Here are 97 books that The Monkey's Paw fans have personally recommended if you like
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My name is Annemarie and I’ve been reading stories almost as soon as I was taught how to read. I’ve also been writing them. My fascination with the supernatural came about, I guess because an active imagination for a small child comes almost naturally from a fear of the dark. The dark held many terrors for me, and in a perverse contrariness, this prompted an interest in supernatural beings. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all real, and the more we know about them, the better. Or at least, that’s what I deduce from my never flagging interest, and I guess that’s why there’s always an element of the supernatural/paranormal in all my stories.
I picked this book up from a second-hand street bookshop. It was the wisteria that did it. Something about those climbing vines made me fall right into the world of Lestat and Louis, and I’ve never fallen out again. Also, I love love, and there’s nothing more intriguing than three unrelated people/beings managing to stay together for sixty-five years.
Of course, there was murder and mayhem, but the love endured, and my secret romantic heart ate that shit up.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Anne Rice, this sensuously written spellbinding classic remains 'the most successful vampire story since Bram Stoker's Dracula' (The Times)
In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood.
When Interview with the Vampire was published the Washington Post said it was a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination . . . sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'. Now, more than forty years since its release, Anne…
An avid reader, I began a project in 2012 to read one short story a week in supernatural mysteries, ghost stories, and quiet horror genres. I began with the classic authors: Poe, MR James, Lovecraft, Shelley, Stoker, du Maurier, etc. I began a blog, Reading Fiction Blog, and posted these free stories with my reviews (I’m still posting today). Over the years, it turned into a compendium of fiction. Today, I have nearly 400 short stories by over 150 classic and now contemporary authors in the blog Index. I did this because I wanted to learn more about writing dark fiction and who better to learn from than the masters?
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.
Part of a new six-volume series of the best in classic horror, selected by Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water Guillermo del Toro
Filmmaker and longtime horror literature fan Guillermo del Toro serves as the curator for the Penguin Horror series, a new collection of classic tales and poems by masters of the genre. Included here are some of del Toro's favorites, from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Ray Russell's short story "Sardonicus," considered by Stephen King to be "perhaps the finest example of the modern Gothic ever written," to Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and stories…
Let me tell you a little about myself. I was born in Dublin, and being the daughter of a diplomat afforded me to experience different cultures. Since childhood my fascination with the unknown caused me to gravitate towards stories related to hauntings. I shared this interest with my maternal grandparents, who contributed to my education by telling me ghost stories (some true whilst others are fictional). Tales of haunted castles were my favorite, which is reflected in my book. In later life, my own experiences with the paranormal cemented the notion of the unexplained and the thin veil between us and those departed.
I strongly recommend this book as not only does it weave spooky images of ghostly events in one’s psyche, but couples it with fascinating phenomena such as telepathic communication and willpower. Furthermore, I was fascinated by the complex personality of the main protagonist, who allows himself to become victim of evil forces leading to a gradual descent into madness.
It also emphasises that social isolation in a remote place can have a detrimental impact on oneself and those close to you. I found the fight for survival in this tale riveting.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Before Doctor Sleep, there was The Shining, a classic of modern American horror from the undisputed master, Stephen King.
Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around…
I grew up reading dark fiction, and the only two books I kept from that period were The Wicked Heart and Whisper of Death, both by Christopher Pike. Though both were categorized as horror, the first is a crime mystery that partly follows the murderer, while the latter feels like an episode out of The Twilight Zone. I never cared for pure horror, and a book doesn’t have to scare me for me to find them enjoyable. What I often wanted was a tangible sense of dread paired with insight into the human psyche, which I believe makes for a more potent reading experience.
When Dr. Tenma sacrifices his social standing by defying orders to save a child, he takes comfort in the fact that he did the right thing. It’s not that he thinks one life is more important than the other; it simply happens that the boy was rushed in first with a gunshot wound in the head. Who wouldn’t put him ahead of all emergencies?
