Books like 'The Port-Wine Stain'
Readers who enjoyed The Port-Wine Stain by Norman Lock also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical horror mystery thriller historical-fiction gothic suspense medical dark literary-fiction
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The Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe Essential Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, by Edgar Allan Poe, 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... -
Goodnight Lady by Martina Cole
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA tour-de-force thriller of corruption and violence.In the sixties, Briony Cavanagh ran a string of the most notorious brothels in London. Only Briony knew what went on behind those doors, and she never opened her mouth - unless she stood to benefit. Only Briony knew the painful road she'd travelled to get there... -
The Complete Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (Volume I of II) by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratings"TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?" And so begins "The Tell-Tale Heart", that compressed tale of Gothic composition. The characters and images that Edgar Allan Poe has gifted us are plentiful. Hugely influential to the short story genre, Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) remains a lion of American letters... -
Mister Slaughter by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe world of Colonial America comes vibrantly to life in this masterful new historical thriller by Robert McCammon... -
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Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsA dream poem of innocent love between children... -
The Complete Poetry by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe eerie tales of Edgar Allan Poe remain among the most brilliant, enduring, and influencial works in American literature. But Poe is also the author of some of the most haunting poetry ever written--poems of love, death and loneliness that have lost none of their power to enthrall in this unique Signet Classic edition... -
Cardinal Black by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsCardinal Black is the latest installment in Robert McCammon's unique series of historical thrillers featuring Matthew Corbett, professional problem solver, who has been called "the Early American James Bond." December 1703 finds Berry Grigsby living as Mary Lynn Nash in a small English village where she has fallen victim to Professor Fell's involuntary drug experiments... -
The Queen of Bedlam by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHis epic masterwork, Speaks the Nightbird, a tour de force of witch hunt terror in a colonial town, was hailed by Sandra Brown as "deeply satisfying...told with matchless insight into the human soul...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction suspense thriller action-adventure adult alternate-history -
The Pit and the Pendulum - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 48 ratingsGet set for true terror in one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous short stories.We enter the mind of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition. The dank prison room is without light and he begins to feel his way around the walls...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense anthologies audiobook classics -
The Caretakers by Eliza Maxwell
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsIn the isolated estate she’s found the perfect getaway. But there’s no escaping the past in this chilling novel from the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl. Filmmaker Tessa Shepherd helped free a man she believed was wrongly imprisoned for murder. When he kills again, Tessa’s life is upended.She’s reeling with guilt, her reputation destroyed... -
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsAn extraordinary novel inspired by the real-life sorority targeted by America's first celebrity serial killer in his final murderous spree.January 1978. A serial killer has terrorized women across the Pacific Northwest, but his existence couldn’t be further from the minds of the vibrant young women at the top sorority on Florida State University’s campus in Tallahassee...Categorized as:
historical-fiction thriller suspense literary-fiction fiction mystery crime historical -
Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women by Kris Waldherr
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor the first time, the untold story of the three women closest to Victor Frankenstein is brought to life in a dark and sweeping reimagining of Frankenstein by the author of The Lost History of Dreams.The MotherCaroline Frankenstein will do anything to protect her family against the nightmarish revolutions engulfing 18th-century Europe...Categorized as:
historical-fiction gothic literary-fiction suspense horror fantasy fiction retellings -
The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsSarai Walker has done it again. With The Cherry Robbers she upends the Gothic ghost story with a fiery feminist zeal. --Maria SempleThe highly anticipated second novel from Sarai Walker, following her "slyly subversive" (EW) cult-hit Dietland--a feminist gothic about the lone survivor of a cursed family of sisters, whose time may finally be up... -
The Sun Rises Over Seven Sisters by M.L. Bullock
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe revelation that a significant, active curse rests on the Cottonwood family puts a damper on Carrie Jo’s excitement about her new baby. Worried about protecting the child and Ashland, she does all she can to help Ashland break the curse and keep their family safe from danger. When Hurricane Jasmine bears down on Mobile, everything goes wrong... -
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Evil Unveiled by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"New York Times" bestselling author Robert McCammon continues his triumphant return with the conclusion of an epic tale of suspense that reinstates him as one of the great storytellers of our time....The Carolinas, 1699: After hearing damning testimony from the townspeople of Fount Royal, magistrate Isaac Woodward sentences the accused witch, Rachel Howarth, to death by burning... -
The Spinster's Fortune by Mary Kendall
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMoonlit alleys, shadowy tunnels, and buried secrets…Summer of 1929.Of supposed unsound mind without a penny to her name, Blanche Magruder lies alone in a home for the aged and infirm.Meanwhile, her house, a crumbled ruin in the heart of Georgetown, Washington, D.C., is pillaged nightly by thieves looking for treasure rumored to be hidden there... -
