Here are 100 books that Sleep No More fans have personally recommended if you like
Sleep No More.
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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 am partial to a soupçon of the paranormal in my psychological thriller, which I know isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. I was gripped the whole time reading, but although I knew something shocking was coming, I had absolutely no idea what was going on until the final chapters.
The reveal at the end genuinely left me shaking. It is probably my favorite twist of all time. Outstanding.
Don't Trust This Book Don't Trust These People Don't Trust Yourself And whatever you do, DON'T give away that ending...
Louise
Since her husband walked out, Louise has made her son her world, supporting them both with her part-time job. But all that changes when she meets...
David
Young, successful and charming - Louise cannot believe a man like him would look at her twice let alone be attracted to her. But that all comes to a grinding halt when she meets his wife...
Adele
Beautiful, elegant and sweet - Louise's new friend seems perfect…
If the future can be edited—who decides what gets erased? Broken Code is a high-stakes biotech conspiracy thriller where power isn’t seized—it’s engineered.
Harper “Brass” Brasfield, a Memphis attorney barely holding her life together, stumbles onto a case that exposes a disturbing experiment: behavior-altering gene edits designed to control who…
Thrillers are just that—thrilling. But thrillers with lots of explosions and gunfights aren’t that appealing to me since I know the hero will make it. With realistic domestic, at-home-style thrillers, the thrilling nature is how the scenarios could really happen. Those are the most thrilling ideas, the ones I can see how they could actually happen to someone—or to me. That makes it exciting. This is why I read many of them and have written quite a few, too, because there’s nothing more thrilling than thinking your home, or the people in it, isn’t as safe as you thought.
One of the best books I’ve ever read. The story’s puzzle is terrific, and the action is constant, intense, and entirely plausible.
This novel was one of the reasons I fell in love with the thriller genre, thanks to its continuous redirection and explosive revelations sprinkled throughout. Completely devourable.
If there was ever a novel I wish I could read again for the first time to be shocked all over again, this is unquestionably the one.
Every year, the Doctor David Beck and his young wife, Elizabeth, meet at the same deserted lake to rediscover their love for each other, and inscribe one more year into 'their' tree. But that year was the last. Elizabeth was kidnapped and Beck knocked unconscious. By the time he woke up, his wife had been discovered dead, and horribly mutilated. For eight years he grieves. Then one afternoon, he receives an anonymous e-mail telling him to log on to a certain web-site at a certain time, using a code that only the two of them knew. The screen opens onto…
When I was 27, I thought it would be fun to write. I have no formal training, yet I have found success through reading exposure and trial and error for 30 years. Changing my voice was hard, but reading these books helped me define the kind of story I wanted to tell in my new novel, Missed Connection. Erotic thrillers truly are a guilty pleasure for me.
Witty writing is important to me both as a writer and a reader, and Palahniuk’s prose is sharp, aggressive, and biting, with more wit than most writers know what to do with. It’s a hard feat as a writer to be witty and aggressive and still maintain the flow of the story, and Palahniuk does it over and over, with this book being a stand out for me.
Not too many books can make me laugh out loud, shudder, cringe, and keep turning the pages like this one did.
Misty Wilmot has had it. Once a promising young artist, she’s now stuck on an island ruined by tourism, drinking too much and working as a waitress in a hotel. Her husband, a contractor, is in a coma after a suicide attempt, but that doesn’t stop his clients from threatening Misty with lawsuits over a series of vile messages they’ve found on the walls of houses he remodeled.
Suddenly, though, Misty finds her artistic talent returning as she begins a period of compulsive painting. Inspired but confused by this burst of creativity, she soon finds herself a pawn in…
If the future can be edited—who decides what gets erased? Broken Code is a high-stakes biotech conspiracy thriller where power isn’t seized—it’s engineered.
Harper “Brass” Brasfield, a Memphis attorney barely holding her life together, stumbles onto a case that exposes a disturbing experiment: behavior-altering gene edits designed to control who…
When I was about 8 years old, I read a book called Tom and the Two Handles by Russell Hoban. It’s a children’s book designed to teach that every story has two sides. This book stuck with me for some reason. So, when I started writing novels, I always made sure my villains had pure motives. Remember, no well-written bad guy THINKS he’s a bad guy. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. This is true of all the classic Bond villains right up to Thanos in the MCU. Plus, and I’m sure most writers would agree, the bad guys are always more fun to write.
This is another book that I discovered after seeing the TV show. The Netflix adaptation is fairly faithful to the text, but I still really enjoyed the novel because the writing is witty, clever, and beautifully paced in a way that makes you want to keep reading when you know you should turn out the light and go to sleep.
The little character quirks add realism and some much-needed light relief to a pretty dark story. For me, the scariest thing about this book is, even though our lead character goes to extreme lengths most of us would never even consider, the roots of his actions come from thoughts we’ve probably all had.
*** NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES *** 'Thriller of the Year' Daily Mail 'Hypnotic and scary' Stephen King 'Examines the fine line between seduction and stalking . . . Ludicrously readable' Guardian
When aspiring writer Guinevere Beck strides into the bookstore where Joe works, he is instantly smitten.
But there's more to Joe than Beck realises and much more to Beck than her perfect facade. And the obsessive relationship quickly spirals into a whirlwind of deadly consequences...
A chilling account of unrelenting, terrifying deceit, Caroline Kepnes' You is a thriller more perversely clever and dangerously twisted than any YOU have…
My passion for mental health is both personal and professional. I have Bipolar Disorder, and I am a law professor who teaches and researches in this area. The books on this list go deeper than the usual narrative of mental illness, telling inspiring success stories and laying bare the dysfunctions of our current approach to mental illness. I have found in these books comfort and motivation to push for change.
The heart of this book is the stories of individuals with serious mental illness based on repeated interviews over the course of years, which illustrate the dysfunction of our mental health system.
These stories are woven together with interviews of experts, research, and the author’s experiences living with a sister who had schizophrenia. I learned as much from this book as any other single book I have read in the field.
A psychiatrist and award-winning documentarian sheds light on the mental-health-care crisis in the United States.
When Dr. Kenneth Rosenberg trained as a psychiatrist in the late 1980s, the state mental hospitals, which had reached peak occupancy in the 1950s, were being closed at an alarming rate, with many patients having nowhere to go. There has never been a more important time for this conversation, as one in five adults--40 million Americans--experiences mental illness each year. Today, the largest mental institution in the United States is the Los Angeles County Jail, and the last refuge for many of the 20,000 mentally…
I inherited an offbeat sense of humor from my mother, who encouraged me to create stories about outrageous subjects, like cats doing “people things.” I’m grateful to have made a living writing about such things, as well as observations about my own humorous experiences in essays, calendars, and books. I’ve always looked to other funny creatives for inspiration, and the books on my list reflect some of my favorites.
Like the author, I live with mental illness and use humorous writing/reading to process my thoughts and “check out” sometimes. In many instances, her words feel like my words. I can’t help that depression and anxiety affect my daily life, but I do find myself musing about weird happenings—often questioning the reality of situations. And then I laugh.
When I read this book, I didn’t feel so alone in my “weirdness,” I felt validated in giggling at the strange predicaments I’ve found myself in.
In Furiously Happy, a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, and explains how it has led her to live life to the fullest:
"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand. And that's what Furiously Happy is all about."
I’ve chosen to recommend fiction by Irish women, because I’m a female Irish writer myself. My own books are mostly for children, but, hey, I’m an adult. As well as a writer I am a retired publisher, a not-quite-retired editor, and an occasional translator, so I tend to engage very closely – OK, obsessively – with text. I have a pretty serious visual impairment, so most of my ‘reading’ is through the medium of audiobooks. I’m never sure if that influences my taste in reading. Anyway, these are the books I’ve liked recently, and hope you do too.
Theoretically for Young Adults (meaning older teenagers), this one is also for adults of any age. It’s about exclusion, anxiety, depression, suicide, all matters that have touched my own family with tragedy,
Helena Close knows about mental illness and what it feels like, and she describes it in visceral detail. But she is a sharp and funny writer, and she takes no prisoners when it comes to the false assurances of a certain kind of charlatan ‘counsellor’.
The heroine of this book seems set to drown in sorrow, but she learns, slowly and with help, how to swim up out of pain and fear towards the light. So uplifting!
