Here are 100 books that Sharp Objects fans have personally recommended if you like
Sharp Objects.
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As a writer, I consider myself lucky to be born and raised in the Deep South. Although I currently live near Los Angeles, I continue to draw upon the region’s complex history, regional color, eccentric characters, and rich atmosphere for inspiration. I also love to read fiction set in the South, especially mysteries and thrillers—the more atmospheric, the better!
This classic is technically nonfiction, but it reads like a mystery novel as it follows the story of Jim Williams, an antiques dealer on trial for the killing of Danny Hansford.
I’ve read this book more than once, savoring John Berendt’s lyrical prose and his brilliant evocation of the charm, eccentricity—and fear—one can find in America’s most beautiful and haunted city: Savannah, Georgia.
Genteel society ladies who compare notes on their husbands' suicides. A hilariously foul-mouthed black drag queen. A voodoo priestess who works her roots in the graveyard at midnight. A morose inventor who owns a bottle of poison powerful enough to kill everyone in town. A prominent antiques dealer who hangs a Nazi flag from his window to disrupt the shooting of a movie. And a redneck gigolo whose conquests describe him as a 'walking streak of sex'.
These are some of the real residents of Savannah, Georgia, a city whose eccentric mores are unerringly observed - and whose dirty linen…
I am the ultimate dilettante. I consume huge amounts of history, literature, and current events. I am not interested in dumbing down what I write. I am endlessly curious and assume my readers are also. I started writing during the pandemic and have not quit. I have completed three novels and have been an avid reader my entire life. Join me!
I really enjoyed this historical mystery novel. It is an early example of a narrative being told from multiple perspectives, some unreliable; beware!
The novel is a classic with beautiful language and sentence construction. I feel there is an elegance and craft given to this narrative rarely found in today’s commercial mystery genre. Sit back and enjoy being seduced by Wilkie Collins.
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'The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.'
One of the earliest works of 'detective' fiction with a narrative woven together from multiple characters, Wilkie Collins partly based his infamous novel on a real-life eighteenth century case of abduction and wrongful imprisonment. In 1859, the story caused a sensation with its readers, hooking their attention with the ghostly first scene where the mysterious 'Woman in White'…
I’m Julia Buckley, a passionate lifelong reader, English teacher, and mystery writer. I gravitated toward mystery as a child when my mom read all the greats of 20th Century Mystery and Romantic Suspense and then passed them on to me. When I became an English teacher, I had the privilege of teaching some of the great Gothic classics like Jane Eyre, Rebecca, and The Castle of Otranto. Teaching these great works and researching the way that all Gothic literature stemmed from Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe, I realized that MANY of the books I read are tinged with the Gothic.
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…
* 'The greatest psychological thriller of all time' ERIN KELLY * 'One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century' SARAH WATERS * 'It's the book every writer wishes they'd written' CLARE MACKINTOSH
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again . . .'
Working as a lady's companion, our heroine's outlook is bleak until, on a trip to the south of France, she meets a handsome widower whose proposal takes her by surprise. She accepts but, whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to brooding Manderley, the new Mrs de Winter finds Max a changed man. And the memory…
Kelly Simmons has been published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, and her widely praised novels are frequently compared to Big Little Lies.
Her new book, The Off Season, is set on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay, where headstrong thirteen-year-old Savannah bursts into the local police department, insisting her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid Bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death but a decades-old cold case.
For fans of Lisa Jewell and Liane Moriarty. Published in 12 countries by Simon & Schuster and Sourcebooks, Kelly's widely praised novels are frequently compared to BIG LITTLE LIES.
THE OFF SEASON explodes on the tranquil shores of the Chesapeake Bay. A headstrong thirteen-year-old girl insists her mother’s drowning was anything but an accident. She’s forced to tangle with the languid bay police department as well as the year-rounder adults and teens who might be complicit not just in her mother’s death, but a decades-old cold case. With echoes of GONE GIRL and STAND BY ME, it’s part crime, part…
I’ve been intrigued with the mind for as long as I can remember. As a child, I imagined shrinking myself down and worming my way into other people’s brains to discover how their thoughts differed from mine. When I realized that was impossible, I started creating characters and imagining how they would think, react, and feel. This led to writing novels and motivated me to get my bachelor’s in abnormal psychology and my master’s in forensic psychology. Now, with an innate curiosity for the mind and a background in how it works, I find myself drawn to reading and writing books that take me into characters’ heads.
Whenever I feel trapped, I think about this book. Told in the first person, it brought me into the asylum and locked me in there with the other patients, and even once I finished reading it, I didn’t feel completely free.
There’s something I like to call “Hollywood Mental Illness.” Movies tend to sugarcoat mental disorders and make them seem fun and entertaining. This book does nothing of the sort. I felt the isolation, the fear, and the sheer panic that these characters faced, like a huge, heavy ball in the pit of my stomach and a zigzagging anxiety that repeatedly paced across my mind. What makes it so dark and frightening is that it’s routed in so much truth, which makes it such a compelling story.
Boisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Now in a new deluxe edition with a foreword by Chuck Palahniuk and cover by Joe Sacco, here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her. We see the struggle through the eyes of Chief Bromden, the seemingly mute half-Indian patient who witnesses and understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them…
Even as a boy, I could see (or maybe just sense) the darkness that resides just below the surface of this otherwise pleasant world. We all have stories, and the ones we hold closest to ourselves are often the darkest. Those are the stories that fascinate me the most. What are the limits of man’s menace? What causes seemingly normal people to snap? To turn on their fellow man? I could do one of two things with this fascination: become a sociopath (perhaps psychopath) or an author of dark, twisted, twisty tales. As you know, I chose the latter.
