Here are 100 books that The Butterfly Garden fans have personally recommended if you like
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I believe my love of horror and mystery started young. My first favorite book was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. I started writing my first mystery novel when I was in high school. It wasn’t very good, but I still have it. I have so many stories in my head that it’s hard to keep them straight. I also co-host a True Crime podcast, Nothing Happens in A Small Town.
If You Tell reads like a fiction mystery novel. I wasn’t paying attention when I started reading this, and I thought it was fiction. When I realized this book was based on a true story it bewildered me. You hear stories about people, how horrible they can be, but this mother had to be a fictional character – she’s not. She will give you nightmares.
A #1 Wall Street Journal, Amazon Charts, USA Today, and Washington Post bestseller.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen's shocking and empowering true-crime story of three sisters determined to survive their mother's house of horrors.
After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle's talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all,…
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,…
A missing child is every parent’s worst nightmare. Emotionally driven, tense, full of despair and hope, these stories captivate me. When I decided to include a cold case mystery of a toddler’s disappearance in my debut novel, I dove deep into both true crime and fictional novels on the subject. These books represent a range of gripping mysteries about not only finding missing children, but the scrutiny and heartache their mothers face. I hope you find these stories as absorbing, powerful, and suspenseful as I do!
The Couple Next Door is an addictive page-turner. It’s clever and creative, and nearly every chapter ends with a cliffhanger that practically requires you to keep reading.
Lapena pulls you into the frenzied search for the missing baby while casting doubt onto nearly every character. The use of multiple points of view ratchets up the tension. Entertaining and fast-paced, this is perfect as a beach read. Bonus points as this is a debut novel!
Another thrilling domestic suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Not a Happy Family
"The twists come as fast [as] you can turn the pages." -People
"I read this novel at one sitting, absolutely riveted by the storyline. The suspense was beautifully rendered and unrelenting!" -Sue Grafton
It all started at a dinner party. . .
A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors-a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .
I’m an October baby born during a full moon, into a small New England town notorious for their connection to the Salem Witch Trials. My house was for sure haunted growing up, I’ve had a lot of nightmares over the years, and I found solace in the horror genre. Though my true background is in comedy having studied with Second City Chicago, the experience afforded me the opportunity to explore the more pained and shadowed sides of myself as a tool to write relevant material. I learned to focus those explorations into narratives and create stories with a lot of heart that highlight my own quest to uncover inner peace.
The first full novel by Hill—who I secretly recognized as Stephen King’s son—takes his father’s traditions to a whole new level. I fell immediately in love with Hill’s twisted yet insightful storytelling.
An aging rockstar protagonist who sets out to confront his unsettling past and weird addiction to odd memorabilia? Yes, please. I’m in awe of Hill’s ability to pack more into a single sentence than most authors do in an entire chapter. He balances the pace of a face-melting guitar solo with the gentle tenderness of vulnerability as his characters struggle to understand their place in the world.
This book had me clutching the covers one moment and reaching for the tissues in the next.
He bought it, in the shape of the dead man's suit, delivered in a heart-shaped box, because he wanted it: because his fans ate up that kind of story. It was perfect for his collection: the genuine skulls and the bones, the real honest-to-God snuff movie, the occult books and all the rest of the paraphanalia that goes along with his kind of hard/goth rock.
But the rest of his collection doesn't make the house feel cold. The bones don't make the dogs bark; the movie doesn't make Jude feel…
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.
Of course, I’m including Gillian Flynn in this list. You may have expected her most popular novel, Gone Girl. I like that one, but this is my favorite of her works so far. In my opinion, it nudges out her other book, Sharper Objects (though that one is my wife’s favorite). I think it was her first book. It’s a dark story of a family with secrets, pain, and a moral decision that goes horribly wrong. Again, this one has a strong theme.
What if you could sacrifice everything to ensure your kids had a better life than you? Now, what if that sacrifice went horribly wrong and ruined not only your life but your kids as well? Flynn is a master of the thriller twist. She’s one of those authors who can lay out all the clues in plain sight for her readers without them even knowing it.…
'Eerily macabre... Wonderful' Guardian 'A nerve-fraying thriller' New York Times 'Every bit as horribly fascinating as In Cold Blood' Daily Mail
Libby Day was seven when her family was murdered: she survived by hiding in a closet - and famously testified that her older brother Ben was the killer.
Twenty-five years later the Kill Club - a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes - gets in touch with Libby to try to discover proof that may free Ben. Almost broke, Libby agrees to go back to her hometown to investigate - for a fee.
I believe my love of horror and mystery started young. My first favorite book was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. I started writing my first mystery novel when I was in high school. It wasn’t very good, but I still have it. I have so many stories in my head that it’s hard to keep them straight. I also co-host a True Crime podcast, Nothing Happens in A Small Town.
I thoroughly enjoyed It Ain’t Me Babe. I liked the clash of the main characters, he is a rebel, leader of a motorcycle club, and she is the complete opposite, a woman brought up in a religious cult. Two very different worlds collide. It’s a sexy, fun story to read, and I was engaged on every page.
