Here are 76 books that Cold Dark Night fans have personally recommended if you like
Cold Dark Night.
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I’ve loved mysteries since childhood. That passion started with silly attractions like Scooby-Doo, Dark Shadows, and Nancy Drew. As I grew older, my love of mystery expanded to include the “what if” elements of folklore and urban legends. I’ve written two, 3-book series employing dual timelines, each wrapped in multiple layers of folklore. Crafting separate plotlines then weaving them into a tidy ending takes patience. I enjoy reading books that are well-executed and if they include a touch of the supernatural, all the better. My passion for urban legends has led me to give presentations to local community groups and also to engage in travel when needed for on-site research.
My first experience reading a book with dual storylines, this novel held me spellbound cover to cover. McMahon has since become an auto-buy author for me, thanks to this fantastical story that puts a magnifying glass on the life of two sisters, a childhood friend, and an unexplained disappearance. The story moves between past and present and revolves around the Tower Motel in Vermont, now a ruined shell that refuses to yield its secrets. Secrets the girls discovered while playing games there as children.
An unexpected splash of the paranormal and the use of letters from one sister to Mr. Hitchcock (yes, that Hitchcock) add the perfect touch to this disturbing gem.
From the New York Times bestselling author Jennifer McMahon (The Winter People) comes an atmospheric, gripping, and suspenseful tale that probes the bond between sisters and the peril of keeping secrets.
The Tower Motel was once a thriving attraction of rural Vermont. Today it lies in disrepair, alive only in the memories of the three women—Amy, Piper, and Piper’s kid sister, Margot—who played there as children. They loved exploring the abandoned rooms … until the day their innocent games uncovered something dark and twisted that ruined their friendship forever.
Now, Amy stands accused of committing a horrific crime, and the…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’ve been fascinated with the paranormal since I was a little girl and used to talk to the old lady on the edge of my bed. That old lady turned out to be my grandma, who had passed when I was in my mother’s womb. My entire family is touched by the curiosity and love that comes with the paranormal, so much so my mother is a working psychic medium. For years, I have spent every birthday attending haunted houses with a paranormal team to “investigate.” For some strange reason, I love to be terrified, and I fear I will never stop chasing the thrill.
This was my first peek into the world of paranormal ghost stories through books. Before this spooky thriller, truth be told, I didn’t know there was such a genre as ghost thrillers.
I will forever be grateful to Riley Sager for not only opening me up to such a captivating genre but for writing such an amazing story.
This bookgives you the present perspective of a woman returning to a haunted house that ran her family away 25 years ago, alongside the perspective of what happened 25 years ago when she was a child from the lens of a “NYT-selling novel” written by her father.
In the latest thriller from New York Times bestseller Riley Sager, a woman returns to the house made famous by her father’s bestselling horror memoir. Is the place really haunted by evil forces, as her father claimed? Or are there more earthbound—and dangerous—secrets hidden within its walls?
What was it like? Living in that house.
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later…
I’ve loved mysteries since childhood. That passion started with silly attractions like Scooby-Doo, Dark Shadows, and Nancy Drew. As I grew older, my love of mystery expanded to include the “what if” elements of folklore and urban legends. I’ve written two, 3-book series employing dual timelines, each wrapped in multiple layers of folklore. Crafting separate plotlines then weaving them into a tidy ending takes patience. I enjoy reading books that are well-executed and if they include a touch of the supernatural, all the better. My passion for urban legends has led me to give presentations to local community groups and also to engage in travel when needed for on-site research.
I’m a huge fan of the board game Clue. The “present” timeline in this story provides an excellent tip of the hat when lead character Sadie, a bit actress, agrees to assume the role of “Miss Lamb” at an old mansion known as Raven Hall. She attends with a collection of others (who take on roles like Miss Mouse, Professor Owl, Colonel Otter, etc.) as part of a trial run for a business that hosts murder mystery parties. Great set-up, right?
Three time periods twine in the plot, one which includes a bizarre game of a different sort that has far-reaching consequences, stretching from past to present. The author does a brilliant job of foreshadowing, planting subtle clues that deliver staggering surprises by the end of the story.
The USA Today bestselling author of The Au Pair returns with another delicious, twisty novel—about a grand estate with many secrets, an orphan caught in a web of lies, and a young woman playing a sinister game.
1988. Beth Soames is fourteen years old when her aunt takes her to stay at Raven Hall, a rambling manor in the isolated East Anglian fens. The Averells, the family who lives there, are warm and welcoming, and Beth becomes fast friends with their daughter, Nina. At times, Beth even feels like she's truly part of the family...until they ask her to help…
Sine, a professor of creative writing, accompanies Sam, a neuroscientist, on a conference trip to a Hotel Castle. Sam wants to present a new device, the "monitor." Sine hopes to recover from tending to her mother who just passed away.
When they arrive, Sine is in a dream-like state. Real…
For years, I have been a voracious reader of dark psychological thrillers and psychological horror. I read several books every week, and I’m always overjoyed to be knocked sideways by an ingenious twist in a book. As a doctor, I am captivated by people and fascinated by the depths of the human mind. For me, humans are the scariest monsters of them all. In 2020, I decided to have a pop at writing a jaw-dropper myself, and my book was born. I only hope you don’t see that twist coming!
