Books like 'The Bad Seed (P.S.)'

Readers who enjoyed The Bad Seed (P.S.) by William March also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.

historical  horror  mystery  psychological  20th century  serial killer  action / adventure  historical  thriller  classics 

  • The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Kathy Bates

    The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris, Kathy Bates

    Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars
    · 80 ratings
    Hannibal Lecter. The ultimate villain of modern fiction who scared the world silent. A young FBI trainee. An evil genius locked away for unspeakable crimes. A plunge into the darkest chambers of a psychopath's mind -- in the deadly search for a serial killer . . .An instant classic of chilling psychological suspense . . . a critically acclaimed audio production of unforgettable intensity . .
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Watchers by Dean Koontz

    Watchers by Dean Koontz

    Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars
    · 42 ratings
    On 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...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  spooky  suspense  thriller  20th-century
  • Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars
    · 79 ratings
    What 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...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  family  suspense  thriller  20th-century
  • Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

    Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

    Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars
    · 71 ratings
    A second family has been massacred by the terrifying serial killer the press has christened "The Tooth Fairy" Special Agent Jack Crawford turns to the one man who can help restart a failed investigation?Will Graham. Graham is the greatest profiler the FBI ever had, but the physical and mental scars of capturing Hannibal Lecter have caused Graham to go into early retirement...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  gothic  spooky  suspense  thriller
  • Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson

    Pop Goes the Weasel by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    Detective Alex Cross is back-and he's in love. But his happiness is threatened by a series of chilling murders in Washington, D.C., murders with a pattern so twisted they leave investigators reeling. Cross's pursuit of the killer produces a suspect, a British diplomat named Geoffrey Shafer. But proving he's the murderer becomes a potentially deadly task...
  • The Alienist by Caleb Carr

    The Alienist by Caleb Carr

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    When The Alienist was first published in 1994, it was a major phenomenon, spending six months on the New York Times bestseller list, receiving critical acclaim, and selling millions of copies. This modern classic continues to be a touchstone of historical suspense fiction for readers everywhere.The year is 1896. The city is New York...
  • Cat & Mouse by James Patterson

    Cat & Mouse by James Patterson

    Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
    · 34 ratings
    In this New York Times bestseller, two killers-one operating in America, one in Europe-believe Alex Cross is the only worthy opponent in the deadly game each has planned. Gary Soneji, a dying prison escapee, is looking for revenge on Cross, while another insane killer is pursued by Thomas Augustine Pierce-a brilliant and relentless detective who may even be better than Cross...
  • Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell, Patricia Cornwell

    Postmortem by Patricia Daniels Cornwell, Patricia Cornwell

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 43 ratings
    Four women with nothing in common, united only in death. Four brutalized victims of a brilliant monster - a "Mr. Nobody", moving undetected through a paralyzed city, leaving behind a gruesome trail of carnage . . . but few clues...
  • The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

    The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr

    Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars
    · 26 ratings
    In The Angel of Darkness, Caleb Carr brings back the vivid world of his bestselling The Alienist but with a twist: this story is told by the former street urchin Stevie Taggert, whose rough life has given him wisdom beyond his years. Thus New York City, and the groundbreaking alienist Dr. Kreizler himself, are seen anew. It is June 1897. A year has passed since Dr...
  • The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley

    The Unclaimed Victim by D.M. Pulley

    Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    Living decades apart, two women get caught in the web of an infamous serial killer. In 1938, at the height of the Great Depression, a madman hunts his victims through the hobo jungles of Cleveland, terrorizing the city...
  • A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin, Otto Penzler

    A Kiss Before Dying by Ira Levin, Otto Penzler

    Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars
    · 35 ratings
    A Kiss Before Dying not only debuted the talent of best-selling novelist Ira Levin to rave reviews, it also set a new standard in the art of mystery and suspense. Now a modern classic, as gripping in its tautly plotted action as it is penetrating in its exploration of a criminal mind, it tells the shocking tale of a young man who will stop at nothing--not even murder--to get where he wants to go...
  • El beso de la muerte by Kathy Reichs

    El beso de la muerte by Kathy Reichs

    Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars
    · 66 ratings
    Her life is devoted to justice; for those she never even knew. In the year since Temperance Brennan left behind a shaky marriage in North Carolina, work has often preempted her weekend plans to explore Quebec. When a female corpse is discovered meticulously dismembered and stashed in trash bags, Temperance detects an alarming pattern and she plunges into a harrowing search for a killer...
  • Felicia's Journey by William Trevor

