Books like 'Hell Screen, Cogwheels and a Fool's Life'
Readers who enjoyed Hell Screen, Cogwheels and a Fool's Life by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary 20th century horror psychological historical-fiction classics
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Different Seasons by Stephen King
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 67 ratingsFrom the Magical Pen of Stephen King, Four Mesmerizing Novellas…“Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”An unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge…the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award nominee The Shawshank Redemption...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook coming-of-age -
![The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott]()
The Shining by Stephen King, Campbell Scott
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 89 ratingsFirst published in 1977, The Shining quickly became a benchmark in the literary career of Stephen King. This tale of a troubled man hired to care for a remote mountain resort over the winter, his loyal wife, and their uniquely gifted son slowly but steadily unfolds as secrets from the Overlook Hotel's past are revealed, and the hotel itself attempts to claim the very souls of the Torrance family... -
![The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin]()
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsSome inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.The story "Omelas" was first published in New Dimensions 3, a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won Le Guin the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story... -
![This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti]()
This Present Darkness by Frank E. Peretti
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 40 ratings"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Ephesians 6:12Ashton is just a typical small town... -
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![After the Fire by Will Hill]()
After the Fire by Will Hill
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe things I've seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.Before, she lived inside the fence. Before, she was never allowed to leave the property, never allowed to talk to Outsiders, never allowed to speak her mind. Because Father John controlled everything—and Father John liked rules. Disobeying Father John came with terrible consequences...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century abuse action-adventure audiobook book coming-of-age -
![Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike]()
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThe only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's storiesthose published during his lifetime and those released after his death... -
![One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey]()
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 88 ratingsBoisterous, ribald, and ultimately shattering, Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has left an indelible mark on the literature of our time. Here is the unforgettable story of a mental ward and its inhabitants, especially the tyrannical Big Nurse Ratched and Randle Patrick McMurphy, the brawling, fun-loving new inmate who resolves to oppose her... -
![Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon]()
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, Thomas Pynchon
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 82 ratingsThe new novel by George Orwell is the major work towards which all his previous writing has pointed. Critics have hailed it as his "most solid, most brilliant" work. Though the story of Nineteen Eighty-Four takes place thirty-five years hence, it is in every sense timely. The scene is London, where there has been no new housing since 1950 and where the city-wide slums are called Victory Mansions...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century alternate-history audiobook book contemporary dark -
![The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin]()
The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsA classic science fiction novel by one of the greatest writers of the genre, set in a future world where one man's dreams control the fate of humanity. In a future world racked by violence and environmental catastrophes, George Orr wakes up one day to discover that his dreams have the ability to alter reality. He seeks help from Dr... -
![Watchers by Dean Koontz]()
Watchers by Dean Koontz
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsOn his thirty-sixth birthday, Travis Cornell hikes into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains. But his path is soon blocked by a bedraggled Golden Retriever who will let him go no further into the dark woods.That morning, Travis had been desperate to find some happiness in his lonely, seemingly cursed life... -
![The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov]()
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov by Vladimir Nabokov
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsFrom the writer who shocked and delighted the world with his novels Lolita, Pale Fire, and Ada, or Ardor, and so many others, comes a magnificent collection of stories. Written between the 1920s and 1950s, these sixty-five tales—eleven of which have been translated into English for the first time—display all the shades of Nabokov's imagination...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook comedy contemporary -
![Suttree by Cormac McCarthy]()
Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsArguably the masterpiece of a novelist as highly praised and scarcely read as any living writer, the Vintage Contemporaries reprint of Suttree should help to bring McCarthy the readers to match his many awards and voluminous reviews...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book comedy -
![Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, Christopher Hitchens]()
Brave New World / Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley, Christopher Hitchens
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsThe astonishing novel Brave New World, originally published in 1932, presents Aldous Huxley's vision of the future--of a world utterly transformed. Through the most efficient scientific and psychological engineering, people are genetically designed to be passive and therefore consistently useful to the ruling class...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century audiobook book contemporary dystopia fiction -
![Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie]()
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fairy-tale female-author -
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![4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane]()
4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratings4.48 Psychosis sees the ultimate narrowing of Sarah Kane's focus in her work. The struggle of the self to remain intact has moved in her work from civil war, into the family, into the couple, into the individual, and finally into the theatre of phychosis: the mind itself. This play was written in 1999 shortly before the playwright took her own life at age 28... -
![Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell]()
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 101 ratingsWinston Smith is a low-rung member of the Party, the ruling government of Oceania. He works in the Ministry of Truth, the Party's propoganda arm, where he is in charge of revising history. He is but a small brick in the pyramid that is the Party, at the head of which stands Big Brother. Big Brother the infallible. Big Brother the all-powerful...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century alternate-history audiobook book contemporary dark -
![Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar]()
Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . . -
![No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy]()
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsIn his blistering new novel, Cormac McCarthy returns to the Texas-Mexico border, the setting of his famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King]()
The Bachman Books by Richard Bachman, Stephen King
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 57 ratingsOmnibus collection of four early Bachman novels (Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man) and the essay "Why I Was... -
![Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky]()
Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr., Darren Aronofsky
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn Coney Island, Brooklyn, Sarah Goldfarb, a lonely widow, wants nothing more than to lose weight and appear on a television game show. She becomes addicted to diet pills in her obsessive quest, while her junkie son, Harry, along with his girlfriend, Marion, and his best friend, Tyrone, have devised an illicit shortcut to wealth and leisure by scoring a pound of uncut heroin...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century abuse action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh]()
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBrace yourself, America, for Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting—the novel and the film that became the cult sensations of Britain. Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career—an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives. It accomplished for its own time and place what Hubert Selby, Jr...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book comedy coming-of-age -
![Replay by Ken Grimwood]()
Replay by Ken Grimwood
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsAt forty-three Jeff Winston is tired of his low-paid, unrewarding job, tired of the long silences at the breakfast table with his wife, saddened by the thought of no children to comfort his old age. But he hopes for better things, for happiness, maybe tomorrow ...But a sudden, fatal heart attack puts paid to that... -
![Along Came a Spider by James Patterson]()
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 79 ratingsWhat have we got? A missing little girl named Maggie Rose . . . a family of three brutally murdered in the projects of Washington, D.C. . . . the thrill-killing of a beautiful elementary school teacher . . . a psychopathic serial kidnapper/murderer who is so terrifying that the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police cannot outsmart him - even after he's been captured... -
![The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard]()
The Lime Works: A Novel (Vintage International) by Thomas Bernhard
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFor five years, Konrad has imprisoned himself and his crippled wife in an abandoned lime works where he’s conducted odd auditory experiments and prepared to write his masterwork, The Sense of Hearing. As the story begins, he’s just blown the head off his wife with the Mannlicher carbine she kept strapped to her wheelchair... -
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![Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker]()
Lightning by Dean Koontz, Peter Marinker
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsA storm struck on the night Laura Shane was born, and there was a strangeness about the weather that people would remember for years. But even more mysterious was the blond-haired stranger who appeared out of nowhere – the man who saved Laura from a fatal delivery. Years later – another bolt of lightning – and the stranger returned, again to save Laura from tragedy... -
![Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson]()
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsA collection of linked stories narrated by a recovering alcoholic and heroin addict, Jesus' Son is a disturbing portrayal of loneliness and hope. He travels through an American underworld of burnt-out sports stars, hospital waiting rooms, doomed relationships and senseless violence... -
![Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane]()
Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsThe year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book -
![Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization) by David Fishelson, Aaron Leichter]()
Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization) by David Fishelson, Aaron Leichter
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsNote - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The... -
![No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsJean-Paul Sartre, the great French existentialist, displays his mastery of drama in NO EXIT, an unforgettable portrayal of hell.The play is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for all eternity... -
![The Magus by John Fowles]()
The Magus by John Fowles
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThis daring literary thriller, rich with eroticism and suspense, is one of John Fowles's best-loved and bestselling novels and has contributed significantly to his international reputation as a writer of the first degree. At the center of The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
![The Tenant by Roland Topor]()
The Tenant by Roland Topor
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment. More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment... -
![Of Mice and Mooshaber by Ladislav Fuks, Mark Corner]()
Of Mice and Mooshaber by Ladislav Fuks, Mark Corner
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLadislav Fuks (1923-94) was an outstanding Czech writer whose work, consisting primarily of psychological fiction, explores themes of anxiety and life in totalitarian systems... -
![The Wall by Marlen Haushofer]()
The Wall by Marlen Haushofer
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsFirst published to acclaim in Germany, The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal... -
![Pastoralia by George Saunders]()