Many years ago, two children from completely different worlds forged a connection, a fateful connection, an unbreakable bond that would change their lives forever…
Salome knows only one way to live—under Prophet David’s rule. In the commune she calls home, Salome knows nothing of life beyond her strict faith, nor of life beyond the Fence—the fence that cages her, keeps her trapped in an endless cycle of misery. A life she believes she is destined to always lead, until a horrific event sets her free.…
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.
If you’ve read any of my novels, you know I like my protagonists to be flawed. The more morally complex the main character, the better, in my opinion. And how can you get more morally questionable than an American who becomes a propagandist for the Nazi party during WWII? But wait. Is he a Nazi? Or is he just playing a part?
Another thing I love is when genre fiction has a larger moral theme that runs through it. What can I say? I don’t like to be preached at, but I do prefer stories with a strong point of view (whether I believe in it or not). And what bigger question can a book tackle than the one Vonnegut plays with inthis book? Are we what we pretend to be? If you’re a WWII buff, or even if you just enjoy peeking into the darkest reaches of human…
“Vonnegut is George Orwell, Dr. Caligari and Flash Gordon compounded into one writer . . . a zany but moral mad scientist.”—Time
Mother Night is a daring challenge to our moral sense. American Howard W. Campbell, Jr., a spy during World War II, is now on trial in Israel as a Nazi war criminal. But is he really guilty? In this brilliant book rife with true gallows humor, Vonnegut turns black and white into a chilling shade of gray with a verdict that will haunt us all.
I believe my love of horror and mystery started young. My first favorite book was The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree. I started writing my first mystery novel when I was in high school. It wasn’t very good, but I still have it. I have so many stories in my head that it’s hard to keep them straight. I also co-host a True Crime podcast, Nothing Happens in A Small Town.
This is a mystery within a mystery—an end-of-the-world survival story that slowly unfolds how the world's end happened. The mystery of a little girl found dead, but not from anything happening in the world. This book made me think about how I’d react in a similar situation. We all hope we’d be level-headed and survive. But as this book tells, you never know.
This propulsive post-apocalyptic thriller “in which Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None collides with Stephen King’s The Shining” (NPR) follows a group of survivors stranded at a hotel as the world descends into nuclear war and the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks.
Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic…
One of the joys of writing a mystery series is you have time to explore your characters—who they are, where they come from, what motivates them. In this particular series, I’d established a rift between the protagonist and her family, and I began to wonder whyit was there. My own sister died when still a baby, yet her absence cast a long, complicated shadow over our family for decades. I wanted to explore more about the family dynamics around a missing child—and kidnapping seemed the best tool to get there. So I read everything I could about kidnapping to present that absence in both intimate and compelling ways.
I love this book because it asks more questions than it answers.
Picoult’s approach is always about allowing the reader to enter deeply into what her characters are experiencing, and she handles the issue of kidnapping with the same grace and sensitivity she’s used in approaching other difficult and occasionally taboo subjects.
As Delia plans her wedding, she is plagued by flashbacks of a life she can't recall. What happens when you find out you aren’t who you thought you were? How do you make sense of the people you love and trust morphing into something more sinister? How can you reach for what you’ve always wanted when it means losing something else?
You’ll think about all this—and more—for a long time after you’ve closed the book.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'She is the master of her craft . . . and humanity is what Picoult does best' Sunday Telegraph
Andrew Hopkins lovingly raised his daughter Delia on his own, allowing her to believe that they lost Delia's mother in a car accident twenty-seven years ago.
But as Delia is preparing herself for the next chapter in her life, a policeman knocks on the door and reveals a terrible secret: that Andrew kidnapped his four-year-old daughter and led Delia's mother to believe she was dead.
As he sits behind bars, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that…
One of the joys of writing a mystery series is you have time to explore your characters—who they are, where they come from, what motivates them. In this particular series, I’d established a rift between the protagonist and her family, and I began to wonder whyit was there. My own sister died when still a baby, yet her absence cast a long, complicated shadow over our family for decades. I wanted to explore more about the family dynamics around a missing child—and kidnapping seemed the best tool to get there. So I read everything I could about kidnapping to present that absence in both intimate and compelling ways.
This memoir is both haunting and oddly inspirational.
On 10 June 1991, eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in Tahoe, California. It was the last her family saw of her for over eighteen years. In 2009 an investigation discovered her living in a tent behind her kidnapper’s house.
I love this memoir for a whole lot of reasons, but in large part because there’s not a trace of self-pity in her account—despite her having had so much of her life “stolen” from her—and because of her determination to find faith in humanity again.
A raw and powerful memoir of Jaycee Lee Dugard's own story of being kidnapped as an 11-year-old and held captive for over 18 years
On 10 June 1991, eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard was abducted from a school bus stop within sight of her home in Tahoe, California.
It was the last her family and friends saw of her for over eighteen years.
On 26 August 2009, Dugard, her daughters, and Phillip Craig Garrido appeared in the office of her kidnapper's parole officer in California. Their unusual behaviour sparked an investigation that led to the positive identification of Jaycee Lee Dugard, living…
