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dark/disturbing book recs
33
items books that explore the shadows of the human psyche and the unknown. perfect for those who crave unsettling narratives and a spine-tingling atmosphere that you'll be thinking about long after finishing
a woman arrives in florence and she finds an unexpected love. she can fix him—they can fix each other; she feels bound to him, body and soul, but soon they’re both cheating and lashing out, and she becomes more and more convinced he’s not merely a vi...
The Devil's Grip by Lina Wolff
a writer searching for inspiration in spain meets a man who is looking for somewhere to hid out as he hides from a woman in charge of a shadowy game show
Carnality by Lina Wolff
eileen is trapped between caring for her verbally abusive alcoholic father and her dead-end job as a secretary at a juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys and dreams of escape. soon, a new therapist arrives at the facility and things begin t...
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
in a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself at the centre of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test
Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
food critic dorothy loves what she does and loves sex as much as she loves food. a satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a pyschopathic pov
A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
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 world away from their banal contemporaries. but their search for the transcendent leads them d...
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her when she is offered an exhibition promising to revive her career. this book explores the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-...
Boy Parts by Eliza Clark
a darkly funny domestic horror novel about a woman who must take drastic measures to save her husband and herself from the vengeful ghost of her mother-in-law
Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth
belle is dealing with the aftermath of her mother's death when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a clue about her mother's demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience at a culty spa to which her mot...
Rouge by Mona Awad
two years after a mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, she starts noticing herself develop dog-like features. as her symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, and highlight ide...
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia
Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories by Agustina Bazterrica
coming-of-age story of a young girl named natsuki and her cousin, yuu, who process and explain their sense of alienation from their families by internalizing the belief that they are both actually from another planet
Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
cynical protagonist samantha is an outcast in her creative writing program until she gets drawn into the bizarre world of her classmates, a tight-knit old-money foursome who all refer to one another as “bunny.”
Bunny by Mona Awad
unsettling, revelatory, and darkly humorous short story collection about that most basic human feeling: hunger
She's Always Hungry by Eliza Clark
marcos works in a meat processing plant in a dystopian world where humans are forced to eat each other after a virus contaminates animal meat
Tender Is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
chilling short story collection about fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history--with bracing urgency
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed by Mariana Enriquez
a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. from childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a sof...
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter
satire meets slasher in this short, darkly funny hand grenade of a novel about a nigerian woman whose younger sister has a very inconvenient habit of killing her boyfriends
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
page-turning mystery about a grieving woman obsessed with solving her sister's cold-case disappearance via the true crime fandom
Rabbit Hole by Kate Brody
a teacher disappears into the woods. as whispers fill her classroom and relatives scour the streets, she melts into a wild landscape
Untold Lessons by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet
feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a korean-american perspective
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim
collection of gothic stories that blur the lines between dreams and reality, weaving a tapestry of macabre encounters and festering secrets.
Modern Gothic by Ed Karshner & Others
in a house with no walls, shared with a woman who has no boundaries, jo finds her strange home coming to life in unimaginable ways. the lines between bodies and plants, dreaming and wakefulness, blur and mesh through this a heady and hyper-sensual po...
Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval
a young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
seven, who works as a cleaner at a chiropractor’s office, reencounters cecilia, a woman who has obsessed her since their school days. as the two of them board the same bus—each dubiously claiming not to be following the other—their chance meeting spu...
Cecilia by K-Ming Chang
greta is a transcriber for a sex therapist. she becomes infatuated with a patient she refers to as “big swiss.” when they eventually meet and become close, she is riddled with guilt but desperate to maintain the relationship.
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
dávila's short stories are terrifying, mesmerizing, and expertly crafted—you'll finish each one gasping for air. with acute psychological insight, dávila follows her characters to the limits of desire, paranoia, insomnia, and fear
The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila
a young couple's toxic instagram crush spins out of control and unleashes a sinister creature in this twisted, viciously funny, "bananas good" story
A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan
follows the lives of four american indian men and their families, all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and tr...
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
sweltering, queer southern gothic that crosses appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the "we" of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever. captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood.
Brutes by Dizz Tate
sly, surprising, and razor-sharp novel that follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
dark energy short stories in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh