Bohjalian followed
Midwives with the 1998 novel
The Law of Similars, about a widower attorney suffering from nameless anxieties who starts dating a woman who practices alternative medicine. The novel was inspired by Bohjalian's visit to a homeopath in an attempt to cure frequent colds he was catching from his daughter's day care center. Bohjalian said of the visit: "I don't think I imagined there was a novel in homeopathy, however, until I met the homeopath and she explained to me the protocols of healing. There was a poetry to the language that a patient doesn't hear when visiting a conventional doctor." Liz Rosenberg of
The New York Times wrote "Few writers can manipulate a plot with Bohjalian's grace and power." However, Rosenberg felt that the novel shared too many similarities with
Midwives. Rosenberg argued that, "unlike its predecessor, it (
The Law of Similars) fails to take advantage of Bohjalian's great gift for creating thoughtful fiction featuring characters in whom the reader sustains a lively interest." Megan Harlan of
The Boston Phoenix described the novel as "formulaic fiction" and wrote that Bohjalian focused too much on creating a complex plot and not enough of complex characterizations.
The Law of Similars, like
Midwives, made
The New York Times bestsellers list. In 2001, Bohjalian was a finalist for the
Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature with his book,
Trans-Sister Radio. Bohjalian won the New England Book Award in 2002.
The Double Bind was a Barnes & Noble Recommends Selection in 2007 and debuted at #3 on the "New York Times" bestseller list. In 2008, Bohjalian released
Skeletons at the Feast, a love story set in the last six months of World War II in Poland and Germany. The novel was inspired by an unpublished diary written by German citizen Eva Henatsch from 1920 to 1945. The diary was given to Bohjalian in 1998 by Henatsch's grandson Gerd Krahn, a friend of Bohjalian, who had a daughter in the same kindergarten class as Bohjalian's daughter. Bohjalian was fascinated by Henatsch's account of her family's trek west ahead of the
Soviet Army, but he was not inspired to write a novel from it until 2006 when he read
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany,
Max Hastings' history of the final years of World War II. Bohjalian was struck by how often Henatsch's story mirrored real-life experiences and the common "moments of idiosyncratic human connection" found in both.
Skeletons at the Feast was considered a departure for Bohjalian because it was set outside of Vermont and set in a particular historical moment. The novel was an enormous commercial and critical success: It was Bohjalian's fifth New York Times bestseller and was selected a "Best Book of the Year" by the
Washington Post and the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was also an
NBC Today Show "Top Ten" summer pick in 2008. His 2009 novel
Secrets of Eden was also a critical success, receiving starred reviews from three of the four trade journals (
Booklist,
Library Journal, and
Publishers Weekly). It debuted at #6 on the bestseller lists for the
New York Times and
Publishers Weekly. It premiered as a TV movie on February 4, 2012, starring
John Stamos, Dorsa Giyahi and
Anna Gunn. His thirteenth novel,
The Night Strangers, was published in 2011. It's a ghost story that drew comparisons to the work of
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Margaret Atwood,
Alice Sebold,
Stephen King, and
Ira Levin. The reader response was mixed, with some readers frustrated with the ending and Bohjalian's use of the second person for parts of the narration. The book won the New England Society Book Award for fiction in April 2012. Bohjalian's
The Sandcastle Girls (2012) is about the
Armenian genocide and its century-long denial by Turkey. The novel includes two stories folded into one: the story of Elizabeth Endicott and Armen Petrosian, lovers who meet in Syria during the genocide; and the story of Laura Petrosian, their granddaughter, who after a century tries to understand why they were silent about their youth.
USA Today proclaimed that Bohjalian makes "a near-century-old event come to life in a way that will make readers gasp with shock that such a terrible event — Turkey's determination to kill all the Armenians in their country — is such a small part of our knowledge of world history".
Oprah Winfrey chose it as a
Book of the Week: "This rendering of one of history's greatest (and least known) tragedies is a nuanced, sophisticated portrayal of what it means not only to endure but also to insist on hope". Since then Bohjalian has written other
New York Times bestsellers, including
The Light in the Ruins (2013);
Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (2014);
The Guest Room (2016);
The Sleepwalker (2017); and
The Flight Attendant (2018). In 2020 the TV show
The Flight Attendant, based on Bohjalian's book of the same name, premiered. It is a comedy thriller starring Kaley Cuoco as an alcoholic flight attendant. Bohjalian's books have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by the
Washington Post, the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch,
Hartford Courant,
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel,
Publishers Weekly,
Library Journal,
Kirkus Reviews,
Bookpage, and Salon. On September 1, 2017, Bohjalian delivered a Vardanants Day Armenian Lecture at the
Library of Congress. ==Writing style==