Ever since childhood, I’ve been interested in dark stories, and this led me to writing dark fantasy. To this day, my main inspirations as a writer are Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, both dark fantasists. I think it is only through understanding evil that we can appreciate goodness. As such, I strive to explore the darker parts of my characters’ psyches. I also write a fair deal about racism, which is a socially accepted, even celebrated form of evil. Fiction, because it has so few limits as far as subject matter, is, in my opinion, the best medium to have these conversations. Thank you for reading my list!
Mary Gaitskill is capable of infuriating empathy. I shouldn’t be invested in her characters as deeply as I am: The vagrant in love with her toxic brother; the aging suburbanite who once raped a friend; the homophobic, abusive midwestern father. Gaitskill tackles one difficult character after another through her surgical exploration of the human experience: All the embarrassing things people hate about themselves, the nervous tics, the in-jokes, the often contradictory feelings running through our heads.
Just when you think you’ve got her pegged as this dark, gothic writer pumping out weird sex stories, she crafts a hilarious piece about an idiot screenwriter trying to embarrass his ex. I read this in college and learned I could, in fact, write about the dark subjects I wanted to.
A man tells a story to a woman sitting beside him on a plane, little suspecting what it reveals about his capacity for cruelty and contempt. A callow runaway girl is stranded in a strange city with another woman’s fractiously needy children. An uncomprehending father helplessly lashes out at the daughter he both loves and resents. In these raw, startling, and incandescently lovely stories, the author of Veronica yields twelve indelible portraits of people struggling with the disparity between what they want and what they know. Because They Wanted To is further evidence that…
From Mary Gaitskill to a book that skips empathy and goes straight for evil.
This book about horrible middle school students systematically tearing down the fat girl in their class through bullying that borders on sexual assault is, to this day, the most nihilistic book I’ve ever read about human nature. The choice Blume makes that gives this book its extra edge is she writes from the viewpoint of Jill, a gutless follower. Jill tortures Linda because the popular kids sanction it; her evil is only matched by her mediocrity. Thus, Blume doesn’t even give her readers a “cool” bully to anchor the story.
Evil children, lazy teachers, no kernel of hope, just good old American cruelty where even the perpetual victim, Linda, turns out to suck in the end. I doubt I’ll ever write a book this dark, but damn, do I admire Blume for writing it.
Bullying sucks, but true friendship is worth fighting for. From the author of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, Judy Blume's Blubber is a sensitive exploration of bullying and self-esteem.
Blubber is a thick layer of fat that lies under the skin and over the muscles of whales . . .
When Linda innocently reads out her class project, everyone finds it funny. Linda can't help it if she's fat, but what starts as a joke leads to a sustained and cruel ritual of humiliation. Jill knows she should defend Linda, but at first she's too scared. When she…
Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.
It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the…
I’m reluctant to recommend it because these guys don’t need the money. Four raging narcissists/rapists/drug addicts create a band and proceed to destroy themselves and everything around them. I remember reading it and thinking, “This is the stuff they admit to.”
This book is the very definition of “If they were black, they’d be locked up.” By the point I was reading Vince Neil whine about not being able to tour Japan because he was on probation for drunkenly killing his friend, I realized I was witnessing pure evil. However, evil can be fascinating.
This book is so singularly revolting that it completely spoiled my already low interest in stories about entitled people growing more entitled. It was adapted into a very whitewashed Netflix movie.
Celebrate thirty years of the world's most notorious rock band with the deluxe collectors' edition of The Dirt-the outrageous, legendary, no-holds-barred autobiography of Motley Crue. Fans have gotten glimpses into the band's crazy world of backstage scandals, celebrity love affairs, rollercoaster drug addictions, and immortal music in Motley Crue books like Tommyland and The Heroin Diaries, but now the full spectrum of sin and success by Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, and Mick Mars is an open book in The Dirt. Even fans already familiar with earlier editions of the bestselling expose will treasure this gorgeous deluxe edition. Joe…
Statutory rape between teachers and students is a very uncomfortable subject that Alissa Nutting tackles head-on in her 2013 breakthrough novel.
I was impressed with how Nutting avoided sympathy for the devil. Her hebephilic protagonist, Celeste, is a terrible person who, like Richard III, conspiratorially lets the reader in on her plans to manipulate and seduce 12-year-old boys. The longer the book goes on, the clearer it becomes that Celeste isn’t some evil mastermind, just a dunderheaded rapist who gets out of trouble by virtue of being an attractive white woman.
I respect Nutting for writing this book. By staring at the monster in all her ugliness, she creates sympathy for the people whose lives are destroyed by Celeste and by people like her in the real world.
Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She is attractive. She drives a red Corvette. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed and devoted to her. But Celeste has a secret. She has a singular sexual obsession - fourteen-year-old boys. It is a craving she pursues with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought. Within weeks of her first term at a new school, Celeste has lured the charmingly modest Jack Patrick into her web - car rides after dark, rendezvous at Jack's house while his single father works the late shift, and body-slamming encounters in Celeste's empty classroom between periods.…
When Miranda’s fiancé, Russ, is being vetted for his dream job in the U.S. attorney’s office, the couple joke that Miranda’s parents’ history as antiwar activists in the Sixties might jeopardize Russ’s security clearance. In fact, the real threat emerges when Russ’s future employer discovers that Miranda was arrested for…
Like other books in this list, I first read this book in college, and I was enthralled by the famous Battle Royal scene. Here’s the thing: even as the black boys are physically and sexually tortured for the amusement of the white Southern gentry, the scene never felt sensationalist to me. It felt exactly like something that would happen during Jim Crow. This was the black experience as horror, and in seeing such a story on the page, I was spurred toward writing black horror.
I felt sick watching the unnamed protagonist go from upwardly mobile student to laborer to activist to squatter while constantly under attack from grotesques representing the worst of America. Even black people don’t get let off the hook: There’s the Cosby-esque college administrator who sabotages other black people in order to keep his spot, but then there’s also the working-class laborer at the paint factory who attacks the protagonist from fear of another black man replacing him. Horrific characters—yet true to life.
This book is an epic indictment of everything terrible about this country. I love it.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.
He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for…
He’s riddled with guilt. She’s annoyed with the status quo.
The death of a crime boss’s daughter forces Detective Neil Caldera to leave NYC. He seeks refuge in the tranquil embrace of a small town, where he finds himself entangled in the labyrinth of a teenage girl’s murder. Tess Fleishman’s…
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
