100 books like The Barn

While I am a tremendous fan of Daphne DuMaurier’s uncanny short stories, in particular, The Birds and Don’t Look Now, I reserve my greatest love and admiration for her modern Gothic masterpiece Rebecca.

While Alfred Hitchcock’s film version is justifiably a classic, it cannot capture the richness of DuMaurier’s prose nor the powerful first-person perspective of the narrator, the unnamed newlywed of a wealthy widower who finds herself cursed to always be in the shadow of his first wife, the eponymous Rebecca. It also can’t quite evoke the oppressive atmosphere of Manderley, silent and secretive, ancient and beautiful, the gilded cage of a mansion ruled over by a domineering housekeeper, the unforgettable Mrs. Danvers. 

I discovered Summer when I first moved to the Berkshires, and it quickly became my favorite of all Wharton’s novels. From the opening scene in which a playful June breeze whisks the hat off a young man, catching the attention of a local girl, I was captivated by this story of young love played out against a month of languid, sunny days filled with flowers, green grass, and leafy trees. But as summer edges into fall, the love story falters, giving way to a chilling encounter on The Mountain that has shadowed Wharton’s sensuously described landscape all along. 

I was drawn to this book because it’s loaded with atmosphere, and features hill folk like I do, with the difference that McCrumb’s characters inhabit the hills of Tennessee, while mine live in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. I especially like the way she weaves local lore and legends into the story, and how she reveals how the landscape appears to different characters, ranging from a long-ago woman, kidnapped by Indians who escapes and makes her way homeward, to a modern-day non-hillbilly who struggles to re-create her difficult journey. Then, there’s the way McCrumb adds a dash of the supernatural through a character with psychic powers—all of which have been grist to my fictional mill.

India Hill Brown is masterful in weaving together history and ghosts into this book.

When two friends stumble across a crumbling gravestone, they soon bring about the attention of its occupant, Avery, who happens to be a black girl who died at the time when even cemeteries were segregated.

If you want a lesson in history and diversity, as well as a spooky ghost story that will scare the pants off you—don’t forget The Forgotten Girl. 

I love that this book incorporates riddles and haiku!

Kids can turn the pages and travel through the seasons (spring through winter) in an illustrated playful guessing game. “I am a wind bird/ sky skipper, diamond dipper,/ dancing on your string.” If you guessed a kite, you are right! A clever combination of art, riddles, and poetry wrapped up in a beautiful picture book package.

Spoiler Alert: Lion of the Sky is a firework!  Wow! 

I was in second grade when I first read this Robert Frost poem in our classroom textbook. There was one magnificent illustration of a horse in a dark, snowy forest, with big snowflakes falling that captured my imagination. I was entranced by the language and images and remember memorizing the poem to recite. In 1978 Susan Jeffers illustrated the poem as a picture book, with evocative gray and white drawings. A later edition added some color. In this case, the beauty of the text is such that no illustrations are needed, but it is lovely to see the snowy village, the narrator stopping to make a snow angel, and the snow-laden tree branches. A great introduction to the poems of Robert Frost, who called this poem “my best bid for remembrance.” (Just FYI, you can listen to a recording of Robert Frost reading this poem on YouTube.) 

Eric Fisher has been Chief Meteorologist at WBZ-TV in Boston since April 2013, and was an on-camera meteorologist for The Weather Channel before that. In this 2021 book, Fisher is able to strike the perfect balance between the “what’s so” and the “why” behind these historic storms (as well as with other types of natural disasters affecting New Englanders). This rare quality, augmented by his meticulous research of historical accounts of these events, including the impressive array of meteorological records broken along the way, enables him to present an enjoyable, educational read—especially for the interested layperson. 

I love this book because it features urbex (urban exploration) and I've done a bit of that myself; some of my previous books were about it. Much of the story is centred around the disused Blackwater Asylum, an enormous complex of wards and treatment rooms with only a skeleton staff of security guards. Everyone associated with Blackwater has their own secrets, from the former patient who lives within the grounds to the property developer with his eye on the land, and we follow Detective Lew Kirby and urban explorer Connie Darke as they try to unravel the crimes that have taken place there. There is mystery aplenty, but what really made this book for me were the locations. The bone jar itself – which I am not going to describe! Go and read the book! – is absolutely stunning and completely original. 

Perhaps it says something about where I live now that the best novel I’ve read that takes place in the San Fernando Valley is largely told through an unreliable and chemically addled narrator. Through a self-medicating veteran named Shep and the people he encounters – from a convenience store clerk to an actress he believes to be his daughter – Kinney conjures an often bleak but never hopeless vision of the Valley. In her hands, familiar sights to us Valley residents take on unnerving new contexts, and for any readers unfamiliar with the 818, her brilliant, hypnotic, and compassionate writing will be an exemplary guide.

This story stands out from other children’s books because it is told wordlessly entirely with photographs.

The stuffed bear Hank, as the title suggests, finds an egg and has to figure out where it belongs. The details in the real sets are a joy to see and the story is told effortlessly with wonderful studio photographs.