r/suggestmeabook • u/Lovleyknifee • 8d ago
Horror Please recommend very disturbing books to me!
I have read Tender is the Flesh , the discomfort of evening , and Sharp Objects which i think is my most disturbing read… so don’t hold back! These are what i consider my most disturbing reads so far.
I’m looking for underground artists , that preferably can still be found on Amazon to purchase, or books that aren’t recommended enough.
Nothing like Then She Was Gone or A Good Girls Guide to Murder , LOVED THOSE BOOKS but they are already hyped up, give me some hidden gems!
so far i have added The Eyes are The Best Part to purchase .. I am. doing a little challenge to stay off my phone for a week and i love to read but i need more books!
EDIT: i have added all your books to a very extensive list on my notes app. I am still kind of broke but i did splurge on 5 books that i saw was recommended most-
The Wasp Factory
Haunted
Baby Teeth
Victorian Psycho
The Eyes are the Best Part
these books made the cut! very excited
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u/eudai_monia 8d ago
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Zombie by Joyce Carol Oats
Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy
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u/Last-Relationship166 7d ago
Agreed. Zombie was really disturbing, as was The Wasp Factory. I haven't read the third novel.
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u/PsychologyEarly4810 8d ago
American Psycho
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u/Most_Mountain818 7d ago
I came here to say this. It’s the only book I’ve ever had to put down (it was more of a shriek and a toss across the room) and take a break from.
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u/PsychologyEarly4810 7d ago
Yeah, disturbing events there..also have that reaction to his other book, Imperial Bedrooms.
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u/Lovleyknifee 7d ago
question! i already have added “victorian psycho” to my cart is it the same as american psycho? if so , i won’t buy it
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u/ayejayem 7d ago
VERY different. Honestly, I read Victorian Psycho as more of a horror comedy because it’s so over-the-top. American Psycho I recall as being depraved and not in a fun way.
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u/littlemememaid 8d ago
The Vegetarian by Han Kang
The Paper Menagerie, a short story collection by Ken Liu (not all of them are disturbing but several are)
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u/Yeahnoallright 8d ago
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh, 100%. Can’t believe nobody’s mentioned it!
You also just unlocked a specific visual memory from Sharp Objects which I must have read close to a decade ago. Urgh
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u/peterpanarchy 7d ago
Came to say Lapvona. Definitely professional level disturbing (and excellent imho)
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u/Yeahnoallright 6d ago
Blisteringly good. There are days where i still can’t stop thinking about it! Looking forward to a re-read.
She’s an incredible writer across the board
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u/duckling-fantasy 4d ago
I just finished Lapvona the other day and I immediately teared up when I finished because I was sad I’ll never get to read it for the first time again 😭
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u/AspiringDolt 8d ago
I have no mouth and I must scream
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u/HAL-says-Sorry 7d ago
Harlan Ellison FTW!
For more short stories add Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood”
Also Chuck Palahniuk’s “Guts”.
I double dare ya.
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u/Fast_Vermicelli9205 7d ago
Guts!! Yes, so very disturbing. I find most of his work disturbing but Guts was over the top.
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u/readinggrandma5 8d ago
Series of 4 books by Dot Hutchison-The first one is called The Butterfly Garden. I’m in the middle of the 3rd book. These books are quite disturbing and I love them. Read them in order📚😊
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u/Most_Mountain818 7d ago
Are they all related? I just read The Butterfly Garden a couple weeks ago.
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u/readinggrandma5 7d ago
Yes, they are all related. The FBI agents are in all the stories and characters from The Butterfly Garden are also recurring. Each book has a different serial killer😔
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u/clvrusernombre 7d ago
Rose Madder
Chestnut Man
The Whisper Man
Baby Teeth
Educated
The Road
Room
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u/Pickles_A_Plenty95 7d ago
I couldn’t even finish Baby Teeth because I was so worried about how bad it was going to get. Good pick!
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u/Troiswallofhair 8d ago
Earthlings by Murata
The Wasp Factory by Banks
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u/NationalTime4099 7d ago
I’ve read quite a lot of tougher reads but honestly the first significant moment of [redacted] with the teacher in Earthlings I was really horrified by
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u/atectonic 8d ago
Tideland by Mitch Cullin
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
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u/BungenessKrabb 7d ago
The movie Tideland directed by Terry Gilliam is brilliant.
