Here are 100 books that Cuckoo Song fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m an author of genre-bent stories and grew up with a love of dark tales. In particular, I was a fan of things that layered stories and linked their themes together, even if you didn’t necessarily notice initially. For example, the Alienfranchise is a story of human survival, but also of corporate conspiracy. When I come across books that mix stories or add interesting structural elements, it instantly draws me in, so I set out to create exactly that with my release Ailuros. But I’m not alone in experimenting like that, so I hope you find some fun, scary releases you may not have known about in my list.
Described as a faux documentary in the style of The Blair Witch Project, this one is an interesting take on the horror genre. Interviews, descriptions of crime-related exhibits, and written testimonies all come together to make the book feel both investigative and more than a little fractured. It’s an uncomfortable combination that helps create a nice sense of fear for readers.
In the faux-documentary style of The Blair Witch Project comes the campfire story of a missing girl, a vengeful ghost, and the girl who is determined to find her sister--at all costs.
Once a year, a road appears in the forest. And at the end of it, the ghost of Lucy Gallows beckons. Lucy's game isn't for the faint of heart. If you win, you escape with your life. But if you lose....
Sara's sister disappeared one year ago--and only Sara knows where she is. Becca went to find the ghost of Lucy Gallows and is trapped on the road…
I am fascinated with mythology in all its shapes and forms. It fascinates me how cultures the world over have similar pantheons, for example, without any cultural cross-pollination. What I like to do in my fiction is blend various myths to create something new. And sometimes I create my own myths. It takes a curious, imaginative mind to come up with these myths, and most importantly a child-like sense of wonder, which, sadly, is extinguished by society as one is forced to “grow up”. I don’t ever want to lose that sense of wonder—to observe the world and see beauty and possibilities at every corner—so I preserve and interrogate it in my fiction.
The world of The Changeling is strange and exhilarating. At first we are presented with what seems like a mundane NYC, but then the edges start to bleed as a more fantastical, deliciously disturbing world seeps into and disrupts the ordinary.
At the core of the story is a family and the lengths they go to protect each other. There are so many reasons this book resonated with me, but particularly for this reason—the idea that if only you pay close attention, you will see that a more fantastical world dwells at the edge of our own.
This is an idea I tackle in my own book, where myths and legends, and fairytales come to life. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. Everyone who reads The Changeling will be… changed.
When Apollo Kagwa was just a child, his father disappeared, leaving him with recurring nightmares and a box labelled 'Improbabilia'. Now a successful book dealer, Kagwa has a family of his own after meeting and falling in love with Emma, a librarian. The two marry and have a baby: so far so happy-ever-after.
However, as the pair settle into their new lives as parents, exhaustion and anxiety start to take their toll. Emma's behaviour becomes increasingly erratic, until one day she commits an unthinkable act, setting Apollo on a wild and fantastical quest through a suddenly otherworldly New York, in…
Most people don’t realize how deeply ingrained folklore is to our daily lives. Superstitious habits like tossing spilled salt over the shoulder seem silly now, but had grave implications a hundred or more years ago. I love books that draw lines between folklore and reality, that weave tales laced with superstition, especially through the lens of modern issues. Stories like these have always helped me to not only understand myself better, but the world around me. The things people do and say aren’t nearly as important as why. Folklore, like changeling stories, I’ve found, is the key to human understanding.
Little Darlingswas 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.
My book is fantastical historical fiction about two characters who're wrestling with the monstrosity of their grief.
It takes you into London high society, where Ambrose tries to forget about how much he misses Bennett and how much he dreads becoming as cold as their Grandfather. It takes you to…
I’ve been terrified, fascinated, and delighted by scary stories my whole life, and my very favorites dabble in the speculative and supernatural: ghosts, monsters, magic, and worlds beyond our own. Give me all your haunted houses, your warped realities, your inexplicable horrors intruding on the everyday world. These fantastical elements are fraught with the power of nightmares and fairy tales, and that makes them the best tools we have to get around our news-hardened, cynical safeguards and explore what truly frightens us.
With a dash of sapphic romance and a heartbreaking final twist, this book imagines a sinister, sentient darkness lurking in a small town and egging its residents on into terrible acts. It cuts right to the core of a troubled family and the petty resentments that have built up between them. I totally cried.
"Imagine Riverdale crossing streams with Stephen King's The Outsider and you'll get a sense of this gripping supernatural mystery...Gould's debut begins as a snappy paranormal yarn and unspools into a profound story about the complex interplay between grief, guilt, and identity." - Oprah Daily
Courtney Gould’s thrilling YA debut The Dead and the Dark is about the things that lurk in dark corners, the parts of you that can’t remain hidden, and about finding home in places―and people―you didn’t expect.
The Dark has been waiting―and it won't stay hidden any longer.
Something is wrong in Snakebite, Oregon. Teenagers are disappearing,…
I’ve been terrified, fascinated, and delighted by scary stories my whole life, and my very favorites dabble in the speculative and supernatural: ghosts, monsters, magic, and worlds beyond our own. Give me all your haunted houses, your warped realities, your inexplicable horrors intruding on the everyday world. These fantastical elements are fraught with the power of nightmares and fairy tales, and that makes them the best tools we have to get around our news-hardened, cynical safeguards and explore what truly frightens us.
This book fills the wilds of Texas with a plague of zombie-like “shakes,” and somehow they are all the scarier for being more of a backdrop than the core of the story. The desert setting is almost a character itself, and it practically shimmers with menace. Between the haunting sense of place and time and the galloping pace of the action, I gobbled down this book in one sitting.
Keep together. Keep your eyes open. Keep your wits about you.
The desert is unkind in the best of times. And the decade since the Civil War has been anything but the best of times for Daisy Wilcox-call her Willie-and her family. This tense, heart-pounding alternate history about a young woman fighting to survive the unthinkable will keep fans of Westworld and The Walking Dead reading late into the night.
A horrifying sickness has spread across the West Texas desert. Infected people-shakes-attack the living, and the surviving towns are only as safe as their perimeter walls are strong. The state…
I’ve been terrified, fascinated, and delighted by scary stories my whole life, and my very favorites dabble in the speculative and supernatural: ghosts, monsters, magic, and worlds beyond our own. Give me all your haunted houses, your warped realities, your inexplicable horrors intruding on the everyday world. These fantastical elements are fraught with the power of nightmares and fairy tales, and that makes them the best tools we have to get around our news-hardened, cynical safeguards and explore what truly frightens us.
This book features an isolated old schoolhouse that has been converted to a family home, where the ghost of one of its residents still lingers, along with her old collection of little porcelain dolls. The seaside landscape drips with atmosphere, and that army of tiny, malevolent porcelain figurines is one of the weirdest and scariest variations on the “creepy doll” trope I’ve ever encountered.
A Zoella Book Club Autumn 2016 title
"So creepy and amazing [...] I loved it [...] You'll never look at small china dolls in the same way ever again." - Zoella
"Deliciously creepy." - Juno Dawson
Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind...
Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lillias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be…
Secrets, misunderstandings, and a plethora of family conflicts abound in this historical novel set along the Brazos River in antebellum Washington County, East Texas.
It is a compelling story of two neighboring plantation families and a few of the enslaved people who serve them. These two plantations are a microcosm…
Most people don’t realize how deeply ingrained folklore is to our daily lives. Superstitious habits like tossing spilled salt over the shoulder seem silly now, but had grave implications a hundred or more years ago. I love books that draw lines between folklore and reality, that weave tales laced with superstition, especially through the lens of modern issues. Stories like these have always helped me to not only understand myself better, but the world around me. The things people do and say aren’t nearly as important as why. Folklore, like changeling stories, I’ve found, is the key to human understanding.
Though Kent’s first novel,Burial Rites, was an absolute triumph, The Good People broke me in ways I am still discovering.
Based on a true story in Ireland, this book places a child at the center, surrounded by superstition and fear. He doesn’t speak or walk, which makes some folks believe he is a changeling. But the women who protect him demonstrate immense empathy as they try to navigate this world plucked out of a Grimm fairy tale.
Reading this book made me more deeply understand the power of kindness.
From the author of Burial Rites, "a literary novel with the pace and tension of a thriller that takes us on a frightening journey towards an unspeakable tragedy" (Paula Hawkins, bestselling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water).
Based on true events in nineteenth century Ireland, Hannah Kent's startling new novel tells the story of three women, drawn together to rescue a child from a superstitious community.
Nora, bereft after the death of her husband, finds herself alone and caring for her grandson Micheal, who can neither speak nor walk. A handmaid, Mary, arrives to help…
Most people don’t realize how deeply ingrained folklore is to our daily lives. Superstitious habits like tossing spilled salt over the shoulder seem silly now, but had grave implications a hundred or more years ago. I love books that draw lines between folklore and reality, that weave tales laced with superstition, especially through the lens of modern issues. Stories like these have always helped me to not only understand myself better, but the world around me. The things people do and say aren’t nearly as important as why. Folklore, like changeling stories, I’ve found, is the key to human understanding.
Bone China, on the surface, is a book about a woman looking to start over, but she is quickly pulled into a world of fantastical lore and superstition.
LikeThe Good People, a child who is other sits at the center, who forces Hester to confront everything she thought she knew about herself. I am always fascinated by books in which the past directly influences the present, lines drawn between choices and events.
Reading Bone China made me think about my own past, the influence it had on my present, and the kind of future each choice might bring.
A Daphne Du Maurier-esque chiller set on the mysterious Cornish coast, from the award-winning author of The Silent Companions.
'Du Maurier-tastic' GUARDIAN
'Deliciously sinister' HEAT
'A clever, creepy read' SUNDAY EXPRESS
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken.
But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.
Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to…
I am an academic at the University of Queensland whose research areas include horror films, screen trauma theory, the cinematic representation of urban spaces, and the collision of romanticism and postmodernism in fantasy literature. My first book, POV Horror: The Trauma Aesthetic of the Found Footage Subgenre, was adapted from my PhD thesis. I am an avid member of the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom, and my second book represents over a decade of talking and writing about George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series, having grown out of conversations in forums, podcasts, symposiums, and fan conventions, as well as my own background in literary analysis and research.
Clarke transports the reader to England during the time of the Napoleonic Wars. There is, however, one small twist: magic once existed in this world and has now returned through two men, drastically changing the course of history and society.
The story is rich in gothic atmosphere and wry humour, and is positively bursting with ideas (there are almost 200 footnotes!). Clarke imbues her protagonists with conflicting approaches to the pursuit of knowledge, with Norrell representing cautious rationality and conservative methodology, while Strange embodies an adventurous spirit and a willingness to embrace the arcane and often the dangerous.
Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of…
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care…
I love to laugh. Whether my oldest son and I are trading bad puns, my husband is teasing, my daughter and I are chuckling over a rom-com, or my youngest son is rolling his eyes and groaning at all of us, my family loves to laugh. Humor creates joy, relieves stress, and is just plain fun. That's what I look for in a good read. The world offers plenty of negativity and hardship. When I escape into a novel, I want fast-paced adventure and swoony romance, but I also want a reason to smile. That's the experience I love, and the one I endeavor to give my readers.
This is such a fun book! The book-loving heroine is so upbeat and full of sunshine. Grace loves whimsy yet manages to keep her feet on the ground. I loved how she uses her experience with fiction to solve mysteries and escape harrowing situations. Lord Astley is haunted by past mistakes but his brooding nature can't stand against Grace's guileless enthusiasm. A marriage of convenience, a villain on the prowl, and a house with secret passageways. What's not to love? Riddled with laugh-out-loud moments, this book should not be missed at Christmas or any other time of year.
Will the magic of Christmas bring these two newlyweds closer together, or will the ghosts of the past lead them into a destructive discovery from which not even a Dickens’s Christmas can save them?
Mistletoe is beautiful and dangerous, much like the woman from Lord Frederick’s Percy’s past, so when he turns over a new leaf and arranges to marry for his estate, instead of his heart, he never expects the wrong bride to be the right choice. Gracelynn Ferguson never expected to take her elder sister’s place as a Christmas bride, but when she’s thrust into the choice, she…