    Felicia's Journey by William Trevor

    Rated: 3.69 of 5 stars
    · 16 ratings
    William Trevor's Last Stories is forthcoming from Viking.Felicia is unmarried, pregnant, and penniless. She steals away from a small Irish town and drifts through the industrial English Midlands, searching for the boyfriend who left her. Instead she meets up with the fat, fiftyish, unfailingly reasonable Mr. Hilditch, who is looking for a new friend to join the five other girls in his Memory Lane...
  • The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes

    The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes

    Rated: 3.64 of 5 stars
    · 14 ratings
    A haunting mystery tale that revolves around the Jack the Ripper murders, this novel was the basis for several films, including a 1927 Alfred Hitchcock silent film featuring Ivor Novello in the title role...
  • Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe

    Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe

    Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    Charles and Laura are a young, happily married couple inhabiting the privileged world of Cambridge academia. Brimming with excitement, Charles sets off with his daughter Naomi on a Christmas Eve shopping trip to London. But, by the end of the day, all Charles and his wife have left are cups of tea and police sympathy. For Naomi, their beautiful, angelic only child, has disappeared...
  • The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

    The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

    Rated: 3.77 of 5 stars
    · 63 ratings
    Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations...
  • Tenderness by Robert Cormier

    Tenderness by Robert Cormier

    Rated: 3.65 of 5 stars
    · 17 ratings
    Eighteen-year-old Eric has just been released from juvenile detention for murdering his parents. Now he's looking for tenderness--tenderness he finds in killing girls. Fifteen-year-old Lori has run away from home again. Emotionally naive and sexually precocious, she is also looking for tenderness--tenderness that she finds in Eric...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  suspense  thriller  20th-century  abuse
  • Koko by Peter Straub

    Koko by Peter Straub

    Rated: 3.55 of 5 stars
    · 20 ratings
    KOKO. Only four men knew what it meant. Now they must stop it. They are Vietnam vets a doctor, a lawyer, a working stiff, and a writer. Very different from each other, they are nonetheless linked by a shared history and a single shattering secret. Now, they have been reunited and are about to embark on a quest that will take them from Washington, D.C...
  • Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

    Hannibal Rising by Thomas Harris

    Rated: 3.55 of 5 stars
    · 30 ratings
    HE IS ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTING CHARACTERSIN ALL OF LITERATURE.AT LAST THE EVOLUTION OF HIS EVILIS REVEALED.Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him...
    Categorized as:
    classics  crime  dark  drama  spooky  suspense  thriller  20th-century
  • The Bat by Jo Nesbø, Ю Несбё

    The Bat by Jo Nesbø, Ю Несбё

    Rated: 3.55 of 5 stars
    · 41 ratings
    Inspector Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad is dispatched to Sydney to observe a murder case. Harry is free to offer assistance, but he has firm instructions to stay out of trouble. The victim is a twenty-three year old Norwegian woman who is a minor celebrity back home...
  • Naoki Urasawa's Monster, Volume 1: Herr Dr. Tenma by Naoki Urasawa

    Naoki Urasawa's Monster, Volume 1: Herr Dr. Tenma by Naoki Urasawa

    Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars
    · 24 ratings
    An ice-cold killer is on the loose, and brilliant Dr. Kenzo Tenma is the only one who can stop him! Conspiracies, serial murders, and a scathing indictment of hospital politics are all masterfully woven together in this compelling manga thriller. Tenma risks his promising medical career to save the life of a critically wounded young boy...
  • Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker

    Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E. Douglas, Mark Olshaker

    Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars
    · 33 ratings
    He has hunted some of the most notorious and sadistic criminals of our time: The Trailside Killer in San Francisco, the Atlanta Child murderer. He has confronted, interviewed and researched dozens of serial killers and assassins, including Charles Manson, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, and James Earl Ray - for a landmark study to understand their motives. To get inside their minds...
  • Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen

    Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen

    Rated: 3.67 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    In 1911 two wealthy British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson, came to a sanitorium in the forests of the Pacific Northwest to undergo the revolutionary "fasting treatment" of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard. It was supposed to be a holiday for the two sisters...
  • Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

    Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham

    Rated: 3.50 of 5 stars
    · 18 ratings
    A New York Times Best Seller!“A worthy retrospective that feels chilling in the manner of novelist Perry.” –Kirkus ReviewsOn June 22, 1954, teenage friends Juliet Hulme—better known as bestselling mystery writer Anne Perry—and Pauline Parker went for a walk in a New Zealand park with Pauline’s mother, Honora...
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