Books like 'The Stain'
Readers who enjoyed The Stain by Douglas Clegg also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
fantasy horror supernatural mystery paranormal social-commentary classics
-
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... -
Zero Hour by Will Hill
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsJamie Carpenter and the rest of Department 19 know when the world will end. It ends when Zero Hour comes. And Zero Hour…is here.As Dracula continues his rise, Department 19 is desperately trying to keep the forces of evil at bay. Then, an unexpected source brings a ray of hope, sending Jamie and Larissa on a dangerous mission to find the one thing that could turn back the darkness for good... -
Bane County: Forgotten Moon by J.R. Rice
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe large river-island of Bane County has a troubled past; but some histories are eagerly forgotten, especially those written in blood. Nestled into the foothills of the National Wildlife Refuge, the small rural town of Silver Canyon seems idyllic to most; but a long-slumbering evil is about to reawaken... -
Salt & Broom by Sharon Lynn Fisher
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA gifted healer unravels the mysteries of a cursed estate—and its enigmatic owner—in a witchy retelling of Jane Eyre . "Salt and broom, make this room Safe and tight, against the night." Trunks packed with potions and cures, Jane Aire sets out on a crisp, clear morning in October to face the greatest challenge of her sheltered girls’-school existence... -
-
Del tiempo y sus demonios by Diego Armando Arciniegas Malagón
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDEL TIEMPO Y SUS DEMONIOS: PERSIGUIENDO LA VERDADEsta novela se desarrolla en un pequeño y misterioso pueblo. En un territorio hermoso, inhóspito a la luz de aquellas certezas que las mayorías consideran irrefutables. Lejos del tiempo que, arbitrariamente, tomara la sabia decisión de separar el bien del mal... -
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft by H.P. Lovecraft, Leslie S. Klinger
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 24 ratings"With an increasing distance from the twentieth century…the New England poet, author, essayist, and stunningly profuse epistolary Howard Phillips Lovecraft is beginning to emerge as one of that tumultuous period’s most critically fascinating and yet enigmatic figures," writes Alan Moore in his introduction to The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft... -
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural by Herbert A. Wise, John Collier
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen this longtime Modern Library favorite--filled with fifty-two stories of heart-stopping suspense--was first published in 1944, one of its biggest fans was critic Edmund Wilson, who in The New Yorker applauded what he termed a sudden revival of the appetite for tales of horror... -
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe essential collection of the American literary master of terror, death, murder, fantasy, and revengeThe first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe... -
The Deceiving by Ninie Hammon
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe monster demon is BACK! ...and he’s had twenty-six years to plot his revenge. More horrifying than any Hollywood-animated, computer-generated, mechanical unreality, the winged demon called an efreet will do anything to get what he wants. Pronounce that: An-y-thing Defeated in 1985 by three twelve-year-olds, the monster returns determined to kill them... -
Cid by Alexie Aaron
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSummer has arrived and, with it, an opportunity for Cid Garrett (paranormal investigator for PEEPS) to make some cash as a carpenter. His colleague Jesse Holden has hooked him up with a fill-in position on a multimillion dollar renovation on an isolated 1920s southern mansion called Hidden Meadow... -
Dark Son by Michael Robertson Jr.
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA new novel in the exciting Lance Brody series from the author of the Amazon Kindle #1 Bestselling horror novel, Rough Draft!A family mysteriously murdered. A haunted farmhouse. A town rich with secrets... -
The Haunting of Crawley House by Michelle Dorey
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsLike a grand lady, the house has reigned over Harvest Street for almost a century. It's a splendid home- a sweeping veranda, ivy covered walls and spacious rooms, all within a short walk to the campus. Add to its charm the exceptionally low rent, and it's a perfect student rental. In spite of this, tenants never stay... -
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... -
The Best Ghost Stories Of Algernon Blackwood by Algernon Blackwood
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSelected from the entire body of Algernon Blackwood’s work, this collection contains some of his finest writing. Blackwood’s ability to create and sustain an atmosphere of unrelieved horror is witnessed in ‘The Willows’, a starkly terrifying tale of another dimension impinging on our own. In contrast, ‘The Other Wing’, is a chilling but delicate evocation of the mysteries of childhood... -
-
Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by Jim Turner, H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHoward Phillips Lovecraft forever changed the face of horror, fantasy, and science fiction with a remarkable series of stories as influential as the works of Poe, Tolkien, and Edgar Rice Burroughs... -
Rivulet by Jamie Magee
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsUnfathomable forces have always contested Genevieve Indiana Falcon, known as Indie. The curse of her cold touch entraps her just as the grief ignited in her past torments her. Yet, her mysterious ability to dream while awake saturates her in the belief that she was not always anguished. There is hope that one day a true peace in her soul can be found... -
44 Book Eight by Jools Sinclair
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIt has been six months since Emily Ross disappeared on a cold winter day while walking to her class at the University of Oregon. It has been six months without clues, without leads, without hope.Detective Ellis Frazier is desperate. He knows it is only a matter of time before the investigation ends up as a cold case, dead and forgotten forever... -
