Here are 90 books that Rim of the Pit fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’m a devourer of Golden Age Detective Fiction, and a writer of locked-room mysteries inspired by the classics. When it comes to old-school mystery writers, my favourites are John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and of course Agatha Christie. What I love about that era is the brilliance of the puzzles, and the way those writers really engaged with the reader and (in some cases) addressed them directly, challenging them to solve the crime along with the detective. Additionally, I’m fascinated by stage illusions (though I’m terrible at performing them myself), and this has also had a major influence on my writing.
If you’re interested in locked-room mysteries, cozy crime, or magic, then you need to read this book.
Gigi Pandian is one of the best in the business, and with Under Lock & Skeleton Key she launches a brand new and exciting series. Gigi is excellent at creating charming characters that the reader cannot help but care about – this makes the mysteries themselves all the more compelling – and this book captures everything that’s great about her writing.
"Wildly entertaining." —The New York Times Book Review
Known for her wonderfully addictive characters, multiple award-winning author Gigi Pandian introduces her newest heroine in this heartfelt series debut. Under Lock & Skeleton Key layers stunning architecture with mouthwatering food in an ode to classic locked-room mysteries that will leave readers enchanted.
An impossible crime. A family legacy. The intrigue of hidden rooms and secret staircases.
After a disastrous accident derails Tempest Raj’s career, and life, she heads back to her childhood home in California to comfort herself with her grandfather’s Indian home-cooked meals. Though she resists, every day brings her…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I’m a devourer of Golden Age Detective Fiction, and a writer of locked-room mysteries inspired by the classics. When it comes to old-school mystery writers, my favourites are John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and of course Agatha Christie. What I love about that era is the brilliance of the puzzles, and the way those writers really engaged with the reader and (in some cases) addressed them directly, challenging them to solve the crime along with the detective. Additionally, I’m fascinated by stage illusions (though I’m terrible at performing them myself), and this has also had a major influence on my writing.
The main character in Death From A Top Hat is the enigmatic magician, The Great Merlini, and he is certainly a beguiling and intriguing character!
The perfect amateur sleuth, with everything I love about this particular “stock character.” He’s funny, he’s smart, and he has – quite literally – plenty of tricks up his sleeve. This book, along with the rest of the Merlini series, offers many brilliant insights into the world of professional illusion.
But most important of all, this book offers an irresistible mystery that certainly kept me guessing!
A detective steeped in the art of magic solves the mystifying murder of two occultists.
Now retired from the tour circuit on which he made his name, master magician The Great Merlini spends his days running a magic shop in New York’s Times Square and his nights moonlighting as a consultant for the NYPD. The cops call him when faced with crimes so impossible that they can only be comprehended by a magician’s mind. In the most recent case, two occultists are discovered dead in locked rooms, one spread out on a pentagram, both appearing to have been murdered under…
I’m a devourer of Golden Age Detective Fiction, and a writer of locked-room mysteries inspired by the classics. When it comes to old-school mystery writers, my favourites are John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and of course Agatha Christie. What I love about that era is the brilliance of the puzzles, and the way those writers really engaged with the reader and (in some cases) addressed them directly, challenging them to solve the crime along with the detective. Additionally, I’m fascinated by stage illusions (though I’m terrible at performing them myself), and this has also had a major influence on my writing.
This is a bizarre and obscure one-hit wonder that definitely needs to be rediscovered.
The style is crisp and witty, with nicely barbed dialogue. The puzzle is utterly bizarre – just the way I like them. And while the book itself doesn’t feature magical themes per se, it’s actually written by a magician.
I admire You’ll Die Laughing for its sheer originality; having read many murder mysteries, I can honestly say I’ve never read one that repeats the trick at the heart of this decidedly idiosyncratic novel.
"I think I'll die ... ho ho ... laughing!" So exclaimed the practical-joking host of the elegant weekend party, after the siren that was attached to the flush lever on the commode went off. That set the mood for the rest of the weekend as the high-powered guests, including the mysterious analyst Dr. Guelph and a bunch of show-biz personalities, "enjoyed" the hospitality of the Grimsby brothers, Ben and the obnoxious Jesse. After choking down octopus and a dessert made of raw eggs, the party-goers were ready to murder Jesse, and each of them told him as much. Well, it…
Stealing technology from parallel Earths was supposed to make Declan rich. Instead, it might destroy everything.
Declan is a self-proclaimed interdimensional interloper, travelling to parallel Earths to retrieve futuristic cutting-edge technology for his employer. It's profitable work, and he doesn't ask questions. But when he befriends an amazing humanoid robot,…
I’m a devourer of Golden Age Detective Fiction, and a writer of locked-room mysteries inspired by the classics. When it comes to old-school mystery writers, my favourites are John Dickson Carr, Ellery Queen, and of course Agatha Christie. What I love about that era is the brilliance of the puzzles, and the way those writers really engaged with the reader and (in some cases) addressed them directly, challenging them to solve the crime along with the detective. Additionally, I’m fascinated by stage illusions (though I’m terrible at performing them myself), and this has also had a major influence on my writing.
