Books like 'Crowned Heads'
Readers who enjoyed Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary horror 20th century supernatural mystery thriller suspense literary-fiction female-mc family
-
Coffey's Hands by Stephen King
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsWelcome back to E Block, the deadliest place this side of the electric chair, where assaults are a daily grind and miracles are about to happen. Paul Edgecombe has become increasingly curious about John Coffey, the brutal killer of two girls. But Coffey is about to reveal something extraordinary, and life on the Green Mile may never be the same again... -
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:
literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook -
The Mouse on the Mile by Stephen King
Rated: 4.48 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsCold Mountain Penitentiary has been home to many troubled souls. E Block, where the electric chair waits for those who must pay the ultimate price, has been home to the most troubled of all. And here, not all the evil is behind bars. Sometimes it carries a gun and wears a badge.Cold Mountain is a place of the damned, but it can also be a place where salvation comes from the most unlikely source... -
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... -
-
It by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 90 ratingsWelcome to Derry, Maine ...It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real ...They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness... -
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... -
'Salem's Lot by Stephen King, Jerry N. Uelsmann
Rated: 4.26 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsStephen King's second novel, the vampire bestseller 'Salem's Lot, tells the story of evil in small-town America. For the first time in a major trade edition, this terrifying novel is accompanied by previously unpublished material from King's archive, two short stories, and eerie photographs that bring King's fictional darkness and evil to vivid life... -
The Waste Lands by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsSeveral months have passed, and Roland’s two new tet-mates have become proficient gunslingers. Eddie Dean has given up heroin, and Odetta’s two selves have joined, becoming the stronger and more balanced personality of Susannah Dean. But while battling The Pusher in 1977 New York, Roland altered ka by saving the life of Jake Chambers, a boy who—in Roland’s where and when—has already died... -
Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
Rated: 4.24 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsRoland, Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Jake’s pet bumbler survive Blaine the Mono’s final crash, only to find themselves stranded in an alternate version of Topeka, Kansas, one that has been ravaged by the superflu virus. While following the deserted I-70 toward a distant glass palace, they hear the atonal squalling of a thinny, a place where the fabric of existence has almost entirely worn away... -
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 73 ratingsFour decades after it first terrified the world, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist is back! An extraordinary classic work of horror and dark paranormal suspense. In this stunning 40th Anniversary Edition, a desperate mother and two priests fight to free the soul of a little girl from a supernatural entity of pure malevolence... -
Swan Song by Robert McCammon
Rated: 4.27 of 5 stars · 49 ratingsThe trade paper reissue of Robert McCammon's New York Times bestselling Swan Song.An ancient evil roams the desolate landscape of an America ravaged by nuclear war.He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, a malevolent force that feeds on the dark desires of the countless followers he has gathered into his service. His only desire is to find a special child named Swan -- and destroy her... -
The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 71 ratingsWhile pursuing his quest for the Dark Tower through a world that is a nightmarishly distorted mirror image of our own, Roland, the last gunslinger, encounters three mysterious doorways on the beach. Each one enters into the life of a different person living in contemporary New York... -
The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies
Rated: 4.32 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsThe complete volume of Robertson Davies's acclaimed trilogy, featuring Fifth Business, The Manticore, and World of Wonders, with a new foreword by Kelly Link Fifth Business Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross and destined to be caught in a no man's land where memory, history, and...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics contemporary crime -
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... -
-
Misery by Stephen King
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 81 ratingsNovelist Paul Sheldon has plans to make the difficult transition from writing historical romances featuring heroine Misery Chastain to publishing literary fiction. Annie Wilkes, Sheldon's number one fan, rescues the author from the scene of a car accident... -
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 41 ratingsGlen Runciter runs a lucrative business—deploying his teams of anti-psychics to corporate clients who want privacy and security from psychic spies. But when he and his top team are ambushed by a rival, he is gravely injured and placed in “half-life,” a dreamlike state of suspended animation...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook book classics -
The Rise of Endymion by Dan Simmons
