VC Andrews' Dollanganger series or My Sweet Audrina.

Native Son

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

The Kite Runner.

Another vote for 10 Days in Memorial

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (an excellent novel about life during the Chenyan War)

Hush Little Baby by Suzanne Redfearn

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr about two children growing up in WWII on different sides.

Cormac McCarthy - god yes. Bleak.

The Sweet Hereafter - Russell Banks
We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver
Every Last One - Anna Quindlen
The Invisible Bridge - Julie Orringer
The O'Briens - Peter Behrens
We Are Not Ourselves - Matthew Thomas

Anything by A.M. Homes, a lot of Joyce Carol Oates' and Lorrie Moore's short stories

If you're up for more on North Korea, read Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Chilling.

And, Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

The orchardist by Amanda coplin - recent debut novel
Anything by Amy Tan seems would be up your alley.

Usual standbys:
Heavy sand by Rybakov (translated from Russian)
One day in the life of Ivan denisovich (Solzhenitsyn)

Anything by James Ellroy (author of LA Confidential)... "My Dark Places" is a nonfiction book about his mother's unsolved murder, which happened when Ellroy was in grade school.

Anonymous wrote:Cormac McCarthy's books

I agree with this, especially The Road.

Have you read Revolutionary Road? That's pretty dark and depressing...

Cormac McCarthy's books

The New Jim Crow
War Against the Weak: Eugenics Movement in America
IBM and the Holocaust

5 Days at Memorial

I most enjoy books that are kind of dark and heavy. Fiction or nonfiction. Examples would be She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb or Escape from Camp 14, about the guy who was born in a North Korea labor camp and escaped. Can you recommend any others that are like this?