Books like 'Nightmare Alley'
Readers who enjoyed Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical mystery horror 20th century psychological supernatural thriller noir crime classics
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Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsAndy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with "Red", a fellow inmate.Source: stephenking...Categorized as:
classics crime drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century -
![The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H.P. Lovecraft]()
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... -
![The Case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft]()
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... -
![More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz]()
More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsAll those who enjoyed shuddering their way through Alvin Schwartz's first volume of Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark will find a satisfyingly spooky sequel in this new collection of the macabre, the funny, and the fantastic... -
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![The Between by Tananarive Due]()
The Between by Tananarive Due
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen Hilton was just a boy, his aged grandmother saved him from drowning by pulling him out of a treacherous ocean current, sacrificing her life for his. Now, thirty years later, Hilton begins to think his borrowed time is running out... -
![Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo]()
Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination by Edogawa Rampo
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsCollected in this chilling volume are some of the famous Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo's best stories—bizarre and blood-curdling expeditions into the fantastic, the perverse, and the strange, in a marvelous homage to Rampo's literary 'mentor', Edgar Allan Poe... -
![The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft]()
The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsOne of the feature stories of the Cthulhu Mythos, H.P. Lovecraft's 'the Call of Cthulhu' is a harrowing tale of the weakness of the human mind when confronted by powers and intelligences from beyond our world... -
![The Wine-Dark Sea by Robert Aickman]()
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 Rats in the Walls by H.P. Lovecraft]()
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... -
![Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman, Reece Shearsmith]()
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... -
![The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick]()
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.01 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsIn the overcrowded world and cramped space colonies of the late 21st century, tedium can be endured through the drug Can-D, which enables users to inhabit a shared illusory world. When industrialist Palmer Eldritch returns from an interstellar trip, he brings with him a new drug, Chew-Z... -
![The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell]()
The Devil Aspect by Craig Russell
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsPrague, 1935: Viktor Kosárek, a psychiatrist newly trained by Carl Jung, arrives at the infamous Hrad Orlu Asylum for the Criminally Insane. The state-of-the-art facility is located in a medieval mountaintop castle outside of Prague, though the site is infamous for concealing dark secrets going back many generations... -
![Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, James Woods]()
Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden by Stephen King, James Woods
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe second of a four-part audio series from Stephen King's bestselling book, Four Past Midnight. Recently divorced writer Mort Rainey is alone at Tashmore Lake--that is, until a figure named John Shooter arrives, pointing an accusing finger... -
![Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones]()
Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratings"Chilling . . . A neo-gothic treat; original, richly imagined, and powerfully told." --The Guardian (UK) for The String Diaries See the girl. Leah Wilde is twenty-four, a runaway on a black motorbike, hunting for answers while changing her identity with each new Central European town...Categorized as:
dark historical-fiction suspense urban 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
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![More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon]()
More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThere's Lone, the simpleton who can hear other people's thoughts and make a man blow his brains out just by looking at him. There's Janie, who moves things without touching them, and there are the teleporting twins, who can travel ten feet or ten miles... -
![His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood and Other Stories by Poppy Z. Brite]()
His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood and Other Stories by Poppy Z. Brite
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsContains four short stories from Swamp Foetus:His Mouth Will Taste of WormwoodThe Sixth SentinelCalcutta, Lord of NervesHow To Get Ahead in New... -
![Asylum by Patrick McGrath]()
Asylum by Patrick McGrath
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn the summer of 1959 Stella Raphael joins her psychiatrist husband, Max, at his new posting--a maximum-security hospital for the criminally insane. Beautiful and headstrong, Stella soon falls under the spell of Edgar Stark, a brilliant and magnetic sculptor who has been confined to the hospital for murdering his wife in a psychotic rage... -
![A House of Bells by J.T. Croft]()
A House of Bells by J.T. Croft
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA woman haunted by fate, a child silenced by fear, and a house full of secrets and bells.1918. Stripped of her reputation and haunted by a spirit she failed to protect, the young governess Grace Meadows finds herself out of time and growing more and more desperate. But when she’s offered a strange job from an eccentric medium, she never could have imagined what she was signing up for... -
![The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton]()
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThese 11 spine-tingling tales of the supernatural bring to light the author's interest in the traditional New England ghost story and her fascination with spirits, hauntings, and other phenomena. Fine line-drawings by Laszlo Kubinyi enhance the mysterious and sometimes chilling mood...Categorized as:
classics ghosts gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction spooky suspense 20th-century -
![Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons]()
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsTHE PAST... Caught behind the lines of Hitler’s Final Solution, Saul Laski is one of the multitudes destined to die in the notorious Chelmno extermination camp. Until he rises to meet his fate and finds himself face to face with an evil far older, and far greater, than the Nazi’s themselves...THE PRESENT.. -
![The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood]()
The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsAlgernon Blackwood's classic tale, The Wendigo. An influential novella by one of the most best-known writers of fantasy and horror, set in a place and time Blackwood knew well... -
![Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder]()
Crimson Peak by Nancy Holder
Rated: 3.82 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsWhen her heart is stolen by a seductive stranger, a young woman is swept away to a house atop a mountain of blood-red clay: a place filled with secrets that will haunt her forever. Between desire and darkness, between mystery and madness, lies the truth behind Crimson Peak. From acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro... -
![Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice]()
Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.85 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAnne Rice brings to life the exquisite and otherworldly society of the eighteenth-century castrati, the delicate and alluring male sopranos whose graceful bodies and glorious voices brought them the adulation of the royal courts and grand opera houses of Europe, men who lived as idols, concealing their pain as they were adored as angels, yet shunned as half-men...Categorized as:
classics drama gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century abuse -
![Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier]()
Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsAn NYRB OriginalDaphne du Maurier wrote some of the most compelling and creepy novels of the twentieth century. In books like Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn she transformed the small dramas of everyday life—love, grief, jealousy—into the stuff of nightmares... -
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![Severin's Journey into the Dark: A Prague Ghost Story by Paul Leppin]()
Severin's Journey into the Dark: A Prague Ghost Story by Paul Leppin
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLeppin was the truly chosen bard of the painfully disappearing old Prague, its infamous side streets and debauched nights ... a poet of eternal disillusionment, he was at once a servant of the devil and an adorer of the Madonna.– Max BrodLeppin once wrote: “Prague remains my deepest experience... -
![The Body Snatchers (Stephen King Horror Library) by Jack Finney, Stephen King]()
The Body Snatchers (Stephen King Horror Library) by Jack Finney, Stephen King
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsThis edition of Finney's horror classic contains an introduction by Stephen King as well as a modernized text... -
![Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon, Steve Rasnic Tem]()
Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon, Steve Rasnic Tem
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsNamed one of the Top 40 Horror Books of All Time by the Horror Writers Association, Some of Your Blood begins with a confidential folder belonging to army psychiatrist Philip Outerbridge. Inside this folder are the letters, memos and transcripts for a young soldier named George Smith, a quiet young man with a terrible past and a shocking secret... -
![Lasher by Anne Rice]()
Lasher by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.87 of 5 stars · 48 ratingsThe Talamasca, documenters of paranormal activity, is on the hunt for the newly born Lasher. Mayfair women are dying from hemorrhages and a strange genetic anomaly has been found in Rowan and Michael. Lasher, born from Rowan, is another species altogether and now in the corporeal body, represents an incalcuable threat to the Mayfairs... -
![Midnight by Dean Koontz]()
Midnight by Dean Koontz
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsDean Koontz, the bestselling master of suspense, invites you into the shocking world of Moonlight Cove--where four unlikely survivors confront the darkest realms of human nature.The citizens of Moonlight Cove, California, are changing. Some are losing touch with their deepest emotions. Others are surrendering to their wildest urges... -
![Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King]()
Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
Rated: 3.84 of 5 stars · 60 ratingsFive interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999. Each story is deeply rooted in the sixties, and each is haunted by the Vietnam War.Stephen King, whose first novel, Carrie, was published in 1974, the year before the last U.S. troops withdrew from Vietnam, is the first hugely popular writer of the TV generation...Categorized as:
classics dark drama historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
![The Sundial by Shirley Jackson]()
The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsAunt Fanny knows when the world will end....Aunt Fanny has always been somewhat peculiar. No one is surprised that while the Halloran clan gathers at the crumbling old mansion for a funeral she wanders off to the secret garden. But when she reports the vision she had there, the family is engulfed in fear, violence, and madness... -
![The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson]()
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde & Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 3.79 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThis volume includes Stevenson's famous spine-chilling thriller Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well as Weir of Hermiston, a brilliant autobiographical portrayal of a father-son relationship... -
![A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick]()
A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 3.80 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFourteen strangers come to Delmak-O. Thirteen of them were transferred by the usual authorities. One got there by praying. But once they arrived on that treacherous planet, whose very atmosphere seemed to induce paranoia and psychosis, the newcomers tound that even prayer was useless. For on Delmak-O, God is either absent or intent on destroying His creations... -
![Odd & True by Cat Winters, Nathalia Suellen]()
Odd & True by Cat Winters, Nathalia Suellen
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTrudchen grew up hearing Odette’s stories of their monster-slaying mother and a magician’s curse. But now that Tru’s older, she’s starting to wonder if her older sister’s tales were just comforting lies, especially because there’s nothing fantastic about her own life—permanently disabled and in constant pain from childhood polio... -
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![Taltos by Anne Rice]()
Taltos by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.81 of 5 stars · 48 ratingsRice's new novel continues the epic occult saga that began with The Witching Hour and Lasher. Taltos takes readers back through the centuries to a civilization part human and part of wholly mysterious origins, at odds with mortality and immortality, justice and guilt... -
