Books like 'Stone Mattress'
Readers who enjoyed Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
historical horror mystery crime classics life-death literary-fiction humor magical-realism satire
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The Two Dead Girls by Stephen King
Rated: 4.52 of 5 stars · 42 ratingsThey were sisters, and the picture-perfect image of innocence. No one understood their brutal deaths, not even the man who killed them. But John Coffey is about to gain a new insight, about his life in prison, and about the one man who will walk him down that green mile . . . toward destiny.Prepare yourself for Stephen King's boldest exercise in nerve-twisting suspense... -
![The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov]()
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsMoscow, 1929: a city that has lost its way amid corruption and fear, inhabited by people who have abandoned their morals and forsaken spirituality. But when a mysterious stranger arrives in town with a bizarre entourage that includes a giant talking cat and a fanged assassin, all hell breaks loose...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury]()
The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsDrunk, and in charge of a bicycle / introduction by Ray Bradbury--The night --Homecoming--Uncle Einar --The traveler --The lake --The coffin --The crowd --The scythe --There was an old woman --There will come soft rains --Mars is heaven --The silent towns --The earth men --The off season --The million-year picnic --The fox and the forest --Kaleidoscope --The rocket man --Marionettes, inc...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure aliens anthologies brazil -
![The Complete Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe (Volume I of II) by Edgar Allan Poe]()
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... -
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![The Best of Roald Dahl by Roald Dahl]()
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...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction 20th-century anthologies children children-books dark -
![King of Kings by Wilbur Smith]()
King of Kings by Wilbur Smith
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThe sequel to Wilbur Smith's worldwide bestseller, The Triumph of the Sun.An epic story of love, betrayal, courage and war that brings together two of Wilbur Smith's greatest families in this long-awaited sequel to his worldwide bestseller, The Triumph of the Sun. Cairo, 1888. A beautiful September day. Penrod Ballantyne and his fiancee, Amber Benbrook, stroll hand in hand...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook fiction historical -
![The Portable Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe]()
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe essential collection of the American literary master of terror, death, murder, fantasy, and revengeThe first new edition of this landmark anthology since 1945, The Portable Edgar Allan Poe presents a more complicated, perverse, and culturally engaged Poe...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies fiction -
![Wuthering Frights by Elise Sax]()
Wuthering Frights by Elise Sax
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMatilda Dare has a ring on her finger, a thriving business, a beautiful, historical home, two dogs, and an amazing group of friends. She should be happy. But her fiancé might be a serial killer, the sheriff’s dead wife is visiting her, and her husband has escaped from prison. All of that is throwing a wrench into Matilda’s celebrations... -
![The Pit and the Pendulum - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe]()
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... -
![Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler]()
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... -
![The Overcoat and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol]()
The Overcoat and Other Short Stories by Nikolai Gogol
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsFour works by great 19th-century Russian author - "The Nose," a savage satire of Russia's incompetent bureaucrats; "Old-Fashioned Farmers," a pleasant depiction of an elderly couple living in rustic seclusion; "The Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich," one of Gogol's most famous comic stories; and "The Overcoat," widely considered a masterpiece of form... -
![Collected Short Stories of Saki (Wordsworth Classics) by Saki]()
Collected Short Stories of Saki (Wordsworth Classics) by Saki
Rated: 4.19 of 5 stars · 16 ratings'All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other peoples' Saki (H.H. Munro) stands alongside Anton Chekhov and O Henry as a master of the short story. His extraordinary stories are a mixture of humorous satire, irony and the macabre, in which the stupidities and hypocrisy of conventional society are viciously pilloried... -
![The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde]()
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFlamboyant and controversial, Oscar Wilde was a dazzling personality, a master of wit, and a dramatic genius whose sparkling comedies contain some of the most brilliant dialogue ever written for the English stage... -
![Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring]()
Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe play is a farcical black comedy revolving around Mortimer Brewster, author who wrights against marriage who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn, New York, as he debates whether to go through with a honeymoon with the woman he loves and has recently agreed to marry... -
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![Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe]()
Selected Tales by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 29 ratings“In his stories of mystery and imagination Poe created a world-record for the English language: perhaps for all languages.”George Bernard ShawRead throughout the world, admired by writers as different as Dostoevsky and H.G. Wells, translated by Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe has become a legendary figure, representing the artist as obsessed outcast and romantic failure... -
![The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol]()
The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
Rated: 4.15 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsThe Overcoat which is generally acknowledged as the finest of Gogol's memorable Saint Petersburg stories, is a tale of the absurd and misplaced obsessions... -
![The Veldt by Ray Bradbury]()
The Veldt by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThe advanced technology of a house first pleases then increasingly terrifies its occupants... -
