepys: Portrait of a Marriage by Sara George
”The journal of Elizabeth Pepys, wife of the celebrated diarist Samuel, is the story of a passionate, if pain-fraught marriage, of a gloriously rich and robust period in our history and a woman's passage through the defining years of her life in which her search to draw significance from her existence is punctuated by the everyday urgencies of living. At times jauntily acerbic, at others movingly elegiac, this is portrait of a tumultuous relationship and era that, in its sharp-edged concerns and emotions, is utterly compelling.”—catalog summary

 
 

Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison
”Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. "Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Brilliantly crafted, moving, wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.”—catalog summary

 

A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O'Nan
”Set in Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, ‘A Prayer for the Dying’ tells of a horrible epidemic that has gripped the town in a vise of fear and death. Jacob Hansen, Friendship's sheriff, undertaker, and pastor, is soon overwhelmed, though he continues to do what he can. Dark, poetic, and chilling, a ‘Prayer for the Dying’ makes us consider if it's possible to be a good man in a time of madness.”—catalog summary