100 books like The Phantom of the Opera

I read this book so many years ago, but it has stayed with me. It struck me then, as it does now, as revolutionary in that it was one of the first retellings of the Arthurian myth from the female perspective.

I took a class on Arthurian Literature in university, and the tales of the period are obviously male-dominated. But The Mists of Avalon showed me a way into the female characters in the tale, and they are fascinating.

This inventive novel is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, but what I enjoyed most about it is the portrayal of the “Fairy Folk” of myth. The Fae.

In most myths, we encounter the dark side of the Fae, the gruesome and frightening side. In modern times we have reduced these creatures to flower fairies. What I loved about this novel is that Maas sticks with the dangerous and malevolent portrayal of these immortals, and she weaves a beautiful mythic tale into their world.

I had stopped reading children’s and teen fiction for a couple of years, for the first time in my half a century of life, and then I read A Curse So Dark and Lonely.

There’s a different sort of adventure here, and I think I related to Harper a little bit extra because I have a chronic illness and when it flares up, my limp is so very obvious. It felt good to see magic + that realism.

The combination of magic, a protagonist I could connect to, and fairy tale elements made me start opening the covers of other books I’d bought and shelved.

Have you ever read Dracula and thought, “What if the vampire were a lady? An extremely gay lady?” That’s Carmilla in a nutshell!

The story actually predates Bram Stoker’s tale by several years, making it a neat little literary artifact on its own, but this isn’t some dry historical text. It is, in fact, super heckin’ horny, to the point that I would strongly advise against listening to the audiobook with, say, your parents or other unsuspecting cishets in the room. It’s gonna get awkward.

It’s also fairly short, making for an easy, steamy bedtime read for anyone who’d like to imagine themself as a waifish little lass ravaged nightly by your lesbian vampire BFF. 

“I wanted to be alone in my room and glad over it all to myself.” In the framing story, two Victorian gents struggle to decipher the hidden meanings of a teenage girl’s diary they have recently uncovered. Partially written in a secret language, that could equally derive from folklore sayings or teen slang, the contents appear to hint at an inauguration into pagan rituals and witchcraft in the nearby woods. A unique attempt to conjure a dark magic out of the missing memories of childhood, this novella explores both the excitement and peril of keeping your first secrets. “I was afraid something had happened to me…”

The other recommendations on my list are titles that will help you if you want to calm yourself down, maybe even get some sleep, whilst staying in a haunted house. But maybe you want to lean into the atmosphere. If that’s the case, you need M. R. James. 

His ghosts are rarely glimpsed clearly, you get troubling hints of their appearance, or you just see the horrible things they have done to their victims, and that makes them all the more terrifying. In these stories, anything could turn on you: a doll’s house, your Latin homework, the advert you see on your daily commute. Proceed with caution.

This list would not be complete if I did not include one of Lovecraft’s books, as he is a true icon of the macabre, having created his own pantheon of Gods. He inspired Anne Rice, Clive Barker, and Stephen King to name a few. His stories are unique, entrenching, groundbreaking, and stay embedded within you long after you’ve read them. Horror fans know him well, but to most people who aren’t familiar with his name, they actually inadvertently know about his work. John Carpenter’s The Thing is based on Lovecraft’s In the Mountains of Madness. The character Pennywise from It is based on Lovecraft’s ideas of “outer gods” and evil beings that exist in dimensions outside of normal human experience. 

The Lurker at the Threshold remains my favorite story because it encompasses everything Lovecraft wrote about – unspeakable revelations, fractured characters, and boundaries of space and time. To me,… show more.

A young musicologist (that’s a real word—musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music from a historic, cultural or systemic approach, as opposed to the study of music performance) is given some pieces of an uncredited but gorgeous sonata and must travel to Prague to figure out who wrote it. Beautifully written with tons of information about music and Prague through WWII, the Velvet Revolution (when the Communist party gave up and left), and life there today. I’d researched the city myself for a book which allowed me to play tour guide when my family visited. It’s #1 on my list of places I want to go back to when I can spend more time.

In July of 1980, a beautiful violinist disappeared during a 45-minute break while the visiting ballet company used a prerecorded piece. Helen Hagnes Mintiks was a Julliard grad who had played with professionals since her teens. After the evening’s performance ended, her colleagues knew—as any musician would—that Helen would never have left the building without her violin. It took another nine hours to find her body, thrown down a ventilation shaft, hands tied with knots that stagehands used. A witness led them to the killer, who promptly confessed—a real villain, robbing the world of a kind-hearted talent out of lust. I read this book probably 30 years ago, while I was reading my way through the entire true crime section of the Cleveland Public Library. 

Lucille Kallen was an amazing TV writer but only wrote five of her cozy mysteries starring small-town, middle-aged reporter Maggie Rome who served as an Archie Goodwin for her cerebral boss, editor C. B. Greenfield. They were all witty and fun, but this one centers around the very real Boston Symphony Orchestra and their summer rehearsal space, Tanglewood music center near the MA-NY border. Expansive hills, the petty rivalries of professionals, and a not-often-used method of murder make this book a must for any mystery lover. Plus, the author was clearly as adoring of Ravel as I am, which is why this slim volume still has a place on my bookshelf after 30-plus years.