I simply had to include one of Daniel Stashower’s brilliant mysteries, as this all-too-brief series features one of the greatest and most famous illusionists of them all: Harry Houdini.
The story is narrated by Houdini’s brother, Dash, who serves as a kind of “Watson” to Houdini’s boisterous “Holmes,” and the two find themselves embroiled in numerous mysteries peppered with old-fashioned derring-do.
What I love about this book is the meticulous research that has clearly gone into it – but Stashower wears his learning lightly; this is a brisk adventure where the pace never sags.
Harry Houdini and his brother, Dash, are called to solve the murder of a toy tycoon in this first locked room mystery starring the legendary real-life magicians
New York City, 1897: Young escapologist Harry Houdini is struggling to get the recognition he craves from the ruthless entertainment industry. But when toy tycoon Branford Wintour is found murdered in his Fifth Avenue mansion, detectives call upon Houdini to help solve this mysterious crime, ushering in a new era of Houdini’s career: amateur sleuth.
When Harry and his brother Dash reach the scene of the murder, they discover Wintour was found dead…
My Swedish grandmother first introduced me to the horror genre when I was a small boy. Her folktales of trolls and witches really fueled my imagination! Then, when I was in junior high, my father encouraged me to read Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft. I didn’t get hooked on things Gothic, however, until I heard the lyrics of Jim Morrison and the Doors in high school. After college, I became a freelance writer. I quickly learned that 80% of my spooky stuff got accepted by magazines while only 10% of my general interest work was published. That said, it’s no wonder I became a horror writer!
The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood features the author’s scariest tales, including “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. Blackwood piles detail after detail atop one another until the reader nearly suffocates from the gloom and terror they create! He also squeezes much fear from isolated places like Canada and the Danube River.
A woman of snow . . . a midnight caller keeping his promise . . . forests where Nature is deliberate and malefic . . . enchanted houses . . . these are the beings and ideas that flood through this collection of ghost stories by Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951). Altogether thirteen stories, gathered from the entire corpus of Blackwood's work, are included: stories of such sheer power and imagination that it is easy to see why he has been considered the foremost British supernaturalist of the twentieth century. Blackwood's ability to create an atmosphere of unrelieved horror and sustain it…
I remember being gifted a copy of a fairy tale book for children by someone my dad worked with as a kid. "Wow, these are really close to the originals," Mom murmured under her breath. "Wait, there are originals?" That set off a chain reaction of a lifelong love of fairy tales, myths, legends, and folk stories. Writing The Tooth Fairy forced me to double-check my lifetime of accumulated knowledge. Plus, being trapped indoors with audiobooks during a global pandemic left me a lot more time to learn! In short: I simply love the old legends.
Have you ever had a book actively try to stop you from reading it? This non-fiction book was guarded like all doorways into Fairie. Every time I sat down to read it the kettle would come to a boil, or the phone would ring! I read it cover to cover though. Even finding it again to tell you about it was a challenge.
Discover where faeries and other mythical creatures are hiding in our modern, urban environment with this beautifully illustrated guide to uncovering magical beings.
From the musty corners of libraries to the darkest depths of urban sewers, faeries, boggarts, redcaps, and other fantastical species can be found all around us-but only if we know where to look. And like every other being in the modern world, these wonderous creatures have been forced to adapt to the climate, industrial, and cultural changes of the modern era. Many formerly common creatures from akeki to cave trolls have been driven out by the urban…
Nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife—mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice—near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. She guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks…
I am an award-winning writer based in Southern California who creates internationally published horror, fantasy, science fiction, and weird West stories. Dozens of my short stories have appeared in podcasts, magazines, games, and Stoker-nominated anthologies, and I’ve authored several books. I am the co-chair and founder of the Horror Writers Association San Diego chapter, a short story instructor, co-creator of the Monster Gunslingers game, and member of writing organizations, including the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association. I find speculative horror a fascinating lens by which to view challenges faced by underrepresented groups and women. I hope you enjoy these tales.
I found each of the short stories in this collection to be entirely unnerving and deliciously disturbing. I particularly enjoyed how the complex characters and intricately crafted plots showcased strange and unusual situations to reveal the often-monstrous facets of humanity.
The stories were unsettling enough that I had to stop reading them before bedtime. I appreciated how they weren’t overly graphic but more subtle, focusing on spine-tingling, sinister suspense. These are the type of delightfully twisty stories I love reading in the fall and getting in the Halloween spirit.
