Here are 100 books that The Red Room fans have personally recommended if you like
The Red Room.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I have written nine crime novels, mostly psychological thrillers, but some blend procedural and PI elements and two are gangland stories. I went to the BRIT school in the 90’s and studied Drama and English Literature at University. I always think that my Performing Arts background gave me a great tool kit for ‘getting into character’ which is useful for writing. I also have an MA in journalism but I definitely prefer fiction to fact. I love the immediacy of first person prose and I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator.
This is a book told from the point of view of Mother Rob and her daughter Callie.
It deals with topics of child psychopathy and innate evil and is beautifully written. I’m a huge fan of Catriona Ward’s and was torn between this book or The Last House On Needless Street but I really enjoyed the exploration of motherhood and childhood here and found myself rooting for the characters long after I turned the last page.
Like all of Ward’s books, Sundial has strong horror vibes and the world we are drawn into is full of lush descriptions but it is the characters that really stand out to me. This book also has some really good twists.
“DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK. Authentically terrifying.” —Stephen King
Sharp as a snakebite, Sundial is a gripping novel about the secrets we bury from the ones we love most, from Catriona Ward, the author of The Last House on Needless Street.
You can't escape what's in your blood...
Rob has spent her life running from Sundial, the family’s ranch deep in the Mojave Desert, and her childhood memories.
But she’s worried about her daughter, Callie, who collects animal bones and whispers to imaginary friends. It reminds her of a darkness that runs in her family, and Rob knows it’s time…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Even as a boy, I could see (or maybe just sense) the darkness that resides just below the surface of this otherwise pleasant world. We all have stories, and the ones we hold closest to ourselves are often the darkest. Those are the stories that fascinate me the most. What are the limits of man’s menace? What causes seemingly normal people to snap? To turn on their fellow man? I could do one of two things with this fascination: become a sociopath (perhaps psychopath) or an author of dark, twisted, twisty tales. As you know, I chose the latter.
Of course, I’m including Gillian Flynn in this list. You may have expected her most popular novel, Gone Girl. I like that one, but this is my favorite of her works so far. In my opinion, it nudges out her other book, Sharper Objects (though that one is my wife’s favorite). I think it was her first book. It’s a dark story of a family with secrets, pain, and a moral decision that goes horribly wrong. Again, this one has a strong theme.
What if you could sacrifice everything to ensure your kids had a better life than you? Now, what if that sacrifice went horribly wrong and ruined not only your life but your kids as well? Flynn is a master of the thriller twist. She’s one of those authors who can lay out all the clues in plain sight for her readers without them even knowing it.…
'Eerily macabre... Wonderful' Guardian 'A nerve-fraying thriller' New York Times 'Every bit as horribly fascinating as In Cold Blood' Daily Mail
Libby Day was seven when her family was murdered: she survived by hiding in a closet - and famously testified that her older brother Ben was the killer.
Twenty-five years later the Kill Club - a secret society obsessed with notorious crimes - gets in touch with Libby to try to discover proof that may free Ben. Almost broke, Libby agrees to go back to her hometown to investigate - for a fee.
I have written nine crime novels, mostly psychological thrillers, but some blend procedural and PI elements and two are gangland stories. I went to the BRIT school in the 90’s and studied Drama and English Literature at University. I always think that my Performing Arts background gave me a great tool kit for ‘getting into character’ which is useful for writing. I also have an MA in journalism but I definitely prefer fiction to fact. I love the immediacy of first person prose and I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator.
This story is told from the perspective of a serial killer's stepdaughter, Sophie, and I swallowed it in two sittings.
Matty Melgren, Sophie’s stepfather, is dying and wants to meet. He’s in prison and his imminent death takes Sophie right back to her childhood. The story is told from Sophie’s perspective as a twelve-year-old observing the breakdown of her mother and Matty’s relationship and as an adult debating how much she wants answers and what they might cost her.
I loved the dual timeline and thought it was a really fresh way to approach a serial killer novel.
'Victoria Selman is an exciting and powerfully fresh voice' Patricia Cornwell
Twelve-year-old Sophie and her mother, Amelia-Rose, move to London from Massachusetts where they meet the charismatic Matty Melgren, who quickly becomes an intrinsic part of their lives. But as the relationship between the two adults fractures, a serial killer begins targeting young women with a striking resemblance to Amelia-Rose.
When Matty is eventually sent down for multiple murder, questions remain as to his guilt -- questions which ultimately destroy both women. Nearly twenty years later, Sophie receives a letter from Battlemouth Prison informing her…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I have written nine crime novels, mostly psychological thrillers, but some blend procedural and PI elements and two are gangland stories. I went to the BRIT school in the 90’s and studied Drama and English Literature at University. I always think that my Performing Arts background gave me a great tool kit for ‘getting into character’ which is useful for writing. I also have an MA in journalism but I definitely prefer fiction to fact. I love the immediacy of first person prose and I am a sucker for an unreliable narrator.
