Fans pick 100 books like In a Glass Darkly

I love that this book was the result of a dare! In 1816, eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and three friends held a contest to see who could write the scariest story. Mary’s story—like her monster—has since taken on a life of its own and today permeates all forms of storytelling.

I find it amusing that my favorite version of the monster is the one Mel Brooks gave us in Young Frankenstein. I wonder what Mary Shelley would think if she knew how much her acceptance of a dare would change storytelling forever.

I like to revisit the original story from time to time to savor the gothic drama and flowery writing. If I’m reading it on a dark and stormy night, all the better.

I have always loved the central premise of the book, that a human being might never age, and yet a portrait of him ages as the years go by.

I love the way that Wilde used elegant and lyrical prose, always boosted by a flamboyant irony, in describing the dissolute life of an aesthete while putting it in the context of a philosophical pursuit of beauty and art. Dorian Gray himself is a deeply flawed moral character, and that is key to the success of the novel.  

This book by Ann Radcliffe was published in 1794, and I read it in the spring of 2020 (yeah, we all remember). It was a welcome respite from my book club books as I sat on my lawn chair accompanying the main character, Emily Saint-Aubert, as she journeyed through the Languedoc. It was a long and arduous journey with long and arduous descriptions, and while I am averse to these, the narrative and language fascinated me. The story pulled me into a moonlit graveyard abutting an ancient convent, then into the languid beauty of 16th-century Venice, the gloomy castle Udolpho, and Signor Montoni's villainous schemes.

This book is the epitome of classic Gothic fiction, a genre of literature that started with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. But Udolpho sets the bar even higher with its narrative's light and darkness and winding twists. 

I love the story, the setting,… show more.

From the mind of a nineteen-year-old member of the English Parliament, this book inaugurated the splatter side of the horror tradition, and it freaked late 18th-century critics out. I love it for all its gruesome irreverence, for how far it’s willing to go for shocks, for its wild, gender-bending sexuality, and so much more.

Although I find parts of it genuinely disgusting, I think it’s more amusing than scary… that said, its inset storytelling and interwoven major plotlines are a hoot to follow. The corruption of the title character is so, so easy and goes so, so far.

The object of his primary lust is so ridiculously pure… orchestrated to maximize the impact of the final confrontations, of course, and they are extreme.

I felt a powerful sense of tragic history and increasing pity and fear as this story progressed with its brooding, fateful, gothic atmosphere and hints of the supernatural in a gloomy, coastal house in Ireland. I became swept up by the gathering intensity and intrigue and the multiple shocks that arise from the main protagonist’s discoveries. I was absorbed in this compelling, thought-provoking story and captivated by its ingenious plot. 

Foley depicts a struggle of finding oneself and learning where one belongs, and holding onto the everchanging definition especially when the geography surrounding us suddenly changes. Maggie and her family migrate from Chicago to Ireland, leaving behind her favorite uncle, and musical influence, the wayward Kevin. Add to this the backdrop of the anticipation of attending a Nirvana concert and you have all the fixings for a well-rounded tale of love, loss, and living. Having had the pleasure of meeting Foley a time or two, I can attest that her sense of setting is as apparent in her identity as an Irish Chicago resident as ever, and this comes through in her characters, who illustrate the same.

I love the delightful yet diverse ensemble of characters that form the story of Evening Class and how their individual stories weave together so beautifully. It taught me that it’s never too late to take a risk or try something new and that everybody has a story, no matter how they present themselves to the world. There is something so comforting in Maeve Binchy’s delightful prose and many moments of laugh-aloud humour.

Inspector Mallon covers the latter decades of the nineteenth century in Dublin history, which were characterised by unrest, extremist violence, and police strikes. The late 1800s were also the service years of the celebrated Dublin Police detective John Mallon, ‘the Great Irish Detective’. The book explores the behind-the-scenes relationships between official Dublin and the force, and between the police and the political activists. McCracken examines the impact the Dublin detectives, known as G-men due to their work in the G Division, had on undermining the political threats and bringing known Fenians and members of the Invincibles, responsible for the horrific Phoenix Park murders, to trial.

No one does dialogue and atmospheric tension like Tana French. Faithful Place is my favorite of hers.

I felt like the characters were so alive that I could hear their voices in my head long after I had closed the book. This story is rife with a gritty, urban Irish atmosphere and thick with familial tension. French does a cross between literary fiction and procedural that is devastating, at times quite dark, and yet ringing with hope—one of my favorite qualities in a mystery.

Best read on a dark, rainy afternoon with a mug of rich coffee—or a Guinness. 

In Dublin Hanged, Henry paints an evocative picture of the turn-of-the-eighteenth-century Irish capital collapsing under rising property crime, food shortages due to series of particularly inclement winters, and political unrest. He also vividly captures the events that led to the organisation of the first metropolitan uniformed police in the British Isles, which came to be widely unpopular. Henry shows, the organisation of the force was costly and in order to fund the new police, the household tax ‘skyrocketed’ virtually overnight. Henry’s analysis reveals there was a marked decline in the frequency of rape and violent assaults in the years following the introduction of the police in October 1786, indicating a degree of effectiveness of the new police despite the lack of its popularity.