Here are 70 books that The Other fans have personally recommended if you like
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My new thriller centers around a small, mysterious cult and their shocking demise. For years, I’ve read true crime books on the subject, and I wanted to infuse the reality and truth of real-life events into my fictional novel. In a similar vein, these books represent a range of thrillers inspired by true events, ranging from cults to serial killers to teenage criminals. I hope you find these books as gripping and haunting as I do.
I find this book to be an unsettling but impactful read, both thought-provoking and complex. We Need to Talk about Kevin follows the mother of a troubled teenager responsible for a school shooting.
It’s about nature versus nurture, the relationship between mother and child, and deeply seated guilt. It draws inspiration from real events, including the 1999 shooting at Columbine, which wasn’t the U.S.’s first mass shooting at a school, but it would become one of the most infamous.
Shriver’s novel raises unsettling questions about a mother’s guilt and self-justification and a community’s heartache and blame. I consider it to be a captivating and moving book.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
As a horror writer, the evil kid subgenre holds great appeal to me. I’ve written about them a few times, most notably in my novella Sour Candy, which remains the most popular thing I’ve written, perhaps because, like in the books mentioned above, we don’t expect our children to be evil monsters, and when they are, we’re ill-prepared to deal with the threat. They’re still children, after all, and we’re supposed to love and protect them. The emotional quandaries this situation presents are fascinating to write about.
Stage’s wonderfully sinister novel documents the early years of a child who seems to have been born bad. The thrill in this one is the ever-escalating war between a precocious and seemingly sweet child and her anguished mother, who knows she’s being manipulated by her daughter, while the father remains oblivious to the horror. It’s unusual, and fun, to read a book in which we get to see things from the child’s perspective as she tries to drive her mother insane.
“Unnerving and unputdownable, Baby Teeth will get under your skin and keep you trapped in its chilling grip until the shocking conclusion.”―New York Times bestselling author Lisa Scottoline
One of Entertainment Weekly’s Must-Read Books for July | People Magazine's Book of the Week | One of Bustle's "Fifteen Books With Chilling Protagonists That Will Keep You Guessing" | One of PopSugar's "25 Must-Read Books That Will Make July Fly By!" | One of the "Biggest Thrillers of the Summer"―SheReads | "New & Noteworthy" ―USA Today | "Summer 2018 Must-Read"―Bookish | "One of 11 Crime Novels You Should Read in July"―Crime…
I’ve always been drawn to the small-town milieu, which might seem strange given I’m a product of suburbia. But as a professional travel writer, I’ve visited scores (maybe hundreds) of country towns, so I know what makes them tick—and they come prepackaged with all the ingredients needed to create an unnerving horror experience. The author simply dreams up a charming little village with humble and lovable residents, then either peels back the bucolic veneer to expose the corruption beneath or introduces a hostile outside force. Voilà! An effective horror novel. I love reading those sorts of stories, and I love writing them.
Science fiction and horror go together like a gourmet meal and vintage wine. No one combined them better than the English writer John Wyndham. I was introduced to his fiction in a high school English class, and this was the first prescribed text I gobbled up rather than plodded through.
Horror doesn’t work unless you care about the protagonists, and Wyndham creates an idyllic village populated with relatable characters before introducing the book’s alien interlopers. Also, ‘pregnancy gone wrong’ is one of my favourite tropes and usually it involves body horror, but this is pretty much bloodless—pure, paranoid terror.
A genre-defining tale of first contact by one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant—and neglected—science fiction and horror writers, whom Stephen King called “the best writer of science fiction that England has ever produced.”
“In my opinion, [John] Wyndham’s chef d’oeuvre . . . a graphic metaphor for the fear of unwanted pregnancies . . . I myself had a dream about a highly intelligent nonhuman baby after reading this book.”—Margaret Atwood, Slate
What if the women of a sleepy English village all became simultaneously pregnant, and the children, once born, possessed supernatural—and possibly alien—powers?
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
My mother got cancer when I was seven and died when I was in college. So, I began to consider death and the afterlife from a very young age. I don’t know if ghosts are real, but I know that people are haunted. I explore this idea—that haunted houses are really settings for haunted humans—as well as the ambiguity between ghosts and mental descents in my own teaching and writing. I love haunted house novels because they’re wonderful vehicles for this sort of exploration and because they’re so much fun to read! I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do!
