Books like Pudd'nhead Wilson

At the beginning of Pudd'nhead Wilson a young slave woman, fearing for her infant's son's life, exchanges her light-skinned child with her master's. From this rather simple premise Mark Twain fashioned one of his most entertaining, funny, yet biting novels. On its surface, Pudd'nhead Wilson possesses all the elements of an engrossing nineteenth-century mystery: reversed identities, a horrible crime, an eccentric detective, a suspenseful courtroom drama, and a surprising, unusual solution. Yet it is not a mystery novel. Seething with the undercurrents of antebellum southern culture, the book is a savage indictment in which the real criminal is society, and racial prejudice and slavery are the crimes. Written in 1894, Pudd'nhead Wilson glistens with characteristic Twain humor, with suspense, and with pointed irony: a gem among the author's later works.

Liked Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain? Here's what readers who loved it picked up next.

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (1930) · 3.72★
The Pearl by John Steinbeck (1947) · 3.41★
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (1855) · 4.12★
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929) · 3.86★
Pebble in the Sky by Isaac Asimov (1950) · 3.85★
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) · 3.45★
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (1906) · 3.72★
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor (1953) · 4.24★
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville (1851) · 3.46★
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726) · 3.55★
King Lear by William Shakespeare (1603) · 3.89★
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937) · 3.87★