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...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century adult -
The Curse of Misty Wayfair by Jaime Jo Wright
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsLeft at an orphanage as a child, Thea Reed vowed to find her mother someday. Now grown, her search takes her to Pleasant Valley, Wisconsin, in 1908. When clues lead her to a mental asylum, Thea uses her experience as a post-mortem photographer to gain access and assist groundskeeper Simeon Coyle in photographing the patients and uncovering the secrets within... -
The Resurrectionist by Paul T. Scheuring
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIt's 1820, and the physicians of London are on fire to unlock the secrets of human anatomy, some consorting with criminals to get their scalpels into a fresh body. Job Mowatt has become such a criminal—a body snatcher, a resurrectionist. The wages are just enough to keep his brilliant daughter, Ivy, clean and safe in London's worst slum... -
The Dismembered by Jonathan Janz
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn the spring of 1912, American writer Arthur Pearce is reeling from the wounds inflicted by a disastrous marriage and the public humiliation that ensued. But his plans to travel abroad, write a new novel, and forget his ex-wife are interrupted by a lovely young woman he encounters on a London-bound train. Her name is Sarah Coyle, and the tale she tells him chills his blood... -
The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories by Michael Cox
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe Victorians excelled at telling ghost stories. In an age of rapid scientific progress, the idea of a vindictive past able to reach out and violate the present held a special potential for terror. Throughout the nineteenth century, fictional ghost stories developed in parallel with the more general Victorian fascination with death and what lay beyond it... -
House of Shadows by Pamela Hartshorne
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen Kate Vavasour wakes in the hospital, she remembers nothing of the family gathered around her, or of her life before the accident. The doctors diagnose post-traumatic amnesia and say the memories should start returning. Which they do—but these memories are not hers. They belong to Isabel Vavasour, who lived and died at Askerby Hall more than 400 years earlier... -
Through the Mist by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsTwo women disturb the dark history of a deceptively quiet postwar Cornwall village in a haunting novel by the bestselling author of A Feather on the Water and The Woman on the Orient Express.It’s winter 1947 when newlyweds Ellen and Tony Wylde move into an abandoned Cornish farmhouse overlooking the sea... -
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The River of Souls by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe year is 1703. The place: the Carolina settlement of Charles Town. . Matthew Corbett, professional “problem solver,” has accepted a lucrative, if unusual, commission: escorting a beautiful woman to a fancy dress ball.What should be a pleasant assignment takes a darker turn when Matthew becomes involved in a murder investigation... -
A Fine Dark Line by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsIt is the summer of 1958 in Dewmont, Texas, a town the great American postwar boom passed by. The kids listen idly to rockabilly on the radio and waste their weekends at the Dairy Queen. And an undetected menace simmers under the heat that clings to the skin like molasses..Categorized as:
gothic historical-fiction suspense thriller 21st-century audiobook bildungsroman book -
The City of Mist: Stories by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsReturn to the mythical Barcelona library known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in this posthumous collection of stories from the New York Times bestselling author of The Shadow of the Wind and The Labyrinth of the Spirits...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense action-adventure adult anthologies -
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...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense 20th-century adult anthologies -
The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsBy chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared...Categorized as:
dark gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure -
Parting the Veil by Paulette Kennedy
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsSome houses hold secrets that are meant to be kept forever…When Eliza Sullivan inherits an estate from a recently deceased aunt, she leaves behind a grievous and guilt-ridden past in New Orleans for rural England and a fresh start. Eliza arrives at her new home and finds herself falling for the mysterious lord of Havenwood, Malcolm Winfield... -
Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLEGENDARY THRILLER WRITER DAVID MORRELL TRANSPORTS READERS TO THE FOGBOUND STREETS OF LONDON, WHERE A KILLER PLOTS TO ASSASSINATE QUEEN VICTORIA.The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The Empire teeters...Categorized as:
gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction suspense thriller action-adventure adult audiobook -
The Listener by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratings1934. Businesses went under by the hundreds, debt and foreclosures boomed, and breadlines grew in many American cities. In the midst of this misery, some folks explored unscrupulous ways to make money. Angel-faced John Partlow and carnival huckster Ginger LaFrance are among the worst of this lot... -
Entwined by Lynda La Plante
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsNo matter how cruelly twins are separated, their lives will always be entwined.In the newly liberated streets of modern Berlin two women, a pampered, beautiful Baroness, losing control of her mind, and a fearless wild animal trainer, facing the greatest challenge of her career, are drawn together by a series of tragic and extraordinary coincidences... -
The Children on the Hill by Jennifer McMahon
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Drowning Kind comes a genre-defying new novel, inspired by Mary Shelley’s masterpiece Frankenstein, that brilliantly explores the eerie mysteries of childhood and the evils perpetrated by the monsters among us.1978: At her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr... -
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The Candle Man by Alex Scarrow
