Here are 80 books that Duet for the Devil fans have personally recommended if you like
Duet for the Devil.
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I’ve always been intrigued by the behaviors of humans. Even as a child, I’ve watched how people interact with each other. We are all so different, yet we are all the same. Each of us has an imaginary box where keep some things locked up such as: our innermost desires—and our worse fears. Fears that, in a very subtle way, guide us in our life decisions. Afraid of blood… then you’d likely not choose nursing. Afraid of flying… then you probably won’t become a pilot. But what happens when we cannot avoid what we are most afraid of? This is where a horror story begins.
To set the record straight, I do not love this book. I still haven’t come to a decision if I even like it. It isn’t the “best” book on my list, yet it isthe most disturbing. And it is a must-read.
A warning, though. It’s a book that you won’t be able to stop and you’ll likely feel very guilty for even reading it. It dives into human behaviors that we don’t want to think about and surely would not intentionally want to take part in. I’ve a question for you: Is there a limit to what you would do to another human being if others were doing it too? How confident are you in your answer? The worse part about this novel is that it is based on a true story.
A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable.
This novel contains graphic content and is recommended for regular readers of horror novels.
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My experience and expertise – I am not only a reader of horror, in particular extreme horror, but I am a published writer with several hundred writing credits. I have had hundreds of stories and articles published on many websites, magazines, and anthologies including a story in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 5. For eleven years I wrote articles on the bizarre and morbid for Girls and Corpses magazine. I have been consistently writing for 20 years, and have also helped write several independent horror films. I have written many reviews and interviews as well, most recently in Phantasmagoria Magazine.
Wrath is truly the king of extreme horror and this is his best book. The over the top sex and violence will leave you traumatized in this tale of a cannibalistic serial killer. At times erotic and at times disgusting, this book at no point bores the reader and is a good introduction to an amazing writer.
"This is a serial cannibalistic killer’s wet dream come true. The author Wrath James White had written something beyond dark, beyond morbid.” - John Rizo, HorrorNews.Net
"The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White the kind of novel that can unsettle even the most hardened gore fanatic. White writes the kind of horror that gets under your skin, and reading his brand of hardcore fiction may have the unintended side effect of making you feel...wrong. Seriously wrong." - I.E. Lester, Dark Scribe Magazine
Fifteen years ago Joseph Miles was abducted, tortured and almost killed by a serial killer with the taste for…
My experience and expertise – I am not only a reader of horror, in particular extreme horror, but I am a published writer with several hundred writing credits. I have had hundreds of stories and articles published on many websites, magazines, and anthologies including a story in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 5. For eleven years I wrote articles on the bizarre and morbid for Girls and Corpses magazine. I have been consistently writing for 20 years, and have also helped write several independent horror films. I have written many reviews and interviews as well, most recently in Phantasmagoria Magazine.
This is the best book written by Gonzalez, who recently passed away. It is the extreme and brutal tale of a woman who is abducted for the purpose of being put into a snuff film. The action is ferocious and brutal and the lead character is extremely strong, so much more than just another victim. I felt for her and cheered for her when her character fights back against the evil men hellbent on torturing and killing her.
BEFORE HOSTEL...BEFORE SAW..THERE WAS SURVIVOR... It was supposed to be a romantic weekend getaway. Lisa was looking forward to spending time alone with her husband-and telling him that they are going to have a baby. Instead, it becomes a nightmare when her husband is arrested and Lisa is kidnapped. But the kidnappers aren't asking for ransom. They want Lisa herself. They're going to make her a star-in a snuff film. What they have in mind for Lisa is unspeakable. They plan to torture and murder her as graphically and brutally as possible, and to capture it all on film. If…
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
My experience and expertise – I am not only a reader of horror, in particular extreme horror, but I am a published writer with several hundred writing credits. I have had hundreds of stories and articles published on many websites, magazines, and anthologies including a story in Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volume 5. For eleven years I wrote articles on the bizarre and morbid for Girls and Corpses magazine. I have been consistently writing for 20 years, and have also helped write several independent horror films. I have written many reviews and interviews as well, most recently in Phantasmagoria Magazine.
The Groomer by Jonathan Athan is a heart-wrenching tale of true evil. It tells the story of a sleazy murderer and producer of child snuff films. At times the book was too much for me and I ended up having a good cry after one of the characters is exposed to some purely evil horror. An amazing and powerful book about the nature of evil.
Andrew McCarthy grows concerned for his family after he catches a young man, Zachary Denton, photographing his daughter, Grace McCarthy, and other children at a park. To his dismay, Zachary talks his way out of trouble when he’s confronted by the police. He hopes that’s the end of it. Then he finds Zachary at a diner and then at a grocery store. He knows their encounters aren't coincidences. And just as Andrew prepares to defend his family, Grace vanishes.
As the police search stalls and the leads dry up, Andrew decides to take matters into his own hands. He starts…
I’ve always been fascinated by the darker corners of the human mind, such as what drives people to commit unspeakable acts and how others find the strength to face them. As both a neuropsychologist and a thriller author, I explore those questions on the page, weaving together my background in psychology with my love of twisty, character-driven stories. Books where the crimes are as twisted as the minds behind them have shaped my own writing, including my latest novel, Heavy Are the Stones. I read them not just for the suspense, but for the unsettling and raw truths they reveal about us all as humans.
Every breadcrumb is important and kept me trying to solve the clues left by the Unknown Subject (UNSUB) nicknamed the Prophet. The killer’s ciphers and methods echoed those of the Zodiac. And somehow, despite the level of detail in the Prophet’s crime scenes and writings, Gardner’s pacing is a stomp on the gas pedal that doesn’t let up. It’s a tricky balance I aspire to achieve.
The Prophet’s poetic fantasies bleeding into reality while the clock counted down kept me wondering how, and if, Detective Caitlin Hendrix would stop this ruthless killer right up until the surprise-filled final showdown.
A riveting psychological thriller inspired by the never-caught Zodiac Killer, about a young detective determined to apprehend the serial murderer who destroyed her family and terrorized a city twenty years earlier.
Caitlin Hendrix has been a Narcotics detective for six months when the killer at the heart of all her childhood nightmares reemerges: the Prophet. An UNSUB—what the FBI calls an unknown subject—the Prophet terrorized the Bay Area in the 1990s and nearly destroyed her father, the lead investigator on the case.
The Prophet’s cryptic messages and mind games drove Detective Mack Hendrix to the brink of madness, and…
My interest in serial killers began when I was a teen watching horror movies with my mom. I learned all I could about them—even became a horror special-effects makeup artist. Eventually, I had to quit due to my connective tissue disorder (Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). It put me on a path of writing. I love digging into the darker side of humanity—murder or mental illness. The story of a serial killer who could challenge the reader to see disability in a new light came to me, and I had to write her story, if not just so I could dive into the psyche of another serial killer.
An engrossing read about a food critic’s life, bumpy career, and murders. There is death and consumption, sex and violence; there is depravity in the mundane. Sometimes voices sparkle, others pop off the page, and then there is Chelsea G. Summer’s Dorothy Daniels. She dug into my brain and picked at it like a scab. From the first page, Summers hooked me on a razor-sharp fishing line. Dorothy recounts stories like an old friend would—if your old friend would describe killing a man and her vagina in equal parts disturbing and eloquent language. There was disgust but also a sense of empowerment. I wanted all of her dirty little secrets. And oh, does Dorothy love to talk.
One of Vanity Fair's Books That Will Get You Through This Winter “One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly." ―The New York Times
Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any…
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
I am the author of the Black Viking and Hellbent Riffraff Thrillers and several volumes of dirty realism poetry. I am also the Founder and editor-in-chief of Bristol Noir, an indie publisher and ezine specialising in curiously dark fiction and crime noir. Since 2017 Bristol Noir has been publishing up-and-coming and best-selling authors from around the world. I’m a writer originally from Northumberland in Northern England. In the late 90s, I studied in Greater Manchester when the IRA bomb went off and during the infamous years of the Hacienda club. I now live in Bristol. I’ve devoted my writing to exploring my heritage and the environments I’ve been in.
This is the dirty realist poet, Charles Bukowski's, last novel and is filled with intriguing code and name-dropping of people he knew and was influenced by. As well as being as poetic as hell. Pulp also gives a glimpse of what it might have been like if Bukowski had lived on and ventured fully into crime fiction or pulp noir.
I love the book’s surface-level simplicity to draw you into its world. However, it then subversively lets bigger themes creep in: including surrealism and spiritualism, as the author faces his own death. All this with Bukowski’s deftly poetic touches.
This showed me how semi-autobiographical elements can fuse and influence fiction and vice versa. And, that it doesn't have to be hard to absorb or distract from the story. By acknowledging layers in writing which are there for those who want to peel back and discover them. And when they don’t,…
Charles Bukowski's brilliant, fantastical pastiche of a detective story. Packed with wit, invention and Bukowski's trademark lowlife adventures, it is the final novel of one of the most enjoyable and influential cult writers of the last century.
