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The Best Books on Evil People, Hidden Darkness, and Twisted Minds
34
items Explore the theme of evil—whether through the actions of malevolent individuals, hidden darkness in everyday life, or philosophical and psychological explorations of what "evil" really means.
Sections
11
What's the Difference Between a Psychopath and a Sociopath?
Signs You Work with a Sociopath
The Banality of Evil and Bureaucratic Complicity
People who do evil things generally don’t consider themselves evil
Psychological Portraits of Evil People 🧠
The Darkness Beneath the Ordinary (Evil in Everyday Life) 🏡
What's the Difference Between a Psychopath and a Sociopath?
Sociopath is a term people use, often arbitrarily, to describe someone who is apparently without conscience and is hateful or hate-worthy. The term psychopath is used to convey a sociopath who is simply more dangerous, like a mass murderer.
Psychopaths are classified as people with little or no conscience but are able to follow social conventions when it suits their needs. sociopaths have a limited, albeit weak, ability to feel empathy and remorse. They're also more likely to fly off th...
Is He a Sociopath or a Psychopath? Here's How to Tell
Signs You Work with a Sociopath
A sociopath has erratic behavior, is unreliable, lies for no apparent reason, and takes risks
Charming and superficial only to people that can give them something such as power, money, or empathy. To everyone else, they are cold, distant, and aloof as if those people don't exist | Completely lacking in emotion or the ability to empathize with... Doesn't remain in a job for too long, constantly changes career paths, and is frequently fired | Commits illegal activity because they can.
They seemed charming, intelligent, balanced, sexy, and effortlessly harmless. Most often, however, this personality acts as a front.
The Banality of Evil and Bureaucratic Complicity
How ordinary individuals can become complicit in evil acts through bureaucratic systems
"Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The name... In the essay, Churchill used the phrase to describe technocrats working at the World Trade Center: If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.
Little Eichmanns
People who do evil things generally don’t consider themselves evil
Most of them regard themselves as good people who are trying to defend themselves as the good guys fighting against the forces of evil.
People often tend to minimize the harmful impact of what they are doing or rationalize their reasons (even if motivated primarily by the simple desire for material gain or by threatened egotism), often seeing their action as much less of a big deal t...
People often tend to minimize the harmful impact of what they are doing or rationalize their reasons
Psychological Portraits of Evil People 🧠
The minds of individuals who do terrible things—cold, calculated, or disturbingly ordinary.
Shriver’s resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them reverberates with the haunting power of high hopes shattered by dark r...
We Need to Talk about Kevin| Lionel Shriver
In this modern classic, the acclaimed author of The Shards explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other. Patrick Bateman moves among the young and trendy in 1980s Manhattan. Young, han...
American Psycho | Bret Easton Ellis
A psychological analysis of evil individuals who disguise their malevolence behind a mask of normalcy. People who are evil attack others instead of facing their own failures. Peck demonstrates the havoc these people of the lie work in the lives of th...
People of the Lie | M. Scott Peck
The Darkness Beneath the Ordinary (Evil in Everyday Life) 🏡
Stories where evil lurks beneath a normal, polite, or seemingly harmless surface
One of the darkest, most nightmarish stories of the twentieth century, Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” created a sensation when it was first published in 1948. This lucid tale of a sleepy town’s annual lottery—and the monstrous desires it awakens—end...
The Lottery and Other Stories | Shirley Jackson
An essential collection of classic stories that established Flannery O’Connor’s reputation as an American master of fiction—now with a new introduction by New York Times bestselling author Lauren Groff In 1955, with the title story and others in this...
A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories | Flannery O'Connor,
A suburban paradise that hides something deeply sinister. For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret — a sec...
The Stepford Wives | Ira Levin
Psychological suspense where manipulation, obsession, and secrets quietly ruin lives. With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling ...
Rebecca | Daphne du Maurier
An exploration of how sociopaths operate in everyday life, often undetected. In the pages of The Sociopath Next Door, you will realize that your ex was not just misunderstood. He’s a sociopath. And your boss, teacher, and colleague? They may be socio...
The Sociopath Next Door | Martha Stout
A deep dive into the characteristics of psychopaths and how they infiltrate society. Most people are both repelled and intrigued by the images of cold-blooded, conscienceless murderers that increasingly populate our movies, television programs, and n...
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us | Robert D. Hare
True Crime: Real-Life Evil 👿
Nonfiction accounts of people who committed unfathomable acts — examining the “banality of evil” and beyond
The original "nonfiction novel" detailing a brutal murder in rural Kansas. On November 15, 1959, in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas, four members of the Clutter family were savagely murdered by blasts from a shotgun held a few inches from their fac...
In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences | Truman Capote
In 1971, while working the late-shift at a Seattle crisis clinic, true-crime writer Ann Rule struck up a friendship with a sensitive, charismatic young coworker: Ted Bundy. Three years later, eight young women disappeared in seven months, and Rule be...
The Stranger Beside Me | Ann Rule
The definitive account of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca murders. Told by the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trials, this is an unflinching look at all the evidence compiled against the Manson family from the perspective of building a case ...
Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders | Vincent Bugliosi
A disturbing true story of abuse, survival, and ultimate justice. 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 psychi...
If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood | Greg Olsen
Philosophical & Literary Explorations of Evil 📚
The idea of evil — its origins, justification, and presence in human nature
Explores morality, free will, and the existence of evil. When brutal landowner Fyodor Karamazov is murdered, the lives of his sons are changed irrevocably: Mitya, the sensualist, whose bitter rivalry with his father immediately places him under suspi...
The Brothers Karamazov | Fyodor Dostoevsky
A haunting journey into colonialism and the darkness of the human soul. Heart of Darkness is the thrilling tale of Marlow, a seaman and wanderer recounting his physical and psychological journey in search of the infamous ivory trader Kurtz. Traveling...
Heart of Darkness | Joseph Conrad
A grim post-apocalyptic world where morality is tested in the face of desperation. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when th...
The Road | Cormac McCarthy
A group of boys on an island descend into savagery — a classic allegory of inherent evil. At the dawn of the next world war, a plane crashes on an uncharted island, stranding a group of schoolboys. At first, with no adult supervision, their freedom i...
Lord of the Flies | William Golding
Evil Lover 💔
When passion turns toxic and intimacy becomes a weapon.
A modern psychological thriller with manipulation, deceit, and sociopathy at its heart. On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being ...
Gone Girl | Gillian Flynn
A writer discovers a disturbing manuscript revealing dark secrets about a successful author's relationship. Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of...
Verity | Colleen Hoover
A chilling account of a girl groomed by her teacher, questioning the nature of consent and obsession. 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and...
My Dark Vanessa | Kate Elizabeth Russell
Evil Mother 👩👧
Tales of mothers who manipulate, harm, or destroy rather than nurture.
A chilling story of maternal fear and detachment when a child doesn’t fit the mold. Doris Lessing's contemporary gothic horror story—centered on the birth of a baby who seems less than human—probes society's unwillingness to recognize its own brutali...
The Fifth Child | Doris Lessing
A journalist returns home to uncover a murder—and face her emotionally abusive, toxic mother. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murder...
Sharp Objects: A Novel | Giillian Flynn
A gripping tale questioning whether evil can be inherited—and what happens when a mother doesn’t bond with her child. Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in t...
The Push | Ashley Audrain
A beautiful but poisonous mother wreaks emotional havoc on her daughter’s life. Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, A...
White Oleander | Janet Fitch
A mother imprisons her own children in the attic to preserve her inheritance. At the top of the stairs there are four secrets hidden—blond, innocent, and fighting for their lives... They were a perfect and beautiful family—until a heartbreaking trage...
Flowers in the Attic | V.C. Andrews
Evil Friend 💀
Friendships gone wrong—manipulation, betrayal, and hidden malice behind the smile.
A darkly comic horror about the terrifying transformation of a best friend—possibly possessed. The year is 1988. High school sophomores Abby and Gretchen have been best friends since fourth grade. But after an evening of skinny-dipping goes disastrou...
My Best Friend's Exorcism | Grady Hendrix
Lies, secrets, and backstabbing among a group of mothers—where even friendships hide danger. A murder...A tragic accident...Or just parents behaving badly? What’s indisputable is that someone is dead. Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s fu...
Big Little Lies | Liane Moriarty
A tight-knit group of college friends slowly unravels as guilt, elitism, and murder set in. Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a wo...
The Secret History | Donna Tartt
Inspired by the Manson cult—about how far a lonely girl will go to belong, and the darkness that follows. Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of g...
The Girls | Emma Cline
A suspenseful and stylish thriller about a toxic friendship in New York that spins out of control. They go through both bottles of champagne right there on the High Line, with nothing but the stars over them... They drink and Lavinia tells Louise abo...
Social Creature: A Novel | Tara Isabella Burton