![Maynard's House by Herman Raucher]()
Maynard's House by Herman Raucher
Rated: 3.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAustin Fletcher, a disturbed young Vietnam War vet, is willed a small house deep in the woods of northern Maine. He comes to own it by the generosity of a brother-in-arms—a fellow soldier and confidante, Maynard Whittier, killed in action by a wayward mortar shell. The rugged landscape of Maine is an intoxicating blend of claustrophobic interiors and endless frozen wastelands... -
![The Rib from Which I Remake the World by Ed Kurtz]()
The Rib from Which I Remake the World by Ed Kurtz
Rated: 3.65 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsWhat begins with a gruesome and impossible murder soon spirals into hallucinatory waking nightmares for hotel house detective Jojo in World War II Arkansas. Black magic and a terrifying Luciferian carnival boil up to a surreal finale for the town of Litchfield, and Jojo Walker is forced to face his own identity in ways he could never have imagined... -
![The Survivor by James Herbert]()
The Survivor by James Herbert
Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt had been one of the worst crashes in airline history, killing over 300 people, and leaving only one survivor. Now the dead were buried and the town of Eton tried to forget. . . . Until the young girl was found, screaming hysterically about malevolently grinning dolls and creatures of darkness. Until the fisherman's body was brought ashore, his face set in a grimace of utter terror... -
![Pandora by Anne Rice]()
Pandora by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.78 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsAnne Rice, creator of the Vampire Lestat, the Mayfair witches and the amazing worlds they inhabit, now gives us the first in a new series of novels linked together by the fledgling vampire David Talbot, who has set out to become a chronicler of his fellow Undead.The novel opens in present-day Paris in a crowded café, where David meets Pandora... -
![Magic by William Goldman]()
Magic by William Goldman
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsStarting out as a boy in the Catskills, Corky develops into a brilliant and famous magician whose long-hidden secret and expert skills attract dark forces intent on destroying him... -
![The Boy Who Couldn't Die by William Sleator]()
The Boy Who Couldn't Die by William Sleator
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhen seventeen-year-old Ken's best friend Roger dies in a plane crash, Ken suddenly realizes that he too could die at any moment. Terrified, he seeks out a plump, middle-aged psychic named Cherie Buttercup, who grants him invulnerability from death in exchange for his soul. Eager to test his new powers, Ken talks his family into a vacation in the Caribbean, where he can swim with sharks...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure book children-books dark-academia death fiction -
![Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin]()
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin
Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the acclaimed author of the bestselling Italian Fever comes a fresh twist on the classic Jekyll and Hyde story, a novel told from the perspective of Mary Reilly, Dr. Jekyll's dutiful and intelligent housemaid... -
![The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson, Kevin Wilson]()
The Bird's Nest by Shirley Jackson, Kevin Wilson
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsElizabeth is a demure twenty-three-year-old wiling her life away at a dull museum job, living with her neurotic aunt, and subsisting off her dead mother’s inheritance. When Elizabeth begins to suffer terrible migraines and backaches, her aunt takes her to the doctor, then to a psychiatrist...Categorized as:
classics crime gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century adult -
![The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNabokov's fourth novel, The Eye is as much a farcical detective story as it is a profoundly refractive tale about the vicissitudes of identities and appearances... -
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![Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice]()
Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsSERVANT OF THE BONES is Anne Rice's new electrifying novel, with a hero as mesmerising, seductive and ambivalent as the vampire Lestat. Azriel is a restless Jewish spirit, born almost 2500 years ago in Babylon, who can be called forth by whoever holds and understands the arcane mystery of the casket of golden bones he is tied to... -
![The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice]()
The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice
Rated: 3.74 of 5 stars · 62 ratingsIn a gripping feat of storytelling, Anne Rice continues the extraordinary Vampire Chronicles that began with the now-classic Interview with the Vampire. For centuries, Lestat—vampire-hero, enchanter, seducer of mortals—has been a courted prince in the dark and flourishing universe of the living dead. Now he is alone... -
![Crawling Chaos: Selected Works 1920-1935 by H.P. Lovecraft]()
Crawling Chaos: Selected Works 1920-1935 by H.P. Lovecraft
Rated: 3.45 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsAn indispensable collection of HP Lovecraft's best work from his distinctive collaborative pieces, prose-poems and early tales of the gruesome and bizarre, through to his later, more mature work: the Cthulhu Mythos. With an introduction by Colin Wilson, Crawling Chaos is must-have for every horror/ fantasy fan... -
![A Face at the Window by Dennis McFarland]()
A Face at the Window by Dennis McFarland
Rated: 3.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAfter sending their only daughter off to boarding school, Cookson Selway and his wife, Ellen, travel to London to escape their empty house. But their quiet hotel has guests other than those on the register, and the vacation turns into a journey not only to another city but to another time... -
![The Dark Between by Sonia Gensler]()
The Dark Between by Sonia Gensler
Rated: 3.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA supernatural romance about the powers that lie in the shadows of the mind, perfect for fans of Sarah Rees Brennan, Alyxandra Harvey, and Libba Bray.At the turn of the twentieth century, Spiritualism and séances are all the rage—even in the scholarly town of Cambridge, England... -
![Yesternight by Cat Winters]()
Yesternight by Cat Winters
Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFrom the author of The Uninvited comes a haunting historical novel with a compelling mystery at its core. In 1925, Alice Lind steps off a train in the rain-soaked coastal hamlet of Gordon Bay, Oregon. There, she expects to do nothing more difficult than administer IQ tests to a group of rural schoolchildren...
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