At the heart of Monster is a knot of ethical conundrums: are all lives equal? Who do we save? Who deserves to die? What happens if the right choice leads to the worse outcome? What do we do then? Do we try to undo the good that we did? Naoki’s Monster is as cynical as it is compassionate. It’s almost rare to find a brilliant psychological thriller with this much heart in it.
Johan is a cold and calculating killer with a mysterious past, and brilliant Dr. Kenzo Tenma is the only one who can stop him! Conspiracy and serial murder open the door to a compelling, intricately woven plot in this masterwork of suspense.
Everyone faces uncertainty at some point in their lives. Even a brilliant surgeon like Kenzo Tenma is no exception. But there's no way he could have known that his decision to stop chasing professional success and instead concentrate on his oath to save peoples' lives would result in the birth of an abomination. The questions of good and…
I grew up reading dark fiction, and the only two books I kept from that period were The Wicked Heart and Whisper of Death, both by Christopher Pike. Though both were categorized as horror, the first is a crime mystery that partly follows the murderer, while the latter feels like an episode out of The Twilight Zone. I never cared for pure horror, and a book doesn’t have to scare me for me to find them enjoyable. What I often wanted was a tangible sense of dread paired with insight into the human psyche, which I believe makes for a more potent reading experience.
How do witch hunts start? How do they keep? Who keeps them churning until all parties involved are dizzy, and only the accusers are innocent?
A group of girls in 1692 are caught dancing around a fire in the woods, trying to conjure spirits or cast spells. They discover they can escape retribution by blaming the slave, Tituba, which starts a slew of false accusations. Whenever the so-called prosecution comes close to the truth, whenever evidence is about to expose the girls’ elaborate lie, they scream, fall to hysterics amidst befuddled men, as if some witch is tormenting them, and so point out a fresh victim for the witch hounds to pursue. The biggest lark is that none of them are witches, and the only craft the girls weaved was condemning innocent lives to torture and eventually death. You have to wonder who’s to blame here: Abigail…
Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism.
I grew up reading dark fiction, and the only two books I kept from that period were The Wicked Heart and Whisper of Death, both by Christopher Pike. Though both were categorized as horror, the first is a crime mystery that partly follows the murderer, while the latter feels like an episode out of The Twilight Zone. I never cared for pure horror, and a book doesn’t have to scare me for me to find them enjoyable. What I often wanted was a tangible sense of dread paired with insight into the human psyche, which I believe makes for a more potent reading experience.
What a sensible-sounding title to a series that was anything but. David Lynch is famously known for avoiding explaining his work lest he kills the mystery, but not only did Frost deftly provide an explanation while keeping the mystery alive, he aggrandized the lore behind it into mythology.
The Secret History of Twin Peaks enlarges the world of the original series, placing the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale. The perfect way to get in the mood for the upcoming Showtime series.
I have long had an interest in government conspiracies and have spent hundreds of hours researching the many experiments our government has foisted upon an unsuspecting populous. When the Church Committee released info on Projects MK Ultra, Bluebird, Artichoke, and others, people were stunned to realize what had been going on. Movies such as The Matrix dealt with mind control and the attempt to create the perfect soldier, and I am convinced such research and experimentation continues today.
This novel has so many reasons to recommend it. It incorporates radical experimentation and horrifying surgeries being done in a bizarre hospital. To make it even more mysterious, there is a hurricane threatening the island which complicates the investigation of US Marshall Teddy Daniels searching for a patient who has disappeared.
I loved the creepy island hospital and the use of weather as a character.
The basis for the blockbuster motion picture directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island by New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane is a gripping and atmospheric psychological thriller where nothing is quite what it seems. The New York Times calls Shutter Island, “Startlingly original.” The Washington Post raves, “Brilliantly conceived and executed.” A masterwork of suspense and surprise from the author of Mystic River and Gone, Baby, Gone, Shutter Island carries the reader into a nightmare world of madness, mind control, and CIA Cold War paranoia andis unlike anything you’ve ever read before.
