Books like 'The Beastly Baby'
Readers who enjoyed The Beastly Baby by Edward Gorey also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical horror 20th century humor dark children
-
Making Bombs for Hitler by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch
Rated: 4.35 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsLida thought she was safe. Her neighbors wearing the yellow star were all taken away, but Lida is not Jewish. She will be fine, won't she?But she cannot escape the horrors of World War II.Lida's parents are ripped away from her and she is separated from her beloved sister, Larissa. The Nazis take Lida to a brutal work camp, where she and other Ukrainian children are forced into backbreaking labor... -
The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe Best of Roald Dahl is a collection of 25 of Roald Dahl's short stories. This collection brings together Dahl’s finest work, illustrating his genius for the horrific and grotesque which is unparalleled... -
Bony-Legs by Joanna Cole
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen a terrible witch vows to eat her for supper, a little girl escapes with the help of a mirror and comb given to her by the witch's cat and dog...Categorized as:
children humor 20th-century action-adventure book children-books fairy-tale female-author -
More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 25 ratingsStorytellers know — just as they have for hundreds and hundreds of years — that everyone enjoys a good, scary story!Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories 3 joins his other popular collections of scary folklore, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and More Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark, to give readers spooky, funny and fantastic tales guaranteed to raise goose bumps... -
-
The Roald Dahl Omnibus: Perfect Bedtime Stories for Sleepless Nights by Roald Dahl
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsEver since his stories first appeared, people have been telling and re-telling each other Roald Dahl's sometimes shocking and always brilliant and bizarre assortment of terror-tinted gems. Bawdy, funny, touching, and downright outrageous, there's simply no one else like Roald Dahl.This volume is a diabolical collection of 28 of Dahl's best stories... -
Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust by Eve Bunting
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThis unique introduction to the Holocaust encourages young children to stand up for what they think is right, without waiting for others to join them.Ages 6 and up... -
Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsStark lives in Colour, a neighbourhood whose inhabitants like to be co-ordinated with their surroundings – a neighbourhood where spangly purple trousers are admired by the walls of buildings as you pass them. Close by is Sound, where you mustn’t make any, apart from one designated hour a day when you can scream your lungs raw... -
Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBook by Hugh Wheeler Introduction by Christopher... -
Hell Screen by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 12 ratings"There can be no doubt that Akutagawa had more individuality than any other writer of his time and has left in Japanese literature a mass of artistic work, often grotesque and curious, that, while it undoubtedly angers the proletarian experimenters who now hold the stage and fight with lusty pens and a highly developed class consciousness against all that he stood for, will continue to live as... -
What Was I Scared Of?: A Glow-in-the Dark Encounter by Dr. Seuss
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsDr. Seuss in a glowing new format!What were we waiting for? We’ve taken the classic Dr... -
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...Categorized as:
children dark humor 20th-century action-adventure anthologies audiobook children-books -
Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAcclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House—classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe—Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty... -
The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsInspired by serial killer Harry Powers, "The Bluebeard of Quiet Dell," who was hung in 1932 for his murders of two widows and three children. This best-selling novel, first published in 1953 to wide acclaim by author Grubb, (who like Powers lived in Clarksburg, West Virginia), served as the basis for Charles Laughton's noir classic... -
Spares by Michael Marshall Smith
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSpares - human clones, the ultimate health insurance. An eye for an eye, but some people are doing all the taking.Spares - the story of Jack Randall: burnt-out, dropped out, and with a zero credit rating at the luck bank. After five years lying low on a Spares farm, looking after inmates that can't even spell luck, he is finally faced with a chance at redemption... -
-
The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper." 'The Hollow Men' is a poem by T. S. Eliot written in 1925, divided into five parts and consists of 98 lines. Eliot's New York Times obituary in 1965 identified the final four as "probably the most quoted lines of any 20th-century poet writing in English"...Categorized as:
dark classics fiction 20th-century existentialism historical philosophy psychological -
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 54 ratingsThe iconic anthology series of horror tales that's now a feature film!This is a new edition of the complete original book. Stephen Gammell’s artwork from the original Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark appears in all its spooky glory... -
A House in the Country by José Donoso
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsGames turn to nightmares during the summer holidays at the magnificent Chilean country estate of the Ventura family when the children - 33 cousins ranging in age from 6 to 16 - are left to themselves while their parents pursue their own pastimes... -
Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R. Lansdale, Don Coscarelli