I loved how claustrophobic and creepy this was. This is another story where I thought I had at least some of it figured out. But nope, I was wrong every time. The ending was not only jaw-dropping and ingenious but satisfying, too—something I think is tricky to achieve.
I was so wrong that I had to go back and read some of it again. I was shocked to find that all the breadcrumbs leading to the ending were indeed peppered throughout. So cleverly done.
“Feeney lives up to her reputation as the “queen of the twist”…This page-turner will keep you guessing.” —Real Simple Think you know the person you married? Think again…
Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Self-confessed workaholic and screenwriter Adam Wright has lived with face blindness his whole life. He can’t recognize friends or family, or even his own wife.
Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts--paper, cotton, pottery, tin--and each…
I’ve always wanted to know why people acquire the things they choose, how they get them, and what they do with them. For years, too, I’ve been fascinated by the period when modernity was being born, a time full of worldwide exploration, the founding of new nations and societies, and the invention of new ways of making, transporting, and distributing all sorts of goods and services. I discovered that studying consumers, consumer goods, and trade from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century was the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity. The Material Atlantic is my report about what I’ve learned.
I like a good wine (though Madeira isn’t one of my favorites). I like even more a book that tells me about wine—and about many other things that I had not previously connected to wine. That’s what Oceans of Wine does and does magnificently.
David Hancock is a pioneering scholar who has taught us to understand the Atlantic Ocean “world” as an interconnected space of exchanges that remade all the individuals and societies surrounding it. In this book, he shows how merchants in Britain, Portugal, and British North America transformed Madeira from a rather ordinary wine into a transatlantic bestseller.
Like most of my favorite historians, Hancock has dug up a treasure trove of unexplored sources to write a big story in a wholly new way.
This innovative book examines how, between 1640 and 1815, the Portuguese Madeira wine trade shaped the Atlantic world and American society. David Hancock painstakingly reconstructs the lives of producers, distributors, and consumers, as well as the economic and social structures created by globalizing commerce, to reveal an intricate interplay between individuals and market forces. Wine lovers and Madeira enthusiasts will enjoy Oceans of Wine, as will historians interested in food, colonial trade, and the history of the Atlantic region.
Using voluminous archives pertaining to wine, many of them previously unexamined, Hancock offers a dramatic new perspective on the economic and…
I believe that magical systems and worlds based on folklore and existing magical practices feel more “real” to the reader... and are a lot more interesting. As an avid Tarot reader, I’ve taken some deep dives into the esoteric magical traditions and symbols behind the cards. I’m still coming up for air on the topic. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to channel this arcane (and let’s face it, not otherwise very useful) knowledge into my own witch and paranormal mysteries. I hope you enjoy the witchy mystery novels on this list!
This frothy, well-paced cozy witch mystery features a psychic who can pick up visions of the past wearers of old clothes. How convenient that she runs a vintage clothing store… Add a Cary-Grant handsome ghost and some very lively romantic entanglements to the great clothes and a charming small town, and you’ve got a winning paranormal mystery. The author also does an excellent job describing the experience of clairtangency—psychic touch.
A fun new mystery series from the author of Gone with the Witch.
The right dress can be magic; the wrong one?murder! From the national bestselling author of Sensation?s Witch series comes the new Vintage Magic mystery series, featuring Madeira Cutler. While opening her own vintage clothing shop, Maddie must clear her family?s name when her sister?s wedding festivities hit a snag: murder.
In an age of splendor, a heretic king strips Egypt bare—forcing his queen to quell rebellion and plunging his children into a conspiracy against the crown.
Salvation in the Sun follows Nefertiti as she ascends the throne beside Pharaoh Amenhotep—soon to become Akhenaten—just as he declares war on Egypt’s ancient…
I first started reading vampire stories when I worked at Kitt Peak National Observatory in the 1990s. One of my co-workers suggested that we were the vampires of the mountain because we were only seen between sunset and sunrise. She encouraged me to read Anne Rice, whose work gave me a taste for heroic vampires. A while later, I moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico, known as the City of Crosses. Another friend suggested I write a story asking what a vampire would make of such a thing. That became an early chapter inVampires of the Scarlet Order.
Charnas steps away from the idea of vampires as supernatural creatures. Her protagonist, Dr. Edward Weyland is a natural creature who must feed on blood to survive. He's not always presented as a "good guy" but I still found myself rooting for him as he moved through the story, trying to understand who and what he truly is. This was also one of the first novels I read where the vampire wasn't fabulously wealthy. Instead, he had to make a living as an anthropology professor. His background as a professor also made his quest for self-understanding feel authentic and relatable.
