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Weird Books That Will Break Your Brain
25
items I've put together this collection of books featuring "liminal spaces". These are books with weird settings, eerie locations, rooms where the walls don't quite line up — empty, shifting, too quiet. Liminal spaces creep me out in the best way. Archite...
Sections
6
Impossible Architectures
Portals, Voids & Dimensional Breaches
Liminal Nature & Biological Thresholds
Urban Decay & Megastructures
Space Horror & Cosmic Liminality
Media, Memory & Sensory Collapse
Impossible Architectures
Buildings that stretch, shift, or collapse the logic of space.
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I show this book to everyone because it's so unusual. All text-based, the words are formatted to match the intensity of the storyline. Text art. The cult classic book and the hallmark of all stories about liminal spaces. A house expands on the inside, opens doors that weren’t there, and becomes a labyrinth that drives its explorers mad.
House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
I've read the whole series but this is still my favorite. Who hasn't lived in a bad apartment building? This book is really hard to find and more expensive but I loved it! Part of a series of thematically connected books that can each be read as standalone. It's also good for anyone who likes cosmic horror. A cheap L.A. apartment complex hides locked doors, green lights, and secrets buried in its impossible construction.
14, Peter Clines
I think the premise of this book seems a lot like House of Leaves. I haven't read it yet but this is on my TBR list. A couple moves into a fixer-upper that resists their presence—shifting walls, eerie stains, and rooms that shouldn’t exist
The Grip of It, Jac Jemc
I think these types of books really strike a nerve with anyone who has lived through a bad home life. In a posh London building, a vacant flat radiates malevolent force, distorting space and time as something awakens within
Apartment 16, Adam Nevill
I discovered this book while putting this list together. It's another for my reading list. An architecturally impossible cathedral spire pushes upward while its builder descends into obsession, decay, and delusion
The Spire, William Golding
Portals, Voids & Dimensional Breaches
Holes in the fabric of reality—and everything they let in.
I loved how atmospheric this one was. It's also classified as “cosmic horror” and based on the Cthulhu Mythos of HP Lovecraft. I wasn't familiar with any of those stories before reading this book and I went in cold. I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. It was a unique story – A portal in a wall opens into a nightmare of alternate realities, owl-headed gods, and a world where thought shapes matter.
The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher
A screenwriter and his family stay in a rental house that warps space, echoes with strange instructions, and won’t let them leave.
You Should Have Left, Daniel Kehlmann
I think this sounds so creepy. A couple discovers a black hole in their apartment building—“the Funhole”—that disfigures everything dropped inside it.
The Cipher, Kathe Koja
Get out your tinfoil hat. This is one of my favorites in this genre. It's in the same series as “14” but it's very, very different. If you tried that one and didn't like it, still try this one. It's a totally different genre. 14 is horror--this book is sci-fi government conspiracy.
A teleportation experiment succeeds—until it doesn't. The people who go through come back… wrong.
A teleportation experiment succeeds—until it doesn't. The people who go through come back… wrong.
The Fold, Peter Clines
Liminal Nature & Biological Thresholds
Forests, fungi, and landscapes that mutate, think, or consume
If you like atmospheric books, this one is for you. It's steeped in metaphors too. I had to watch a number of YouTube videos along the way to figure out what everything meant.
A biologist enters a quarantined zone where language, biology, and topography mutate into something unrecognizable
A biologist enters a quarantined zone where language, biology, and topography mutate into something unrecognizable
Annihilation: A Novel (10th Anniversary Edition), – Jeff VanderMeer
I've read other T. Kingfisher's books before so I knew what I was getting into. This one is what they call “fungal horror”.
A retelling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” with a fungal twist—where the land, the house, and the dead pulse together.
A retelling of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” with a fungal twist—where the land, the house, and the dead pulse together.
What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher
This book was all over my social media feeds when it came out. I think it's a well-deserved recommendation.
A family inherits a house in the woods, only to find the land itself hungers—filled with creatures that were once human.
A family inherits a house in the woods, only to find the land itself hungers—filled with creatures that were once human.
