Books like 'Grim Tales'
Readers who enjoyed Grim Tales by Norman Lock also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
fantasy horror magical-realism literary-fiction low-fantasy
-
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics fiction -
Hades by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen a viral video puts twelve-year-old Xanther under a spotlight of scrutiny at school, her little white cat—still slumbering, still unnamed—offers the only escape, though it comes at a price. Not even Xanther’ parents can deny the strange currents now shuddering around their eldest, touching off inexplicable happenings. Entities troubling the dreams of the twins seem to have singled out Freya... -
Stara Słaboniowa i Spiekładuchy by Joanna Łańcucka
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWy to, Słaboniowa, zawsze tak zakręcicie, że człowiek sam nie wie, w co wierzyć, i widzi rzeczy, których nie ma.W mroźny zimowy wieczór stara kobieta staje przy drewnianym płocie i jak co dzień spogląda bystrym okiem na rodzinną wieś. Gdzieś z nieprzeniknionych ciemności nadciąga zło, jakiego jeszcze mieszkańcy Capówki nie doświadczyli... -
End of the Game and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsEnd of the game is one of the most important collections of stories of the second half of the 20th century. Engaged in transgressing the laws of conventional narrative, in these eighteen stories Julio Cortázar combines intertextuality, an unpublished use of the colloquial and endless game to bring the reader into a particular universe where nothing is what it seems... -
-
The Lumberjack's Dove by GennaRose Nethercott
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“Serious art does not need to be weighty or explicitly topical. It can be, as it is here, apparently as light as a feather: The Lumberjack’s Dove is, in its manner, a folktale; it is also a meditation on attachment, on loss, on transformation... -
Unbinding Love by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhen Atlanta-based psychic medium-turned amateur sleuth Angela Panther teams up with her best friend Mel and celestial super sleuth—and Angela's dead mother—Fran to help Detective Aaron Banner find a lost boy, the trio heads into ghostly territory they’ve never experienced. The mob and magic aren't part of the psychic medium handbook, and the trio's not sure they'll make it out of it alive... -
Bestiary: The Selected Stories of Julio Cortázar by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsA collection of masterful short stories in Julio Cortazar's sophistocated, powerful and gripping style.A grieving family home becomes the site of a terrifying invasion. A frustrated love triangle, brought together by a plundered Aztec idol, spills over into brutality. A lodger’s inability to stop vomiting bunny rabbits inspires a personal confession...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century absurdism adult anthologies audiobook -
Who's a Good Boy? by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
Rated: 4.49 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsFrom the authors of the New York Times bestselling novels It Devours! and Welcome to Night Vale and the creators of the #1 international podcast of the same name, comes a collection of episodes from Season Four of their hit podcast, featuring an introduction by the authors, a foreword by Jonny Sun, behind-the-scenes commentary, and original illustrations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult anthologies comedy fiction -
Miss Peregrine's Journal for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsRecord your thoughts or create your own peculiar stories in this beautifully designed journal, filled with vintage black-and-white photos and quotes from all three novels in the Peculiar Children series. Life is full of surprises. Things are rarely what they seem. We all have secret hidden talents. These are some of the lessons that Miss Peregrine’s students learn, sometimes the hard way... -
The Kite of Stars and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis book collects sixteen wondrous stories of fantasy, science fiction, horror and things in between from the imagination of award-winning fictionist Dean Francis Alfar... -
Summer Morning, Summer Night by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsGreen Town, Illinois stands at the very heart of Ray Bradbury Country. A lovingly re-imagined version of the author's native Waukegan, it has served as the setting for such modern classics as Dandelion Wine, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and Farewell Summer...Categorized as:
low-fantasy magical-realism anthologies classics contemporary fiction historical-fiction horror -
Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis... -
The Buying of Lot 37 by Joseph Fink, Jeffrey Cranor
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFrom the authors of the New York Times bestselling novels It Devours! and Welcome to Night Vale and the creators of the #1 international podcast of the same name, comes a collection of episodes from Season Three of their hit podcast, featuring an introduction by the authors, a foreword by Dessa, behind-the-scenes commentary, and original illustrations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult book comedy contemporary -
-
Redwood by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Season One finale of this riveting multisensory masterpiece from the visionary author of House of Leaves...Categorized as:
magical-realism literary-fiction low-fantasy fiction fantasy horror mystery contemporary -
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsA young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte—who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult animals anthologies contemporary -
Altmann's Tongue: Stories and a Novella by Brian Evenson
