What did you love about Hell or High Water?
Winter's Bone
Winter's Bone gives you a teenage girl against her entire community with the same grim loyalty and refusal to bend.
Nomadland
Nomadland shows you the real people living in RVs and seasonal jobs in the same emptied-out America.
True Grit
True Grit's Rooster Cogburn is that same worn-down lawman who understands exactly why someone breaks the rules.
5 books like Hell or High Water
- Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell — Woodrell invented the term 'country noir' and this novel is why.
- Nomadland by Jessica Bruder — The nonfiction companion piece to Hell or High Water's America.
- The Son by Philipp Meyer — Meyer's epic traces a Texas family across 150 years — from Comanche captivity to oil wealth to moder…
- Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward — Ward's National Book Award winner follows a Mississippi family in the days before Hurricane Katrina.
- True Grit by Charles Portis — Portis's novel shares Hell or High Water's bone-dry humor and its belief that justice sometimes requ…
Picked for the feeling of Hell or High Water, not its genre. Each one is explained below. One movie isn’t much to go on: rate four more and the books are picked for you.
Why these books
A modern Western that's really about economic desperation in rural America — two brothers robbing the banks that robbed their family, tracked by a ranger who understands exactly why they're doing it. These books share that same tension between sympathy and law, set in landscapes where poverty isn't a backstory but the terrain itself.
Winter's Bone
Woodrell invented the term 'country noir' and this novel is why. Like Hell or High Water, it follows someone navigating a world where crime is just what happens when legitimate systems abandon you — a teenage girl searching the Ozark meth economy for her missing father, with the same unflinching compassion for people making terrible choices because the alternatives are worse.
Read it with your book club →
Nomadland
The nonfiction companion piece to Hell or High Water's America. Bruder embedded with elderly Americans living in vans and RVs, chasing seasonal work at Amazon warehouses and sugar beet farms. It's the economic landscape the film dramatizes — people who did everything right and still lost, finding dignity in motion because staying put means admitting the system broke its promises.
Read it with your book club →
The Son
Meyer's epic traces a Texas family across 150 years — from Comanche captivity to oil wealth to modern decline. Like Hell or High Water, it's about what the land owes the people who work it and what happens when that contract gets rewritten by power. The scope is vastly bigger, but the moral engine is identical.
Read it with your book club →
Salvage the Bones
Ward's National Book Award winner follows a Mississippi family in the days before Hurricane Katrina. Like the Howard brothers, her characters are resourceful, proud, and trapped by circumstances that no amount of cleverness can fully overcome. The same raw dignity in the face of systems designed to grind people down.
Read it with your book club →
True Grit
Portis's novel shares Hell or High Water's bone-dry humor and its belief that justice sometimes requires ignoring the law. Mattie Ross hiring a drunk marshal to avenge her father has the same desperate pragmatism as two brothers robbing banks with a plan — and the same understanding that official channels exist to protect people who don't need protecting.
Read it with your book club →Is Hell or High Water based on a book?
Hell or High Water isn’t based on a book — it’s an original screenplay by Taylor Sheridan.
What should I read if I loved Hell or High Water?
Start with Winter's Bone, Nomadland and The Son. 5 books on this page were picked for the feeling of Hell or High Water, not its genre, with a reason for each.
Which book is most like Hell or High Water?
Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. Woodrell invented the term 'country noir' and this novel is why.
These are for everyone who loved Hell or High Water. Want books picked for you?
Someone who loved Hell or High Water and Zack Snyder's Justice League reads different books from someone who loved Hell or High Water and When Harry Met Sally. One movie isn’t much to go on. Rate four more — Hell or High Water already counts — and the books are picked for you.
Rate four more moviesOr read it with your book club and talk about it while you’re still reading.