Based on the case of child killer Mary Bell this book is an unexpected page-turner and is written with so much heart. It’s dark, compulsive, and the prose sparkles.
This is another dual timeline book we follow Chrissie as a child living a hard life and eventually committing murder. We meet her again as an adult with a new identity and a daughter of her own. Nancy Tucker is a psychologist I believe and it certainly comes across.
The entire cast in this book is written with such tenderness and insight. A really difficult book dealing with a tough topic but also a story of redemption and understanding.
'So that was all it took,' I thought. 'That was all it took for me to feel like I had all the power in the world. One morning, one moment, one yellow-haired boy. It wasn't so much after all.'
Chrissie knows how to steal sweets from the shop without getting caught, the best hiding place for hide-and-seek, the perfect wall for handstands.
Now she has a new secret. It gives her a fizzing, sherbet feeling in her belly. She doesn't get to feel power like this at home, where food is scarce and attention scarcer.
I have always been obsessed with the idea of other worlds I can’t sense but can somehow contrive to glimpse, whether with a magic amulet or some fabulous technology. As a kid growing up in the woods and devouring fantasy novels and biology texts alike, I couldn’t decide between science or writing as a way of exploring the unknown, and ultimately, I ended up doing both: becoming a writer specializing in marine and coastal environments, one of the many places in our world where the deeper we look at the senses of the creatures living there, the more we realize just how limited our own perceptions are.
I will always find an excuse to read a classic literary tome about an unreliable narrator by the British seashore, partly because I know I’m in for a gut-punch of a landscape description. Even better when it’s garnished with a few—not too many, just enough—of those ultra-evocative lines that stop you in your tracks and make you go, “That’s exactly what that’s like!” But that’s not even the best part of this five-course meal of a book.
The story becomes increasingly surreal and disturbing. At each stage, Murdoch’s descriptions of the ocean landscape shift and change with the narrative, so the water increasingly looms in the background like a living character, apparently impersonal and even more deliciously horrible for it.
Winner of the prestigious Booker Prize-a tale of the strange obsessions that haunt a playwright as he composes his memoirs
Charles Arrowby, leading light of England's theatrical set, retires from glittering London to an isolated home by the sea. He plans to write a memoir about his great love affair with Clement Makin, his mentor, both professionally and personally, and amuse himself with Lizzie, an actress he has strung along for many years. None of his plans work out, and his memoir evolves into a riveting chronicle of the strange events and unexpected visitors-some real, some spectral-that disrupt his world…
I am a long-time ER nurse, aid worker, and writer, and I have long been fascinated by true crime/mysteries; much of that interest honed in the ER, where I was often stumped when patient injuries or recollections of witnesses didn’t quite add up. As amateur detectives, we ER nurses often hounded detectives with our own theories, and in one especially big murder case, we had figured out exactly what had happened and who the real killer was before the detectives did. I am also a voracious reader and love a good mystery/thriller to take me away from real life, except when I am solving real life crimes on Dateline.
I read this book when it first came out, and I loved it. The main character is an alcoholic and this is not even the first of her issues.
I love a flawed character and a story that has me glued to the pages. I loved the unexpected twists and an ending that felt, to me, like justice served.
The #1 New York Times bestseller, USA Today Book of the Year and now a major motion picture starring Emily Blunt.
Rachel takes the same commuter train every morning and night. Every day she rattles down the track, flashes past a stretch of cozy suburban homes and stops at the signal that allows her to daily watch the same couple having breakfast on their deck. She's even started to feel like she knows them. Jess and Jason, she calls them. Their life—as she sees it—is perfect. Not unlike the life she recently lost.
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
Like the characters in this list, I am a stranger living in Spain. Well, not quite a stranger! Although born and raised in Oxford, UK, I shared a childhood with my Spanish grandmother, who couldn’t speak English and was almost completely deaf! So, from an early age, I became her translator. Over two decades, I have communed, collaborated, and sometimes collided with all manner of people and places in this country, and my all-consuming love for this nation has led me to investigate its history. The books I recommend here address issues that affect ordinary people in extraordinary times and have brought me great joy. I hope they will for you too.
Who would have thought a story set in London in 1975 could provide such enlightenment about the Spanish civil war that ended thirty-six years earlier? But it did, and that’s why I liked it.
An elderly Brit living in Cleaver Square is being haunted by the ghost of the dictator, El Caudillo, Francisco Franco. It sounds gruesome, but the mood is light, sometimes funny, and always informative. As I got more into the story, I understood the connections, and this unraveling of a secret was just the thing to keep me engaged. I thoroughly recommend it.
___________________________________________ 'An atmospheric novel, with a magnificently unreliable narrator . . . McGrath is a connoisseur of this literary tradition.' Financial Times
'The pleasure in a Patrick McGrath novel is the travelling, not the arrival, and this is a rare novel that has pleasure on every page.' The Times
'Unfailingly deft in his handling of trauma and deceit.' Guardian ___________________________________________ 'Let there be no more of this clucking and wheedling. Oh Pa, are you sure? Or: Oh Francis, is this really a good idea? Let me be clear. I am always sure, and it is always a good idea.'
Visits to galleries, museums, and castles were an integral part of my childhood. These filled me with an enduring love for art, architecture, and archaeology. My initial studies covered all areas of art history, but I became drawn to the visual cultures of the Islamic world. I have been lucky enough to live and work in different parts of the Middle East. I am committed to sharing knowledge about the arts and archaeology of the Islamic world through books, exhibitions, and websites. I have always enjoyed fiction that involves art as part of a story, and the selections in this list are my current favorites. I hope you enjoy them!
The themes of regret and the unstable nature of memory stayed with me long after I had finished the book. A renowned expert on the Arabian Nights, Irwin weaves stories within stories, leaving the reader unsure about what is real and what is the product of a character’s imagination.
The unreliable narrator is a mildly successful but ultimately second-rate twentieth-century British painter who refers to a creative practice employed by the surrealists. The book took me on a wonderful journey through the artistic culture of London. Edith Sitwell, Salvador Dalí, and André Breton are just a few of the famous names who populate this surprising story.
Caspar is a mildly promising surrealist painter living in 1930s London, who secretly longs for the ordinary. He meets Caroline who seems ordinary enough until she vanishes. Caspar's obsessive quest to find her leads him into a more surreal landscape than any he could imagine. The dazzling interplay of fiction and fact-within-fiction is at the heart of this wondrous work of imagination from one of the most intriguing writers at work today.
I’ve always loved books about the bad choices good people make, or the good choices bad people make. I like twists and turns and ugly crying and serious “wtf” moments. Books that are like punches to the gut make me swoon. Dig up the dirt. Find the worms. Gnash your teeth, rend your garments, regret your choices and find new ways to love. Those are my favorite stories to read, but also to write. I write romance (Megan Hart), thrillers (Mina Hardy), and horror (Megan E. Hart), but to me, those different genres are all similar. Lots of screaming!
After reading Darby Kane’s Pretty Little Wife, I knew I had to pick up The Replacement Wife, and boy, am I glad I did. The main character in this book is also a mom and wife, but unlike a lot of other domestic thrillers, Elisa Wright is happy with her life. The problem isn’t her suspiciously-acting husband, but her brother-in-law, who was going to marry her good friend…until that friend went missing. The dips and swerves in this book had me convinced I knew what was going to come next, but I did not! I’ll admit, I do love an unreliable narrator, but you’ve got to find a way to make me believe and relate, and Kane turned that trope upside down and spun it around.
The #1 International bestselling author of Pretty Little Wife returns with another thrilling domestic suspense novel that asks, how many wives and girlfriends need to disappear before your family notices?
Elisa Wright is a mom and wife, living a nice, quiet life in a nice, quiet town. She's also convinced her brother-in-law is a murderer. Josh has one dead wife and one missing fiancee, and though he grieved for them he starts dating someone new. Elisa fears for that woman's safety, and she desperately wants to know what happened to her friend, Josh's missing fiancee.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am a comic book writer, published by Marvel and DC Comics, turned novelist. I enjoy getting inside the heads of my characters until they become entities of their own, with their own voices and actions. At that point I’m merely the facilitator; an interested spectator with a keyboard. Maybe, one whose prose shows a visual flair. Sometimes, I hear competing voices in my head, rather like the warring personas that feature in my debut novel GoodCopBadCop, but I don’t like to play favourites.
The narration is completely devoted to the worldview of main character Harry White. A man who climbs the ladder of corporate and social America thanks to unnatural drives inside him both dedicated to achieving his success and predicated ultimately to securing his eventual self-destruction. The demon is inside Harry White and it is the American dream. An extraordinary novel from an extraordinary writer who had already written himself into the annals of American literature with such classics as Last Exit to Brooklyn andThe Room. The Demon in my view is Selby Jr.’s most personal and impersonal work.
A womanizer’s struggle for self-control spirals into crime, madness, and murder Harry White grew up in blue-collar Brooklyn, but the young man’s charm, smarts, and good looks have helped him earn a place as an uptown junior executive. White’s gifts have also made his love life easy, and he takes special pleasure in seducing married women. But when “Harry the Lover” is ready to grow up and leave his womanizing behind, White finds that suppressing his libido has dangerous consequences. His attempts at restraint awaken something sinister, causing White to seek excitement in a new form of violence and depravity.…