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe companion book to the popular movie starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK. Stuck in an East Texas old folks home, they must face off against a redneck mummy... -
The Haunted Looking Glass by Edward Gorey
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Haunted Looking Glass is the late Edward Gorey's selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on. It includes stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and L. P. Hartley, among other masters of the fine art of making the flesh creep, all accompanied by Gorey's inimitable illustrations.ALGERNON BLACKWOOD, "The Empty House"W.F... -
The Little Vampire Moves In by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsRudolph, the little vampire, has been banished from his family’s vault because of his friendship with humans. He now lives in the basement of Tony’s apartment house. Tony is terrified his parents will find out, and when a neighbour complains about the smell, things look bad . . -
The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsNewly orphaned Peggy Grahame is caught off-guard when she first arrives at her family's ancestral estate. Her eccentric uncle Enos drives away her only new acquaintance, Pat, a handsome British scholar, then leaves Peggy to fend for herself. But she is not alone. The house is full of mysteries and ghosts... -
The Heavenly Table by Donald Ray Pollock
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom Donald Ray Pollock, author of the highly acclaimed The Devil All the Time and Knockemstiff, comes a dark, gritty, electrifying (and, disturbingly, weirdly funny) new novel that will solidify his place among the best contemporary American authors.It is 1917, in that sliver of border land that divides Georgia from Alabama... -
Swords Against Wizardry by Fritz Leiber
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsFahrd and the Gray Mouser, master swordsmen, are determined to climb to the summit of Stardock, a dangerously steep mountain, in search of treasure... -
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 76 ratingsThis second novel begins in 1940, immediately after the first book ended. Having escaped Miss Peregrine’s island by the skin of their teeth, Jacob and his new friends must journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. Along the way, they encounter new allies, a menagerie of peculiar animals, and other unexpected surprises...Categorized as:
children dark 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book coming-of-age dark-fantasy -
-
The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of them was a huge, brawny, full-bearded barbarian from the northlands of Nehwon. His name was Fafhrd, his weapon a broadsword. The other was a small, nimble man dressed all in gray. Men called him the Gray Mouser, and he carried both rapier and dirk. They were known throughout the city of Lankhmar as brawlers, cutpurses, and rogues... -
The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth by Roger Zelazny
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsHere are strange, beautiful stories covering the full spectrum of the late Roger Zelazny's remarkable talents. In Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, Zelazny's rare ability to mix the dream-like, disturbing imagery of fantasy with the real-life hardware of science fiction is on full display. His vivid imagination and fine prose made him one of the most highly acclaimed writers in his field... -
The Children's Story by James Clavell, George Selden
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 21 ratingsIt was a simple incident in the life of James Clavell—a talk with his young daughter just home from school—that inspired this chilling tale of what could happen in twenty-five quietly devastating minutes. He writes, "The Children's Story came into being that day. It was then that I really realized how vulnerable my child's mind was —any mind, for that matter—under controlled circumstances... -
Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card by Orson Scott Card
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMaps in a Mirror brings together nearly all of Orson Scott Card's short fiction written between 1977 and 1990. For those readers who have followed this remarkable talent since the beginning, here are all those amazing stories gathered together in one place, with some extra surprises as well... -
The Brentford Triangle by Robert Rankin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratings'Omally groaned. "It is the end of mankind as we know it. I should never have got up so early today" and all over Brentford electrical appliances were beginning to fail.. -
East of Ealing by Robert Rankin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratings'Ahead, where once had been only bombsite land, the Lateinos & Romiith building rose above Brentford. Within its cruel and jagged shadow, magnolias wilted in their window boxes and synthetic Gold Top became doorstep cheese...' Something sinister is happening east of Ealing. The prophecies of The Book of Revelation are being fulfilled... -
The Ghost Belonged to Me by Richard Peck
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratings"More death! More, if you do not stop it. Others lost, like me in the black water. Save them!"When Alexander first sees the eerie glow in the dormer window of the barn, it sets his heart pounding. And when he ventures into the barn in the dark of night, his breath catches in his throat. Suddenly Blossom Culp's words come back to him: "You can make contact with the Unseen... -
Ghosts I Have Been by Richard Peck
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsUpon discovering that she has the gift of Second Sight, Blossom also learns that whether glimpsing the future or traveling into the past, one is powerless to alter history... -
Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA haunting and psychologically driven collection from Shirley Jackson that includes her best-known story "The Lottery"At last, Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" enters Penguin Classics, sixty-five years after it shocked America audiences and elicited the most responses of any piece in New Yorker history... -
