Fans pick 100 books like Rosemary's Baby

I had the pleasure of hearing Sarah Waters speak at the Derby Book Festival in 2015, bought a signed copy of her latest novel, and have been recommending it ever since. The Paying Guests is set in the wake of World War I, and the historical context is beautifully rendered. Frances Wray and her mother have been living a quiet and orderly life on a street where the houses have ‘a Sunday blankness to them… every day of the week.’ It’s a life stuck in time, in a house whose ‘heart stopped… years ago.’ Then the Wrays’ new lodgers arrive, and they are noisy, gaudy, messy, dramatic, attractive. The two worlds collide with Frances caught between them, and what follows is both a captivating love story and a gripping crime story.

As shocking as I felt Kubrick’s film was, I think the book is possibly more startling. Some scenes Kubrick played for laughs are described as violent and sadistic in the novel. If, like me, you are a fan of the film, it’ll fill in some blanks for you. Ever wonder why Alex and his friends drink milk?

The book is written in futuristic teen-speak that did take me a while to get my head around, but this ultimately adds to the strangeness of the insular world these ‘droogs’ inhabit. Though it was first published in 1962, I think this is still a very relevant and unflinching look at the place of violence in society.

This is a Gothic suspense classic, but the suspense is gradual in the most delicious way. The book begins with a 1930s meet-cute in which a young paid companion to a rich and unpleasant woman meets a wealthy, unhappy widower at a resort. The young woman befriends the man while her employer is bedridden with a cold, and the two share some funny and touching moments.

The Gothic part comes when he unexpectedly proposes marriage, and they return to his gargantuan family estate, Manderley, which was formerly run by his late wife, Rebecca. Now, the spookiness permeates the story, from the shadowy corners of the mansion to the constant watchfulness of the very creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. Rebecca has been in print for almost a hundred years, and that alone is evidence of its awesomeness.

In this modern feminist era, Maxim DeWinter might seem horribly patriarchal, but it’s utterly believable… show more.

I grew up reading Stephen King, and one of the earlier titles I read by him, is Misery. When I think about isolation, danger, and being trapped in a cabin—this book comes to mind.

Of course, his number one fan, she has different ideas for the protagonist of this book, Paul Sheldon. She wants his novel/s to end differently, a different fate for the characters she has grown to love. And she’ll go to great lengths to get him to change his mind. After his car accident, she ties him to the bed and hobbles him—one of the most intense (and violent) scenes in the book. And who can ever forget her calling him a Dirty Birdie—that phrase will echo in my head forever.

Of course the movie is well done, too—a stellar performance by Kathy Bates. As the wind and ice howl outside the cabin, we are trapped… show more.

I can never get enough ghost and haunted house stories that have social commentary themes. This is one of the books that helped inspire my own book. Trevor Riddell’s parents are separated, and Trevor and his father move to his lumber-robber-baron grandfather’s mansion in the woods of the northwest, where Trevor’s father and aunt hope to talk their ailing father into a big-money real estate deal involving the house and land.

This book has everything I love: ghosts, intrigue, mystery, history, emotionally-complex antagonists, and epistolary story-telling through letters and journals. Woven into all that, Stein manages to insert a moral about conservation and trees (and other things I’ll let you discover on your own). Ghost stories have a history of being morality tales, and this is a modern version—true to the tradition—that I really enjoyed.

Think folk horror and you think rural setting, pretty cottages, white picket fences, and lurking ritual. Harvest Home is a folk horror classic and hits these expectations spot on.

A city couple escapes to the village of Cornwall Coombe to give their daughter a better quality of life. Everything is perfect until the husband discovers they were welcomed for a very specific reason. This discovery, becoming more evident as the harvest ritual approaches, leaves him in fear of losing his life and his family.

I loved this gradual teasing out of horror, subtle nuances that build to the awful climax. The ending is chilling, contrasting so sharply as it does against the background of a rural paradise, giving me one of those ‘oh!’ moments.

This phantasmagorical oral history unfolds during one of my favorite time periods, the psychedelic late 60s/early 70s. It also fuses two of my favorite sub-genres, folk horror and haunted houses.

I could easily visualize the setting and the different characters as I read their statements and tried to piece together the reality of what happened during the band’s infamous time at Wylding Hall.

This book had the greatest influence on my desire to write my own ghost story.

I liked the stalwart Brit characters, Roderick and Pamela, even though they were a bit slow putting together the clues. I figured out the secret before they did, which only added to the fun. The writing style is old-fashioned enough to add to the atmosphere, and the story is beautifully told.

I am partial to a soupçon of the paranormal in my psychological thriller, which I know isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was gripped the whole time reading, but although I knew something shocking was coming, I had absolutely no idea what was going on until the final chapters.

The reveal at the end genuinely left me shaking. It is probably my favorite twist of all time. Outstanding.

Jackson’s Gothic horror flows like black chiffon over a yawing window. That’s how I felt reading about Hill House. I loved the way the house sneaks up with its psychological weights swinging and jarring. Eleanor possesses a dark ambiance. She desperately needed to belong to something or someone, and I couldn’t let go of that.

Her emotions and fears were right there with me. But it was the romantic underbelly that got me: Eleanor’s romance with Hill House. The statuesque gardens, the light, and shadows, all tempted her into its sinister realm. As it tempted me. I felt deeply for Eleanor, wanting to belong to something extraordinary to replace her dull life. Shirley Jackson is quoted as saying, “I delight in what I fear.” This book proves it.