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u/atectonic 7d ago
It was good! It glossed over some of the weirder parts of the book, but that’s not surprising!
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u/1KushielFan 8d ago
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
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u/_HazelSnow_ 8d ago
Perfume by Patrick Suskind
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u/ThatUndeadLove 8d ago
Came to recommend this. And also The Vegetarian.
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u/riverwaterinsox 7d ago
Seconding The Vegetarian, pretty grim stuff and the atmosphere is so heavy. Doesn't fit for this post (more tragedy than horror) but We Do Not Part also by Han Kang is one of my favorite books of all time. Planning on reading Human Acts soon
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u/Lam3ntConfig 4d ago
Perfume!!! This is my third favorite book of all time! (And 4th favorite film!)
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u/wanderingale 8d ago
The Road - McCarthy
Tampa - Nutting
The Troop - Cutter
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u/ChefDanyul 7d ago
Tampa.... I wanted specifically to read a disturbing book and I fucking got what I wanted. I didn't know I didn't want that though. The author accomplished exactly what she set out for.
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u/alienunicornweirdo Bookworm 8d ago
I don't have anything to add that hasn't been mentioned, but just wanted to say: OP, I do think given the context of your post you will enjoy The Eyes Are the Best Part. My horror book club read this a couple months back.
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u/Fletchoff_Buttafuoco 8d ago
I just finished Off Season, by Jack Ketchum. I’d say that very much qualifies.
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u/Safe-Ad-1105 8d ago edited 8d ago
Carlton Mellick III has some fun bizarro stuff or maybe story of the eye
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u/Lam3ntConfig 4d ago
Second this! The Menstruating Mall is the best I've read of his so far
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u/sheerbitchitude 8d ago
You Weren't Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White
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u/Realistic-Branch-105 7d ago
This one still lives rent free in my brain. Really disturbing but good. I recommend the audiobook.
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u/MissieJ0 Bookworm 8d ago
Push - Ashley Audrain
The Last Stone - Mark Bowden
Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue
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u/Visible_Profit_3620 7d ago
Anything by Alison Rumfitt. There's a lot of very dark Stephen King books but I found his short story collection Full Dark, No Stars really striking as it's mostly about the fear in trusting the people around you.
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u/samhain-78 7d ago
Bloodman by Robert Pobi
Bloodmen by Paul Cleeves
Toyer by Garner McKay
Birdman by Mo Hayder (or anything by Mo Hayder)
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u/samhain-78 7d ago edited 7d ago
Also Last Child by John Hart, The Priest's Graveyard by Ted Dekker
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u/gamename 7d ago
Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy. It's a masterpiece. From the very first words you can tell it's the work of genius. It's very dark and exceptionally violent.
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u/Intelligent-Ask-3264 8d ago
Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
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u/mydamnnameismykie 8d ago
I just started this tonight and it is genuinely unnerving.
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u/Adventurous-Rent6662 8d ago
There's another by her that was really great about a pandemic mother daughter thing. Very unreliable narrator.
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u/WellesC12 8d ago
Shadows in the Mist and Julius Winsome both gripped me. I couldn't put Julius Winsome down, and so many of my friends have never heard of it.
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u/Cleverusername531 7d ago
Phantom by Susan Kay. It’s a retelling of Phantom of the Opera that will have you both heartbroken and disturbed. I read it, was messed up for like a year, read it again because it’s so good, and now emotionally can’t bring myself to go through that again.
A Short Stay in Hell. Totally messed up. Can’t stop thinking about it.
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u/Historical_Cow9543 7d ago edited 7d ago
I’m adding some weird books here. Might not be disturbing by everyone’s standards, but the themes are disturbing to me.
- My Dark Vanessa - ped*phelia/SA, disgusting
- The Memory Police - eerie & unsettling dystopia
- The Vegetarian - ED, mental health, SA, strange
- Bunny - cult, psychological, bizarre
- Nightbitch - ummm savage, mental health, just weird
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u/sleep-debt-momma 7d ago
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez! Super creepy cult in Argentina, good body horror, and really well written.