“Probably the best vampire novel ever written.” — Oxford Times
“A superior, grandly detailed vampire story that takes the torment of its monstrous hero very seriously indeed… Like all the very best monster-fiction writers in the Frankenstein tradition, Charnas uses the inhuman condition to explore the specialness of humankind — and the result is both a gripping psychological portrait and smashingly deft entertainment.” — Kirkus Reviews
“…Charnas’ view of her protagonist is unswervingly unsentimental, and…her denouement is savage and intense and brilliantly satisfying.
“…Charnas’ writing is also rich and impressive: she seems equally at home on a college campus, in…
I've been writing Spooky Middle Grade for a number of years, and before that, I wrote horror for Hollywood. Living in Sleepy Hollow, spooky is in my blood, and if I didn't write creepy stories, they'd kick me out. I'm also a professional storyteller and have scared the bejeebus out of kids and adults in places like Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Rockefeller State Park Preserve, and Washington Irving's Sunnyside. Halloween is my favorite time of year. It more or less becomes a month-long village-wide celebration in October. Being inundated with all this crazy rubs off on you, and I have been well-steeped.
A story about evil puppets? Sign me up! Oddity is a town only the Addams Family could love, with weird, strange, unusual, and downright wrong things taking place at all hours of the day and night. What I love about this book is the way it manages to give us an entire town of spookiness, and yet still find a plot that is even more spooky. The characters are unforgettable, and the villains are a joyous wonder.
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author picked
Oddity
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This book is for kids age
8,
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10, and
11.
What is this book about?
Welcome to Oddity, New Mexico, where normal is odd and odd is normal.
Ada Roundtree is no stranger to dodging carnivorous dumpsters, distracting zombie rabbits with marshmallows, and instigating games of alien punkball. But things haven't been the same since her twin sister, Pearl, won the town's yearly Sweepstakes and disappeared. Along with her best friend, Raymond, and new-kid-from-Chicago Cayden, Ada leads a self-given quest to discover Oddity's secrets, even evading the invisible Blurmonster terrorising the outskirts of town.
But one of their missions goes sideways, revealing something hinky with the Sweepstakes . . . and Ada can't let it…
I was born and raised in New Mexico and it’s a part of me. New Mexicans will tell you that it’s impossible to describe its uniqueness, that you must experience it for yourself. That may be partially true, but writers have done a great job incorporating the majesty of the landscape, the earthiness of the people, the eclectic nature of its values, and ultimately the spell it casts. I’ve set quite a few books in New Mexico and have tried to show how these layers fit together for me. Ultimately, it’s called The Land of Enchantment for many reasons and we do our best to share them with our readers.
This is a nonfiction book and typical of New Mexico, as there are whole chapters of its history nobody really knows about. The (probably) first white American woman to come into the territory was a Jewish woman who accompanied her merchant husband and brothers. Even more interesting, merchants and traders weren’t even the first Jewish people - “Crypto-Jews” who were fleeing the inquisition came to New Mexico long before it was part of the US and kept their identity secret to assimilate. This is depicted with a character in Alburquerque and that perfectly encapsulates one of the overriding things about New Mexico and its tales – a deep sense of connectedness, across people, across the land.
In this first history of the Jews in New Mexico--from the colonial period to the present day--the author continuously ties the Jewish experience to the evolution of the societies in which they lived and worked. The book begins with one of the least known but most fascinating aspects of New Mexico Jewry--the crypto-Jews who came north to escape the Mexican Inquisition. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the story is more familiar: German merchants settling in Las Vegas and Santa Fe and then coming to Albuquerque after the railroad arrived. To these accounts the author adds considerable nuance and detail,…
Born the heir of a master woodcutter in a queendom defined by guilds and matrilineal inheritance, nonbinary Sorin can’t quite seem to find their place. At seventeen, an opportunity to attend an alchemical guild fair and secure an apprenticeship with the…
Having known families affected by substance abuse, I’ve long been fascinated by the resiliency of addicts’ relatives and close friends. Equally compelling to me, as a one-time wannabe psychologist, was how living with substance abusers shaped people’s characters and lives. But while the search for a recovering addict drives Beyond Billicombe’s plot, the book is also an ode of sorts to North Devon, the area of England where I spent three of the happiest years of my life. Though I now live outside New York City, I haven’t given up hope on being able to move back there someday.
Dealing with an addicted child or sibling is traumatic enough; when the addict is your parent, the person who is supposed to protect and support you, the fear and betrayal are ramped up to an unbearable level. One of the Boys captures this in all its harrowing detail. Two barely teenaged boys move with their father from Kansas to New Mexico, where the father’s descent into meth addiction obliterates any sense of responsibility, affection, and decency he might once have possessed. Narrated by the younger son, One of the Boys is more than a realistic depiction of addiction; it also shows how far children will go to gain or retain a parent’s love, which is what makes the story so devastating.
A father and his boys have won 'the war': the father's term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave Kansas and drive through the night to their new apartment in Albuquerque. Settled in new schools, the brothers join basketball teams, make friends. Meanwhile their father works from home, smoking cheap cigars to hide another smell. Soon his missteps - the dead-eyed absentmindedness, the late-night noises, the comings and goings of increasingly odd characters - become sinister, and the boys find themselves watching him transform into someone they no longer recognize.