The Hollow Kind, Andy Davidson
I found this book while putting this list together. Jeff Vandermeer is the master of liminal and weird eco horror.
A surreal, fractured novel where biotech, memory, and identity collapse into something sprawling, sentient, and ecological.
A surreal, fractured novel where biotech, memory, and identity collapse into something sprawling, sentient, and ecological.
Dead Astronauts, Jeff VanderMeer
Those plants that move when you touch them always give me the creeps. Imagine if they were sentient!
A human colony on a distant planet must learn to live with (and survive) intelligent, manipulative alien plant life.
A human colony on a distant planet must learn to live with (and survive) intelligent, manipulative alien plant life.
Semiosis, Sue Burke
Urban Decay & Megastructures
Cities and infrastructure that loop, rot, or consume.
The main character is on a mission to find his wife. She's gone missing inside of this endless building. It's a desperate search he encounters different bizarre situations and people. The closest concepts I can think of are “Alice in Wonderland”, “Labrynth”.
A quiet schoolteacher loses his wife in the Tower of Babel, a vast, surreal megastructure filled with unpredictable zones and impossible rules.
A quiet schoolteacher loses his wife in the Tower of Babel, a vast, surreal megastructure filled with unpredictable zones and impossible rules.
Senlin Ascends, Josiah Bancroft
Another book that I haven't read yet but I have it in my library! Beneath New York’s subways, monstrous gods stir, and the city’s forgotten tunnels twist into blood-soaked myth.
The Dead Take the A Train, Cassandra Khaw & Richard Kadrey
I love this! A city’s decaying infrastructure becomes overrun with mold and rot—spreading beneath the streets like a sentient organism
The Marigold, Andrew F. Sullivan
I'd classify this book as corporate liminal. A big faceless corportion, gigantic factories, mindless tasks that have no apparent purpose. A woman begins working at a sprawling industrial complex where time slips, tasks become meaningless, and no one knows what the factory actually produces. Corridors loop, departments bleed into each other, and reality becomes as bureaucratically sense...
The Factory, Hiroko Oyamada
Space Horror & Cosmic Liminality
Space where physics breaks, time loops, and humanity dissolves.
This is one of the few books that I'll read again. It's like Titanic in space! A salvage crew boards a long-lost luxury liner drifting in space—only to find its corridors haunted by something they can’t escape.
Dead Silence, S.A. Barnes
These types of books are my goto in scifi. There's something strange about big empty spaceships floating through space.
Aboard a distant starship, crew members begin to emotionally unravel after exposure to strange alien objects in the cargo hold.
Aboard a distant starship, crew members begin to emotionally unravel after exposure to strange alien objects in the cargo hold.
The Employees, Olga Ravn
I think one thing that makes a book liminal is a normal space that is out of context in some way. Amnesia fits this for many. Here we have the story about a man who wakes up on a generation ship that’s falling apart — and has no idea who he is.
Hull Zero Three, Greg Bear
Media, Memory & Sensory Collapse
Stories that become maps. Narratives that fracture space. Memory as architecture.
If you like unusual books, this is for you. Say the name of the book 10 times fast and you'll understand what the title means (rorschach test)
"A man is hunted by a conceptual predator swimming through thought and language—where text becomes structure and maps form from memory.
"A man is hunted by a conceptual predator swimming through thought and language—where text becomes structure and maps form from memory.
The Raw Shark Texts, Steven Hall
A film scholar uncovers a lost reel that connects her to an entity that haunts media itself—fracturing the boundaries of time and perception.
Experimental Film, Gemma Files
Yes, this book is named “S”. A library book annotated by two strangers hides a meta-narrative: postcards, margin notes, and inserts become physical paths through mystery.
S, Doug Dorst & J.J. Abrams
I discovered this book while putting this list together. Techies will love this.
When human minds are uploaded into nested digital simulations, the code begins to develop cracks—and the world becomes recursive and unstable.
When human minds are uploaded into nested digital simulations, the code begins to develop cracks—and the world becomes recursive and unstable.
Permutation City, Greg Egan