Swords Against Death by Fritz Leiber
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsIn the second instalment of this rousing series, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser journey from the ancient city of Lankhmar, searching for a little adventure and debauchery to ease their broken hearts. When a stranger challenges them to find and fight Death on the Bleak Shore, they battle demonic birds, living mountains, and evil monks on the way to their heroic fate... -
-
The Little Vampire Takes a Trip by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTony is not at all thrilled by the prospect of a week's vacation on an isolated farm until he convinces his best friend, a little vampire, to come along...Categorized as:
children humor 20th-century action-adventure book children-books comedy female-author -
The Little Vampire and the Mystery Patient by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsPart of a series of novels designed to bridge the gap between children's and adult fiction. The emphasis is on dynamic, imaginative novels with strong characterization and fast moving plots... -
The Last Man Alive by A.S. Neill
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe adventures of a group who survived a poisonous cloud that turned everyone else into stone... -
Quitters, Inc by Stephen King, Eric Roberts
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsDick Morrison's life has become a nightmare of addictions, filling his days with overeating, overworking, and smoking way too much. When an old friend tells him about a surefire way to quit, he's more than willing to give it a shot. But what Dick doesn?t know is that Quitters, Inc... -
The Falcon's Malteser by Anthony Horowitz
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhen the vertically-challenged Johnny Naples entrusts Tim Diamond with a package worth over three million pounds, he's making a big mistake. Tim Diamond is the worst detective in the world... -
Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNot Wanted on the Voyage is the story of the great flood and the first time the world ended, filed with an extraordinary cast of remarkable characters. With pathos and pageantry, desperation and hope, magic and mythology, this acclaimed novel weaves its unforgettable spell... -
The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror by Daniel Pinkwater
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsGreat questions have always been raised by literature. Moby Dick asks, "Doesn't anyone ever get seasick?" The Odyssey asks, "Doesn't anyone ever get seasick?" The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror asks: "Why doesn't everyone get food poisoning? How do they survive so many greasy snacks?" "Is Dr... -
The Sprouts of Wrath by Robert Rankin
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe fourth part of the "Brentford Trilogy". Amazing, but true, Brentford Town Council has agreed to host the next Olympic Games. However, something sinister is afoot in Brentford, and it is up to the regulars of The Flying Swan to save the world as we know it... -
Krindlekrax by Philip Ridley
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsRuskin Splinter is small and thin, with knock knees, thick glasses and a squeaky voice, and the idea of him taming a dragon makes the whole class laugh out loud. Big, strong Elvis may be stupid and keep breaking windows, but he looks like a hero... -
The Little Vampire on the Farm by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWhen your best friend sleeps all day in a coffin, flies about at night in a black cloak and has two sharp eye-teeth, you know that are in for the unexpected... -
-
The Ghost in the Mirror by John Bellairs, Brad Strickland
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIt started out as a two-week vacation—and turned into a terrifying journey back in time.Rose Rita is thrilled when her parents agree to let her go on a two-week summer trip with her friend Mrs. Zimmermann—who is a witch... -
In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsIn the Penal Colony is a short story by Franz Kafka. This story is set in a penal colony with no name. The book describes the last use of a torture and execution device developed sculpting condemned the judgment against her skin before you let him die, all in the course of twelve hours... -
Bunnicula: The Celery Stalks at Midnight by James Howe, Victor Garber
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsBunnicula is missing! Chester the cat makes a chilling discovery--Bunnicula the vampire bunny has vanished from his cage in the Monroe household...Categorized as:
children humor 20th-century action-adventure animals anthropomorphism audiobook book -
The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAfter a miraculous recovery from near death, a young man known only as the Divinity Student is beset by strange dreams whose lingering effects further alienate him from his fellows. Abruptly, he is sent away from the chill, damp confines of the seminary to work as a word-finder in the vibrant, chaotic desert city of San Veneficio, scanning old texts to record any unknown words he may find... -
The Witch's Eye by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"Fast upon us spirits all, listen for our whispered call..."Lynn knows she should feel safe now. Her family's suspicious neighbor Mrs. Tuggle died in the fire that destroyed her house and things are returning to normal. However, Lynn can't shake the feeling that Mrs. Tuggle's evil presence is rising again. Lynn hears the old woman hauntingly calling to her at night... -
Writ in Blood by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAmbitious in its scope and provocative in its content, the saga of the undying Count Saint-Germain is a monumental feat of the imagination.Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's novels have powerfully captured Saint-Germain throughout his long existence, from the temples of Ancient Egypt to our present century...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.