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLocked in an eerily quiet room on the Titanic, a dying man tells a young girl his life story as the ship begins to sink. It all starts in Whitechapel, London in 1888, as the Ripper murders began... -
Fyneshade by Kate Griffin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsMany would find much to fear in Fyneshade's dark and crumbling corridors, its unseen master and silent servants. But not I. For they have far more to fear from me...On the day of her grandmother's funeral, Marta discovers that she is to be sent to be governess at Fyneshade, her charge the young daughter of the owner, Sir William Pritchard.All is not well at Fyneshade... -
Orpheus Builds a Girl by Heather Parry
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBased on a true story, Orpheus Builds a Girl is a novel of sisterly love, sinister obsession, and the battle for control of the story. A dark, chilling debut novel from award-winning writer Heather Parry.German doctor Wilhelm Von Tore shares with the reader the story of his one true ove; a love written in the stars, decades in the making, a love so strong it transcended death itself...Categorized as:
gothic historical-fiction literary-fiction dark horror fiction retellings historical -
The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsFrom the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Doll Factory, The Burial Plot is an unstoppable historical thriller about murder, manipulation, and a young woman trying to wrestle power from the hands of a dangerous man. But he’s always one step ahead . . .London, 1839... -
The Specimen by Jaima Fixsen
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsWalk carefully, lest you become a part of Dr. Burnett's collection…1826. Isobel Tait finds herself, by chance, staring at a tiny human heart floating in a jar. It should be of little consequence; Dr. Burnett is renowned for his collection of oddities and medical specimens, and this, a juvenile heart with a damaged mitral valve, is not the strangest thing on display... -
Whispers in the Dark by Jonathan Aycliffe
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn this second chilling novel by Jonathan Aycliffe, orphaned Charlotte Metcalf arrives on the doorstep of her relatives, the mysterious Ayrtons, in the hope of locating her younger brother Arthur. Their home, Barras Hall, is at first a welcome refuge, until Charlotte realizes that the manor has become her prison, and that she is surrounded by a horror she cannot escape... -
The North Water by Ian McGuire
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA ship sets sail with a killer on board . . .1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act...Categorized as:
dark historical-fiction literary-fiction medical suspense thriller 21st-century action-adventure -
The Mad Wife: A Novel by Meagan Church
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWith odes of The Bell Jar comes a searing historical suspense following a 1950s housewife who, when a mysterious new wife moves across the way, begins to unearth dark secrets about her neighborhood and her own mind. In the 1950s, nothing is valued more than conformity, and Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the ideal housewife...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction thriller suspense fiction horror mystery historical -
Ruler of the Night by David Morrell
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThomas De Quincey is beginning to control his opium addiction when the excitement of his current case threatens to unravel his grip on reality once and for all. On their way home to the Lake District, the De Quinceys become unwitting witnesses to a truly historic murder: the first to take place on one of England's newly constructed railways...Categorized as:
historical-fiction gothic suspense thriller mystery fiction historical industrial-era -
The Jekyll Revelation by Robert Masello
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsWhile on routine patrol in the tinder-dry Topanga Canyon, environmental scientist Rafael Salazar expects to find animal poachers, not a dilapidated antique steamer trunk. Inside the peculiar case, he discovers a journal, written by the renowned Robert Louis Stevenson, which divulges ominous particulars about his creation of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde... -
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Gilchrist by Christian Galacar
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsGilchrist is as beautiful as it is terrifying—a novel of mounting suspense, with an unsettlingly human heart at its core. . . black as it may be.Two years after losing their infant son to a tragic accident, Peter Martell, a novelist with a peculiar knack for finding lost things, and his wife, Sylvia, are devastated to learn they may no longer be able to have children... -
Twilight by William Gay
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsA Southern gothic novel about an undertaker who won’t let the dead rest. Suspecting that something is amiss with their father’s burial, teenager Kenneth Tyler and his sister Corrie venture to his gravesite and make a horrific discovery: their father, a whiskey bootlegger, was not actually buried in the casket they bought for him... -
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsThe Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs...Categorized as:
historical-fiction literary-fiction gothic horror fiction historical mystery fantasy -
His Wicked Sins by Eve Silver
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsDetermined to help her impoverished family, Elizabeth Canham accepts a position at Burndale Academy, an isolated girl's school filled with secrets and shadows. There she meets mysterious widower Griffin Fairfax, a man dogged by dark rumours, a man who both frightens and fascinates her... -
Winterwood by Dorothy Eden
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsPursued by a scandalous trial that rocked London society, Lavinia Hurst has escaped, penniless, to Venice. There she becomes acquainted with the Meryons - Daniel, the handsome head of the family to whom she's immediately drawn, his vicious wife, their daughter who was crippled by a tragic accident, and the great-aunt - an ancient woman of enormous wealth who is near death... -
Darkwater by Dorothy Eden
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA tale of love and peril in a haunted old English mansion. Fanny knew then that Adam felt as she did about the strange events at Darkwater. Even before the sudden death of the old Chinese amah, she had sensed a chill of menace in the atmosphere. Now there was real peril in the mists and fogs that beshrouded the ancient English estate. There was danger..
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