I have read this book more times than I have read any other book, and on my seventh read, I think I finally figured it out. I love a book that keeps you guessing, that keeps you wondering what’s real and what’s an illusion, and in this short novel, Henry James achieves just that. Are the ghosts real? Is the governess going insane?
James makes both possibilities equally likely—and equally frightening. My favorite ghost stories and horror novels are those that are ”about” something beyond the surface-level plot, and James creates a subtle queer sub-theme that is another reason why I keep reading this book again and again…
'A most wonderful, lurid, poisonous little tale' Oscar Wilde
The Turn of the Screw, James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension, tells of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something, or someone, malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence, or a manifestation of something else entirely?
Edited and with an Introduction and Notes by David Bromwich Series…
I’ve always been fascinated by the everyday lives of people from early New England; I want to understand how they experienced their world, made choices, and participated in changing history. Most of these people left no memoirs, so I’ve spent years in all manner of archives, piecing together clues to individual lives. I’ve found extraordinary insights on how and why people farmed in tax valuations, deeper knowledge of their material world in probate court inventories, evidence of neighborly interdependence in old account books, etc. I’ve spent my career as a public historian sharing these stories through museum research and exhibits, public programs, lectures, and writing. I love the hunt – and the story!
When the Robertsons bought their 18th-century home in Hampton, Ct., they inherited an unparalleled lode of documents assembled over 100 years of the previous owners’ history. Starting in the 1790s, the Traintors saved, it seems, every bit of paper that came through their hands: from private letters and business accounts, to pamphlets, social invitations, school records, and, of course books. The Robertsons spent years digesting this remarkable trove. In this book, they “open out” the evidence – as Laurel Ulrich did for Martha Ballard’s diary – in a way that transforms it into a moving and deeply intimate story of family life and community change in a small New England town. I found their tale – told often in the Taintors’ own words – to be vivid, immediate, a surprisingly frank, personal, and moving story.
Examines 150 years of the social life and customs of a small New England town through letters and other documents belonging to the family that built and lived in the authors' house in Hampton, Connecticut
When I was a little boy growing up in Philadelphia, I couldn’t have dolls. So I collected Hot Wheels, gave them all wild names and backstories, and moved them around through scandal and adventure on our pool table. As a voracious reader, I devoured hefty novels from my parent’s bookcase as a teenager, and in the 1980s, I adored prime-time soaps like Dallas and Dynasty. I also discovered great midcentury melodramas from filmmakers like Douglas Sirk and Mark Robson, leading to reading related books. Today I review books for the New York Times, and I remain passionate for period melodrama. (Don’t get me started on my Mad Men obsession!)
The first great American trashy novel, Peyton Place today seems rather tame, but in its day, it was scandalous. Plucking it from my mother’s bookcase when I was 14, I was engrossed by its roaring passion and sensational secrets.
Set in a small New England town, the book set the stage for the modern soap opera, and I wolfed it down like a big box of candy. It reminds me of those great, heady melodramas of the 1950s (and was itself made into a fabulously sudsy film in 1957), an intoxicating mix of all things forbidden.
I adored the fact that it was literary, which it doesn’t get enough credit for. I think its opening line—“Indian summer is like a woman…”—is one of the best in mid-20th Century literature.
When Grace Metalious's debut novel about the dark underside of a small, respectable New England town was published in 1956, it quickly soared to the top of the bestseller lists. A landmark in twentieth-century American popular culture, Peyton Place spawned a successful feature film and a long-running television series—the first prime-time soap opera.
Contemporary readers of Peyton Place will be captivated by its vivid characters, earthy prose, and shocking incidents. Through her riveting, uninhibited narrative, Metalious skillfully exposes the intricate social anatomy of a small community, examining the lives of its people—their passions and vices, their ambitions and defeats, their…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
I’ve always been fascinated by the everyday lives of people from early New England; I want to understand how they experienced their world, made choices, and participated in changing history. Most of these people left no memoirs, so I’ve spent years in all manner of archives, piecing together clues to individual lives. I’ve found extraordinary insights on how and why people farmed in tax valuations, deeper knowledge of their material world in probate court inventories, evidence of neighborly interdependence in old account books, etc. I’ve spent my career as a public historian sharing these stories through museum research and exhibits, public programs, lectures, and writing. I love the hunt – and the story!