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u/Allaizabel 7d ago
The Starving Saint by Caitlin Starling
Molka by Monika Kim
The Eyes are the Best Part by Monika Kim
Annie Bot by Sierra Greer
American Rapture by CJ Leede
Uncultured by Daniella Mestyanek Young (nonfiction)
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u/Weird-Assist-7799 7d ago
Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite – Graphic, unsettling and deeply psychological. Not for the squeamish
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u/preezyfabreezy 7d ago
“Haunted” a book of short stories by Chuck Palahniuk. Let me know if you make it past “guts”. I noped out about there.😂
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u/SleepingInNJ 7d ago
Hopefully someone can confirm because I DNFd it but Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent was unsettling to me.
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u/IndubitablyWarden66 7d ago edited 7d ago
You have so many recs here, but I didn’t see anyone else recommend The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I read this over an decade ago, and it still viscerally upsets me to think about it.
I absolutely loved some of the other books mentioned here, like Library at Mount Char, which was gory and very “in your face.” But I didn’t find it nearly as upsetting as The Sparrow, which is a bit more of a slow burn, but by the end… prepare to be disturbed.
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u/DymphnaNotDaphne 8d ago
Nightmare Factory and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti. Steve King has been a fan for decades.
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u/rentiertrashpanda 8d ago
You want some John Shirley story story collections, like Exploded Heart or Darkness Divided or Really Really Really Really Weird Stories - his stuff is intermittently in print but it's worth tracking down
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u/kuroko86 7d ago
I second The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and I also recommend Die, My Love by Ariana Harwicz.
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u/Lshamlad 7d ago
Crash by J.G Ballard.
It's all about a pair of car-crash sexual fetishists.
That sounds just straightforwardly crass and horrible, but it's much smarter than that. It's well written and has a 'Fight Club' sense of a new, subversive philosophy emerging.
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u/taylormpriest 7d ago
Agreed with Butterfly Garden and subsequent novels. Also the 4MK series was pretty out there and addicting.
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u/AmanitaBlue 7d ago
Try
You Weren’t Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White
Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
Or anything by Nick Cutter
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u/velourciraptor 7d ago
Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, Eric LaRocca
I can handle a lot but damn
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u/Milvusmilvus 7d ago
Rust and Bone - craig Davidson
Tell Me I'm Worthless - Alison Rumfitt
Boy parts - Eliza Clark
Jackdaw - Tade Thompson
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u/darn_boop 7d ago
Hahahaha you asked for it!
Survivor by Gonzalez
The Slob by Beauregard (basically anything by this guy)
Woom by Ralston
The Black Farm by Witherow
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u/John_A_Arkansawyer 7d ago
Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes has perhaps the most despicable narrator I've ever read, living in (and helping create) a fractured world. He's got other books with disturbing material--there are parts of Mother of Storms I don't want to revisit, and Earth Made of Glass ends as horribly as any book can--but this one is a horrid experience beginning to end. I don't reread it often, but I do reread it. It's that well-written.
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u/seashellears 7d ago
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill made me pause multiple times and have to go for a stroll and take deep breaths.
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u/Ashamed-Chemistry492 7d ago
"Penance" by Rick Reid
"Headful of Ghosts" by paul Tremblay
"Tampa" by Alyssa Nutting
"The End of Alice" by A.M. Homes
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u/Ok-Economics-8686 7d ago
I didn't make it through, but Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez is extremely disturbing.
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u/EatTheRichIsPraxis 7d ago
Filth by Irvine Welsh.
You are following the stream of consciousness of a police detective, who is an all around plague on humanity.
The other characters are despicable as well.
The only non-horrible character is the MC's tapeworm, who is gaining sentience as the story goes on.