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTwenty-five short stories and a detective novella, The Sanza Affair, present a chilling collection of tales in which social institutions and human relationships dissolve without warning and with mayhem. A first collection.Brian Evenson has added an O...Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies apocalyptic classics fiction horror -
In the Eyes of Mr Fury by Philip Ridley
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOn the day Concord Webster turned eighteen, the Devil died. The Devil’s real name was Judge Martin, but Concord’s mother called him the Devil. She said he boiled babies for dinner and made lampshades out of human skin. So why did she, who hated him so venomously, have a key to his house? The key will unlock more than just Judge’s front door... -
Smoke City by Keith Rosson
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMarvin Deitz has some serious problems. His mob-connected landlord is strong-arming him out of his storefront. His therapist has concerns about his stability. He’s compelled to volunteer at the local Children’s Hospital even though it breaks his heart every week.Oh, and he’s also the guilt-ridden reincarnation of Geoffroy Thérage, the French executioner who lit Joan of Arc’s pyre in 1431... -
Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratings“You should be here; he’s simply magnificent.” These are the final words a biologist hears before his Margaret Mead-like wife dies at the hands of Godzilla. The words haunt him as he studies the Kaiju (Japan’s giant monsters) on an island reserve, attempting to understand the beauty his wife saw...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies fiction horror poc-mc -
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies classics fiction ghosts -
Baby of the Family by Tina McElroy Ansa
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn evocative, delicately comic story of a girl’s coming of age. From the moment of her birth in a rural black hospital in Georgia, Lena McPherson is recognized as a special child, with the power to see ghosts and predict the future. Named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism book children comedy coming-of-age fiction -
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics fiction -
Eight Muses of the Fall by Edgar Calabia Samar
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThis novel is on the one hand a young man’s frustrated attempt to write the great Filipino novel, and on the other, his coming to terms with the futility of his search for his lost mother. Along the way, he is guided and misdirected by some muses and demons to reimagine his personal past without the burden of national history... -
-
The Bone Fire by György Dragomán
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom an award-winning European writer, a Gothic page-turner with all the menace and promise of a fairy tale In the aftermath of a revolution that has plunged her country into chaos, thirteen-year-old Emma’s small corner of the world is shattered after her dissident parents' death in a car crash...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult book coming-of-age contemporary -
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington by Leonora Carrington
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSurrealist writer and painter Leonora Carrington (1917-2011) was a master of the macabre, of gorgeous tableaus, biting satire, roguish comedy, and brilliant, effortless flights of the imagination. Nowhere are these qualities more ingeniously brought together than in the works of short fiction she wrote throughout her life...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics -
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... -
Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsNineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again.” A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies audiobook dragons fiction -
The Last Dark by Stephen R. Donaldson
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsCompelled step by step to actions whose consequences they could neither see nor prevent, Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery have fought for what they love in the magical reality known only as "the Land." Now they face their final crisis...Categorized as:
low-fantasy magical-realism action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook dark dark-fantasy -
At the Mouth of the River of Bees: Stories by Kij Johnson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA sparkling debut collection from one of the hottest writers in science fiction: her stories have received the Nebula Award the last two years running. These stories feature cats, bees, wolves, dogs, and even that most capricious of animals, humans, and have been reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, and The Secret History of Fantasy...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult animals anthologies dystopia -
Colorful by Eto Mori
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA beloved and bestselling classic in Japan, this groundbreaking tale of a dead soul who gets a second chance is now available in English for the very first time."Congratulations, you've won the lottery!" shouts the angel Prapura to a formless soul. The soul hasn't been kicked out of the cycle of rebirth just yet—he's been given a second chance...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century anthologies asian-mc audiobook classics -
The Erstwhile by Brian Catling
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn London and Germany, strange beings are reanimating themselves. They are the Erstwhile, the angels that failed to protect the Tree of Knowledge, and their reawakening will have major consequences. In Africa, the colonial town of Essenwald has fallen into disarray because the timber workforce has disappeared into the Vorrh. Now a team of specialists are dispatched to find them... -
The Threads of the Heart by Carole Martinez
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThey say Frasquita knows magic, that she is a healer with occult powers, that perhaps she is a sorcerer. She does indeed possess a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for generations...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult book contemporary family -
Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsnovel of Elizabethan magus John Dee, tr M... -
-
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsPart visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult book contemporary family -
The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMixing the mundane with the metaphysical, the pairings of the everyday and the extraordinary in this collection of short fiction yield supernatural results—a young musician perceives another world while drinking coffee, a fairy chronicles his busy life in a sandcastle during the changing tide, a demonic 16th-century chess set shows up in a New Jersey bar, and Charon, the boatman of hell, takes a... -
In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
The Arrival of Missives by Aliya Whiteley
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsThe Arrival of Missives is a genre-defying story of fate, free-will and the choices we make in life. In the aftermath of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural England, where life is as predictable as the changing of the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies coming-of-age female-mc feminism -
All the Names They Used for God by Anjali Sachdeva
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsA haunting, diverse debut story collection that explores the isolation we experience in the face of the mysterious, often dangerous forces that shape our livesAnjali Sachdeva's debut collection spans centuries, continents, and a diverse set of characters but is united by each character's epic struggle with fate: A workman in Andrew Carnegie's steel mills is irrevocably changed by the brutal...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsUnexpected tales of the fantastic, & other odd musings by Nalo Hopkinson Karen Joy Fowler Karen Russell Jeffrey Ford among many othersContains STORIES by the AMAZING Jeffrey Ford, the FABULOUS Karen Joy Fowler, the UNLIKELY Kelly Link, the THRILLING Nalo Hopkinson, the SHOCKINGLY GOOD Karen Russell, the UNNERVING James Sallis, and dozens of UNCANNY others, as well as USEFUL lists of many...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies female-author female-mc fiction -
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2014 by Gordon Van Gelder, Katie Boyer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsVolume 126, No. 5&6, #713, May/June 2014Edited by Gordon Van GelderCover art by Cory & Katska EnchCONTENT:Novella"Bartleby The Scavenger" by Katie BoyerNovelets"The End Of The Silk Road" by David D...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism anthologies dark dark-fantasy female-mc fiction -
Soul Blade by Aaron Hodges
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Three Nations are crumbling.Darkness is gathering.Only one remains to stand against it.Eric stumbles through the wilderness, searching, hunting – desperate for sign of his sister. But the girl is gone, stolen away by the power of the Soul Blade. With each passing hour its hold on her tightens, her spirit fading before the onslaught of its magic... -
Remember Why You Fear Me by Robert Shearman
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDeliciously frightening, darkly satirical, and always unexpected, Robert Shearman has won the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Edge Hill Reader's Prize. Remember Why You Fear Me gathers together his best dark fiction, the most celebrated stories from his acclaimed books, and ten new tales that have never been collected before... -
-
A Bottle of Storm Clouds: Stories by Eliza Victoria
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAward-winning author Eliza Victoria mixes magic with the mundane in this special concoction of 16 short stories. A girl meets a young man with the legs of a chicken. A boy is employed by a goddess running a pawnshop. A group of teenagers are trapped in an enchanted forest for 900 days. A man finds himself in an MRT station beyond Taft, a station that was not supposed to exist... -
Verdigris by Michele Mari
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends his summers at his grandparents’ modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore, losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his grandfather’s library... -
Sleeping in Flame by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWalker Easterling is a retired actor turned successful screenwriter living in the Vienna of strong coffee, fascinating friends, and mysterious cafes. When he falls in love with Maris York, a beautiful artist who creates cities, his life becomes alive in fantastic and unsettling ways...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult book dark dark-fantasy fairy-tale -
Orange World and Other Stories by Karen Russell
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the Pulitzer Finalist and universally beloved author of the New York Times best sellers Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove, a stunning new collection of short fiction that showcases Karen Russell's extraordinary, irresistible gifts of language and imagination...Categorized as:
literary-fiction low-fantasy magical-realism adult anthologies audiobook contemporary dystopia -
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories by Bruno Schulz, Jonathan Safran Foer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe collected fiction of "one of the most original imaginations in modern Europe" (Cynthia Ozick) Bruno Schulz's untimely death at the hands of a Nazi stands as one of the great losses to modern literature. During his lifetime, his work found little critical regard, but word of his remarkable talents gradually won him an international readership... -
Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book..Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism low-fantasy fiction contemporary fantasy mystery horror
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.