Pastoralia by George Saunders
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsWith this new collection, George Saunders takes us even further into the shocking, uproarious and oddly familiar landscape of his imagination.The stories in Pastoralia are set in a slightly skewed version of America, where elements of contemporary life have been merged, twisted, and amplified, casting their absurdity-and our humanity-in a startling new light... -
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![Solaris by Stanisław Lem]()
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsA classic work of science fiction by renowned Polish novelist and satirist Stanislaw Lem.When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface, he finds a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the living physical likeness of a long-dead lover... -
![The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson]()
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 58 ratingsThe Lottery, one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker. "Power and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century anthologies audiobook contemporary crime dark -
![No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre]()
No Exit and Three Other Plays by Jean-Paul Sartre
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsIn these four plays, Jean-Paul Sartre, the great existentialist novelist and philosopher, displays his mastery of drama. NO EXIT is an unforgettable portrayal of hell. THE FLIES is a modern reworking of the Electra-Orestes story. DIRTY HANDS is about a young intellectual torn between theory and praxis. THE RESPECTFUL PROSTITUTE is an attack on American racism... -
![Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl]()
Kiss Kiss by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsIn these dark, disturbing stories Roald Dahl explores the sinister side of human nature: the cunning, sly selfish part of each of us that leads into the territory of the unexpected and unsettling.Originally published in 1960, Kiss Kiss brings together 11 of Roald's macabre adult tales...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century anthologies audiobook children children-books comedy contemporary -
![The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka]()
The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 50 ratingsThe Metamorphosis and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras... -
![The Lottery by Shirley Jackson]()
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 55 ratingsIn a small American town, the local residents are abuzz with excitement and nervousness when they wake on the morning of the twenty-seventh of June. Everything has been prepared for the town’s annual tradition—a lottery in which every family must participate, and no one wants to win. “The Lottery” stands out as one of the most famous short stories in American literary history... -
![First Blood by David Morrell]()
First Blood by David Morrell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFirst came the man: a young wanderer in a fatigue coat and long hair. Then came the legend, as John Rambo sprang from the pages of First Blood to take his place in the American cultural landscape...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima]()
Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsRecognized throughout the world for his brilliance as a novelist and playwright, Yukio Mishima is also noted as a master of the short story in his native Japan. Here nine of his finest stories, selected by Mishima himself, represent his extraordinary ability to depict a wide variety of human beings in moments of significance... -
![Last Call by Tim Powers]()
Last Call by Tim Powers
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsTwenty years ago Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player and went into hiding, after a weird high-stakes game played with Tarot cards. But now the cards - and the supernatural powers behind them - have found him again.Crane's father killed gangster Bugsy Siegel in 1948 to become the Fisher King, and to keep that power he is determined to kill his son...Categorized as:
historical-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history arthurian audiobook book -
![Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor]()
Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it... -
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![Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz]()
Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA dark, quasi-detective novel, Cosmos follows the classic noir motif to explore the arbitrariness of language, the joke of human freedom, and man’s attempt to bring order out of chaos in his psychological life.Published in 1965, Cosmos is the last novel by Witold Gombrowicz (1904–1969) and his most somber and multifaceted work... -
![The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier]()
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsHow long he fought with them in the darkness he could not tell, but at last the beating of the wings about him lessened and then withdrew...A classic of alienation and horror, The Birds was immortalised by Hitchcock in his celebrated film. The five other chilling stories in this collection echo a sense of dislocation and mock man's sense of dominance over the natural world...Categorized as:
classics historical-fiction 20th-century adult animals anthologies audiobook contemporary -
![A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess]()
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 84 ratingsTold by the central character, Alex, this brilliant, hilarious, and disturbing novel creates an alarming futuristic vision of violence, high technology, and authoritarianism... -
![Death with Interruptions by José Saramago]()
Death with Interruptions by José Saramago
Rated: 3.98 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsNobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's brilliant new novel poses the question what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death?On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, of course, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially mass celebration...Categorized as:
classics 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook book contemporary -
![Carrie by Stephen King]()
Carrie by Stephen King
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsA modern classic, Carrie introduced a distinctive new voice in American fiction -- Stephen King. The story of misunderstood high school girl Carrie White, her extraordinary telekinetic powers, and her violent rampage of revenge, remains one of the most barrier-breaking and shocking novels of all time.Make a date with terror and live the nightmare that is.. -
![Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati]()
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...
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