![The Complete Short Stories by Ambrose Bierce, Jerome Hopkins]()
The Complete Short Stories by Ambrose Bierce, Jerome Hopkins
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBefore he trailed off into the wilds of Mexico, never to be heard from again, Ambrose Bierce achieved a public persona as "bitter Bierce" and "the devil's lexicographer." He left behind a nasty reputation and more than ninety short stories that are perfect expressions of his sardonic genius... -
![Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories by Shirley Jackson]()
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 Trees by Percival Everett]()
The Trees by Percival Everett
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsPercival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk... -
![The Headless Horseman by Thomas Mayne Reid]()
The Headless Horseman by Thomas Mayne Reid
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsTexas in the 19th century. The War with Mexico is still a recent memory, marauding Comanches are a daily threat for new settlers of the Lone Star State. Louise Poindexter, a beautiful newcomer, is courted by two men - the arrogant and vindictive Cassius Calhoun and the dashing but poor mustanger Maurice Gerald... -
![The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain]()
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsrelates the adventures of Satan, the sinless nephew of the biblical Satan, in Eseldorf, an Austrian village in the year 1702. Twain wrote this version between November 1897 and September 1900. "Eseldorf" is German for "Assville" or "Donkeytown"...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction magical-realism satire 20th-century action-adventure adult -
![The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson]()
The Complete Stories of Robert Louis Stevenson: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Nineteen Other Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe complexity and range of Robert Louis Stevenson's short fiction reveals his genius perhaps more than any other medium. Here, leading Stevenson scholar Barry Menikoff arranges and introduces the complete selection of Stevenson's brilliant stories, including the famed masterpiece Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr... -
![Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, Ray Bradbury]()
Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier, Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsJohn Collier's edgy, sardonic tales are works of rare wit, curious insight, and scary implication. They stand out as one of the pinnacles in the critically neglected but perennially popular tradition of weird writing that includes E.T.A. Hoffmann and Charles Dickens as well as more recent masters like Jorge Luis Borges and Roald Dahl...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies fiction -
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![Grandmother Spider: A Charlie Moon Mystery by James D. Doss]()
Grandmother Spider: A Charlie Moon Mystery by James D. Doss
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA lawman with a hardy appetite for life and an unshakable faith in the explicable, Southern Ute Acting Chief of Police Charlie Moon is not prepared to accept a purely supernatural explanation for the recent strange events of April 1... -
![Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe]()
Spirits of the Dead: Tales and Other Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsEdgar Allan Poe's tales and poems draw the reader into an unsettling world of mystery and fear.In 'The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether', 'A Predicament', 'The Angel of the Odd' and other stories, characters are caught up in macabre situations, often with horrifying results... -
![Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe]()
Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Pit and the Pendulum...The Purloined Letter...The Tell-Tale Heart...A Descent into Maelstrom...and six other choice chillers by the acknowledged master of mystery, fantasy, and horror. These ten absorbing stories, selected by a famed anthologist of science-fiction and the supernatural, prove that even after a century Poe's imagination still works it macabre magic... -
![The Hound of the Baskervilles, with "the Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle]()
The Hound of the Baskervilles, with "the Adventure of the Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsThe Hound of the Baskervilles (1901–02) is Arthur Conan Doyle’s most celebrated Sherlock Holmes adventure. At the end of the yew tree path of his ancestral home, Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead. Close by are the footprints of a gigantic hound. Called to investigate, Holmes seems to face a supernatural foe... -
![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...Categorized as:
classics crime literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies fiction -
![The Beast Within by Émile Zola]()
The Beast Within by Émile Zola
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsHis haunting, impressionistic study of a man's slow corruption by jealousy, Emile Zola's The Beast Within (La Bete Humaine) is translated from the French with an introduction and notes by Roger Whitehouse in Penguin Classics.Roubaud is consumed by a jealous rage when he discovers a sordid secret about his young wife's past... -
![The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki]()
The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsAlphonse, a young Walloon officer, is travelling to join his regiment in Madrid in 1739. But he soon finds himself mysteriously detained at a highway inn in the strange and varied company of thieves, brigands, cabbalists, noblemen, coquettes and gypsies, whose stories he records over sixty-six days...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism satire action-adventure adult audiobook bildungsroman -
![Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson]()
Let Me Tell You by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsFrom the peerless author of 'The Lottery' and 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle', this is a spectacular new volume of unpublished and uncollected stories, essays, lectures, letters and drawings...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies female-author fiction -
![I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories by Ray Bradbury]()
