Here are 22 books that Private Rites fans have personally recommended if you like
Private Rites.
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Noclip In, No Way Out... All Dan wants is to find a way home. He'd settle for a beer, a bite to eat, and a place to sleep off his hangover.But, in an endless, ever-changing dungeon cobbled together from twisted carnivals, abandoned shopping malls, janky laundromats, and condemned insane asylums, getting a bit of shut-eye is harder than it sounds.Dan has accidentally "Noclipped" into the Backrooms—a bizarro, extra-dimensional Alice-in-Wonderland world, overrun with horrific nightmare creatures known as the Dwellers. No one ever gets out. Hell, forget about leaving, if Dan wants to survive the week, he's going to need to…
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…
As Jane uncovers Alur's secrets, she learns a terrible truth.After the monumental events in the Wastelands, Jane now embarks on a mission to discover who built the enigmatic System and why it brought her to Alur. On top of that, she needs to take care of the demonic horde she is now responsible for, along with helping any others she can along the way.However, there is an insidious evil here, festering in the most unexpected of places. Can she unravel the mystery in time? Or will the allure of power pull her down a path of darkness?Ancient forces, deadly monsters,…
I’m chronically ill. Whether I’m swept up, terrified, swooning, or trying to solve a mystery, I love my fiction to take me elsewhere. The dichotomy of wanting to share my experiences, discuss disability, open up the conversation around the topic, and have others lose themselves in story has been a fine line I’ve walked with all of my work. With Joyce, I wanted to bring grief and disability to life in a more resonate way. The words pain and fatigue mean drastically different things to different people. When magic is involved, it transcends your definition or mine, allowing us to focus on the experience with less personal context.
Some say this book is horror. I recommend it not as a horror book, but as a glimpse into illness, grief, and uncertainty through the lens of magical realism.
I see the moments along the way that are scary, but for me, those are just jump pads to the action of living, of existing, of the complicated state of being unwell, and how love will allow you to accept more than you thought you were capable of.
Does Julia know she showcased the slow decline of a chronically ill person in the way she did? I do not know. But as a chronically ill person myself, I saw poignant vignettes of tenderness around the topic.
Though the dual storylines, the unknown, the fear, are interesting and creative, it’s the quiet moments between two women who love each other, just wondering what’s next, that will stay with you.
Named as book to look out for in 2022 by Guardian, i-D, Autostraddle, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Stylist and DAZED.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
To have the woman she loves back should mean a return…
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…
WINNER OF The Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novella, the Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella AND The British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella
SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award
'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It…
The classic tale that everyone knows but there is a lot more depth to the novel than in the many adaptions. There is high Victorian melodrama here but also interesting social details and an ingenious writing style combining diary entries, letters and newspaper reports. A real page turner but with psychological depth.
31
authors picked
Dracula
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
17.
What is this book about?
'The very best story of diablerie which I have read for many years' Arthur Conan Doyle
A masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also probes identity, sanity and the dark corners of Victorian sexuality and desire. It begins when Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula purchase a London house, and makes horrifying discoveries in his client's castle. Soon afterwards, disturbing incidents unfold in England - an unmanned ship is wrecked; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; a lunatic asylum inmate raves about the imminent arrival of his 'Master' - and a determined group of adversaries…
I first read this soon after it was published in 2011. I reread it this year because I wanted to see how well it would hold up after so many years. I wasn't disappointed. To begin with, it remains a moving tribute to the wonderfully talented Siobhan Dowd (author of Bog Child and Solace of the Road), who died far too soon of cancer. Ness paints the character of his protagonist, Conor, with admirably spare prose, and the story builds by accretion, so that the monster's tales become gradually intertwined with Conor's own path towards acceptance and mourning. Solidly YA in focus with much for this adult reader to appreciate.
The bestselling novel and major film about love, loss and hope from the twice Carnegie Medal-winning Patrick Ness.
Conor has the same dream every night, ever since his mother first fell ill, ever since she started the treatments that don't quite seem to be working. But tonight is different. Tonight, when he wakes, there's a visitor at his window. It's ancient, elemental, a force of nature. And it wants the most dangerous thing of all from Conor. It wants the truth. Patrick Ness takes the final idea of the late, award-winning writer Siobhan Dowd and weaves an extraordinary and heartbreaking…
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…
15+ pages of new, original content, including a glossary of terms, in-universe writings, and more!
A USA Today Best-Selling Novel!
"Unlike anything I've ever read. " --V.E. Schwab
"Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!" --Charles Stross
"Brilliantly original, messy and weird straight through." --NPR
The Emperor needs necromancers.