Nicky Belane, private detective and career alcoholic, is a troubled man. He is plagued not just by broads, booze, lack of cash and a raging ego, but also by the surreal jobs he's been hired to do. Not only has been hired to track down French classical author Celine - who's meant to be dead - but he's also supposed to find the…
I’ve been an avid psychological suspense reader since I was at school, but have only recently begun to write in the genre myself. I’m not sure why it took me so long. If it was my most favourite genre to read, then why not write in it? When I came up with the idea for The Weekend Alone, I knew I had to write it, and I finally discovered what other suspense authors already knew: that playing with a reader’s perception can be the most amazing fun! My next psychological suspense book will be out with HQ Digital in summer 2023. Here’s hoping my own thrillers will keep readers gripped long past lights out!
This gripping thriller moves between the past and the present to tell the story of Melissa Slade, a woman who seemed to have the perfect life before she was convicted of the murder of her two baby girls. As journalist Jonathan Hunt investigates the case, he has no idea what to believe. Is Melissa a lying and manipulative murderer or an innocent victim? You’ll want to keep turning the pages to find out!
'Stayed up late finishing this, just had to know what happened, brilliant final twist! Gripping page-turner with great characters'Sunday Times bestselling author B A Paris
She says she's innocent. DO YOU BELIEVE HER?
2013
Melissa Slade had it all: beauty, money, a successful husband and beautiful twin babies. But, in the blink of an eye, her perfect life became a nightmare - when she found herself on trial for the murder of her little girls.
PRESENT DAY
Jonathan Hunt covered the original Slade Babies case for the local newspaper. Now that new evidence has come…
Among other things, I'm an existentialist. A well-constructed mystery novel is an existential puzzle given to the reader to solve at his/her leisure, and the noir sub-genre has the further subtext that the protagonist—and the reader—are doomed in some way even if the solution is nailed. Romance novels are drivel and have no basis in reality, but noir and other types of mystery fiction reflect the way that the world works: you may solve this puzzle problem, but then you are left to a vast world that is rife with puzzles but without a coherent plot. The detective trudges on, achieves a kind of satisfaction, and then is thrust into the next crisis.
A treasure trove of noir short fiction, an impressive anthology of American greed, crime, and comeuppance by some of the genre’s greatest authors including Mickey Spillane, Evan Hunter, Elmore Leonard, Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, Dennis Lehane, Cornell Woolrich, and editor Ellroy. The 39 selected stories are a feast of excellence, a wide-ranging buffet of tasty tales from 1923 to 2007—makes me drool just thinking about a re-read.
A magisterial anthology of American noir writing in the 20th century by the best-selling author of the LA Quartet: The Black Dahlia. The Big Nowhere , LA Confidential and White Jazz. In his intoduction to The Best American Noir of the Century, James Ellroy writes, "noir is the most scrutinised offshoot of the hard-boiled school of fiction. It's the long drop off the short pier and the wrong man and the wrong woman in perfect misalliance. It's the nightmare of flawed souls with big dreams and the precise how and why of the all-time sure thing that goes bad." Offering…
The epic saga continues. Jarnland is in a frenzy of excitement. After the eccentric demise of Old King Wyllard, his co-Majesty, young Queen Esmeralda, announces a Royal Tournament to celebrate the return of our heroes from their perilous quest. The Main Event will be a duel between the legendary warrior…
I’ve been a journalist who’s focused on culture, particularly film, and especially classic film and film noir. That sparked me to write two crime novels, with a third on the way, for Level Best Books. The first came out in February. The next will reach the market in May 2025. The third will come out in 2026. For more information, please go to my website.
Cynicism and fatalism drank heavily together in the hardboiled genre of the private detective novel, but no more so than in this mid-40s book.
I think they even take refuge in the novel’s title: Build My Gallows High. It tells the embittered tale of Red Bailey, a guy in hiding from private detective work after being exploited by a powerful client and betrayed by the beautiful and manipulative woman Bailey loved.
Bailey would never go back to those days—until he would. His ex-client finds him and blackmails him into searching for that woman, who was also once that powerful man’s lover.
I love the way each of the three of them harbor conflicting ideas of how this story will end. That’s perfect—the book’s conflict and bile inspired the creation of what has long been one of the darkest and most celebrated of films noir, Out of the Past.
Retired private eye Red Bailey is happier than he's been for a long time. Living in Nevada, bothered by nobody, he runs a little gas station, gets in a lot of fishing, and might even be falling for a local girl. Then, out of the blue, his past comes back to haunt him. Blackmailed into doing just one more job, he's forced to revisit the life he fled—in particular, the seductive Mumsie McGonigle. It's not long before Bailey realizes that a trap has been set for him. The novel, scripted by the author, went on in the hands of Jacques…