I Sing the Body Electric! & Other Stories by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe mind of Ray Bradbury is a wonder-filled carnival of delight and terror that stretches from the verdant Irish countryside to the coldest reaches of outer space. Yet all his work is united by one common thread: a vivid and profound understanding of the vast set of emotions that bring strength and mythic resonance to our frail species...Categorized as:
classics humor literary-fiction satire 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
![Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker]()
Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, Annie Tucker
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsThe epic novel Beauty Is a Wound combines history, satire, family tragedy, legend, humor, and romance in a sweeping polyphony. The beautiful Indo prostitute Dewi Ayu and her four daughters are beset by incest, murder, bestiality, rape, insanity, monstrosity, and the often vengeful undead...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism satire 20th-century 21st-century action-adventure adult -
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![Estudio en escarlata/El sabueso de los Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle]()
Estudio en escarlata/El sabueso de los Baskerville by Arthur Conan Doyle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLa popularidad de Sherlock Holmes ha sido inmensa e incesante... si muchos le parodiaron (a Conan Doyle) casi todos los escritores posteriores han moldeado sus héroes conforme a uno de los poliédricos aspectos del gran Sherlock. Este dejó de ser un personaje literario, se convirtió en una criatura viviente y borró la memoria de su creador... -
![Deathtrap by Ira Levin]()
Deathtrap by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsSeemingly comfortably ensconced in his charming Connecticut home, Sidney Bruhl, a successful writer of Broadway thrillers, is struggling to overcome a "dry" spell which has resulted in a string of failures and a shortage of funds... -
![The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb]()
The Pendragon Legend by Antal Szerb
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt an end-of-London-season soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumors... -
![The Listener by Robert McCammon]()
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... -
![Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson]()
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... -
![The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle]()
The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBrother and sister Roderick and Pamela Fitzgerald flee their busy London lives for the beautiful but stormy Devon coastline. They are drawn to the suspiciously inexpensive Cliff End, feared amongst locals as a place of disturbance and ill omen. Gradually, the Fitzgeralds learn of the mysterious deaths of Mary Meredith and another strange young woman... -
![By Night under the Stone Bridge by Leo Perutz]()
By Night under the Stone Bridge by Leo Perutz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSixteenth-century Prague provides the setting for the story of the forbidden love between emperor Rudolf II and Esther, the wife of an influential financier, and of the efforts of the city's Great Rabbi to right a situation angering... -
![Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink]()
Angel of the West Window by Gustav Meyrink
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsnovel of Elizabethan magus John Dee, tr M... -
![The Big Blow by Joe R. Lansdale]()
The Big Blow by Joe R. Lansdale
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratings“The sea had turned black as a dutch oven, the sky the color of gangrene, and between sea and sky there appeared to be something rising out of the water, something huge and oddly shaped, like a horrible sea god, and then Simmons realized what it was.”Galveston, Texas. September 4, 1900. A giant hurricane—destined to be remembered as the storm of the century—is brewing offshore... -
![The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories by Oscar Wilde]()
The Picture of Dorian Gray and Three Stories by Oscar Wilde
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 23 ratings"The Picture of Dorian Gray, " Wilde's only full-length novel, is the enduringly eerie fable of a portrait that ages and decays as its model remains ever young and beautiful. Dorian Gray, a naive and irresistible young man, is lured by decadent Lord Henry Wotton into a life of depravity... -
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![No Doors, No Windows by Harlan Ellison]()
No Doors, No Windows by Harlan Ellison
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsYOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF! The only trouble is, fear comes in so many different shapes and sizes these days. It comes as rejection by a beautiful woman. It comes in the brutalization of your love by an amoral man... -
![The White South by Hammond Innes]()
The White South by Hammond Innes
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHuman conflict lies behind the tragedy unfolded in this epic story of the indomitable courage and endurance of a handful of English and Norwegians plunged through unforeseen circumstances into a fight with the pitiless forces of nature... -
![Glorious Nemesis by Ladislav Klíma]()
Glorious Nemesis by Ladislav Klíma
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsI feel myself to be walking in the footsteps ... of what Ladislav Klíma wrote and stood for.—Bohumil HrabalKlima's intense inner life and complex mental state are reflected in his peculiar writings... -
![Tales of Suspense by Edgar Allan Poe]()
Tales of Suspense by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTales of Suspense - Edgar Allen Poe - Illustrations by: Steve Salerno - THE WORLD'S BEST READING - The Reader's Digest Association...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction adult anthologies audiobook early-modern fiction historical -
![Spellbinders in Suspense by Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Bloch]()
Spellbinders in Suspense by Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Bloch
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTable of contents:"The Chinese Puzzle Box" by Agatha Christie"The Most Dangerous Game" by Richard Connell"The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier"Puzzle For Poppy" by Patrick Quentin"Eyewitness" by Robert Arthur"Man From The South" by Roald Dahl"Black Magic" by Sax Rohmer"Treasure Trove" by F... -
![Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki]()
Beasts and Super-Beasts by Saki
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 13 ratingsShort excerpt: I wish you would turn me into a wolf Mr. Bilsiter said his hostess at luncheon the day after his arrival...
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