The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.
Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead nonsense.
Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, first in The Locked Tomb Trilogy, unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap off the page, as…
Before becoming an author, I’d dabbled in almost every other genre—science fiction, western, coming-of-age, fantasy, and the like. When I wrote, published, and won awards for my first two mystery thrillers, I felt like I had finally found my niche with mystery readers. Good writers are good readers, so for years, I read only the genre for which I was writing. After a time, all those mysteries started to become rather formulaic, so I decided to branch out into other genres I used to enjoy. When I heard that other mystery fans were experiencing “genre burnout,” I built this list to encourage them to enjoy the fruits of all genres.
Much like the bibliophilic protagonist of The Shadow of the Wind, I discovered this life-changing novel in a most hidden corner of the world—in my case, tucked out of sight on the bottom shelf of a discount bookstore in the Red Light District of Amsterdam.
While the narrative focuses on one child’s unwavering perseverance to solve the mysterious disappearance of his favorite author and unmask the pyromaniac burning all his books, I became enmeshed in the noir-style, labyrinthine backdrop of 1940s-50s Barcelona in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.
This masterpiece is equal parts mystery, coming-of-age, midcentury gothic, and European historical fiction, and left me with eyes brimming with tears when I finished the final page.
"The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." -Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)
"One gorgeous read." -Stephen King
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been…
I’m chronically ill. Whether I’m swept up, terrified, swooning, or trying to solve a mystery, I love my fiction to take me elsewhere. The dichotomy of wanting to share my experiences, discuss disability, open up the conversation around the topic, and have others lose themselves in story has been a fine line I’ve walked with all of my work. With Joyce, I wanted to bring grief and disability to life in a more resonate way. The words pain and fatigue mean drastically different things to different people. When magic is involved, it transcends your definition or mine, allowing us to focus on the experience with less personal context.
Like some other powerhouse books I’ve read, it would take hours to fully discuss the brilliant storytelling, the compelling characters, the descriptions that have you smelling the damp earth, and to truly explain the awe I felt when reading this book.
When I say, “I’ve never read anything like this,” I usually mean that wowed me this much or that one aspect was unique or clingy. In this case, I mean it in every sense. It was chewy and raw and rare, unique and visceral, sumptuous and dark, devastating and lyrical.
Dealing with illness in magical realism is something I’m familiar with, clearly. To see it being handled in the way Sue Rainsford does is spine-tingling and refreshing, if one can call a book so guttural as this one such.
'A tangled, gnarled, wonderfully original, strange, beautiful beast of a book' DAISY JOHNSON, author of Everything Under
'Beautiful and terrifying' SUNDAY TIMES
'Seethingly assured debut fuses magical realism with critical and feminist theory' GUARDIAN
In house in a wood, Ada and her father live peacefully, tending to their garden and the wildlife in it. They are not human though. Ada was made by her father from the Ground, a unique patch of earth with birthing and healing properties. Though perhaps he didn't get her quite right. They spend their days healing the local human folk - named Cures - who…
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…
I’m chronically ill. Whether I’m swept up, terrified, swooning, or trying to solve a mystery, I love my fiction to take me elsewhere. The dichotomy of wanting to share my experiences, discuss disability, open up the conversation around the topic, and have others lose themselves in story has been a fine line I’ve walked with all of my work. With Joyce, I wanted to bring grief and disability to life in a more resonate way. The words pain and fatigue mean drastically different things to different people. When magic is involved, it transcends your definition or mine, allowing us to focus on the experience with less personal context.
Have you ever read a book that makes your mouth and eyes water at the same time? That makes you laugh and takes your breath away and pisses you off and has you telling your partner every single detail of it, assuring they’ll never need to read it, but they want to anyhow? That’s Like Water for Chocolate.
The opening scene sets the whole tone of the book, and from then on, it sways between emotional heartbreaker, hilarious romp, devastating family drama, and magical realism that is so brilliant it feels real. What I’m saying is, it’s a delight.
THE INTOXICATING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER ABOUT LOVE, COOKING AND MAGIC. PERFECT FOR FANS OF JOANNE HARRIS AND ISABEL ALLENDE.
'This magical, mythical, moving story of love, sacrifice and summering sensuality is something I will savour for a long time' MAUREEN LIPMAN
Like Water For Chocolate tells the captivating story of the De la Garza family. As the youngest daughter, Tita is forbidden by Mexican tradition to marry. Instead, she pours all of her emotions into her delicious recipes, which she shares with readers along the way.When Tita falls in love with Pedro, he is seduced by the magical food she cooks.…
