If Where the Crawdads Sing left you wanting more stories about resilient outsiders, wild landscapes, and quiet mystery, these 13 authors like Delia Owens will satisfy that craving.
Delia Owens spent decades as a wildlife scientist in Africa before publishing her first novel at age 70. Where the Crawdads Sing (2018) tells the story of Kya Clark, the “Marsh Girl” who raises herself in the North Carolina marshlands after being abandoned by her family — and who becomes a murder suspect when a local man turns up dead. The book spent over 190 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold over 18 million copies, and was adapted into a 2022 film.
What makes Owens’ writing distinctive is her naturalist’s eye. The marsh isn’t just a setting — it’s practically a character, described with the precision and love of someone who has spent a lifetime studying ecosystems. Combined with a coming-of-age story and a slow-burning murder mystery, Where the Crawdads Sing hit a sweet spot that few literary novels manage: it’s genuinely literary and genuinely a page-turner.
For more recommendations, explore our guides to best American authors, best historical fiction books, and authors like Kristin Hannah.
Authors Like Delia Owens
1. Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023 with Demon Copperhead, a retelling of David Copperfield set in Appalachian Virginia. But she’s been writing extraordinary nature-infused literary fiction since The Bean Trees in 1988. Prodigal Summer, Flight Behavior, and The Poisonwood Bible all share Owens’ ability to make the natural world central to human drama.
Kingsolver trained as a biologist, and like Owens, her scientific background enriches her fiction. Her characters are rooted in specific landscapes — Appalachian mountains, Arizona deserts, the Congo — and those landscapes shape who they become. If you loved how the marsh raised Kya, Kingsolver’s characters are equally formed by their environments.
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.”
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
2. Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You explore how secrets corrode families and communities. Ng writes about outsiders with the same empathy Owens brings to Kya — people who don’t fit the molds their communities expect, and who pay a price for their difference.
Ng’s settings are suburban rather than rural, but the emotional terrain is similar: isolation, judgment, and the desperate need to belong. Our Missing Hearts (2022) expanded her range into speculative territory, imagining an America where Asian American culture is suppressed. Her prose is careful and exact, rewarding readers who pay attention to details.
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over.”
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
3. Lisa Wingate
Lisa Wingate’s Before We Were Yours is based on the real scandal of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, which kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families in the 1930s-50s. The novel alternates between past and present, and like Where the Crawdads Sing, it features a child navigating a dangerous world without adequate protection from adults.
Wingate writes about the American South with affection and honesty, and her stories centre on resilience — children and women who survive systems designed to crush them. The river setting of Before We Were Yours has the same sensory richness as Owens’ marshland. Both writers make you feel the humidity, hear the water, and smell the mud.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
Lisa Wingate, Before We Were Yours
4. Sue Monk Kidd
Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees is a Southern coming-of-age story about a fourteen-year-old girl who escapes her abusive father and finds refuge with three beekeeping sisters in 1960s South Carolina. Like Kya, the protagonist Lily is a young girl who builds a life and family from whatever materials she can find.
Kidd’s writing about bees and the natural world parallels Owens’ treatment of the marsh ecosystem. The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings show her range, moving from antebellum Charleston to first-century Palestine. But The Secret Life of Bees remains her most Owens-like work — tender, grounded, and deeply Southern.
“Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive.”
Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
5. Charles Martin
Charles Martin writes Southern literary fiction with a strong romantic thread. Where the River Ends follows a couple paddling down a river as the wife battles terminal cancer, and the journey becomes both literal and metaphorical. Martin’s prose is lyrical without being overwrought, and his stories are deeply connected to Southern landscapes.
Martin shares Owens’ ability to use nature as emotional language. Water, in particular, runs through his novels as a symbol of both life and loss. The Mountain Between Us was adapted into a film, but his lesser-known novels like Chasing Fireflies are where his Owens-like qualities shine brightest.
“The measure of a man’s character is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands in times of challenge.”
Charles Martin
6. Geraldine Brooks
Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for March, a retelling of Little Women from the absent father’s perspective during the Civil War. A former foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Brooks brings a journalist’s eye for detail to her historical fiction. Year of Wonders, about a plague village in 17th-century England, is equally immersive.
Brooks shares Owens’ fascination with how people survive extreme circumstances. Her characters are often isolated — by war, disease, or geography — and must rely on their own resourcefulness. People of the Book, tracing the history of a rare illuminated manuscript, shows her range but maintains the same intimate, deeply researched approach. If these authors make you want to try writing your own nature-inspired fiction, Grammarly is a useful tool for cleaning up first drafts.