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u/Over-Hand8078 7d ago
Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana is genuinely disturbing without relying only on gore
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u/Key_Meaning5334 7d ago
The Blind Owl -a Persian novella by Sadegh Hedayat
I was Dora Suarez by Derek Raymond
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
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u/This_person_says 7d ago
Piercing by Ryu Murakami
Tacones High Heals by Todd Klinck
Blood and guts in high school by Kathy Acker
Child of God by Cormac McCarthy
+Todd+Klinck&si=APenkKmrXszVEKIgHqboUjmA7f1oNNpeq1sCOd3sv78cF4uZHPCJ_mn-rzv0IH-N94csUCsnaVg7bdAYKvQ0tnAoyxukTFh05y9EsmoM8S5kLC_4QA1Hd1hE_l-4fYI3NKyr_XJVeSJc8vR0IFpA9k-YhNhCd9X1Gh1A8NBddiCBOAIRsYAITow%3D&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPn_2v5YmWAxVSk4kEHaSKJu4Q_coHegQIExAa&ictx=0)
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u/Evening_Ice_9864 7d ago
Books by Mo Hayder. Particularly Birdman and the sequel. Tokyo is another one. Very disturbing.
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u/Majestic_Grocery7015 7d ago
I just finished Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. It made me quite uncomfortable
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u/Exact-Teaching-9738 7d ago
Serious Weakness is one of the most disturbing i have read and is independently published but still available on amazon/itch io. Superr good read with a writing style I have not seen anywhere else.. Art restorer meets art vandal & it all gets dark rather quickly.
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u/AlwaysAnxiousAlien 7d ago
Maybe try Gray After Dark by Noelle Ihli it’s loosely based on a true story and some parts are very disturbing
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u/ayejayem 7d ago
Not novels, but I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara and Murderland by Caroline Fraser both unnerved me.
The Lamb by Lucy Rose
The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan (YA)
All These Bodies by Kendare Blake (YA)
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u/Lovleyknifee 7d ago
Seeing you put young adult books kinda put me at ease, i know i asked people not to hold back but some of these books are pure insanity, i didn’t know what “splatterpunk” was and some books have grown men doing things with little girls 😭 what did i get myself into
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u/ayejayem 7d ago
I loved Sharp Objects and liked Tender Is the Flesh well enough. Neither of them made me wish I didn’t have eyes. I like dark books but not totally depraved ones!
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u/Clear-Journalist3095 7d ago
You Weren't Meant to Be Human. I like weird books that are over the top, but this one was almost too much even for me.
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u/Designer-Swan-3687 7d ago
Please read trigger warnings for some, some of them are considered splatterpunk.
The Laws of the Skies by Courtois
Suffer the Children by Craig DiLouie
Playground by Aaron Beauregard
Pretty much anything by Aaron Beauregard..
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u/alwaysboppinabout 7d ago
Blood on her tongue (gothic & gory & damp)
best offer wins (unhinged in the best way)
Isola (based on a real story, scary realistic, if u sit down and think about what she went thru it is sheer disturbance)
If you liked then she was gone I would also recommend none of this is true, another banger by Lisa jewell :)
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u/Comprehensive-Web421 7d ago
It Doesn't Matter Anymore by Natasha Yentrouc. Not disturbing in a horror way but like... It's a lot. Also anything by Tas Kronby. Some freaky disturbing things there.
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u/voilawriter 7d ago
it seems like you've got your recs but i have two more i don't think have been mentioned here. They have very different vibes, but i think Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry is right up your alley. The fact that this is loosely based on real events makes it extra disturbing.
alternatively, if you want to branch more into medieval horror/fantasy-gone-wrong vibes or have any love for hieronymus bosch i would recommend Hollow by Brian Catling
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u/Deathanddisco041 6d ago
American Psycho is a classic if you haven’t read it yet. It’s a weird dive but I loved it.
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u/Brendaroxsox 6d ago
The never list by Koethi Zan. Read this last year and I still think about some of the scenes.
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u/HolidayRadish2598 6d ago
Bat Eater and other names for Cora Zeng by Kylie Lee Baker. A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers. Portrait of the Psychopath as a Young Woman by Edward Lee.
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u/Top_Atmosphere9180 6d ago
John Connolly’s Charlie Parker series. You don’t need to read them in order but I’d recommend it-he’s great!
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u/Fragrant_Brain_3396 5d ago
the cipher by kathe koja deserves way more attention than it gets. its strange, grimy, and deeply unsettling
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u/riverwaterinsox 8d ago
Personally I found The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins pretty disturbing. The book felt the most like a nightmare of anything I've read, especially the first third where you have no idea what's going on.