Saoirse (18) can't wait to leave school - but just before the Leaving Cert her ex-boyfriend dies by suicide. Everyone blames Saoirse - even Saoirse herself, who cheated on him with his best friend. She is shunned by her schoolmates and suffers unbearable levels of anxiety.
Everything becomes too much, and on the night of the school Debs, Saoirse throws herself into the river - and wakes up in a psychiatric hospital. Slowly, painfully, with the support of a friendly hospital cleaner, her old best friend, her kind and hilarious grandmother, and even her irritating sister, Saoirse regains her…
I am a professor emeritus of History and Arctic & Northern Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A mostly lifelong Alaskan, my research interest has been northern, especially Alaska, history. I’m deeply interested in northern peoples and cultures and both their resilience and adaptation in the face of rapid socio-economic and cultural change. As I write, I strive to create a narrative that will fascinate and inspire; that will resonate deeply, so the reader continues to think about the book well after finishing it. Such narratives attract me as a reader.
Terese Marie Mailhot’s raw account of her traumatic childhood and its enduring consequences took my breath away. A nearly lifelong Alaskan, I am acutely aware of the social problems afflicting Indigenous communities; in fact, I’ve done research on the topic.
Yet, I have never read a more honest, painful, and beautifully written testimonial by an Indigenous person about her experience with childhood poverty and neglect, substance abuse in the home, sexual abuse, and resulting poor self-esteem and self-doubt. Mailhot, who was raised on Seabird Island in British Columbia, began writing her memoir as mental health therapy and it became a process of self-discovery.
Her experience highlights the effects of historical trauma on Indigenous individuals and communities, as well as the prevalence of maltreatment of Indigenous women.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Winner of the Whiting Award for Non-Fiction Selected by Emma Watson as an Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick
'I loved it' Kate Tempest 'Astounding' Roxane Gay 'A sledgehammer' New York Times
Heart Berries is a powerful, poetic memoir of a woman's coming of age on an Indian Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalised and facing a dual diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder, Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma.
Since I started reading, I gravitated to books with believable characters in real situations, because I could see myself in these stories. How would I cope in a family dealing with illness or death, breakups in relationships, money woes, and other crises that I read about? Realistic stories about family problems are relatable to everyone, and reading about them through the eyes of the children involved is so meaningful. That’s why when I started creative writing after I retired, I found my voice in the genre I loved to read as a kid. I write authentic stories about families presented with difficult issues for middle-grade readers (and adults).
This next book is gritty in its authenticity. It isn’t for the faint of heart to read about the heartbreaking struggles of thirteen-year-old Anna Collette whose mother tries to take her life and is hospitalized. Anna has to live with her distant father, his new wife, and their baby where she doesn’t feel like part of the family. But the author gives us a warm and loving character in her stepmother who shows Della what family can be. I’m enthralled by true and complex characters in this book who represent the highs and lows of real life.
The beginning of the eighth grade is not what Anna thought it would be. Her lifelong best friend has ditched her for the cool kids, and her mum is in the hospital after swallowing a bottle of pills. Anna is also trying to reconnect with her dad who remarried and has a baby now. Ultimately, Anna finds friendship and camaraderie from some unlikely sources and learns that sometimes life leaves you feeling gobsmacked, but if you have the right people in your life to support you, you'll be just fine.
I have written four books of popular science, and edited a fifth collection of my favorite science writers. I have been a judge for the 2022 Science in Society Book Awards for the National Association of Science Writers. I taught popular science writing for 34 years to undergraduates and graduates alike. Most of all, I love the wonder and awe of understanding the world around us.
A stunning biography of a brilliant mathematician, John Forbes Nash, and his descent and resurrection from madness, that became a hit movie.
Nasar makes both the mathematics and the personality of an early, unusual and important game theorist come alive for even the most math-adverse reader. This is an unusual account of recovery, of a mind apprehending the world of human competition, and a poetical love and coming-of-age story.
**Also an Academy Award–winning film starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly—directed by Ron Howard**
The powerful, dramatic biography of math genius John Nash, who overcame serious mental illness and schizophrenia to win the Nobel Prize.
“How could you, a mathematician, believe that extraterrestrials were sending you messages?” the visitor from Harvard asked the West Virginian with the movie-star looks and Olympian manner. “Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did,” came the answer. “So I took them seriously.”
Thus begins the true story of John Nash, the mathematical…
