Here are 93 books that The Ridge fans have personally recommended if you like
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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.
A fellow New Englander, Tremblay took me by complete surprise with this novel. In the past, I saw horror defined by slashers, gore, and jump scares. This novel helped me understand that modern horror is a bit savvier and more nuanced, with a stronger focus on emotional suffering.
I really connected with the struggling working-class family and sympathized with their decision to let a documentary film crew create a series about their clearly struggling daughter. The film crew intended to market the girl as possessed by a demon, which the family signs off on in order to collect a desperately needed financial boost.
It expertly explores the hardships of the middle class, sibling love, and the societal hush-hush of mental illness. Plus, it’s got some twists and turns to that made my blood run absolutely cold.
The lives of the Barretts, a suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to halt Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show.Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls the terrifying events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets…
As well as being an author of horror and thriller fiction, I’ve been a teacher for over a decade. Over the years, I’ve played to my strengths, selecting and teaching some of the very best in both classic and contemporary horror. The power of narratives to hold and horrify is one of the most undying features of storytelling, from Ancient Greek theatre to modern thrillers, and I’m always on the lookout for authors who achieve this in new and innovative ways. The books on this list all instill dread in very different ways, but they all have one thing in common: they’ll stick with you long after you put them down.
If there’s one thing Joe Hill does well, it’s suspense.
There are moments of this book that had me bouncing on my seat as I was reading, unable to contain the sheer tension of the moment inside my body. I remember walking around with the book in front of my face at work, not able to put it down, needing to know what would happen next.
NOS4A2 is a great example of characters you really care about being put in the most terrifying situations and the way he uses bizarre and compelling settings, as well as really memorable set pieces, to build dread is on another level.
An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.
Anyone could be next.
We're going to Christmasland ...
NOS4R2 is an old-fashioned horror novel in the best sense. Claustrophobic, gripping and terrifying, this is a story that will have you on the edge of the seat while you read, and leaving the lights on while you sleep. With the horrific tale of Charles Manx and his Silver Wraith, Joe Hill has established himself as the premiere horror and supernatural thriller writer of his generation.
I grew up in a house filled with books as a son of educated, well-read parents. My mother was an English/French/Spanish teacher, and my father was an encyclopedia editor. Among all the books in our downstairs, there was a custom-built coffin bookcase my father kept stocked with his favorite horror novels. He died when I was eleven and in an effort to get to know him better, I started reading the books in that coffin. I was very quickly turned into a horror fan, and a few years later started writing horror stories myself. Every time I start writing another horror story, I know I’m my father’s son.
Straub is a master, but this title is often overlooked. It’s compact, completely engaging, and features some of the best dread-inducing moments I’ve ever read in a horror novel. His writing is a masterclass in dread, and as a writer I return to it often. Much as Tremblay uses the gimmick of reality TV in A Head Full of Ghosts to horrifying effect, Straub employs email in a creepy and sinister fashion.
A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son—beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill—vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death. After his sister-in-law’s funeral, Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No…
While attending college, I lived in a haunted house. This was before all the ghost-hunting shows and YouTube, so I didn’t know what I was seeing at night. During the year and a half of these experiences, I saw two distinct shadow figures and had other people living in the front of the house, as well as my roommate, confirm they, too, had seen and heard things that were unexplainable. This began my interest in the paranormal. After graduation, I became a law enforcement officer and have been a Police Detective for the last 21 years. I have explored haunted locations and seen spirits and other unexplainable things.
I chose my Stephen King books wisely. Reading his novels is an investment of time. Bag of Bones was worth it! It is a strange story about how the past and the present will always be interrelated and interactive.
I loved the way King used the hauntings of the past to explain the present. Excellent book!
When Mike Noonan's wife dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block. Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat called Sara Laughs.
Here Mike finds the once familiar town in the tyrannical grip of millionaire Max Devore. Devore is hell-bent on getting custody of his deceased son's daughter and is twisting the fabric of the community to this purpose.
Three year old Kyra and her young mother turn to Mike for help. And Mike finds them increasingly irresistible.
But there are other more sinister forces at Sara Laughs - and Kyra can feel them…
I have a passion for character bonds which come from my day-to-day “normal” life.
