100 books like Come Closer

A gruesome story of murder and desire that also happens to have the most vivid olfactory descriptions of any genre.

Suskind’s preternatural ability to summon odor from the page makes you feel as if you are there beside him, walking through the flowered hillsides of Provence, or in the back room of a perfume shop on the Pont au Change. His twisted use of classic perfume techniques is as accurate as it is chilling.

In this middle-grade horror novel, Steve is feeling lonely and worried. His newborn brother is sick in the hospital, and his parents are understandably stressed. There’s also a wasp’s nest threatening their home, which becomes a bigger problem when the wasp queen visits him in his dreams. One night, the queen comes to Steve and offers to help “fix” the baby.

I have read many, many horror books. I consider myself a connoisseur of the creepy. This book, intended for middle-grade children, remains one of the scariest books I’ve read. It’s filled with dread while also centering on family.

I can imagine a young Wednesday (as played by Christina Ricci or the late great Lisa Loring) reading this book and imagining what she would wish upon her own brother should a wasp queen approach her.

Little Darlings was the first book I’d read in a long time that made me feel seen.

When Lauren came home from the hospital after delivering twins only to find her life had not become as picture perfect as she was led to believe, I felt a keen connection. Told with visceral desperation, Lauren’s story is one we can all relate to—a story of self-doubt and a mad scramble for validation. 

This novel is a masterclass in unreliable narration. It follows Will, a young man estranged from his family and religion, as he attends college and falls in love with Phoebe.

As Will takes over and narrates his recollections of their relationship, Phoebe’s friendship with a man named John Leal, and her inculcation into a religious cult, he becomes increasingly untrustworthy. Will rails against John Leal, his lies, and the damage he has done to Phoebe, revealing his complicity in toxic masculinity and his own harmful actions.

Kwon renders her characters as entirely believable, frightening people, in lyrical and considered prose.

A dystopian zombie-type tale, this novel focuses on a hyper-intelligent child who is starved for affection—and non-vegetarian protein.

Melanie struggles to control her biological impulses, to be more than what the adults fear and to be seen as human instead of an abomination, because she’s capable of love. Yet, it’s her immense capacity for clear, rational thought that makes her oh-so uncanny. 

I’ve read the book—and watched the film—multiple times. If you don’t mind some gore, this story is much more than just a zombie sci-fi.

The author plays a clever trick on us to get us to identify with the villain in this book. It’s effective and horrifying, and results, in large part, in our seeing the world through a monster’s self-serving eyes. It’s not a pretty picture, but there’s no escape for his unfortunate victims, or for us. He reminds me of Bridget in the movie The Last Seduction, in the way some predators seem like a completely different species from us, their prey, while we assume they’re human, just like us. This is noir, only with an homme fatale (and a bit of publishing industry satire thrown in).

Now these two main characters, both “villains,” are refreshingly human. When the evil archeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark tells Indy that it would only take a small push to move him out of the light, this is the kind of thing he meant. For the woman in the story, being bad is an almost understandable way to cope with the particular situation she faces (that we’ve all faced). For the man, he’s been in the dark for a long time, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t need love. A serial killer/black comedy/love story about a hired killer and an inspired killer. Is it a match made in Heaven, or Hell?

Westlake gets into the head of a successful career criminal, making available the kind of attitude and thinking that most readers would normally abhor.

Somehow, we don’t in the Parker series. Even as the clever, convoluted plot unfolds, we never stop caring what happens to Parker and we root for him against creepier crooks.

I especially like the authentic feel of the techniques and procedures Parker employs. It’s almost as though Westlake was a criminal himself. His work inspired me to write about what I don’t think most authors have directly experienced—what happens in a therapist’s head.

So I think my books also feel real.

Bullies beware! Bad Girls Don’t Die features a vengeful poltergeist that possesses the little sister of protagonist Alexis Warren.

Alexis is a lonely misfit teenager on the fringes of her high-school social scene. Her home life isn’t much better as her mother’s desire for corporate success leads to regular dinner table conflict. The sisters find comfort in each other, but that’s when Alexis notices a change in her sibling Kasey. Subtle at first, Kasey’s transformation into a malicious psychopath sends Alexis into an investigation that reveals a small-town secret of a fatal bullying incident. 

Bad Girl’s Don’t Die is a story of sisterly bonds, secret pasts, and the sacrifices that are sometimes made to protect loved ones.

Blatty’s classic novel is recommendable as much for its cultural impact, which is of course inextricably bound up with its legendary film adaptation, as for its own content. With the story of young Regan, a 12-year-old girl in the modern technological world who becomes possessed by an ancient demon, Blatty, a committed Roman Catholic, deliberately set out to communicate a vivid sense of supernatural evil to a modern, skeptical, jaded audience. Many people don’t realize that The Exorcist is actually a Christian novel. As Blatty himself later put it, if he could get people to believe, even fictionally/emotionally, in demons, they would also know what it feels like to live in a universe where God and angels are real. The result, regardless of your religious beliefs, is unforgettable.