Here are 97 books that The Ridge fans have personally recommended if you like
The Ridge.
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I’ve been fascinated by how people behave and how in-group bias can change who they are. That interest led me into computational sociology (I study human behavior for a living), with my work appearing in The New York Times, USA Today, WIRED, and more. But my deepest fascination has always been with people’s propensity for the horrific. I LOVE the liminal space where fear, secrecy, and belonging collide. Being neurodivergent, living in a small Virginia town with my wife and our neurodivergent, queer son, I see how communities can both shelter and suffocate. That tension is why I’m drawn to stories saturated in dread, beauty, and what lives in the shadows.
I’ve never read another book that got under my skin like A Head Full of Ghosts.
I felt unsettled, not just by the horror, but by the way Tremblay made me question memory, faith, and family. I remember finishing it and just sitting there, trying to figure out what was what. It’s rare for a book to make me feel compassionate and terrified at the same time.
That’s why I recommend it: because it doesn’t leave you when you close the cover. It lingers, and I love that.
The lives of the Barretts, a suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to halt Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show.Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls the terrifying events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets…
Nominated for the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback, and winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award.
Francis Hoyt, arrogant, athletic, brilliant, manipulative and ruthless is a master burglar who specializes in stealing high-end silver and jewelry. He's never been caught in the act. Recently retired Connecticut state investigator Charlie…
As an autistic person, I was a deeply unhappy and anxious child, so naturally I grew up to be a goth, with scary stories becoming a way for me to manage my constant fear. The Gothic became one of my special interests, and something I’ve always enjoyed studying. Additionally, I’ve always loved imaginative, fantastical tales that helped me feel like I was escaping from the real world I hated (and honestly, still hate) so much. As a result, there’s a special place in my heart for books that combine the weird Gothic trappings I hold so dear with the action and magic of a fantastical adventure novel.
This is an American Gothic road novel that takes us across not just multiple state lines, but also multiple generations.
We see the entire life of main protagonist Vic McQueen, and how the trauma of her abuse-ridden childhood causes her to become an abusive parent herself—only to find herself racing across America to save her son from an innocence-sucking vampire.
NOS4A2 may lack bats and crumbling castles, but the villainous Charlie Manx is a perfectly creepy supernatural monster, and the book’s focus on psychological trauma feels right in line with the Gothic tradition. I loved NOS4A2 from the moment I started reading it, and it has stuck with me ever since. Not only is the book a thrilling, spooky, action-packed ride; it’s also full of characters I genuinely cared about.
Hot take, but I think I like Joe Hill’s books even more than his dad’s.
An old Silver Wraith with a frightening history. A story about one serial killer and his lingering, unfinished business.
Anyone could be next.
We're going to Christmasland ...
NOS4R2 is an old-fashioned horror novel in the best sense. Claustrophobic, gripping and terrifying, this is a story that will have you on the edge of the seat while you read, and leaving the lights on while you sleep. With the horrific tale of Charles Manx and his Silver Wraith, Joe Hill has established himself as the premiere horror and supernatural thriller writer of his generation.
I grew up in a house filled with books as a son of educated, well-read parents. My mother was an English/French/Spanish teacher, and my father was an encyclopedia editor. Among all the books in our downstairs, there was a custom-built coffin bookcase my father kept stocked with his favorite horror novels. He died when I was eleven and in an effort to get to know him better, I started reading the books in that coffin. I was very quickly turned into a horror fan, and a few years later started writing horror stories myself. Every time I start writing another horror story, I know I’m my father’s son.
Straub is a master, but this title is often overlooked. It’s compact, completely engaging, and features some of the best dread-inducing moments I’ve ever read in a horror novel. His writing is a masterclass in dread, and as a writer I return to it often. Much as Tremblay uses the gimmick of reality TV in A Head Full of Ghosts to horrifying effect, Straub employs email in a creepy and sinister fashion.
A woman commits suicide for no apparent reason. A week later, her son—beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill—vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death. After his sister-in-law’s funeral, Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No…
Nominated for the Shamus Award for Best Original Paperback, and winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award.
Francis Hoyt, arrogant, athletic, brilliant, manipulative and ruthless is a master burglar who specializes in stealing high-end silver and jewelry. He's never been caught in the act. Recently retired Connecticut state investigator Charlie…
While attending college, I lived in a haunted house. This was before all the ghost-hunting shows and YouTube, so I didn’t know what I was seeing at night. During the year and a half of these experiences, I saw two distinct shadow figures and had other people living in the front of the house, as well as my roommate, confirm they, too, had seen and heard things that were unexplainable. This began my interest in the paranormal. After graduation, I became a law enforcement officer and have been a Police Detective for the last 21 years. I have explored haunted locations and seen spirits and other unexplainable things.
I chose my Stephen King books wisely. Reading his novels is an investment of time. Bag of Bones was worth it! It is a strange story about how the past and the present will always be interrelated and interactive.
I loved the way King used the hauntings of the past to explain the present. Excellent book!
When Mike Noonan's wife dies unexpectedly, the bestselling author suffers from writer's block. Until he is drawn to his summer home, the beautiful lakeside retreat called Sara Laughs.
Here Mike finds the once familiar town in the tyrannical grip of millionaire Max Devore. Devore is hell-bent on getting custody of his deceased son's daughter and is twisting the fabric of the community to this purpose.
Three year old Kyra and her young mother turn to Mike for help. And Mike finds them increasingly irresistible.
But there are other more sinister forces at Sara Laughs - and Kyra can feel them…
I have a passion for character bonds which come from my day-to-day “normal” life.
Outside of being a writer, I’ve been working at one of our city’s busiest hospitals for the past 7 years as a communications operator. Every day, I interact with people who are facing challenges, struggling, and in need of help. With that being said, I also interact with people who are supportive, grateful and overall happy. I find myself drawn to how people come together in both the good and the bad times.
In my opinion, you need to be able to relate to the characters in order for the story to become a success.
I loved this story for many reasons. The first thing that caught my attention was having a strong female lead. Her no-nonsense character was out of this world. She was relatable in many ways, especially with her black sheep antics. She had me caught up in some hilarious moments that had me in stitches.
The second thing was the murder mystery. This had me hooked right off the bat, wanting to know who the killer was. That really kept me intrigued throughout, and I couldn’t wait to see how it would all play out. Although I was upset to have finished this wonderful story, I was quite thrilled with how it ended.
The happiest day of Payton Lambert's life was the day she graduated high school and watched Bald Knob, Kentucky get smaller and smaller in her rearview mirror. She wanted more for her life than a tiny town where everyone knows your business and you can’t find a decent cup of coffee for at least forty miles. Twelve years later, an unexpected phone call in the middle of the night has her packing up her life in Chicago and racing back home to the one person she ever regretted leaving behind.Upon her return, she sees that Leo Hudson, the scrawny boy…
I identify as agender and grew up in Oklahoma, one of the worst places to be trans or LGBTQ because of the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ legislation that’s flying through the Oklahoma state legislature. Writing Ugliest, a book about teen activists fighting these laws, reminded me how important standing up for what’s right is and what powerful activists teens can be when they get together. This list has other books celebrating the strength of teens protesting and pushing against societal wrongs. Although some terrible things happen in these books—just like in the real world—reading them reminds us that fighting back is worth it.
I loved this great story about trying to do the right thing when everything is stacked against you. Ecological disasters rarely make the news anymore, but in this book, a teen discovers that a mining operation in her grandma’s town is making people sick. She can’t abide the corruption of local authorities and how everyone is held hostage by the jobs the mining industry brings.
I cheered Liberty along as she fought and fought, gathering help along the way from unlikely corners. She draws on her sense of justice to find a way that works around the corruption and right the wrongs in a real way, and I was reminded that even if you can’t help everyone, helping as many as you can is worth it.
2017 Green Earth Book Award, Young Adult Fiction 2017 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award (SONWA), Young Adult Notable Book
With her mother facing prison time for a violent political protest, seventeen-year-old Liberty Briscoe has no choice but to leave her Washington, DC, apartment and take a bus to Ebbottsville, Kentucky, to live with her granny. There she can at least finish high school and put some distance between herself and her mother―or her former mother, as she calls her. But Ebbottsville isn't the same as Liberty remembers, and it's not just because the top of Tanner's Peak has been…
Schoolteacher turned writer. With the encouragement of my old college friend, the great Michael Crichton I began writing detective novels—paperback originals at first, then a hardback thriller called Target of Opportunity, which was a detective novel but included a long section of historical background about the Resistance in southern France. From there I moved to biographical fiction: novels about Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant. Then straight historical fiction, often with a Parisian background, because I’ve lived and worked in that marvelous city and can’t get enough of it.
The appealing heroine Diony Hall moves with her new husband into the Kentucky wilderness. A beautiful variation on the archetypal plot, “Someone Goes on a Journey,” written in gorgeous prose and featuring many perfectly rendered actual characters such as Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Boone. The story shows determined human nature struggling against hostile nature, the earliest of the great American themes.
Set at the time of the western migration from Piedmont Virginia to her native Kentucky, Ms. RobertsAIs novel recounts the heroism of the Kentucky pioneer. Roberts was that rare thing, a true artist...She was one of the indispensables.O-Robert Penn Warren. Southern Classics Series.
1995 - “Write what you know,” Mark Twain advised. I’d been married three times. I wrote romances. 2012 - “Write what you know.” I’d been divorced three times and fantasized about murdering my ex. Only massive doses of chocolate kept my finger off the trigger. Hence…Death by Chocolate.
Death by a HoneyBee is humorous and suspenseful, and I love the heroine.
Josiah Reynolds is a snarky, fifty-year-old beekeeper in the southern town of Lexington, Kentucky. The story is intriguing and the quirky characters fascinating. The author inserts interesting details of beekeeping without interrupting the story. I later learned that the author is a beekeeper and hence was able to provide authentic details.
When Josiah finds her rival beekeeper dead with his head in one of her bee hives, she is thrown into a world of suspense and mystery…and humor! Josiah is a strong southern woman who greets problems with southern wit and wisdom!
I’ve always loved reading memoirs, especially about a hero’s journey—whether it’s a teacher figuring out a tough group of students or a kid figuring out how to change the story they’ve been written into. I love nothing more than the triumphant ending that makes me cheer and cry happy tears. As an English teacher and debut author of my own memoir, I’ve found that honest storytelling opens a door for others to walk through and tell their own stories. I love seeing my students connect with stories like theirs because it shows them they’re not alone in their struggles and that living happily ever after is possible.
Bobi Conn’s story of growing up in poverty was too familiar: the cheap food, a car they push to start, a motel they move into when her father hits her mother, and the frustration of watching our mothers go back because they don’t have the courage to stay gone. Bobi also found refuge at school, which I related to because this was where life was predictable—and we were fed.
The author’s voice is powerful and honest as she shares her trauma, humiliation, and loss. Bobi Conn comes from the holler, deep in Appalachia, and her story is a beautiful testament to the resilience and bravery children are forced to have—and the childhood too many lose along the way.
A clear-eyed and compassionate memoir of the Appalachian experience by a woman who embraced its astonishing beauty, narrowly escaped its violence, and struggles to call it home.
Bobi Conn was raised in a remote Kentucky holler in 1980s Appalachia. She remembers her tin-roofed house tucked away in a vast forest paradise; the sparkling creeks, with their frogs and crawdads; the sweet blackberries growing along the road to her granny's; and her abusive father, an underemployed alcoholic whose untethered rage and violence against Bobi and her mother were frighteningly typical of a community marginalized, desperate, and ignored. Bobi's rule of survival:…
I’ve practiced criminal law in Appalachian Kentucky as both a defense attorney and a prosecutor—not at the same time—for twenty five years. I can tell what’s genuine from what’s contrived in no time flat. Sometimes I can suspend my disbelief, but usually I can’t, so I lean toward books that get the details and intricacies right. If you’re looking for some modern Appalachian crime tales told by people who know how to a tell a story and know how to get the details of the place right, this list is for you.
This was the first book I read written after 2000 that got modern life in Appalachia dead on right and it changed the way I looked at my own writing.
I love the way the past intersects with the present as Clay’s own life flirts with violence, all while he seeks the truth behind his mother’s death during his childhood. I was never sure where it was all headed until the final pages.
In his New York Times bestselling debut novel, Silas House introduced himself as an important voice for Appalachia, and indeed, for the entire rural South. In Clay's Quilt, now a touchstone for his many fans, House takes us to Free Creek, Kentucky, where a motherless young man forges his path to adulthood, surrounded by ancient mountains and his blood relatives and adopted kin: his Aunt Easter tied to her faith and foreboding nature; his Uncle Paul, the quilter; the wild girls Evangeline and Alma; and a fiddler whose music calls to Clay's heart. As he struggles to stitch up the…