A workaholic splits his time between home and hotel rooms until an anonymous cryptic message arrives, setting off a wrinkle in the time continuum and slowly shredding his sanity. Elsewhere, a woman's jealousy over her spouse's connection with their only child boils over, leading her to see monsters everywhere except the mirror. University fraternity brothers discover that a cruel prank has dire consequences but the full extent of their punishment is yet to come, while an intrepid hiker explores an abandoned Cold War facility hidden within a Massachusetts mountain only to realize that military secrets aren't the only things buried…
Being a musician does funny things to you. It leads you to look for patterns in the beautiful – and not-so-beautiful. To my mind, music is art and logic perfectly combined. I believe this unique combination offers musicians extra insights into the world around us. My desire to discover patterns in the world around me, fused with an underlying sense of injustice, has helped shape the opinions and ideas for a better social model that I write about today. I've founded several online initiatives, written extensively, and given talks around the concept of a post-money, open access economy. I believe this will ultimately prove to be the only viable path for humanity over the next century.
As someone who campaigns for a better way to operate spaceship Earth, Dispelling Wetiko was the precise slap in the face I needed to break free from the spell that has captured so many would-be change-makers like myself. It’s so easy to look around and point the finger at those who benefit most from the world’s problems as being the cause agents when nothing could be further from the truth.
It is our collective hopes, our weaknesses, and our fears – multiplied in their billions – that create the super-structure that billionaires enjoy. Levy defines this as a collective psychosis of humanity that wreaks havoc on the world around us – a psychosis that we must face down before we can hope to defeat it.
There is a contagious psychospiritual disease of the soul, a parasite of the mind, that is currently being acted out en masse on the world stage via a collective psychosis of titanic proportions. This mind-virus—which Native Americans have called "wetiko"—covertly operates through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, rendering people oblivious to their own madness and compelling them to act against their own best interests.
Drawing on insights from Jungian psychology, shamanism, alchemy, spiritual wisdom traditions, and personal experience, author Paul Levy shows us that hidden within the venom of wetiko is its own antidote, which once recognized…
To understand why I write macabre stories, you could ask my therapist if I had one. I’ve had this bent since my mother read me Dr. Seuss’ What Was I Scared Of? (A title that inspired the title of my TV series Are You Afraid of the Dark?) Blame it on her. My reading was dominated by the short stories I mentioned and magazines like Eerie and Creepy. I also consumed a steady diet of Twilight Zone and Saturday matinee horror movies. Why? I believe it’s because these stories offer imaginative conflicts that are far removed from reality yet told through the perspective of common experience. And they’re always wrapped in a compelling mystery.
This is more of a general recommendation for the myriad of terrific horror-themed short stories that I’ve been reading since I was young. The Most Dangerous Game, The Birds, The Upper Berth, anything by Poe, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, The Specialty of the House, the list goes on. And on.
These types of short stories always have a disturbing premise that makes you shudder; they are paced so that you can’t turn the pages fast enough and often end with a stunning twist. I picked this book since I feel it is a quintessential example of this genre and because I have a personal bias since I used it as the basis for the pilot episode of my TV series.
Outside, the night is cold and wet. Inside, the White family sits and waits. Where is their visitor? There is a knock at the door. A man is standing outside in the dark. Their visitor has arrived. The visitor waits. He has been in India for many years. What has he got? He has brought the hand of a small, dead animal - a monkey's paw. Outside, in the dark, the visitor smiles and waits for the door to open.
The Bridge provides a compassionate and well researched window into the worlds of linear and circular thinking. A core pattern to the inner workings of these two thinking styles is revealed, and most importantly, insight into how to cross the distance between them. Some fascinating features emerged such as, circular…
I’ve loved reading ever since I learned how. Sometimes, that can be inconvenient. I now own over 8000 books, not including ebooks, so storage space is an issue. Fortunately, my heart space is not as constrained as my physical space. Anyway, given my keen interest in reading, it’s no surprise that I began to write. Though my reading tastes are wide, I mostly write in fantasy, my favorite genre. It’s an opportunity to explore new worlds and to use them to reflect upon our own. We may not make literal pacts with demons, but we all face temptation. Figuring out how to navigate our desires is a crucial part of life.
This book hooked me initially by drawing hope out of a difficult situation. When Chance Fortunato is just a little kid, his own father sells him to a demon. He spends eight years learning magic and then tempting other teenagers to sell their souls. But then, he flips the script, winning his freedom and setting out to undo the evil he has done by helping others to avoid or escape demonic pacts.
I was impressed by Chance’s ability to overcome a catastrophic upbringing. I was fascinated by how seamlessly Reeder has him switch between navigating ordinary teenage issues and supernatural threats. Chance’s dialogs with his “hairy monkey brain”—which mostly wants sex—and his efforts to find a relationship that is more than that are moving and realistic. His bravery in the face of overwhelming threats is inspiring.