To understand why I write macabre stories, you could ask my therapist if I had one. I’ve had this bent since my mother read me Dr. Seuss’ What Was I Scared Of? (A title that inspired the title of my TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?) Blame it on her. My reading was dominated by the short stories I mentioned and magazines like Eerie and Creepy. I also consumed a steady diet of Twilight Zone and Saturday matinee horror movies. Why? I believe it’s because these stories offer imaginative conflicts that are far removed from reality yet told through the perspective of common experience. And they’re always wrapped in a compelling mystery.
Like Stephen King, Clive Barker has an impressive list of horror-themed novels for all tastes, ranging from fantasy to deeply disturbing and graphic horror tales like Books of Blood. This book skews more toward fantasy but still has its share of scares and disturbing imagery.
A young boy is sent on a whimsical and horrifying imaginative adventure. It’s like a modern-day Grimm fairy tale, right up my alley.
I am an avid Hispanist and have for a long time been fascinated by the mix of cultures in medieval Spain. Soon after 9-11, I was forced to take part in a barefoot ritual of security checks on arriving at Zaragoza airport to see something of the Moorish heritage there, and it hit me how important the way we tell the story of ‘Moors and Christians’ is to our own times. My own experience as a linguist and of living abroad made me particularly interested in people who are able to see both sides of a story and transfer between cultures. This is what I researched further in my Ph.D. in relation to the demise of Muslim Granada.
This is Andalusia at its most picturesque, with its castles and craggy mountains and a story with all the colour and brio of a medieval costume drama. It’s actually seriously researched history but written in the style of a romantic novel.
It was written in the mid-nineteenth century out of a fascination, which I share, for the story of the demise of the last Muslim kingdom in medieval Iberia. It’s full of heroic deeds, foolhardy escapades, chivalric episodes, and emotional scenes, all based on documentary evidence.
But what I especially like is the ironic stance the author achieves on the bigotry and intolerance characteristic of the victors in the conflict through the conceit of pretending his tale is written by a Spanish monk. It made me think about how history is written, who writes it, and how often we take for granted narratives that first emerged from political propaganda.
Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 - November 28, 1859) was an American author of the early 19th century. Best known for his short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip van Winkle (both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon), he was also a prolific essayist, biographer and historian. Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving is said to have encouraged authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also the U.S. minister to Spain 1842-1846.
I’m a devourer of Golden Age Detective Fiction, and a writer of locked-room mysteries inspired by the classics. When it comes to old-school mystery writers, my favourites are John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and of course Agatha Christie. What I love about that era is the brilliance of the puzzles, and the way those writers really engaged with the reader and (in some cases) addressed them directly, challenging them to solve the crime along with the detective. Additionally, I’m fascinated by stage illusions (though I’m terrible at performing them myself), and this has also had a major influence on my writing.
This book captures just about everything I love about the mystery genre.
It’s a locked-room mystery set in a snowbound cabin, where a group of city slickers find themselves confronted with a seemingly supernatural entity: the Wendigo. Rim of the Pit has a tangible sense of dread, which is something you don’t often find in Golden Age mysteries, but at the same time it’s a masterclass in logic and misdirection.
It certainly taught me a lot about creating suspense but also about planting clues – lessons I’ve put to use in my own books.
The cult classic mystery that John Dickson Carr hailed as “a marvel of ingenuity.”
“I came here to make a dead man change his mind.”
So begins a creepy and unusual mystery celebrated to this day as one of the greatest “impossible crime” novels of all time. When a family’s promise to protect the beloved pine grove of their dead father creates a financial strain, a seance is suggested to summon the ghost of the late logger and ask its permission. A mixed group of skeptics and believers convene at a snow-bound lodge to call the spirit with a group…
