Books like Stork — picked by fans

Vera and Daniel are expecting their first child. To help supplement their income, Vera decides she can sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. She’s very good at it, too. She plans to stop...after just one more house. Unfortunately, this particular house belongs to The Slob and things are about to get very, very ugly.

Beauregard puts the “gross” in “engrossing!” This may be the most disturbing book that I have ever read. What sets Beauregard apart from many other writers of extreme horror is his immense talent for creating well-developed, relatable characters within an actual horror story. I grew to care for Vera and Daniel. When you sympathize with and connect so well with the characters, the horrors become magnified and the tension grows palpable. This book is absolutely horrid—chock full of the worst atrocities. Yet, you will find yourself loving it nonetheless. It is truly unforgettable.

Sarah Temple has ended her relationship with an abusive boyfriend and is now stuck in a dingy apartment living next to some very peculiar people. When her ex is unsuccessful in his attempt at reconciliation, he hooks up with her neighbor. Several days later he emerges as a strange new man. Sarah decides to investigate. And so the adventure begins.

Sometimes extreme horror stories fall short because the authors just want to shock and disgust readers. That’s fine for some, I suppose. But when an author can create a truly good, horrific story and make it disturbing, to boot, It’s a truly winning combination. Harvey Click does just that in The Bad Box. This story is creepy, suspenseful, mysterious, full of action, gory, imaginative, and masterfully written with rich, descriptive language and great imagery:

"A stench of damp dirt and worms and fungus and rotting animals belched up from… show more.

Some might say that this is a really crappy story. I will agree only to the extent that this book does, in fact, center on feces. Sara Todd is pregnant and she’s not craving pickles and ice cream!

This book is brilliantly written. McCluskey presents a most vile and disgusting story—one that is ripe with imagery and depravity. There’s not much that shocks and disturbs me, to be honest, but this book had me muttering, “No, oh no, no, no” in anticipation of the nasty deeds. Each one seemed progressively worse. It will likely turn your stomach and surely disgust you!

Who wouldn’t want to be granted wishes? Then again, it’s best to heed the old idiom, “Be careful what you wish for.” 

Pam Wilkins lives a miserable life. When she encounters a Djinn who promises her happiness, beauty, wealth, and anything she can hope for, she is desperate enough to give in to temptation. The Djinn does, in fact, grant her wishes, but they come at a hefty cost.

Calling this book sick and twisted would be an understatement. West exceeds the boundaries of human decency. The scenes are downright vile and will surely make you gag. The story is engrossing, wildly imaginative, and has a great twist at the end.

Aside from my research on rewards management, pro-social organizational behavior, and employee substance misuse, I’ve focused a lot of my attention on workplace incivility. 

Bob Sutton’s book was one of the factors leading me to look at this topic. We’ve all encountered incivility at work and all know – at least implicitly – how it impacts us. Sutton’s book was one of the first to make sense – at least for me – of such behavior, not only by identify the “dirty dozen” (12 highly prevalent manifestations of workplace incivility), but also by detailing how damaging such behavior can be to individuals and the organizations employing them.

Aside from giving me insight into the prevalence and nature of employee MIS-management, this book was the start of a personal journey to discover some of the less obvious (but potentially more robust) implications of such problematic organizational behavior.

Evan Stark’s book introduced me to the concept of ‘coercive control’.

It is a continued and malevolent pattern of domination and entrapment that makes family violence a human rights crime. He also noted that the perpetrator, often a man, uses gendered stereotypes to control the woman, to convince her that it is she who is at fault.

Evan Stark’s insights helped me connect the gendered cultural practices of money with family violence. When these cultural ways of dealing with money were used for entrapment and abuse, money as a medium of care became a medium of coercive control.

I blame a 90’s childhood spent devouring Bruce Coville and O.R. Melling, but I am obsessed with stories where our hero tumbles, slides, or wanders into another world. That’s why, even as an adult, I drink up the scene(s) in a speculative book where I get that first delicious glimmer of an uncanny separate world beneath “normal” life.

When it’s done well, it’s everything, and Sasha’s way-too-early morning swims in Vita Nostra evoke that feeling pitch-perfectly. I love how the authors describe the visceral discomfort of cold water, I love the industrial incongruity of the buoy she swims to, and mostly I love how they use the disorienting sensation of sneaking out to swim in wild and dangerous waters, to set the mood for the weirdness to come.

This made me feel like I was watching Sailor Moon and reading The Dark Tower again for the first time. 

I was deeply struck by the honest depiction of domestic violence and manipulation in this novel, which is based on the author’s own experience of marriage. The novel builds up slowly, with facts of the marriage interspersed with the retrospective analysis of the author.

The writing is lovely—stark, poetic, and, given the subject, improbably funny. Even with the humor, this is not at all an easy novel to read, but the reward is a haunting, visceral understanding of how even a well-educated woman can turn unlikely victim. 

Sometimes the most toxic relationships are born out of an all-consuming desire to become friends (or more).

So is the case for the narrator of Second Place, M, who becomes obsessed with impressing an artist, L, who stays in her home during the COVID-19 pandemic. L is an awful guest, but M is cringe-worthy in her attempts to impress him, as she begins to reflect on her relationship with her daughter, her husband, and her own body.

The novel is indebted to the Mabel Dodge Luhan’s 1932 memoir Lorenzo in Taos, about DH Lawrence’s stay at her artists’ colony in New Mexico. Lawrence threatened to ‘destroy’ his hostess, as L threatens M in this novel. With every twist and turn, Second Place becomes more surreal, horrifying, and darkly humorous.

When I was in my emotionally abusive marriage, I didn’t fully realize I was being abused. I finally called the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and they recommended this book. It does an excellent job of explaining what verbal/ emotional abuse is, and how to recognize it. Reading this book set me on the path to finally getting the help I needed and getting free from my abuser.