45 books like Breakup from Hell

A hauntingly beautiful anthology of five twisted fairytales that, to me, felt like stepping into a pastoral Twilight Zone and stayed in my mind for days after the final page. Carroll’s artwork is eerie and subtle, and the limited color palette turns scenes of the mundane into a visual nightmare.

The stories are well-paced and spooky, and in my opinion, best read during a dark summer thunderstorm.

When I went into this book, I sensed that Amelinda would pull zero punches. I was so right it was glorious. Skye is fed up. Fed up of being responsible for her insufferable little sister, Dierdre. Fed up with the stories, with the games, with their endless childhood fantasies. Moving halfway across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over. Finally, in this new, isolated neighbourhood, Skye is managing to fit in. Not Dierdre, though. No, Dierdre seems to be slipping more and more into a world of her own. And then one day: Dierdre vanishes. When a creature unlike anything Skye has ever seen comes scratching at her door claiming to know who took Dierdre, Skye is going to have to suspend her disbelief and re-enter a childhood of warped imagination.

As one of four sisters, I appreciate a good sister story because there’s always something going on under the surface. House of Hollow is no different. There’s the complicated dynamic of the three sisters—the model and fashion designer, the grunge musician, and the loner high school student—revealed when the eldest goes missing and the two younger sisters search for her. And then there’s the twist of something otherworldly—the fact that the girls disappeared for a month as children, reappearing with black eyes, white hair, mysterious scars, and the ability to entrance others with their scent and touch. I couldn’t stop turning the pages.

One word: Mr. Jitters. After her filmmaker dad is attacked and nearly killed in New York City, Lola Nox is sent to live with the grandmother she’s never met in an eerie town called Harrow Lake, the shooting location of her dad’s most iconic horror movie. But Harrow Lake is a sinister little town full of strange legends and the locals seem determined to keep it that way. With disappearances that the police shove under the rug and now a ghostly presence that has started following her everywhere, Lola is about to meet the thing that keeps this backwater little town in its firm, creepy grip. This novel reminded me of everything brilliant in The Babadook and Mr. Jitters might even give him a run for his money. 

Every time I read this book, I want to strangle basically every character except for Cat—and that’s half the fun! Charmed Life taught me that sometimes we can be too close to a situation to recognize its dangers or the safest paths to get away.

Cat assumes his sister is good, and everyone else assumes that he’s wicked because he’s always with her. I find his innocence endearing and I love that, as his understanding of Gwendolyn unfolds, he continues to seek goodness in others around him.

When I needed a concise overview of the history of hell, from Egyptian Duat to modern-day versions of Christian hell and all the many other versions around the world, this book gave me just what I needed. The tone and language are lighthearted, which keeps the subject interesting without getting too dark or depressing.

I liked how the authors break down hell into its common components, asking questions like “Where is hell?” and “Who’s in charge?” and giving a sense of how people have answered these questions in different places and times. I walked away feeling like we were all connected through this shared history of curiosity about the afterlife.

Jenna Moran is an under-appreciated author who combines whimsy and darkness in equal measure, created worlds that are at once familiar and strange. This bittersweet picture book is her at her finest, accompanied by glorious artwork by Elizabeth Sherry as she tells the story of a picture-book world attacked by an invasion of terrible, otherworldly things—Ordinary Objects.

The Other Hotel was my first Jack Stroke book and after the first few pages I was hooked.

The writing is easy, authentic, and unpretentious – reading it quickly made me feel like I was hanging out with an old friend. The plot is twisted, the characters are off-the-hook, and Stroke has the unique capacity to inject a sense of apathetic calm into situations where all hell is breaking loose – making the book a tremendous amount of fun.

I highly recommend the whole series.

When I was interviewing for a position at Notre Dame, the campus museum had an exhibit of illustrations for Dante’s Inferno, which reinforced to me the fascination of Dante. 

When I began teaching the work a few years later, my students were engrossed by its riveting portrayals of moral ugliness. They were also amazed that Dante places even popes in hell. The work has so inspired my students that one of them submitted her final paper in terza rima, the form Dante uses, and another reflected on where precisely in hell she might belong.

This beautifully translated bilingual edition contains extensive, helpful commentary.

"There is a despair that goes deeper than existence; it runs to the marrow of consciousness, to the seat of the soul."

In this brief but brilliant masterpiece, the afterlife is a (nearly) infinite library. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Just wait. With each page turn, I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into a state of existential dread. Immersive, heartbreaking, and profound, I would've been happy to stay in this hell a good while longer.