Outside of being a writer, I’ve been working at one of our city’s busiest hospitals for the past 7 years as a communications operator. Every day, I interact with people who are facing challenges, struggling, and in need of help. With that being said, I also interact with people who are supportive, grateful and overall happy. I find myself drawn to how people come together in both the good and the bad times.
In my opinion, you need to be able to relate to the characters in order for the story to become a success.
I loved this story for many reasons. The first thing that caught my attention was having a strong female lead. Her no-nonsense character was out of this world. She was relatable in many ways, especially with her black sheep antics. She had me caught up in some hilarious moments that had me in stitches.
The second thing was the murder mystery. This had me hooked right off the bat, wanting to know who the killer was. That really kept me intrigued throughout, and I couldn’t wait to see how it would all play out. Although I was upset to have finished this wonderful story, I was quite thrilled with how it ended.
The happiest day of Payton Lambert's life was the day she graduated high school and watched Bald Knob, Kentucky get smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror. She wanted more for her life than a tiny town where everyone knows your business and you can’t find a decent cup of coffee for at least forty miles. Twelve years later, an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night has her packing up her life in Chicago and racing back home to the one person she ever regretted leaving behind.Upon her return, she sees that Leo Hudson, the scrawny boy…
I am a historian based in Louisville, Kentucky. When I moved here two decades ago, I could tell the vibe was different than other places I had been. Southern—but not like Tennessee. Midwestern—but not like Illinois. So I started reading, and eventually writing, about the state’s history. I have a Ph.D. in United States history so I lean toward academic books. I like authors who dig into the primary sources of history and then come out and make an argument about the evidence that they uncovered. I also lean toward social and cultural history—rather than military history—of the Civil War.
When I moved to Kentucky many years ago, the large Confederate memorial on a downtown street was a puzzle to me because I knew that Kentucky had been a Union state. As one historian said many years ago, “Kentucky seceded after the war was over.” Marshall’s book walks us through that process. She covers everything from politics to postwar violence to children’s literature to the resistance efforts of Kentucky’s African Americans as she explains why those Confederate memorials and monuments went up all around the state.
Historian E. Merton Coulter famously said that Kentucky ""waited until after the war was over to secede from the Union."" In this fresh study, Anne E. Marshall traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that more Kentuckians fought for the North than for the South. Following the Civil War, the people of Kentucky appeared to forget their Union loyalties, embracing the Democratic politics, racial violence, and Jim Crow laws associated with formerly Confederate states. Although, on the surface, white Confederate memory appeared to…
I have been a journalist for over a decade, most frequently writing on the subjects of spirits, cocktails, and drinking culture for such publications as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Playboy, and VinePair. I have written 12 books—6 of them on booze—my latest of which is Dusty Booze: In Search of Vintage Spirits.
Booze books need not only to be filed all the way in the back of the bookstore in the “Food/Drink” section; the best deserve to be mainstream—and bestseller Pappyland proved that.
This is a dual memoir in some ways, following the rise, fall, and incredible rise again of the Van Winkle family and their grandfather Pappy’s vaunted and eponymous spirit, along with the story of Thompson reckoning with his own family lore and fatherhood.
“A warm and loving reflection that, like good bourbon, will stand the test of time.” —Eric Asimov, The New York Times
The story of how Julian Van Winkle III, the caretaker of the most coveted cult Kentucky Bourbon whiskey in the world, fought to protect his family's heritage and preserve the taste of his forebears, in a world where authenticity, like his product, is in very short supply.
Following his father’s death decades ago, Julian Van Winkle stepped in to try to save the bourbon business his grandfather had founded on the mission statement: “We…
As a lifelong Kentuckian with a lifelong fascination for history, true crime, biography, and the supernatural, once I started writing, I pursued these and related topics. The writer Charles Fort’s research methods interested me: he read old newspapers looking for forgotten stories. That seemed a good way to find little-known information. I am a lecturer in the English Department at Eastern Kentucky University and have spent two decades reading old newspapers issue by issue between classes and taking notes on possible stories. The books on my list also include much detail on entertaining obscurities, and I hope you enjoy them.
Eastern Kentucky’s long history of violence is well documented, so it is time the other end of the state is also represented.