Surely, you’re not surprised to see the dark master himself on my list. Stephen King is one of the most prolific horror authors (or authors of any genre, for that matter) of all time. I have to be honest; I don’t always like his endings, but I love King’s vividly detailed stories. They draw you in and make the unreal feel very real. Misery is one of my favorites because it’s probably one of King’s best psychological thrillers. I also like that it’s a departure from his normal supernatural themes.
Sure, it doesn’t hurt that the protagonist is a novelist, but even if he wasn’t, I’d love this book. There’s nothing scarier than to be totally at the mercy of someone for your survival. And when that person is an unhinged lunatic who destroys your work and forces you to be her personal storyteller, or you won’t get medicine, food,…
My new thriller centers around a small, mysterious cult and their shocking demise. For years, I’ve read true crime books on the subject, and I wanted to infuse the reality and truth of real-life events into my fictional novel. In a similar vein, these books represent a range of thrillers inspired by true events, ranging from cults to serial killers to teenage criminals. I hope you find these books as gripping and haunting as I do.
I find this book to be an unsettling but impactful read, both thought-provoking and complex. We Need to Talk about Kevin follows the mother of a troubled teenager responsible for a school shooting.
It’s about nature versus nurture, the relationship between mother and child, and deeply seated guilt. It draws inspiration from real events, including the 1999 shooting at Columbine, which wasn’t the U.S.’s first mass shooting at a school, but it would become one of the most infamous.
Shriver’s novel raises unsettling questions about a mother’s guilt and self-justification and a community’s heartache and blame. I consider it to be a captivating and moving book.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
When I was not yet a teen, a neighbor had what I considered to be a valuable treasure—all of the Nancy Drew Mystery series. Her daughter had died of leukemia, and she had held onto them as a reminder of her precious child. To my surprise, she entrusted them to me to read. That was the beginning of my passion for mysteries. As I got older, I couldn’t get enough of Agatha Christie and P. D. James. I visit them often, like old friends, but I am also eager to make new literary acquaintances. My list has only five, but it could have included thousands. Enjoy this diverse sampling.
This book made me gasp when I read the ending. I’m usually pretty good at figuring out whodunnits, but this was a plot twist I didn’t see coming. I went back and re-read it to see if everything fit together. It did. A well-plotted and fun read that relies on Greek Mythology and the timeless classics of Agatha Christie for its inspiration.
"An unforgettable―and Hollywood-bound―new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." ―Entertainment Weekly
The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband―and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.
Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five…
Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.
I couldn’t look at society the same way after reading this tale of how a group of schoolboys stranded on an island descends, step by step, into savagery. The savagery is inside all of us, and the veneer of civilization that our education puts on it is very thin and easily cracks. Haunting.
A plane crashes on a desert island and the only survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. As the boys' delicate sense of order fades, so their childish dreams are transformed into something more primitive, and their behaviour starts to take on a murderous, savage significance.
First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies is one of the most celebrated and widely read of modern…
I’ve read crime fiction since I was a kid, starting with Nancy Drew and the mystery magazines—Alfred Hitchcock, Mike Shayne, and Ellery Queen. While in elementary school, I wrote mystery short stories, which my sister illustrated, and we sold them on the street corner for 25 cents apiece. In the nineties, I devoured novels by Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, and P.D. James. The 2000s introduced another generation of favorite authors, including Belinda Bauer, Chris Whitaker, and Tana French. I love too many to name! My current passion is for novels that I can really sink my teeth into, with complex characters hiding dark secrets.
There were a lot of juicy secrets to unravel in this gothic thriller. Murder, feral twins, a devastating fire, an abandoned baby, and a ghost child.
Vida Winter, old and ill, has been safeguarding the family’s secrets, but she doesn’t want to take them with her to the grave. She hires biographer Margaret Lea to write her life story. But Vida isn’t the most reliable narrator, forcing Margaret to conduct her own investigation to uncover the truth. Eventually, the secrets are laid bare, but one question remains open at the end...
'Simply brilliant' Kate Mosse, international bestselling author of Labyrinth
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Everybody has a story...
Angelfield House stands abandoned and forgotten.
It was once home to the March family: fascinating, manipulative Isabelle; brutal, dangerous Charlie; and the wild, untamed twins, Emmeline and Adeline. But the house hides a chilling secret which strikes at the very heart of each of them, tearing their lives apart...
Now Margaret Lea is investigating Angelfield's past, and its mysterious connection to the enigmatic writer Vida Winter. Vida's history is mesmering - a tale of ghosts, governesses, and gothic strangeness. But as Margaret succumbs to the power…
I’m obsessed with the exploration of what it means to be a human being. We’re coming into an era where we see more characters who aren’t good or evil but both—they possess the potential to save someone from jumping off a bridge one day and beating someone the next. We’re all capable of the greatest acts of kindness and the most abominable atrocities imaginable. I believe we need to be reminded of that fact so that when there comes a time when we can decide whether to hurt or to help someone, we become the better version of ourselves and make the right decision.
I know, I know…this is a book you’re either going to love or hate, and it’s probably on a lot of lists. I love this book because before it was as common to “break the rules” and write frankly about taboo subjects, Katherine Dunn dove headfirst into an ocean of taboo and told a story that’s as exquisitely heart-wrenching as it is ghastly.
Despite her flaws (and I mean flaws in character–I don’t consider her physical traits to be flawed at all), the protagonist, Oly, is driven by devotion to her family as much as anything.
A National Book Award Finalist: This 'wonderfully descriptive' novel from an author with a 'tremendous imagination' tells the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias have bred their own exhibit of human oddities. (The New York Times Book Review)
The Binewskis arex a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities (with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes). Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan, Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins, albino hunchback Oly, and…
