Fans pick 100 books like A Visit

I’ve always been fascinated with the unseen hidden inside what is seen. In my life, I’ve tried to peer into dark corners and see reflections in lightless rooms. I’m captivated by ancient ways and alternate realities, and I love it when a new idea bends my mind and makes room for possibilities. I try to illuminate the subtle shadows many don’t notice or consider through my books, and I write Speculative and Literary Fiction to offer the potential of my imagination. I feel, in many ways, it’s the greatest contribution to humanity I can make.

I’ve always been fascinated with the unseen hidden inside what is seen. In my life, I’ve tried to peer into dark corners and see reflections in lightless rooms. I’m captivated by ancient ways and alternate realities, and I love it when a new idea bends my mind and makes room for possibilities. I try to illuminate the subtle shadows many don’t notice or consider through my books, and I write Speculative and Literary Fiction to offer the potential of my imagination. I feel, in many ways, it’s the greatest contribution to humanity I can make.

I’ve always been fascinated with the unseen hidden inside what is seen. In my life, I’ve tried to peer into dark corners and see reflections in lightless rooms. I’m captivated by ancient ways and alternate realities, and I love it when a new idea bends my mind and makes room for possibilities. I try to illuminate the subtle shadows many don’t notice or consider through my books, and I write Speculative and Literary Fiction to offer the potential of my imagination. I feel, in many ways, it’s the greatest contribution to humanity I can make.

I’ve always been fascinated with the unseen hidden inside what is seen. In my life, I’ve tried to peer into dark corners and see reflections in lightless rooms. I’m captivated by ancient ways and alternate realities, and I love it when a new idea bends my mind and makes room for possibilities. I try to illuminate the subtle shadows many don’t notice or consider through my books, and I write Speculative and Literary Fiction to offer the potential of my imagination. I feel, in many ways, it’s the greatest contribution to humanity I can make.

Since I was a child, Halloween and Christmas have held equally hallowed positions in my heart. When I learned of Krampus folklore in my teens, I was immediately fascinated. Krampus offered the best of both worlds—a dose of Halloween creepiness to counterbalance the bright jubilation of the winter holidays. Krampus Confidential, a middle-grade mystery, and adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, is my second children’s book that aims to introduce this magnificent creature to children in a way that doesn’t inspire nightmares. My first, Goodnight Krampus, is a board book for young readers that reimagines the monster as a rambunctious toddler who gives Santa a hard time by refusing to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.

My interest in ghosts is partly due to growing up in York, which is one of the most haunted cities in the UK. In that city, I think that pretty much every pub has its own ghost, and if you’re unlucky (or lucky) enough, you stand a good chance of spotting long-dead Roman soldiers, plague victims, or ghostly dogs as you walk the streets. This atmosphere has seeped into my fiction; I have written two novels of the supernatural and am currently working on a third. I’ve also made a study of the grim and gothic in fiction; my Ph.D. thesis was largely about vampires (especially Dracula) but also strayed into other monsters and uncanny stories over the past two centuries. 

I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.

I am a cultural historian, film critic, literary critic, editor, and essayist–and a closeted fiction writer–fascinated by ‘the fantastic’ in art or in life. And Christmas seems to me the perfect example of a time that unites realism and the strange–the time of ghost stories and nativities. I wrote a book on It’s a Wonderful Life (2023) because it triumphantly succeeds at bridging the connection between ordinary life and the marvelous. I have also edited anthologies of Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (Penguin, 2010), and Victorian Fairy Tales (Oxford World’s Classics, 2015), both of which include many seasonal classics.  

I've always been a fan of ghost stories. As a kid, I loved horror movies and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and H. P. Lovecraft; later on, I discovered movies like The Innocents (based on Henry James's The Turn of the Screw) and The Haunting (adapted from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House). As a ghost historian and editor, I've discovered dozens of brilliant tales from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; these are stories that remain relevant, entertaining, and frightening.

My name is Alister Dray Penborn. I am a lifelong mystery lover, all the way back to my favorite childhood cartoon, Scooby-Doo, and my favorite anime, Detective Conan, or Case Closed as it was called in the US at the time of airing. It's a passion that grew over the years as I was exposed to even more great mysteries. One of the most appealing aspects is the investigation process, where a character sees the inconsistencies of crime scenes, analyzes and makes sense of events, and collects and relies on the slightest clues to act as puzzle pieces to the full picture.