Parker’s book examines the frontier serial killers the Harpe Brothers, feuds, moonshiners, and the Night Riders who terrorized farmers in the Black Patch tobacco wars—domestic terrorists not unlike the KKK. In modern times, we have the chilling story of Rod Ferrell and his murderous vampire cult.
My favorite story is “Murder Mansion,” about a 1948 Bowling Green crime with outlandish twists and turns.
Western Kentucky has always had a dark side, despite being the Birthplace of Bluegrass Music. Mary James Trotter, an arrested moonshine-selling grandma, remarked to a judge that she simply had to sell a little liquor now and then to take care of my four grandchildren. Rod Ferrell led a bloodsucking vampire cult in Murray, Kentucky, and traumatized parents of the 1990s. In the early morning of July 13, 1928, at the Castle on the Cumberland, seven men were put to death in Kentucky's deadliest night of state-sponsored executions. Join award-winning author Richard Parker as he takes you on a journey…
As a lifelong Kentuckian with a lifelong fascination for history, true crime, biography, and the supernatural, once I started writing, I pursued these and related topics. The writer Charles Fort’s research methods interested me: he read old newspapers looking for forgotten stories. That seemed a good way to find little-known information. I am a lecturer in the English Department at Eastern Kentucky University and have spent two decades reading old newspapers issue by issue between classes and taking notes on possible stories. The books on my list also include much detail on entertaining obscurities, and I hope you enjoy them.
Dark Highwayis the best piece ever written on one of the state’s most fascinating murder cases.
In November 1936, Gen. Henry Denhardt, prominent politician and former lieutenant governor, was suspected of shooting his fiancée Verna Garr Taylor (“the prettiest woman in two counties”). DAngelo uses an impressive array of sources to recreate what almost certainly happened.
The case strikes me as especially enigmatic since an elderly woman claimed to be the only surviving person who knew the truth behind the murder but swore she would never reveal it. As I recall, she died just after the book was published in 2016, so if she had information of value it is lost forever.
On a cold November night in 1936, the body of beautiful businesswoman Verna Garr Taylor is found in a ditch along a lonely highway in rural Kentucky. Verna has been shot through the heart, and fiancé, former lieutenant governor and brigadier general Henry Denhardt insists she committed suicide.
But the clues left behind point to murder, and General Denhardt quickly becomes the target of investigators. The general's sensational murder trial draws reporters from all over the country to the small Kentucky community. The case is featured in the New York Times, the London Herald, Newsweek, Time, Life, and other national…
My therapeutic journey with PTSD has been a long and bumpy road that I still work through to this day, close to fifteen years now. Given the silent suffering that so many go through, I feel that the more we talk about and advocate for seeking help the more people we can save. The common thread with my picks is resiliency. The characters face their symptoms and don’t give in to them. If a thriller novel can reach someone because they identify with the struggles discussed in the pages, then maybe that book can be the bridge to them finally getting the help they need.
Prior to being officially recognized, PTSD went by many names. Shell shock for World War I. Combat fatigue/exhaustion in World War II. Vietnam Veterans suffering after returning home were diagnosed with Vietnam syndrome or Post-Vietnam syndrome.
Morrell’s story and the subsequent film adaptation are the earliest recollections I have of a thriller novel and action movie incorporating, and accurately portraying, PTSD in veterans.
As a boy I loved the story of Rambo and the movie franchise. It’s what fueled my desire to become a Green Beret, and although I never made it into Special Forces, I still proudly served my country. It wasn’t until coming back from Iraq that First Blood really resonated with me on a whole new level.
Morrell paints acute and gripping depictions of what so many Vietnam Veterans experienced; homelessness, aimlessness, joblessness, the inability to reintegrate, flashbacks, anger, resentment, and…
From New York Times bestselling author, David Morrell, comes a classic thriller that introduced the character of Rambo, one of the most iconic action heroes of the twentieth century.
Called “the father of the modern action novel,” FIRST BLOOD changed the genre. Although the book and the film adaptation have similarities, they are very different, especially its unexpected ending and its greater intensity.If you’ve only experienced the film, you’re in for a surprise.
Once they were soldiers. Rambo, the ragged kid whose presence in town is considered a threat. And Teasle, the Chief of Police of Madison, Kentucky. Both have…
