Books like 'Freddy's Book'
Readers who enjoyed Freddy's Book by John Gardner also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
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The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.52 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsThe internationally acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author returns to the magnificent universe he constructed in his bestselling novels The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game, and The Prisoner of Heaven in this riveting series finale—a heart-pounding thriller and nail-biting work of suspense which introduces a sexy, seductive new heroine whose investigation shines a light on the dark...Categorized as:
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The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 91 ratingsBarcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written... -
Boy's Life by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAn Alabama boy’s innocence is shaken by murder and madness in the 1960s South in this novel by the New York Times–bestselling author of Swan Song. It’s 1964 in idyllic Zephyr, Alabama. People either work for the paper mill up the Tecumseh River, or for the local dairy. It’s a simple life, but it stirs the impressionable imagination of twelve-year-old aspiring writer Cory Mackenson...Categorized as:
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The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsMoscow, 1929: a city that has lost its way amid corruption and fear, inhabited by people who have abandoned their morals and forsaken spirituality. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town with a bizarre entourage that includes a giant talking cat and a fanged assassin, all hell breaks loose...Categorized as:
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The Complete Fiction by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe Nameless CityThe FestivalThe Colour Out of SpaceThe Call of CthulhuThe Dunwich HorrorThe Whisperer in DarknessThe Dreams in the Witch HouseThe Haunter of the DarkThe Shadow Over InnsmouthDiscarded Draft of "The Shadow Over Innsmouth"The Shadow Out of TimeAt the Mountains of MadnessThe Case of Charles Dexter WardAzathothBeyond the Wall of SleepCelephaïsCool AirDagonEx OblivioneFacts... -
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 78 ratingsThe story takes the form of a series of letters from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew, a junior "tempter" named Wormwood, so as to advise him on methods of securing the damnation of a British man, known only as "the Patient".Screwtape holds an administrative post in the bureaucracy ("Lowerarchy") of Hell, and acts as a mentor to Wormwood, the inexperienced tempter...Categorized as:
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The Book of Fantasy by Jorge Luis Borges, Silvina Ocampo
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe Book of Fantasy began one night when three friends fell to talking about fantasies and ghost stories... -
Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOriginally written for the pulp magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, H. P. Lovecraft's astonishing tales blend elements of horror, science fiction, and cosmology that are as powerful today as they were when first published. This tome presents original versions of many of his most harrowing stories, including the complete Cthulhu Mythos cycle, in order of publication...Categorized as:
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The Last Enchantment by Mary Stewart
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsArthur Pendragon is King! Unchallenged on the battlefield, he melds the country together in a time of promise. But sinister powers plot to destroy Camelot, and when the witch-queen Morgause -- Arthur's own half sister -- ensnares him in an incestuous liaison, a fatal web of love, betrayal, and bloody vengeance is woven...Categorized as:
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Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Alberto Manguel, Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis huge anthology offers a kaleidoscope of brilliant writing from the Magi of the imagination. Alberto Manguel has selected 72 fantastic tales from life on the edge of the twilight zone, with stories from Marguerite Yourcenar, Herman Hesse, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, and many, many more... -
The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIncantations of black magic unearthed unspeakable horrors in Providence, Rhode Island...Categorized as:
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Complete Ghost Stories by M.R. James
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsM. R. James wrote his ghost stories to entertain friends on Christmas Eve, and they went on to both transform and modernize a genre. James harnesses the power of suggestion to move from a recognizable world to one that is indefinably strange, and then unforgettably terrifying...Categorized as:
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Novels & Stories: The Lottery / The Haunting of Hill House / We Have Always Lived in the Castle / Other Stories and Sketches by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratings“The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable,” writes A. M. Homes. “It is a place where things are not what they seem; even on a morning that is sunny and clear there is always the threat of darkness looming, of things taking a turn for the worse...Categorized as:
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Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratings"There can be no doubt that Akutagawa had more individuality than any other writer of his time and has left in Japanese literature a mass of artistic work, often grotesque and curious, that, while it undoubtedly angers the proletarian experimenters who now hold the stage and fight with lusty pens and a highly developed class consciousness against all that he stood for, will continue to live as...Categorized as:
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Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsDoro is an entity who changes bodies like clothes, killing his hosts by reflex--or design. He fears no one--until he meets Anyanwu. Anyanwu has also died many times. She can absorb bullets and make medicine with a kiss, give birth to tribes, nurture and heal, and savage anyone who threatens those she loves. She fears no one--until she meets Doro... -
The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBarcelona, 1957. It is Christmas, and Daniel Sempere and his wife Bea have much to celebrate. They have a beautiful new baby son named Julian, and their close friend Fermín Romero de Torres is about to be wed. But their joy is eclipsed when a mysterious stranger visits the Sempere bookshop and threatens to divulge a terrible secret that has been buried for two decades in the city's dark past... -
Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories by M.R. James
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe only annotated edition of M. R. James's writings currently available, Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories contains the entire first two volumes of James's ghost stories, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary and More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary...Categorized as:
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The World That We Knew by Alice Hoffman
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIn Berlin in 1941 during humanity's darkest hour, three unforgettable young women must act with courage and love to survive, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Dovekeepers and The Marriage of Opposites Alice Hoffman. In Berlin, at the time when the world changed, Hanni Kohn knows she must send her twelve-year-old daughter away to save her from the Nazi regime... -
The Seventh Horse and Other Tales by Leonora Carrington
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis collection of Carrington's fiction, the most comprehensive so far, includes a novella and 18 short stories written between the late 1930s and the early '70s in French, Spanish and English. All these tales take place in fantastic, eerie landscapes and are narrated in surreal, stylized voices. Carrington (House of Fear , etc...Categorized as:
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Tryst by Elswyth Thane
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHilary Shenstone is dead, yet he haunts his old home. Only animals and a young girl Sabrina can sense his presence. The old housekeeper is aware of this, and helps Sabrina to contact the spirit...Categorized as:
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The Haunted Dolls' House by M.R. James
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEvil comes with many different faces. A macabre human drama is re-enacted in a Gothic dolls' house one night; a whistle awakens a force of unspeakable malevolence; an ancient curse is passed from person to person; a grisly crime is avenged from beyond the grave; the tomb of a Swedish count will not rest quietly . M. R...Categorized as:
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Collected Ghost Stories by M.R. James
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsM. R. James is widely regarded as the father of the modern ghost story, and his tales have influenced horror writers from H. P. Lovecraft to Stephen King. First published in the early 1900s, they have never been out of print, and are recognized as classics of the genre...Categorized as:
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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... -
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsrelates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan, in Eseldorf, an Austrian village in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "Assville" or "Donkeytown"... -
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The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsTwo friends are midway on a canoe trip down the Danube River. Throughout the story Blackwood personifies the surrounding environment—river, sun, wind—and imbues them with a powerful and ultimately threatening character...Categorized as:
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The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsDuring the Great War, a combat nurse searches for her brother, believed dead in the trenches despite eerie signs that suggest otherwise, in this hauntingly beautiful historical novel with a speculative twist from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the NightingaleJanuary 1918... -
Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsHans Christian Andersen's fairy tales are like exquisite jewels, drawing from us gasps of recognition and delight. Writing in the midst of a Europe-wide rebirth of national literature, Anderson broke new ground with his fairy tales in two important ways. First, he composed them in the vernacular, mimicking the language he used in telling them to children aloud... -
How Much It May Storm by A.N. Willis
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTheir secret didn’t die with her.Colorado, 1918: Millie Boylan is a nurse who sees darkness marking those soon to die. When she falls for a doomed soldier named Edward Gainsbury, she vows to save his life. But Millie soon finds the greatest danger is the one she cannot see.Colorado, 1943: With a brother gone to war, Dinah must learn how to fend for herself... -
The Woman Who Had Two Navels and Tales of the Tropical Gothic by Nick Joaquín, Gina Apostol
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. With the post-colonial sensibilities of Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Jhumpa Lahiri and an ironic perspective of colonial history resonant with Marques and Llosa, Joaquin is a long-neglected writer ready to join the ranks of the world classics...Categorized as:
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The Kindred of Darkness by Barbara Hambly
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWhen James Asher and his wife Lydia's baby daughter Miranda is kidnapped by the Master Vampire of London, the stakes are high: blindly follow the Master Vampire's instructions, keep out of the way of the human networks that serves the vampires, destroy the interloper who seeks to seize control of the London Nest, and find the key to the Nest's tortuous inner workings: The Book of the Kindred of...Categorized as:
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Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsJohn Collier's edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl... -
The Loss by Julie Plec
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFamily is power.The Original vampire family swore it to each other a thousand years ago. They pledged to remain together always and forever. But even when you're immortal, promises are hard to keep. After a hurricane destroyed their city, Klaus, Elijah and Rebekah Mikaelson have rebuilt New Orleans to even greater glory. The year is 1766. The witches live on the fringes in the bayou... -
The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNewly orphaned Peggy Grahame is caught off-guard when she first arrives at her family's ancestral estate. Her eccentric uncle Enos drives away her only new acquaintance, Pat, a handsome British scholar, then leaves Peggy to fend for herself. But she is not alone. The house is full of mysteries and ghosts...Categorized as:
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The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, Mikolaj Dutsch
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsThe Street of Crocodiles in the Polish city of Drogobych is a street of memories and dreams where recollections of Bruno Schulz's uncommon boyhood and of the eerie side of his merchant family's life are evoked in a startling blend of the real and the fantastic... -
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The Wine-Dark Sea by Robert Aickman
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsPeter Straub called Robert Aickman 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories'. Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term for them) are a subtle exploration of psychological displacement and paranoia. His characters are ordinary people that are gradually drawn into the darker recesses of their own minds...Categorized as:
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The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA poignant and suspenseful retelling of a classic fairy tale set in a war-torn world. In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel... -
The Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratings"The Rats in the Walls" is a short story by H.P. Lovecraft. Written in August–September 1923, it was first published in Weird Tales, March 1924.The story is narrated by the scion of the Delapore family, who has moved from Massachusetts to his ancestral estate in England, known as Exham Priory. On several occasions, the protagonist and his cats hear the sounds of rats scurrying behind the walls...Categorized as:
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I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé, Angela Y. Davis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"Stunning... Maryse Condé's imaginative subversion of historical records forms a critique of contemporary American society and its ingrained racism and sexism." —THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBEAt the age of seven, Tituba watched as her mother was hanged for daring to wound a plantation owner who tried to rape her...Categorized as:
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Three Souls by Janie Chang
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAn absorbing novel of romance and revolution, loyalty and family, sacrifice and undying loveWe have three souls, or so I'd been told. But only in death could I confirm this ... So begins the haunting and captivating tale, set in 1935 China, of the ghost of a young woman named Leiyin, who watches her own funeral from above and wonders why she is being denied entry to the afterlife... -
A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsThis classic tale from the author of The Last Unicorn is a journey between the realms of the living and the dead, and a testament to the eternal power of love.Michael Morgan was not ready to die, but his funeral was carried out just the same. Trapped in the dark limbo between life and death as a ghost, he searches for an escape. Instead, he discovers the beautiful Laura..Categorized as:
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O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIn the tradition of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, a darkly humorous modern classic of Scottish literature about a doomed adolescent growing up in the mid-20th century—featuring a new introduction by Maggie O’Farrell, award-winning author of Hamnet...Categorized as:
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The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt an end-of-London-season soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumors...Categorized as:
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The Warrior's Princess by Barbara Erskine
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHer fateful life would echo through time.When Jess is attacked by someone she once trusted, she flees to her sister's house in the Welsh borders to recuperate. But she is disturbed by the cries of a mysterious child.Two thousand years before, the same valley is the site of a great battle between Caratacus, king of the British tribes, and the invanding Romans...Categorized as:
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The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBrother and sister Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald flee their busy London lives for the beautiful but stormy Devon coastline. They are drawn to the suspiciously inexpensive Cliff End, feared amongst locals as a place of disturbance and ill omen. Gradually, the Fitzgeralds learn of the mysterious deaths of Mary Meredith and another strange young woman... -
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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by James Kahn
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn his newest adventure, Indiana Jones travels to India accompanied by a female torch singer named Willie Scott and an eleven-year-old boy named Short Round, his self-appointed side-kick... -
By Night under the Stone Bridge by Leo Perutz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSixteenth-century Prague provides the setting for the story of the forbidden love between emperor Rudolf II and Esther, the wife of an influential financier, and of the efforts of the city's Great Rabbi to right a situation angering... -
The Stones of Green Knowe by Lucy M. Boston
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThis last of the series starts at the origin of Green Knowe. Roger, the son of a Norman lord, first child to live in the grand old manor, finds ancient stones that magically transport him back and forth in time so he can meet and befriend Toby, Linnet, Susan, and Tolly - future inhabitants of Green Knowe...Categorized as:
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A Witch in Time by Constance Sayers
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA young woman in Belle Epoque France is cursed to relive a doomed love affair through many lifetimes, as both troubled muse and frustrated artist.In 1895, sixteen-year-old Juliet LaCompte has a passionate, doomed romance with the married Parisian painter Auguste Marchant... -
Boy in Darkness and Other Stories by Mervyn Peake, Joanne Harris
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA must-have for fans of the Gormenghast books, this anthology constitutes a chapter in the life of Titus Groan that unfolds beyond the pages of the author's monumental trilogy. Disturbingly atmospheric, these stories are told with the force and simplicity of allegory. This special volume includes rare stories as well as some never-before-seen illustrations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics coming-of-age dark dark-fantasy -
Time and the Gods by Lord Dunsany
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThis omnibus contains all the stories from Dunsany's earlier collections: Time and the Gods, The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories, A Dreamer's Tales, The Book of Wonder, The Last Book of Wonder, and The Gods of Pegāna...Categorized as:
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