Books like 'Imaginary Friend'

Readers who enjoyed Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky & 史蒂芬·切波斯基 also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

contemporary  horror  mystery  supernatural  psychological  dark fantasy  thriller  north-america  usa  pennsylvania 

  • The Magnus Archives: Season 4 by NOT A BOOK

    The Magnus Archives: Season 4 by NOT A BOOK

    Rated: 4.88 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    The Magnus Archives is a horror audiobook written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrates the stories in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly-appointed head archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute; an institution based in London centred on research into the paranormal...
  • The Magnus Archives: Season 3 by Jonathan Sims

    The Magnus Archives: Season 3 by Jonathan Sims

    Rated: 4.80 of 5 stars
    · 15 ratings
    The Magnus Archives is a horror audiobook written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrates the stories in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly-appointed head archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute; an institution based in London centred on research into the paranormal...
    Categorized as:
    paranormal  spooky  gothic  dark  horror  fantasy  fiction  lgbtq
  • Solitary by Alexander Gordon Smith

    Solitary by Alexander Gordon Smith

    Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    Furnace Prison ...Where death is the least of your worries.Escape is just the beginning ...We thought we’d made it, we thought we were free. But we should have known there was no way out of Furnace.All we did was slip deeper into the guts of the prison: into solitary confinement, where the real nightmares live - the warden, the Wheezers, and something much, much worse.The clock’s ticking...
  • Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

    Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars
    · 71 ratings
    Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  family  ghosts  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells

    The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells

    Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars
    · 19 ratings
    John Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can......but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war...
  • Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

    Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    "I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922." the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson, Stephen King

    Nightmare at 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson, Stephen King

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Remember that monster on the wing of the airplane? William Shatner saw it on The Twilight Zone, John Lithgow saw it in the movie-even Bart Simpson saw it. "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" is just one of many classic horror stories by Richard Matheson that have insinuated themselves into our collective imagination...
    Categorized as:
    dark  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  adult  anthologies
  • 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...
  • Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Finders Keepers by Stephen King

    Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    Wake up, genius. The genius is John Rothstein, an iconic author who created a famous character, Jimmy Gold, but who hasn’t published a book for decades. Morris Bellamy is livid, not just because Rothstein has stopped providing books, but because the nonconformist Jimmy Gold has sold out for a career in advertising...
  • Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

    Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 36 ratings
    The definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Ukrainian novel—a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.Our life is brief . .
  • Full Throttle by Joe Hill

    Full Throttle by Joe Hill

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    A little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns...
  • A Wild Light by Marjorie M. Liu

    A Wild Light by Marjorie M. Liu

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 23 ratings
    View our feature on Marjorie Liu’s A Wild Light.For too long Maxine Kiss has felt an inexplicable darkness inside her-a force she channels into hunting the demons bent on destroying the human race. But when she finds herself covered in blood and crouched beside her grandfather's dead body with no memory of what happened, Maxine begins to fear that the darkness has finally consumed her...
  • Deadly Little Games by Laurie Faria Stolarz

    Deadly Little Games by Laurie Faria Stolarz

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    High school juniors Camelia and Ben have discovered a powerful bond: They both possess the power of psychometry, the ability to see the future through touch. For Ben, the gift is a frightening liability. When he senses a strong threat or betrayal, he risks losing control. Camelia's gift is more mysterious. When she works with clay, her hands sculpt messages her mind doesn't yet comprehend...
  • 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...
  • 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...
  • Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

    Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 54 ratings
    Loop me in, odd one.The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature...
  • The Last Town by Blake Crouch

    The Last Town by Blake Crouch

    Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars
    · 36 ratings
    Welcome to Wayward Pines, the last town.Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. Their children are taught that David Pilcher, the town’s creator, is god. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed...
  • The Fisherman by John Langan

    The Fisherman by John Langan

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    In upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true...
  • The Outsider by Stephen King

    The Outsider by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars
    · 75 ratings
    An unspeakable crime. A confounding investigation. At a time when the King brand has never been stronger, he has delivered one of his most unsettling and compulsively readable stories.An eleven-year-old boy’s violated corpse is found in a town park. Eyewitnesses and fingerprints point unmistakably to one of Flint City’s most popular citizens...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  north-america  paranormal  spooky  suspense  usa  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...
  • Duma Key by Stephen King

    Duma Key by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.95 of 5 stars
    · 40 ratings
    When Edgar Freemantle moves to the remote island of Duma Key to escape his past, he doesn't expect to find much there.But Duma has been waiting for him, and something in the view from his window urges him to discover a talent he never knew he had.Edgar Freemantle begins to paint. And as he paints, the island's secrets begin to stir...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

    Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 73 ratings
    The dead don't talk. I don't know why. But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different...
  • Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey

    Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 29 ratings
    You might think that helping a friend's widow to stop a lawyer from stealing her husband's corpse would be the strangest thing on your To Do list. But life is rarely that simple for Felix Castor. A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of a long-dead American serial killer, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved...
  • 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...
    Categorized as:
    dark  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  20th-century  adult
  • 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...
  • Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

    Forever Odd by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 58 ratings
    I see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death...
  • The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron

    The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 27 ratings
    Over the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic...
    Categorized as:
    dark  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  21st-century  adult
  • 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...
  • 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:
    dark  drama  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • 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...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  ghosts  north-america  paranormal  spooky  suspense  usa
  • 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.
  • 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...
  • Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

    Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

    Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    William ""Dead"" Kennedy has problems. He's haunted by family, by dead people with unfinished business, and by those perfect pop songs that you can't get out of your head. He's a 32-year-old Texan still in love with his ex-wife. He just lost his job at Pet-Co for eating cat food. His air-conditioning is broken, there's no good music on the radio, and he's been dreaming about ghost roads...
  • Sunset by Stephen King

    Sunset by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars
    · 31 ratings
    'Did you maybe leave the oven on? Or forget to turn off the gas under your patio barbeque? What about the lock on your back door? Did you remember to give it a twist? Things like that are so easy to forget, and someone could be slipping in right now...'Now: just after sunset, as darkness grips the imagination, that's when reality grows thin...
  • Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King, Richard Chizmar

    Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King, Richard Chizmar

    Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars
    · 50 ratings
    The little town of Castle Rock, Maine has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told... until now.There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs...
  • Murder of Angels by Caitlín R. Kiernan

    Murder of Angels by Caitlín R. Kiernan

    Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars
    · 12 ratings
    From the award-winning author of Silk and Threshold...To find the solace she seeks, Niki Ky must return to the house on the side of Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama, to finish what her lover Spyder Baxter started. Her odyssey will take her places no human was meant to travel, and she will face creatures no human should ever have to face..
  • 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:
    dark  drama  family  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense
  • 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...
  • The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

    The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough

    Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    In this emotionally gripping, genre-defying novella from Sarah Pinborough, a woman sits at her father's bedside, watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters--she is the middle child of five--have all turned up over the past week to pay their last respects...
  • Strange Weather by Joe Hill

    Strange Weather by Joe Hill

    Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars
    · 38 ratings
    A collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, Joe HillSnapshot is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. .
  • Alice by Christina Henry

    Alice by Christina Henry

    Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars
    · 43 ratings
    A mind-bending new novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll... In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo the screams of the poor souls inside. In the hospital, there is a woman. Her hair, once blond, hangs in tangles down her back...
  • Darker Things by Rob Cornell

    Darker Things by Rob Cornell

    Rated: 3.70 of 5 stars
    · 10 ratings
    Craig Lockman—no one had called him that in fifteen years.Not since his days at the Agency. Not since he was trained to kill creatures that were supposed to exist only in nightmares.Yet the teenage girl on his doorstep not only knows his real name, she claims she's his daughter.Before Lockman can learn how the girl found him, he's attacked by a black-ops team of assassins...
  • American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

    American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Some places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico...
  • Origin by J.A. Konrath

    Origin by J.A. Konrath

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Thriller writer J.A. Konrath, author of the Lt. Jack Daniels series, digs into the vaults and unearths a technohorror tale from the depths of hell... 1906 - Something is discovered by workers digging the Panama Canal. Something dormant. Sinister. Very much alive. 2009 - Project Samhain. A secret underground government installation begun 103 years ago in New Mexico...
  • Hannah-Beast by Jennifer McMahon

    Hannah-Beast by Jennifer McMahon

    Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    The fate of a lonely girl becomes part of a town’s shameful secret history in Thriller Award winner Jennifer McMahon’s terrifying story of guilt, retribution, and one tragic Halloween night.Thirty-four years ago, on October 31, poor Hannah Talbott took part in a scavenger hunt gone violently wrong. The mean girls made sure of it...
  • Desperation by Stephen King

    Desperation by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars
    · 67 ratings
    Alternate Cover Edition ISBN 0451188462 (ISBN13: 9780451188465)There's a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It's known as Desperation, Nevada.It's not a very nice place to live. It's an even worse place to die.Let the battle against evil begin.Welcome to ..
  • Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

    Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

    Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars
    · 68 ratings
    Aging, self-absorbed rock star Judas Coyne has a thing for the macabre -- his collection includes sketches from infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a trepanned skull from the 16th century, a used hangman's noose, Aleister Crowley's childhood chessboard, etc. -- so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it...
    Categorized as:
    dark  drama  ghosts  gothic  paranormal  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin

    The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin

    Rated: 3.71 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    A haunting vision in the woods sets off a series of tragic events, leaving Nicholas Close lost amid visions of ghosts trapped in their harrowing, final moments. These uniquely ter­rifying apparitions lead him on a thrilling and suspenseful ride to confront a wicked soul, and will leave an indelible mark on lovers of high-quality suspense and horror alike...
  • Insomnia by Stephen King

    Insomnia by Stephen King

    Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars
    · 65 ratings
    Ralph Roberts has a problem: he isn't sleeping so well these days. In fact, he's hardly sleeping at all. Each morning, the news conveyed by the bedside clock is a little worse: 3:15...3:02...2:45...2:15. The books call it "premature waking"; Ralph, who is still learning to be a widower, calls it a season in hell...
Fantastic book recommendations by book lovers for book lovers.
Find out more about thebooknaut.com.



Looking for more inspiration? Enter another book title to get more suggestions on what to read next.


Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.