Bob Gross, knowing that we shared an interest in New England towns in the early Republic, generously shared drafts of each chapter of this magisterial work. I was astonished. The depth and range of his research are unparalleled. In a life-work 45 years in the making, Bob has culled evidence on Concord from every conceivable source, showing the rest of us how it’s done. He has reconstructed families and linked neighbors through church, farm, business, political, and religious activities, using this to reconstruct the life of the town. Bob knows his people so well that I am convinced he has accurately captured their personalities, dynamics, and conflicts. It is rare that we can have such confidence in “knowing” the past. In engaging prose, he presents individuals actively shaping – or resisting – change in their town, and ultimately, their world.
One of The Wall Street Journal's 10 best books of 2021 One of Air Mail's 10 best books of 2021 Winner of the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize
In the year of the nation’s bicentennial, Robert A. Gross published The Minutemen and Their World, a paradigm-shaping study of Concord, Massachusetts, during the American Revolution. It won the prestigious Bancroft Prize and became a perennial bestseller. Forty years later, in this highly anticipated work, Gross returns to Concord and explores the meaning of an equally crucial moment in the American story: the rise of Transcendentalism.
I've been writing and providing pastor care for more than thirty years now. Since turning sixty, I have noticed that aging well is not a given. Many people seem to grow increasingly bitter, resentful, and hard. If we want to become more empathetic, grateful, and loving, we have to keep growing and do our spiritual and relational work. We also need trustworthy guides to help us find our way. I hope to be a wise, compassionate guide for my readers.
Kenison wrote this book when she was in her forties, after
she nudged her husband to sell their long-time family house and move to rural
New Hampshire with their two teenage sons. The book gives voice to being
uprooted, letting go of the familiar, and the profound transitions of mid-life.
Kenison writes beautifully of the stirrings and longings that prompt us to see
our lives from a new vantage point, ultimately allowing us to move on with
grace and grit.
The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition-boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, an attempt to find a deeper sense of place and a slower pace, in a small New England town. It is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers - holding on, letting go. Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is…
I first became obsessed with the ancient world at around seventeen, and have spent the subsequent years researching and gathering knowledge on all aspects of ancient life. It was through fiction that this love first blossomed and the yearning for books has not yet ceased. In 2015 I decided I didn’t want to just be a reader anymore, and I began work on what would in 2017 become my debut novel, The Centurion’s Son. I have no plans to stop any time soon.
Ben instantly became one of my favourite authors after this. It’s not often you can feel an author’s passion for their work, but it shone from every page in this book. I was already hooked on ancient Rome, but I just found this stood out amongst its peers. Ben didn’t concentrate on the generals and senators that would write their names into history, but on the everyday soldiers that lived by the edge of their sword. It is a book I will certainly never forget
The Forgotten Legion - fighting for honour, freedom and revenge
Romulus and Fabiola are twins, born into slavery after their mother is raped by a drunken nobleman. At thirteen years old they are sold - Romulus to gladiator school, Fabiola into prostitution, where she will catch the eye of one of the most powerful men in Rome. Tarquinius is an Etruscan, a warrior and soothsayer, born enemy of Rome, but doomed to fight for the Republic in the Forgotten Legion. Brennus is a Gaul, his entire family killed by the Romans, and he rises to become one of the most…
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 have read adventure, crime, and thriller books all my life. Reading is a huge relaxation for me and a good novel will transport me from the stresses and strains of daily life into another place in my head. A place where I feel involved with the characters and the environment, a place where I can imagine I could be. A good storyteller is different from a crime writer. They take the reader on a journey that might be through history or different continents. A journey that the reader wants to travel as well. I try to emulate this in my writing.
Based in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the story follows the Wolfe family in war-torn Mexico. During these tumultuous events in American and Mexican history, the Wolfes grow rich and forge a violent history of their own, spawning a fearsome legacy that will lead them to a climactic reckoning at the Río Grande.
I found this to be a page-turning epic story about a nineteenth-century crime family spanning three generations. Apparently loosely based on Blake’s own ancestors, this made the storytelling even more realistic for me.
A page-turning epic about the making of a borderland crime family, Country of the Bad Wolfes will appeal both to aficionados of family sagas and to fans of hard-knuckled crime novels by the likes of Donald Pollack, Elmore Leonard, James Lee Burke and James Ellroy.
Basing the novel partly on his own ancestors, Blake presents the story of the Wolfe family spanning three generations, centering on two sets of identical twins and the women they love, and ranging from New England to the heart of Mexico before arriving at its powerful climax at the Rio Grande.
