Books like 'Carrie'

Readers who enjoyed Carrie by Stephen King also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

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  • Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Different Seasons by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars
    · 67 ratings
    From the Magical Pen of Stephen King, Four Mesmerizing Novellas…“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge…the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption...
  • The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott

    The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott

    Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars
    · 89 ratings
    First published in 1977, The Shining quickly became a benchmark in the literary career of Stephen King. This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to claim the very souls of the Torrance family...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti

    This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti

    Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    "For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12Ashton is just a typical small town...
  • The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

    The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

    Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars
    · 73 ratings
    Four decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence...
  • Watchers by Dean Koontz

    Watchers by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    On his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Misery by Stephen King

    Misery by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars
    · 81 ratings
    Novelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Ubik by Philip K. Dick

    Ubik by Philip K. Dick

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    Glen Runciter runs a lucrative business—deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation...
  • The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King

    The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 57 ratings
    Omnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was...
  • The Lime Works: A Novel  (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard

    The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard

    Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    For five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he’s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he’s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair...
  • Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker

    Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker

    Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars
    · 32 ratings
    A storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy...
  • Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman

    Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman

    Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Librarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.The post of Diocesan Exorcist in the Church of England has changed to the preferred term Delivery Ministry. It sounds less sinister, more caring, so why not a job for a woman? When offered the post the Rev. Merrily Watkins cannot easily refuse, having suffered uncanny experiences of her own...
  • Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti

    Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    This collection features tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives...
  • From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 28 ratings
    Twelve cassettes, 21 hrs.Read by Stephen Lang Bartholomew Lampion is born in Bright Beach, California, on a day of tragedy and terror, when the lives of everyone in his family are changed forever. Remarkable events accompany his birth, and everyone agrees that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen...
  • Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

    Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    When police find two skeletons locked in a bony embrace deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, Natural History Museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid in the investigation. She soon realizes that the expertise the cops want is the result of her ordeal last year, battling the horrific beast loose in the basement corridors of the Museum...
  • The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, Stephen King

    The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, Stephen King

    Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars
    · 67 ratings
    On the first day of May, 100 teenage boys meet for an event known throughout the country as The Long Walk. If you break the rules, you get three warnings. If you exceed your limit, what happens is absolutely terrifying. Reissue...
  • The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

    The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka

    Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars
    · 50 ratings
    The Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras...
  • Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

    Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them...
  • Last Call by Tim Powers

    Last Call by Tim Powers

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    Twenty years ago Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player and went into hiding, after a weird high-stakes game played with Tarot cards. But now the cards - and the supernatural powers behind them - have found him again.Crane's father killed gangster Bugsy Siegel in 1948 to become the Fisher King, and to keep that power he is determined to kill his son...
  • Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz

    Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    A dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work...
  • The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

    The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    How long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew...A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world...
  • Everville by Clive Barker

    Everville by Clive Barker

    Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars
    · 36 ratings
    On the borderland between this world and the world of Quiddity, the sea of our dreams, sits Everville. For years, it has lived in ignorance of the gleaming shore on which it lies. But its ignorance is not bliss...
  • The Other by Thomas Tryon

    The Other by Thomas Tryon

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    Entranced and terrified, the reader of The Other is swept up in the life of a Connecticut country town in the thirties—and in the fearful mysteries that slowly darken and overwhelm it.Originally published in 1971, The Other is one of the most influential horror novels ever written...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Phantoms by Dean Koontz

    Phantoms by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    They found the town silent, apparently abandoned. Then they found the first body, strangely swollen and still warm. One hundred fifty were dead, 350 missing. But the terror had only begun in the tiny mountain town of Snowfield, California.At first they thought it was the work of a maniac. Or terrorists. Or toxic contamination. Or a bizarre new disease.But then they found the truth...
  • Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

    Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    In this brilliant collection of stories, Stephen King takes readers down paths that only he could imagine.A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driver finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil...
  • Ghost Story by Peter Straub

    Ghost Story by Peter Straub

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 37 ratings
    In life, not every sin goes unpunished.GHOST STORYFor four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • Ghost Stories by Henry James

    Ghost Stories by Henry James

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    With an Introduction and Notes by Martin Scofield, University of Kent at Canterbury. Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly marvellous and the darker areas of the human psyche...
  • The Door to December by Richard Paige, Dean Koontz

    The Door to December by Richard Paige, Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    The #1 New York Times bestselling author delivers a truly suspenseful novel of a mother who must save her daughter from a threat she can hardly understand...
  • Needful Things by Stephen King

    Needful Things by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 71 ratings
    From the Flap:With a demonic blend of malice and affection, Stephen King says goodbye to the town he put on the map -- Castle Rock, Maine . . . where Polly Chalmers runs You Sew and Sew and Sheriff Alan Pangborn is in charge of keeping the peace. It's a small town, and Stephen King fans might think they know its secrets pretty well; they've been here before...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • The Dead Zone by Stephen King

    The Dead Zone by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 72 ratings
    Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone. Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a-half-year trip into The Dead Zone...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

    Four Past Midnight by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    At midnight comes the point of balance. Of danger. The instang of utter stillness when between two beats of the heart, an alternative reality can slip through, like a blade between the ribs, and swithc you into a new and terrifying world...
  • Naoko by Keigo Higashino

    Naoko by Keigo Higashino

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Naoko, a major bestseller and film in Japan, is a poignant and wily take on gender relations from a master of the detective story. Expertly and seamlessly interweaving the real and the unreal, Naoko involves a regular guy whose world is rocked when his wife dies in a bus accident. His young daughter survives, but seems to be inhabited by her mother’s personality...
  • The Mist by Stephen King

    The Mist by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 70 ratings
    #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephen King’s terrifying novella about a town engulfed in a dense, mysterious mist as humanity makes its last stand against unholy destruction—originally published in the acclaimed short story collection Skeleton Crew and made into a TV series, as well as a feature film starring Thomas Jane and Marcia Gay Harden.In the wake of a summer storm, terror descends.
  • False Memory by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    False Memory by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    Read by Stephen Lang10 Cassettes, 18 hours Martie Rhodes is a young wife (happily married to Dustin for three years), a video game designer, and a compassionate woman who takes her agoraphobic friend Carol to therapy sessions. Carol is so afraid of leaving her apartment that the trips are grim ordeals for both women--but bonding experiences as well...
  • Night Chills by Dean Koontz

    Night Chills by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz unleashes a contagion on a small Maine town--one that triggers the darkest desires of the soul.Designed by top scientists and unleashed in a monstrous conspiracy, night chills are seizing the men and women of Black River--driving them to acts of rape and murder. The nightmare is real. And death is the only cure..
  • Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, Ridley Scott

    Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, Ridley Scott

    Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    A spellbinding novel of murder, mystery, and the occult, Falling Angel pits a tough New York private eye against the most fearsome adversary a detective ever faced. For Harry Angel, a routine missing-persons case soon turns into a fiendish nightmare of voodoo and black magic, of dizzying peril and violent death...
  • Apt Pupil by Stephen King

    Apt Pupil by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    Todd Bowden is an apt pupil. Good grades, good family, a paper route. But he is about to meet a different kind of teacher: Mr. Dussander. Todd knows all about Dussander's dark past. The torture. The death. The decades-old manhunt Dussander has escaped to this day. Yet Todd doesn't want to turn him in. Todd wants to know more. Much more...
  • Bag of Bones by Stephen King

    Bag of Bones by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    Four years after the sudden death of his wife, forty-year-old bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write, and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls Sara Laughs, Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick

    The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, the final novel in the trilogy that also includes Valis and The Divine Invasion, is an anguished, learned, and very moving investigation of the paradoxes of belief. It is the story of Timothy Archer, an urbane Episcopal bishop haunted by the suicides of his son and mistress - and driven by them into a bizarre quest for the identity of Christ...
  • Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

    Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    Forced by overwhelming evidence to confess her life of crime, Dolores Claiborne, a foul-tempered New Englander, describes how her disintegrating marriage years before caused her heart to turn murderous...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  female-mc  gothic  paranormal  spooky
  • Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta

    Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta

    Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    When Elliot Hoover loses his wife and daughter, Audrey Rose, in a fiery car crash, his world explodes. To heal his mental anguish and claim some peace, he visits a psychic who reveals to him that his daughter has been reincarnated into Ivy Templeton, a young girl living in New York City...
  • The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

    The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce

    Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Sam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys—roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town, daring adults to challenge their freedom. Then one day Sam wakes to find the tooth fairy sitting on the edge of his bed—but this is not the benign figure of childhood myth. This is an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever...
  • Spider by Patrick McGrath

    Spider by Patrick McGrath

    Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    Spider is gaunt, threadbare, unnerved by everything from his landlady to the smell of gas. He tells us his story in a storm of beautiful language that slowly reveals itself as a fiendishly layered construction of truth and illusion...
  • Mutation by Robin Cook

    Mutation by Robin Cook

    Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    In Mutation, Robin Cook's masterpiece of techno-medical suspense, Dr. Cook tells a story as chilling and real as today's headlines. On the forefront of surrogate parenting and genetic research, it is the explosive tale of a brilliant doctor who sought to create the son of his dreams--and invented a living nightmare..
  • The Fog by James Herbert

    The Fog by James Herbert

    Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    A peaceful village in Wiltshire is shattered by a disaster which strikes without reason or explanation, leaving behind a trail of misery and horror. A yawning, bottomless crack spreads through the earth, out of which creeps a fog that resembles no other. Whatever it is, it must be controlled...
  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

    The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

    Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars
    · 45 ratings
    It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House...
    Categorized as:
    classics  dark  drama  female-mc  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

    Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The Rolfes -- Ben, wife Marian, son David, and Aunt Elizabeth -- are a pleasant family from New York seeking to escape from the doldrums of a summer in their Queens apartment. They find a beautiful old country mansion on Long Island -- restful, secluded, with pool and private beach -- perfect, for the right people. But their "perfect" summer home hides terrors beyond their wildest imaginings...
  • The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson

    The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    What if you didn't believe in God, but then met the Devil? That is precisely the dilemma in the mysterious tale of Gideon Mack. A good man, and, ironically, a good minister despite his atheism, Mack leads a respectable and well-intentioned life in a small Scottish town. There he dutifully tends to his flock and even raises a small fortune for Christian charity running marathons...
  • Haunted by James Herbert

    Haunted by James Herbert

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Three nights of terror in a house called Edbrook. Three nights in which David Ash, there to investigate a haunting, will be the victim of horrifying and maleficent games. Three nights in which he will face the enigma of his own past. Three nights before Edbrook's dreadful secret will be revealed - and the true nightmare will begin...
  • Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

    Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Hangsaman is Miss Jackson's second novel. The story is a simple one but the overtones are immediately present. "Natalie Waite who was seventeen years old but who felt that she had been truly conscious only since she was about fifteen lived in an odd corner of a world of sound and sight, past the daily voices of her father and mother and their incomprehensible actions...
  • Unfinished Symphony by V.C. Andrews

    Unfinished Symphony by V.C. Andrews

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Melody Logan had only just found a safe harbor when a new storm set her adrift all over again.... Melody had always believed her mother, Haille, and dear stepdaddy had died in tragic accidents — that's why she'd come to stay with her secretive Logan relatives on Cape Cod. But then a friend recognized Haille's picture in a catalog and kindled Melody's hopes...
    Categorized as:
    classics  dark  drama  gothic  suspense  20th-century  abuse  book
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