Books like 'The Owl Service'
Readers who enjoyed The Owl Service by Alan Garner also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical fantasy mystery horror supernatural action / adventure urban fantasy 20th century europe british-isles
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Warbound by Larry Correia
Rated: 4.41 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsNew York Times and Wall Street Journal best-selling author's gritty urban fantasy set in an alternate noir 1930s. A tough P.I. battles an interdimensional monster that wants to suck magic power out of the world. Sequel to Hard Magic and Spellbound. Book Three in the Grimnoir Chronicles...Categorized as:
magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult aliens alternate-history alternate-universe -
Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsFifteen-year-old Oscar Drai meets the strange Marina while he's exploring an old quarter of Barcelona. She leads Oscar to a cemetery, where they watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the last Sunday of each month. At exactly ten o'clock in the morning, a woman shrouded in a black velvet cloak descends from her carriage to place a single rose on an unmarked grave...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age gothic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
Hard Magic by Larry Correia
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsJake Sullivan is a licensed Private Eye—with a seriously hardboiled attitude. He also possesses raw magical talent and the ability to make objects in his vicinity light as a feather or as heavy as depleted uranium, all with a magical thought. It's no wonder the G-men turn to Jake when they need someone to go after a suspected killer who's been knocking off banks in a magic-enhanced crime spree...Categorized as:
magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history alternate-universe audiobook -
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThis second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. Along the way, they encounter new allies, a menagerie of peculiar animals, and other unexpected surprises...Categorized as:
children coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure -
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Declare by Tim Powers
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAs a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare...Categorized as:
magic magical-realism myths paranormal retellings 20th-century action-adventure adult -
The Witch’s Lens by Luanne G. Smith
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsAs World War I rages, there are evils—both living and dead—that only a witch can see in a spellbinding novel by the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Raven Spell.With her husband off fighting at World War I’s eastern front, Petra Kurková embraces her fleeting freedom, roaming the city at night with her camera... -
The Curse of the Blue Figurine by John Bellairs
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsJohnny Dixon doesn't believe that the ghost of mad Father Baart haunts the town church. But then he takes an old scroll and a seemingly harmless figurine from the church basement, accepts a magic ring from a mysterious stranger--and is plunged into a terrifying adventure that may cost him his life... -
Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsUpon discovering that she has the gift of Second Sight, Blossom also learns that whether glimpsing the future or traveling into the past, one is powerless to alter history... -
The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsNicholas Valiarde is a passionate, embittered nobleman with an enigmatic past. Consumed by thoughts of vengeance, he is consoled only by thoughts of the beautiful, dangerous Madeline. He is also the greatest thief in all of Ile-Rien..Categorized as:
gothic magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book -
Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsArriving in the English countryside to live with her mother and new stepfather, Jenny has no interest in her surroundings, until she meets Tamsin. Since her death over 300 years ago, Tamsin has haunted the lonely estate without rest, trapped by a hidden trauma she can't remember, and a powerful evil even the spirits of night cannot name... -
Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn 1919, Kitty Weekes, pretty, resourceful, and on the run, falsifies her background to obtain a nursing position at Portis House, a remote hospital for soldiers left shell-shocked by the horrors of the Great War. Hiding the shame of their mental instability in what was once a magnificent private estate, the patients suffer from nervous attacks and tormenting dreams...Categorized as:
gothic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century abuse action-adventure adult audiobook -
The Satanic Mill: Evil Lurks Within by Otfried Preußler
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn seventeenth-century Germany, a boy desperately wants to escape from a school for Black Magic where he is held captive by demonic forces...Categorized as:
children classics coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century -
Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Chilling . . . A neo-gothic treat; original, richly imagined, and powerfully told." --The Guardian (UK) for The String Diaries See the girl. Leah Wilde is twenty-four, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town... -
Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula: The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count by Loren D. Estleman
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAfter a mysterious schooner runs aground in an English harbor with no human passengers--only the dead captain, drained of blood--a series of bizarre nocturnal crimes takes place in London. It can only be the work of Count Dracula, and only one man can save the city: the great Sherlock Holmes...Categorized as:
classics gothic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook -
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The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers
Rated: 3.91 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsBrendan Doyle, a specialist in the work of the early-nineteenth century poet William Ashbless, reluctantly accepts an invitation from a millionaire to act as a guide to time-travelling tourists. But while attending a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810, he becomes marooned in Regency London, where dark and dangerous forces know about the gates in time... -
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlternate Cover Edition can be found here. At the turn of the twentieth century, a former spy is called into service to hunt down a vampire killer...Once a spy for Queen Victoria, James Asher has fought for Britain on every continent, using his quick wits to protect the Empire at all costs. After years of grueling service, he marries and retires to a simple academic’s life at Oxford...Categorized as:
gothic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook book -
The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro, Daniel Kraus
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIt is 1962, and Elisa Esposito—mute her whole life, orphaned as a child—is struggling with her humdrum existence as a janitor working the graveyard shift at Baltimore’s Occam Aerospace Research Center. Were it not for Zelda, a protective coworker, and Giles, her loving neighbor, she doesn’t know how she’d make it through the day...Categorized as:
magic magical-realism myths paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history -
The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsFrom master storyteller Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the international phenomenon The Shadow of the Wind, comes The Angel’s Game — a dazzling new page-turner about the perilous nature of obsession, in literature and in love...Categorized as:
classics gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure -
Fateful by Claudia Gray
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA tragic tale about falling in love on the world's most infamous ill-fated sea voyage as heroine, Tess, discovers darker secrets that lie beneath the doomed crossing. and a hidden brotherhood that threaten to tear her lover from her forever... -
Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsGhost Talkers: a new novel from beloved fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal featuring the mysterious spirit corps and their heroic work in World War I.Ginger Stuyvesant, an American heiress living in London during World War I, is engaged to Captain Benjamin Hartshorne, an intelligence officer. Ginger is a medium for the Spirit Corps, a special Spiritualist force...Categorized as:
magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book -
The Haunting of Granite Falls by Eva Ibbotson
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAmerican millionaire Hiram C. Hopgood will stop at nothing to make his daughter, Helen, happy—even if it means buying her an ancient Scottish castle and shipping it back to Texas. Assembling the castle isn’t a problem for the oil tycoon . . . it’s the ghosts that worry him. Hopgood has made up his mind: the ghouls have got to go. But these spirits don’t spook so easily...Categorized as:
children magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children-books -
Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsChrysanda Flamande was the sultriest vamp of the silver screen in Hollywood, California, in the year 1923. Then an elderly Chinese gentleman warned her that a trinket she'd worn in her last movie had marked her to be the bride of an ancient devil-god of Manchuria... -
Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsWhen struggling riverboat captain Abner Marsh receives an offer of partnership from a wealthy aristocrat, he suspects something’s amiss. But when he meets the hauntingly pale, steely-eyed Joshua York, he is certain. For York doesn’t care that the icy winter of 1857 has wiped out all but one of Marsh’s dilapidated fleet. Nor does he care that he won’t earn back his investment in a decade... -
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsOne of Ray Bradbury’s best-known and most popular novels, Something Wicked This Way Comes, now featuring a new introduction and material about its longstanding influence on culture and genre.For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin...Categorized as:
children classics coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century -
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War in Heaven by Charles Williams
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWilliams gives a contemporary setting to the traditional story of the Search for the Holy Grail. Examining the distinction between magic and religion, War in Heaven is an eerily disturbing book, one that graphically portrays a metaphysical journey through the shadowy crevices of the human mind... -
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWorld Fantasy Award Winner Michael Crawford is forced to flee when discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed. Yet it is not the revengeful townspeople he fears but the deadly embrace of the malignant spirit that is claiming him as her bridegroom.Crawford will not travel alone; soon he is aided by his fellow victims, the greatest poets of his day—Byron, Keats, and Shelley... -
The Ladies of the Secret Circus by Constance Sayers
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsParis, 1925: To enter the Secret Circus is to enter a world of wonder-a world where women tame magnificent beasts, carousels take you back in time, and trapeze artists float across the sky. But each daring feat has a cost... -
Unnatural Issue by Mercedes Lackey
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA brand-new Elemental Masters novel from the national bestselling author Mercedes Lackey. Richard Whitestone is an Elemental Earth Master. Blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, he has sworn never to set eyes on his daughter, Suzanne...Categorized as:
magic paranormal retellings 20th-century action-adventure alternate-history audiobook book -
The Watcher in the Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIt was an unforgettable summer....When fourteen-year-old Irene Sauvelle moves with her family to Cape House on the coast of Normandy, she's immediately taken by the beauty of the place--its expansive cliffs, coasts, and harbors. There, she meets a local boy named Ishmael, and the two soon fall in love...Categorized as:
children gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure audiobook -
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 60 ratingsFive interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation...Categorized as:
classics coming-of-age magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman
Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWritten by award-winning novelist Kim Newman, this is a brand-new edition, with additional 40,000 word never-before-seen novella, of the popular third installment of the Anno Dracula series, Dracula Cha Cha Cha.Rome. 1959. Count Dracula is about to marry the Moldavian Princess Asa Vajda - his sixth wife...Categorized as:
classics gothic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook -
The Demon Headmaster by Gillian Cross
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsDinah moves in with the Hunter family and starts going to the same school as her foster-brothers Lloyd and Harvey. It's not easy, as they seem to hate her, and school is really strange. Pupils suddenly talk like robots and do weird things - even Dinah finds herself acting oddly.She's sure the headmaster has some kind of power over them, and is determined to find out more...Categorized as:
children classics 20th-century action-adventure anthologies children-books comedy demons -
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThe mystery of Ryhope Wood, Britain's last fragment of primeval forest, consumed George Huxley's entire, and long, life. Now, after his death, his sons have taken up his work. But what they discover is beyond what they could have expected. For the Wood is a realm where myths gain flesh and blood, tapping primal fears and desires subdued through the millennia... -
Odd & True by Cat Winters, Nathalia Suellen
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTrudchen grew up hearing Odette’s stories of their monster-slaying mother and a magician’s curse. But now that Tru’s older, she’s starting to wonder if her older sister’s tales were just comforting lies, especially because there’s nothing fantastic about her own life—permanently disabled and in constant pain from childhood polio... -
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Groosham Grange by Anthony Horowitz
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsFrom Anthony Horowitz, a Groosham . . . make that gruesome . . . new adventure! Sent to Groosham Grange as a last resort by his frustrated parents, thirteen-year-old David Eliot quickly discovers that his new boarding school is very peculiar. New pupils are made to sign their names in blood . . . the French teacher cancels classes on days there�s a full moon . .Categorized as:
children coming-of-age magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure audiobook boarding-school -
Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIt's 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in betweenRaybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him...Categorized as:
gothic magic paranormal 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook -
Never Trust a Dead Man by Vivian Vande Velde
Rated: 3.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSelwyn is brokenhearted when the beautiful Anora chooses to marry the awful,but rich, Farold. It's bad enough when Farold beats Selwyn up in front of the villagers. But nothing prepares Selwyn for Farold's being found murdered. All accusing fingers point to Selwyn, who is promptly sealed in a burial cave with Farold's corpse.But they're not alone in the cave... -
The Boggart by Susan Cooper
Rated: 3.76 of 5 stars · 29 ratings"Centuries old and housands of miles from home". When Emily and Jess Volnik's family inherits a remote, crumbling Scottish castle, they also inherit the Boggart - an invisible, mischievous spirit who's been playing tricks on residents of Castle Keep for generations... -
Ella, the Slayer by A.W. Exley
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSeventeen-year-old Ella copes the best she can; caring for her war-injured father, scrubbing the floors, and slaying the undead that attack the locals. Vermin they're called, like rats they spread pestilence with their bite. Ella's world collides with another when she nearly decapitates a handsome stranger, who is very much alive...Categorized as:
coming-of-age myths paranormal retellings 20th-century action-adventure alpha-mc alternate-history -
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIt is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort Vlad Tepes, the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. Peppered with familiar characters from Victorian history and fiction, the novel follows vampire Geneviève Dieudonné and Charles Beauregard of the Diogenes Club as they strive to solve the mystery of the Ripper murders...Categorized as:
gothic paranormal retellings 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history audiobook -
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 59 ratingsA mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. A strange collection of curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience...Categorized as:
children coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure -
The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs
Rated: 3.75 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsWhen Lewis Barnavelt, an orphan. comes to stay with his uncle Jonathan, he expects to meet an ordinary person. But he is wrong. Uncle Jonathan and his next-door neighbor, Mrs. Zimmermann, are both magicians! Lewis is thrilled. At first, watchng magic is enough. Then Lewis experiments with magic himself and unknowingly resurrects the former owner of the house: a woman named Selenna Izard...Categorized as:
children classics gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure -
The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 3.76 of 5 stars · 44 ratingsA mysterious house harbors an unimaginable secret. . . .It’s wartime, and the Carver family decides to leave the capital where they live and move to a small coastal village where they’ve recently bought a home. But from the minute they cross the threshold, strange things begin to happen. In that mysterious house there still lurks the spirit of Jacob, the previous owners’ son, who died by drowning...Categorized as:
children coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure -
Born of Illusion by Teri Brown
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAnna Van Housen has a secret. A gifted illusionist, Anna assists her mother, the renowned medium Marguerite Van Housen, in her stage show and séances, easily navigating the underground world of magicians, mediums, and mentalists in 1920s New York. As the illegitimate daughter of Harry Houdini—or so Marguerite claims—sleight of hand illusions have never been a challenge for Anna...Categorized as:
coming-of-age gothic magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure book -
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Children of the Night by Dan Simmons
Rated: 3.72 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAn evil legacy comes to life in this classic and ultimately human novel about believable vampires, featuring a brand-new introduction by Dan Simmons. Children of the Night will take you to a place that no one knows—yet all of us fear.In a desolate orphanage in post-Communist Romania, a desperately ill infant is given the wrong blood transfusion—and flourishes rather than dies... -
The Silence of Ghosts: A Novel by Jonathan Aycliffe
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen the Blitz starts in London, Dominic Lancaster, injured out of service at the battle of Narvik, accompanies his 10 year old sister Octavia to the family house on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake District.Octavia is profoundly deaf but at night she can hear disturbing noises in the house. When questioned by Dominic as to what she can hear, she replies: 'voices'... -
Petty Magic: Being the Memoirs and Confessions of Miss Evelyn Harbinger, Temptress and Troublemaker by Camille DeAngelis
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEvelyn Harbinger sees nothing wrong with a one-night stand. At 149 years old, Eve may look like she bakes oatmeal cookies in the afternoon and dozes in her rocking chair in the evening, but once the gray hair and wrinkles are traded for jet-black tresses and porcelain skin, she can still turn heads as the beautiful girl she once was...Categorized as:
magic magical-realism paranormal 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book espionage -
Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
Rated: 3.65 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFailed academic Frank Nichols and his wife, Eudora, have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family's old estate-the Savoyard Plantation- and the horrors that occurred there. At first, the quaint, rural ways of their new neighbors seem to be everything they wanted... -
Bloodline by Kate Cary
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThirty-five years have passed since the death of the Master. But now a new evil walks among the living. . . . When nineteen-year-old John Shaw returns from the trenches of World War I, he is haunted by nightmares—not only of the battlefield, but of the strange, cruel and impossible feats of his regiment's commander, Quincey Harker... -
The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsIn a gripping feat of storytelling, Anne Rice continues the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles that began with the now-classic Interview with the Vampire. For centuries, Lestat—vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals—has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Now he is alone...
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