Fans pick 100 books like Audition

I find this book to be an unsettling but impactful read, both thought-provoking and complex. We Need to Talk about Kevin follows the mother of a troubled teenager responsible for a school shooting.

It’s about nature versus nurture, the relationship between mother and child, and deeply seated guilt. It draws inspiration from real events, including the 1999 shooting at Columbine, which wasn’t the U.S.’s first mass shooting at a school, but it would become one of the most infamous.

Shriver’s novel raises unsettling questions about a mother’s guilt and self-justification and a community’s heartache and blame. I consider it to be a captivating and moving book.

A story of someone going missing is always something that affects me viscerally. I was drawn into the intrigue of a woman who is apparently happily married one minute, and then blood stains are found on the floor of the couple’s kitchen the next.

I loved this book because it was a who-dun-it with great descriptive scenes. It was well-written and left me hungry for it when I was forced to put it down to do my chores. A taut, gripping saga about real-life people in real settings is always something I find fascinating.

I’m fascinated by the in-depth character development and details in this book. The film is a classic, but I think the book is even better. Many people think of Hannibal Lecter as the obvious villain of Silence of the Lambs, forgetting that Clarice and the FBI were seeking his guidance to find “Buffalo Bill,” a fictional serial killer attacking women.

Buffalo Bill is an amalgamation of real serial killers, including Ted Bundy, Ed Gein, and Gary Heidnik. By cherry-picking the methods and traits of real killers, I think Harris created a truly terrifying villain. I find the characters, and especially the villain, to be rooted in reality, making them stick in your mind long after the last page.

This novel has so many reasons to recommend it. It incorporates radical experimentation and horrifying surgeries being done in a bizarre hospital. To make it even more mysterious, there is a hurricane threatening the island which complicates the investigation of US Marshall Teddy Daniels searching for a patient who has disappeared.

I loved the creepy island hospital and the use of weather as a character.

What do you get when you cross paths with an unhinged truck driver on a lonely stretch of isolated highway? You get the book Duel, by Richard Matheson. Based on a true event of unprovoked road rage the author himself was put through, Duel is the story of a businessman heading to San Francisco who is confronted and pursued by an unseen psycho behind the wheel of a gasoline tanker and trailer. Subjected to a life-and-death game of cat and mouse, Man, as the protagonist in the book is called, has to out-maneuver this menace, or die trying. If you are into isolation terror, with get-up-and-go pacing, Duel is a must-read.

Being a huge fan of the Tobe Hooper film The Funhouse, I was interested to hear there had been a book released by Dean Koontz based on the movie. Figuring it was your run-of-the-mill paperback tie-in, I bought a cheap copy on eBay to see if there was any bonus material added to give further depth to the plot and characters. What I didn't expect to find, was a novella-sized prequel to be attached. Without giving any spoilers, the reader learns the history behind Amy Harper's psychic link to the monster Gunther and his carney father, Conrad.

It explores the effect Amy's unhinged mother Ellen has on her children, as well as Liz's loose attitude towards men and how that influences Amy to date Buzz. Add in a graphic account of how the kids were murdered in Fairfield county last year, and the book has a lot of hidden… show more.

Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural is, hands down, the best collection of over fifty short stories, novellas, and poems I've ever read in one, skin-prickling book. With authors like Bram Stoker, Sheridan Lefanu, Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Matheson, Isaac Asimov, A.M. Burrage, Robert Bloch, and H.P. Lovecraft, you're in for many sleepless nights. My personal favorites include; "Last Respects" by Dick Baldwin, a story of two morticians preparing a body for a wake, only the body doesn't seem to be quite at rest; "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" by Patricia Highsmith, a story that proves snails can be terrifying. This one had me short on breath halfway through; and most disturbing of all, "His Unconquerable Enemy" by W.C. Morrow. It's about a rajah that has a surgeon amputate his servant Neranya's limbs off, then keeps the poor man in a small pen of open ironwork above his bed for… show more.

Between 1931-1938, a radio program went on the air called, The Witch's Tale. Old Nancy, the Witch of Salem, would introduce stories of the eerie, weird, and blood-chilling sort, with her wise, black cat Satan. Putting to print thirteen of these hair-raising scripts, we can now take a step back in time and read from the point of view of the actors from the golden age of radio in The Witch's Tale by Alonzo Deen Cole.

Old Nancy: “Turn out them lights, and make it nice and dark. That's it. Now draw up to the fire, and gaze into the embers, gaze into them deep, and soon you will be amongst vampires, werewolves, ghosts and devil worshipers. He he he... isn't that right, Satan?" (CAT meows.)

There have been so many books about George Lucas’s most famous creation, the Star Wars saga, and about the man himself.

As far as biographical accounts are concerned, Dale Pollock’s volume (initially published in 1983, and updated in 1990 and 1999) has to be given a lot of credit for being the first to properly introduce this unique filmmaker, whose life and career have been so full of unexpected twists and turns, to the world – and to me!

Pollock’s well-researched and very readable book set a high standard for all the writers following in his footsteps.

Renowned cultural historian Thomas Doherty provides a granular, blow-by-blow retelling of the events that led to the Hollywood blacklist. He places particular emphasis on the hearings as a ‘media-political spectacle,’ seeing it as the first such media event of the postwar era. He reexamines the events through a close and careful reading of press and media responses of the time. Less cinema-centric than other accounts, and less mesmerized by key individuals, Doherty gives us a cool, skeptical perspective on what is often an emotive or partisan discourse. There is much detail on how filmmakers, activists, politicians, newspaper and radio figures acted, and for what reasons, and how and why the post-war hearings played out as they did. The result is a sophisticated cultural history of the blacklist era.