Forty-Four Book Eleven by Jools Sinclair
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsNow the prime suspect in a high-profile murder investigation, Abby Craig flees the only place she has ever called home and is forced to live on the run as a fugitive in the shadows of the American Southwest.But Abby soon discovers that she isn't alone. A mysterious stranger is plaguing her every step. A stranger with a dark past who has plans for her... -
44 Book Seven by Jools Sinclair
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAbby Craig’s worst nightmare has come to life…When an old friend suddenly reappears, a mysterious darkness begins to hound her. Shadowy truths will claw their way to the surface to finally see the light of day. Life and death hang in the balance when a long-buried secret refuses to stay dead... -
Tales Around the Jack O'Lantern: A Mary O'Reilly Short Story by Terri Reid
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe lights are out, the jack-o-lantern is lit and the O’Reilly clan is enjoying their family tradition of sharing ghost stories on Halloween night. Set ten years before Mary moves to Freeport, this novelette offers five unique ghost stories that will leave you checking over your shoulder just to make sure no one “uninvited” is in the room with you... -
The Amazing Mr Blunden by Antonia Barber
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIt was such an old house it sometimes seemed to Lucy that all the past was gathered up inside it as if in a great box; as though it had a life of its own that continued to exist just beyond the reach of her eyes and ears...Categorized as:
classics paranormal 20th-century action-adventure book children children-books fiction -
Sleepy Hollow: A Novelization (Includes the Classic Short Story) by Peter Lerangis, Washington Irving
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHEADS WILL ROLLIt is 1799, the eve if a new century. In New York City, young Constable Ichabod Crane is eager to use his latest scientific methods and his powers of deduction to solve the most brutal of crimes. But nothing can prepare him for the shocking murders that take him far from the city's cobblestones to the eerie town of Sleepy Hollow... -
The Lighthouse by Ron Ripley
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEx-marine Shane Ryan is a ghost hunter whose troubled past haunts him almost as much as the ghosts he encounters in the line of duty. He’s the best. And his reward for excellence? The punishment of being in high demand for jobs to eradicate the worst kind of ghosts – the kind that kill... -
The Complete Short Stories by Ambrose Bierce, Jerome Hopkins
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBefore he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius... -
-
The Collected Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson by E.F. Benson, Richard Dalby
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsContents:Room in the tower --Dust-cloud --Gavon's eve --Confession of Charles Linkworth --At Abdul Ali's grave --Shootings of Achnaleish --How fear departed from the long gallery --Caterpillars --Cat --Bus-conductor --Man who went too far --Between the lights --Outside the door --Terror by night --Other bed --Thing in the hall --House with the brick-kiln --"And the dead spake-" --Outcast... -
The Knowing by Ninie Hammon
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen the hot call comes over the radio: “Code Red! Active shooter at Carlisle Elementary School,” Police Sergeant Jack Carpenter has one job and only one job. Find the gunman; take him out. He rushes into the school, fully armed and focused on cold, hard reality. But what happens to him in the next few hours shatters the world as he has always known it... -
Best Ghost Stories of J.S. Le Fanu by J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsHere are 16 classic ghost stories: "Carmilla" (perhaps the classic vampire thriller), "Green Tea", "The Familiar", "The Haunted Baronet", "Madam Crowl's Ghost", "The Dead Sexton", "An Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House" plus nine others. Half these stories never published before in U.S... -
Berkley Street by Ron Ripley
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAlternate cover edition of ISBN 9781532759208An abandoned house. A forgotten evil. Home sweet home...Shane Ryan returns to Nashua and the childhood memories that drove him to join the Marines. After a prolonged legal battle with his aunt and uncle, Shane has possession of the family home where his parents disappeared over 20 years ago... -
Selected Writings by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 27 ratings'And much of Madness and more of Sin And Horror the Soul of the Plot'This selection of Poe's critical writings, short fiction and poetry demonstrates his intense interest in aesthetic issues, and the astonishing power and imagination with which he probed the darkest corners of the human mind... -
Still Bleeding by Stephen Leather
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsA short story by the bestselling author of the Jack Nightingale series. Supernatural detective Nightingale is called in to investigate a case of stigmata. A young girl is bleeding from her hands and feet and claims to be talking to the Virgin Mary. But Nightingale soon realises that all is not as it seems - and the girl is in mortal danger... -
Sacrificial Grounds by Sara Clancy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey survived the witch’s game. Now they’re fighting back… The offspring of the four families have barely managed to escape the Bell Witch’s deadly harvest. Exhausted, terrified, and haunted by their families’ twisted secrets, they know that death still awaits in the woods. Unless they can work together, and end the curse once and for all... -
Shaker Town by Rebecca Patrick-Howard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTaryn's camera is finally revealing a past to her that she's always longed to see-the mysterious Shakers as they were 100 years ago. But is she seeing a past she hadn't bargained for? Taryn Magill is ready for a break from the supernatural. She'd never planned on being a psychic detective... -
Bones of a Witch by Dana E. Donovan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBones of a Witch, the fourth in a series of Detective Marcella mysteries, shines a light on one of America’s darkest hours when a simple accusation could get a girl hanged. But as Lilith learns, history is always pending, and the art of witch hunting never dies... -
Hauntings: Tales of the Supernatural by Henry Mazzeo, Henry James
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsCollection of 17 tales of the supernatural. These are all in the best tradition of the supernatural story -- authentically eerie, but more about the human spirit than about spooks and specters. Well-known authors are presented here in what, for them, is an unusual manner: a rich vein of British and American imaginative fiction... -
-
Witch Wood by John Buchan
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsSet against the religious struggles and civil wars of seventeenth century Scotland, John Buchan's Witch Wood is a gripping atmospheric tale in the spirit of Stevenson and Neil Munro.As a moderate presbyterian minister, young David Sempill disputes with the extremists of his faith, as all around, the defeated remnants of Montrose's men are being harried and slaughtered... -
Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday by Italo Calvino
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCompiled by Italo Calvino, one of the essential writers of the twentieth century (and editor of the best-selling Italian Folktales), Fantastic Tales is a rich and wide-ranging collection of twenty-six classic, uncanny tales from the nineteenth century written by an intriguing panoply of European and American authors... -
Worthe's Village by Ron Ripley, Thom Bowers
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsHow much fear can one man take? Marcus Holt thought his worst memories were behind him. A veteran of the Vietnam War, the tough old soldier is haunted by nightmares of brutal conflict. But he’s about to discover that his battle for survival has only just begun. Professor Abel Worthe is brilliant, wealthy, and utterly immoral... -
Dark Game by Michael Robertson Jr.
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLess than twenty-four hours after the horrific events that forced him to flee his hometown, Lance Brody steps off a bus into a whole different nightmare.The small town of Westhaven seems ordinary on the surface, but Lance can feel the evil lurking in the air … and it knows Lance has arrived... -
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 Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories by Michael Cox
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Victorians excelled at telling ghost stories. In an age of rapid scientific progress, the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held a special potential for terror. Throughout the nineteenth century, fictional ghost stories developed in parallel with the more general Victorian fascination with death and what lay beyond it... -
American Gothic Tales by Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Brockden Brown
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsJoyce Carol Oates has a special perspective on the “gothic” in American short fiction, at least partially because her own horror yarns rank on the spine-tingling chart with the masters. She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King... -
The Elders by Dima Zales, Anna Zaires
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsGoing to Level 2 gives me unimaginable power. So naturally, now that everyone I care about is in trouble, I can't do it anymore.The Elders can, but will they teach me, and if so, at what price?Ultimately, it comes down to a choice... -
Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis volume contains 24 of Bierce's best tales of the unknown. Morbid, cynical, eerie, they take you to a twilight region of flesh and spirit — and into the darkest recesses of the human mind... -
Fresh Meat by Alice Henderson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsA rash of strange deaths in the Tahoe National Forest bring Sam, Dean and Bobby to the Sierra Nevada mountains to hunt a monster with a taste for human flesh. Soon walking corpses, bodies with missing organs, and attacks by a mysterious flying creature lead the trio to a cunning and deadly foe which can assume a human form and will do anything to survive... -
-
Van Helsing by Kevin Ryan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsDeep in the mountains of nineteenth-century Carpathia lies the mysterious and mythic land of Transylvania, a world where evil is ever-present, where danger rises as the sun sets, and where monsters such as Count Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's Monster take form and inhabit man's deepest nightmares -- terrifying legends who outlive generations, defying repeated attacks from the doomed... -
The Good Sisters by Helen Phifer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratings‘So frightening I had to stop reading it at night’ – Judy (Netgalley)The chilling new horror from bestselling author, Helen Phifer 1933, Mother Superior Agnes offers sanctuary to a desperate young woman fleeing for her life. Only to wake in the morning to discover a terrible fate has befallen one of the Sisters – in a room locked from the inside... -
Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAgainst a background of witchcraft in 17th-century rural Lancashire, ROBERT NEILL has woven an extraordinary novel of the power of evil.. -
Red Creek by Nathan Hystad
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThere's a dark shadow over Red Creek. Once a best-selling horror author, Paul Alenn is in a slump. His wife and daughter are across the country, moved away to the West Coast, leaving him alone in his Central Park-adjacent New York townhouse... -
A Thin Ghost and Others by M.R. James
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsCollection of stories by Montague Rhodes James, a noted medieval scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge and of Eton College. He is best remembered today for his ghost stories in the classic Victorian Yuletide vein... -
Dark Ladies: Conjure Wife/Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsConjure WifeWitchcraft. Norman Saylor considered it nothing but superstition, until he learned that his own wife was a practicing sorceress. Even still, he refuses to accept the truth that every woman knows...that in the secret occult warfare that governs our lives, witchcraft is a matter of life and death...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.