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.
contemporary horror supernatural mystery 20th century psychological thriller paranormal classics suspense
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Different Seasons by Stephen King
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom 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
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 89 ratingsFirst 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... -
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
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsFour 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... -
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Watchers by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsOn 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... -
Misery by Stephen King
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsNovelist 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... -
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsGlen 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
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsOmnibus 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
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor 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
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA 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
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLibrarian 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
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis 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
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsTwelve 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
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsWhen 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... -
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The Long Walk by Richard Bachman, Stephen King
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsOn 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
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThe 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
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsRosemary 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
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsTwenty 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...Categorized as:
crime dark paranormal suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history -
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA 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
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsHow 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
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsOn 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
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsEntranced 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... -
Phantoms by Dean Koontz
Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsThey 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
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsIn 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... -
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Ghost Story by Peter Straub
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsIn 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... -
Ghost Stories by Henry James
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWith 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
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe #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
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsFrom 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... -
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 72 ratingsJohnny, 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... -
Four Past Midnight by Stephen King
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsAt 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
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNaoko, 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
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
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 31 ratingsRead 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
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.. -
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Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, Ridley Scott
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA 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
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsTodd 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
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsFour 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... -
The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe 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
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsForced 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... -
Audrey Rose by Frank De Felitta
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsWhen 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
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSam 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
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSpider 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
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsIn 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
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsA 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... -
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The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsIt 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... -
Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe 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
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhat 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
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThree 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
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHangsaman 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
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsMelody 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...
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