“I fell in love with the place as one sometimes does with a house: at first sight.”
Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders
7. Bonnie Garmus
Bonnie Garmus’ Lessons in Chemistry is about Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist in the 1960s who gets pushed out of her lab and ends up hosting a cooking show where she teaches housewives chemistry. It’s funny, furious, and surprisingly moving — a debut novel that became one of the biggest books of 2022.
Garmus shares Owens’ ability to write about a woman who doesn’t fit her era, forced to survive on intelligence and stubbornness. Both Kya and Elizabeth Zott are self-taught, underestimated, and quietly revolutionary. The tonal difference is significant — Garmus is funnier and more satirical — but the emotional core is the same.
“Courage is the root of change — and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”
Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry
8. Elizabeth Strout
Elizabeth Strout won the Pulitzer Prize for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of linked stories centred on a retired math teacher in coastal Maine. Strout writes about ordinary people in small communities with extraordinary precision and compassion. Her prose is spare — every sentence earns its place.
Strout’s Maine is as fully realized as Owens’ North Carolina marsh. Both writers understand that a place is never just a backdrop — it shapes how people think, speak, and relate to each other. My Name Is Lucy Barton and Oh William! continue Strout’s exploration of loneliness, family, and the impossible difficulty of truly knowing another person.
“You will have a painful, wonderful life.”
Elizabeth Strout, My Name Is Lucy Barton
9. Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize, telling the story of hostages and their captors who form unexpected bonds over months of captivity. Patchett writes about the connections between unlikely people with warmth and intelligence, and her novels reward patient, attentive reading.
Patchett and Owens both write about isolated communities — Kya’s marsh, Patchett’s hostage situation, the family compound in The Dutch House. Both understand that isolation doesn’t just limit people; it also reveals them. Patchett also owns Parnassus Books in Nashville, one of America’s great independent bookstores.
“The best we can do is reach toward each other in the dark.”
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
10. Abraham Verghese
Abraham Verghese is a physician who writes novels about medicine, family, and the immigrant experience. Cutting for Stone follows twin brothers born in Addis Ababa to an Indian nun and a British surgeon, spanning decades and continents. It spent over two years on the bestseller list.
Verghese brings a doctor’s attention to physical detail and a storyteller’s sense of emotional truth. Like Owens, he writes long, immersive novels that reward patience — books where the setting (Ethiopia, New York, the human body) is rendered with scientific precision and genuine love. His long-awaited second novel, The Covenant of Water (2023), confirmed his status as one of America’s finest literary novelists.
“The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have.”
Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
11. Jamie Ford
Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is set during the Japanese American internment in World War II Seattle, following a Chinese American boy and a Japanese American girl whose friendship is torn apart by history. Like Owens, Ford writes about characters caught in circumstances beyond their control who find connection and meaning anyway.
Ford’s writing is accessible and emotionally direct, without sacrificing literary quality. Songs of Willow Frost and The Many Daughters of Afong Moy show his range, but his debut remains his most widely loved work. He shares Owens’ gift for making history feel personal and immediate.
“I was an only child who had found a friend. Not just a friend. A best friend.”
Jamie Ford, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
12. Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale is a World War II novel about two sisters in occupied France who resist the Nazi occupation in different ways. Hannah has published over 20 novels, but The Nightingale and The Great Alone (set in 1970s Alaska) are her most Owens-adjacent — both feature women surviving extreme environments and dangerous men through sheer determination.
Hannah writes emotional, plot-driven literary fiction that doesn’t apologize for making you cry. The Great Alone in particular shares Owens’ wilderness setting and themes of female resilience in isolation. If you finished Where the Crawdads Sing wanting more stories about women who refuse to be broken by their circumstances, Hannah has an entire shelf for you.
“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale
13. Sara Gruen
Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants is set in a Depression-era travelling circus and follows a veterinary student who joins the show after a family tragedy. The novel combines historical detail, animal husbandry, and a love story with the kind of immersive setting that makes you feel you’re living inside the book.
Gruen shares Owens’ background in animal science, and it shows in both writers’ treatment of the natural world. Animals aren’t props in their books — they’re fully realized presences that matter. Water for Elephants was adapted into a film and remains one of the most beloved historical novels of the 21st century.
“I meant what I said, and I will not take it back.”
Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants