Books like 'The Abandoned'
Readers who enjoyed The Abandoned by Douglas Clegg also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
fantasy horror supernatural psychological paranormal ghosts gothic pulp haunted-places dark
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Carrie / 'Salem's Lot / The Shining by Stephen King
Rated: 4.56 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsStephen King is a unique and powerful writer without equal for millions of horror fans. His incredible narrative drive ensnares the reader in a web of everyday surroundings, believable situations and recognizable characters that are eventually caught up in a terrifying noose of monumental evil... -
The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA child who does not know her name…In 1903 fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. An ambulance is sent for, and the two survivors are taken to All Hallows, the imposing asylum, hidden deep on Dartmoor... -
The Haunting of Winchester Mansion by Alexandria Clarke
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn the small town of Black Bay, a vacant, forgotten house sits atop an overlooking bluff. When Bailey and Bodhi Taylor move in and begin renovations, the house seems perfect. But things move on their own, screams echo from the basement, and Bailey sees a shadowy figure out of the corner of her eye... -
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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Rejected Gambit by Avery Stone
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHe stares into your eyes with nothing but hate, forced to acknowledge the truth of your brilliant strategy. Your first move puts you in the lead, but will you achieve checkmate?Being appointed leader of the Grandmasters should be another check in your column of wins, but instead, the news triggers something dangerous, because those who surround you want nothing but bloodshed... -
Hunting Fear by Kay Hooper, Dick Hill
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHe's no ordinary kidnapper. Not only does he strike again and again, but he collects the ransom, gets away safely, and leaves his helpless hostages dead. Now, after months of eluding the best that law enforcement can put against him, this monster has left nothing in his wake but a cold trail of unconnected victims. He's no ordinary cop... -
The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsA definitive edition of stories by the master of supernatural fictionHoward Phillips Lovecraft's unique contribution to American literature was a melding of traditional supernaturalism (derived chiefly from Edgar Allan Poe) with the genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1920s... -
Ashes Beneath Her by J.R. Erickson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOrla has a gift, an ability to sense things she touches: memories, traumas… murders. On a sunny day in 1975, she sets off on a bike ride into the picturesque countryside and vanishes. She is not the first young woman to go missing and she will not be the last.Ashes Beneath Her is the third novel in the stand-alone Northern Michigan Asylum Series... -
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... -
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsThe eerie tales of Edgar Allan Poe, from the 1830s and 40s, remain among the most brilliant and influential works in American literature... -
The Prayer of the Night Shepherd by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt Stanner Hall, a Victorian mansion-turned-hotel, Ben Foley hosts murder-mystery weekends and strives to prove that his hotel is the house on which Arthur Conan Doyle based his immortal Baskerville Hall. As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley’s dabbling uncovers more than he can handle... -
Spring Slaughter by Sara Clancy
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey thought the harvest was over. But a darker evil is about to be revealed… It has been more than a year since the offspring of Black River’s oldest families made their final stand against the evil Bell Witch. Their victory took a heavy toll, and left the survivors scarred and estranged from their blood lines... -
Dahlia by Tabitha Barret
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLittle girls are supposed to draw pictures of rainbows and unicorns, so when I started drawing monsters in the shadows, people acted as if something was wrong with me. They didn't know I could predict the future. As I got older, I adapted and became a tattoo artist who gave helpful advice to skeptics... -
Abandoned Grace: An Interview with Devin Andersen by Marissa Honeycutt
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAs an author, I know that characters often take on lives of their own. But what would you do if you received a phone call from someone you thought only existed in the pages of your book? That is exactly what happened to me, Marissa Honeycutt, author of The Life of Anna... -
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Lost Girl by Anne Francis Scott
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLost Girl - Readers' Favorite Award Finalist in Paranormal FictionRenowned sculptor Allison Weathers doesn't believe in ghosts. But when a tragic twist of fate leads her to the small mountain town of Dawson Mills, Tennessee, she soon learns that the dead don't always stay silent. Shadows begin to shift in the rambling, old Victorian farmhouse she's purchased. Voices come from nowhere... -
The Children in the Lake: A Story You Will Never Forget by Mark Edward Hall
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn 1925 three children vanish without a trace in Arrowhead Lake. Nearly a century later there are those who still report seeing the children swimming beneath the surface like elusive dolphins. After losing her husband in a violent car crash, Rachel King and her two young sons venture to Arrowhead Lake to heal... -
Tanners Dell by S.E. England, Sarah E. England
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFollowing the hypnosis of violently disturbed psychiatric patient, Ruby Dean, an unholy dark force was unleashed on the medical staff who tried to help her. Now only one of the original team remains--Ward Sister, Becky. Despite her fianc�, D.I... -
The Body at Auercliff by Amy Cross
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"We'll bury her so deep, even her ghost will have a mouth full of dirt!" When Rebecca Wallace arrives at Auercliff to check on her aged aunt, she's in for a shock. Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms... -
Belle Manor Haunting by Cheryl Bradshaw
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe door to Addison Lockhart's room opens. Five-year-old Sara Belle walks in. The child seems lost and confused. Addison reaches out, grabs Sara's hand, and the room goes black.Addison's eyes open to find she's been transported several decades into the past. She's sitting in the back seat of a car. Sara is beside her. The car stops at an intersection... -
Ghostwritten by Ronald Malfi
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFour brand-new horror novellas from “a modern-day Algernon Blackwood” all about books, stories, manuscripts – the written word has never had sharper teeth…From the bestselling author of Come with Me, four standalone horror novellas set in a shared universe! In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride... -
White Silence by Jodi Taylor
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratings*The first instalment in the new, gripping supernatural thriller series from international bestselling author, Jodi Taylor.* "I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am." Elizabeth Cage is a child when she discovers that there are things in this world that only she can see. But she doesn’t want to see them and she definitely doesn’t want them to see her... -
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsYears ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command... -
Thunderbird by Chuck Wendig
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the fourth installment of the Miriam Black series, Miriam heads to the southwest in search of another psychic who may be able to help her understand her curse, but instead finds a cult of domestic terrorists and the worst vision of death she’s had yet. Miriam Black is being developed as a TV series by Starz with the producers of Breaking Bad... -
The Patience of a Dead Man by Michael Clark
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHe just spent everything on a house in disrepair, but he didn’t know someone was waiting inside. Tim Russell just put his last dollar on a handyman’s dream; a quaint but dilapidated farmhouse in New Hampshire. Newly single after a messy divorce, his plan is to live in the house as he restores it for resale... -
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The Ghost Tree by Sara Bain
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA newcomer to a small town must contend with a 17th century poltergeist intent on murder Five years after the death of his wife, MacAoidh Armstrong moves into a smallholding in southern Scotland with the intention of living a self-sufficient existence. Although he’s heard the steading has a reputation for being haunted, the pragmatic Highlander does not believe in ghosts... -
The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories by Michael Cox, F. Marion Crawford
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWith their evocative settings amid mists and shadows, in ruinous houses, on lonely roads and wild moorlands, in abandoned churches and over-grown gardens, ghost stories have long exercised a universal fascination... -
The Sense of Death by Matty Dalrymple, Sarah E. Purdum
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnn Kinnear has created a peaceful existence at her cabin in the Adirondack woods. But the calm is shattered after Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Firth is reported missing. With few clues and fewer options, detective Joe Booth calls upon Ann's spirit sensing abilities to help solve the mystery... -
A Grave Calling by Wendy Roberts
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThere had been no attempt to bury the dead girl, naked except for the white ribbon tied to her wristTwenty-five-year-old Julie Hall has a unique ability: when she takes up a dowsing rod, she finds not water but bodies. To Julie, it's a curse, not a gift, and one she rarely uses—she prefers her quiet life in a trailer, with her grandfather and her dog for company... -
Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the Shirley Jackson Award, nine stories of cosmic horror from the heir apparent to Lovecraft’s throne.Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti... -
The Ghosts of Thorwald Place by Helen Power
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTrust no one. Especially your neighbors.Rachel Drake is on the run from the man who killed her husband. She never leaves her safe haven in an anonymous doorman building, until one night a phone call sends her running. On her way to the garage, she is murdered in the elevator. But her story doesn’t end there... -
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... -
The End of Temperance Dare: A Novel by Wendy Webb
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHaunting and atmospheric, The End of Temperance Dare is another thrilling page-turner from the author reviewers are calling the Queen of the Northern Gothic.When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists’ retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor’s dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a “waiting room for death...Categorized as:
ghosts gothic haunted-places paranormal suspense 21st-century action-adventure adult -
Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman, Reece Shearsmith
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul... -
Don't Look Back by Ben Cheetham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAdam’s eyes swelled in horror at the sight that confronted him. Henry was standing with his back against the front door, pale and rigid, his left hand pressed to his neck. Blood was seeping between his fingers, running down his wrist and dripping from his elbow onto the back of Jacob’s head... -
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The Haunting of Leigh Harker by Darcy Coates
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSometimes the dead reach back...Leigh Harker’s quiet suburban home was her sanctuary for more than a decade, until things abruptly changed. Curtains open by themselves. Radios turn off and on. And a dark figure looms in the shadows of her bedroom door at night, watching her, waiting for her to finally let down her guard enough to fall asleep... -
Love the Way You Lie by Lisa Unger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhat's drawn four damaged people back to haunted land? The answer could destroy them all in a gripping short story about trapped memories and the lies we tell ourselves.Matthew, Claire, and Mason haven't been back to Merle House since the summer they were sixteen. They tried for years to put their history behind them, to forget the mystery of the girl who vanished so long ago... -
In The Blink Of An Eye by Wendy Corsi Staub
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA new novel of suspense that promises to propel USA Today bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub into the ranks of the masters of the genre.When a medium returns to the small-town home where her childhood friend was killed, she intends to coax the secrets of the house out into the light -- before the murderous force residing there makes both she and her friend's daughter its next victims... -
A Place for Vanishing by Ann Fraistat
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA teen girl and her family return to her mother's childhood home, only to discover that the house's strange beauty may disguise a sinister past, in this contemporary gothic horror from the author of What We Harvest.The house was supposed to be a fresh start. That's what Libby's mom said... -
The Ghosts of Miller's Crossing by David Clark
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMore than Ghosts haunt you in his ghost story.Edward Meyer is returning back to his home town after the tragic loss of his wife. This move is rather ironic since it was the tragic loss of his parents that forced him away in the first place. When he returns, he learns a deep family secret that goes beyond the spirits that roam the town... -
Hannahwhere by John M. McIlveen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWinner of the 2015 Drunken Druid Award (Ireland) for high literary merit.Nominee for the 2015 Bram Stoker Award (HWA) in the First Novel category.In a suburb on Boston’s North Shore, a catatonic little girl is found behind a dumpster. She is a mystery... -
Splintered by Tal Bauer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsEverything in Ben's life was perfect. He had it all. The good career. The perfect partner, Evan. The happy home. They were even talking about turning the extra bedroom into a nursery.But things start to splinter. Evan begins missing time, not knowing where he was or how he got there... -
Onyx Webb: Book One by Richard Fenton, Andrea Waltz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWho can she trust? What is the truth? Every decision has consequences. What you thought you knew about ghosts is wrong. Sometimes they can walk among the living. In Onyx Webb, the silk of time weaved between lives is generations apart. Follow a billionaire playboy who’s hit rock bottom in 2010, a girl off to prom in 1979, and Onyx Webb in 1906 on her sixth birthday... -
52 Sleepless Nights: Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, and Horror Short Stories by Tobias Wade
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDid you know that the Grim Reaper's Scythe isn't there to harvest you? It's really to protect you against something on your journey.Or that Heaven keeps a prisoner? You'll get to meet him soon.I still don't think that's as bad as the time I threw a suicide watching party, or when my sex doll wouldn't stop crying though... -
From Away by Phoef Sutton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSammy Kehoe, his sister, Charlotte, and her four-year-old daughter, Maggie, are all each other have left since the car accident that killed the rest of their family. When they visit their beloved old family home on remote Fox Island, Maine, Sammy and Charlotte each have relationship sparks with island locals... -
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The Door by Boris Bacic
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThere's a locked door in Nathan's new apartment. At night, it opens.He doesn’t care – until he starts hearing eerie scratching noises coming from behind it. Footsteps resound in his apartment, objects are mysteriously moved out of place, and no matter what he tries, he can’t get the door open. Then one night, the door opens on its own, revealing a long, dark corridor... -
Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsLoop 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... -
House Taken Over by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratings"Casa Tomada" (English: "House Taken Over") is a 1946 short story by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar. It was originally published in Los anales de Buenos Aires, a literary magazine edited by Jorge Luis Borges, and later included in his volume of stories, Bestiario.It tells the story of a brother and sister living together in their ancestral home which is being "taken over" by unknown entities... -
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... -
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... -
Circling the Drain by Lisa Unger
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIs it a hoax, or is it something unspeakably real? In this short story about evil games and spiraling secrets, whatever bargain you strike, there's a price to be paid.Mason Brandt dropped out of seminary and found a job at a spiritual center offering guidance to troubled teens. Mason was on himself years ago - a suspect in a young girl's disappearance. When a female student is found murdered...
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