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 45 ratingsThe time of reckoning has arrived. As a final genocidal Crusade threatens to enslave humanity forever, a new messiah has come of age. She is Aenea and she has undergone a strange apprenticeship to those known as the Others. Now her protector, Raul Endymion, one-time shepherd and convicted murderer, must help her deliver her startling message to her growing army of disciples... -
The October Country by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsRay Bradbury's second short story collection is back in print, its chilling encounters with funhouse mirrors, parasitic accident-watchers, and strange poker chips intact. Both sides of Bradbury's vaunted childhood nostalgia are also on display, in the celebratory "Uncle Einar," and haunting "The Lake," the latter a fine elegy to childhood loss...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook classics -
The Stranger by Max Frei
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsThe millions-selling fantasy epic of the new Russian literary icon-a freeloading freebooter who finds a new home in a magical world Max Frei's novels have been a literary sensation in Russia since their debut in 1996, and have swept the fantasy world over. Presented here in English for the first time, The Stranger will strike a chord with readers of all stripes... -
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...Categorized as:
suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies classics contemporary -
Imajica by Clive Barker
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsImajica is an epic beyond compare: vast in conception, obsessively detailed in execution, and apocalyptic in its resolution. At its heart lies the sensualist and master art forger, Gentle, whose life unravels when he encounters Judith Odell, whose power to influence the destinies of men is vaster than she knows, and Pie 'oh' pah, an alien assassin who comes from a hidden dimension... -
The Talisman by Stephen King, Peter Straub
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsOn a brisk autumn day, a twelve-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change...Categorized as:
epic suspense 20th-century action-adventure alternate-universe audiobook book classics -
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
Rated: 4.12 of 5 stars · 61 ratingsHere are stories of other worlds: of the rain-gutted forests of Venus and the deep canals of Mars; of the empty blackness of space and of planets that have no name. Here are stories, too, of Earth - new and unfamiliar in the glow of a wondrous future. And here- above all - is the story of The Illustrated man - tattooed by a witch with the most fantastic images ever seen on Earth..Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure aliens anthologies audiobook classics -
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... -
-
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...Categorized as:
suspense thriller 20th-century action-adventure adult alternate-history angels anthologies -
Midwinter of the Spirit by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsLibrarian note: an alternate cover for this edition can be found here.The post of Diocesan Exorcist in the Church of England has changed to the preferred term Delivery Ministry. It sounds less sinister, more caring, so why not a job for a woman? When offered the post the Rev. Merrily Watkins cannot easily refuse, having suffered uncanny experiences of her own... -
Weaveworld by Clive Barker
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 43 ratingsClive Barker has made his mark on modern fiction by exposing all that is surreal and magical in the ordinary world --- and exploring the profound and overwhelming terror that results... -
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsWinner of the Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award for best vampire novel of the century: the genre-defining classic of horror sci-fi that inspired three films. The population of the entire world has been obliterated by a pandemic of vampire bacteria. Yet somehow, Robert Neville survived...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult apocalyptic audiobook book -
Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 40 ratingsBeware of Helen... Heather is such a whiny little brat. Always getting Michael and me into trouble. But since our mother married her father, we're stuck with her ... our "poor stepsister" who lost her real mother in a mysterious fire. But now something terrible has happened...Categorized as:
family suspense 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children children-books -
Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsIn this propulsive novel by the author of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Elephant Vanishes, one of the most idiosyncratically brilliant writers at work in any language fuses science fiction, the hard-boiled thriller and white-hot satire into a new element of the literary periodic table... -
Thunderhead by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.11 of 5 stars · 39 ratingsSince the days of Coronado, explorers have been captivated by the search for Quivira, the fabled Lost City of Gold. Now, guided by a mysterious letter, archaeologist Nora Kelly is about to remount an expedition her father conducted 16 years earlier -- before mysteriously vanishing in the remote canyon country of southeast Utah... -
The Omen by David Seltzer
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 35 ratingsNow updated, this classic tale of the antichrist who comes to Earth in the form of a young boy is available in time for 20th Century Fox's contemporary remake of the 1976 classic film, starring Liev Schreiber, Julia Stiles, and Mia Farrow, scheduled for release on June 6, 2006. Reissue... -
The Changeover by Margaret Mahy
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCarnegie medal-winning supernatural romance from Margaret Mahy.The face in the mirror. From the moment she saw it, Laura Chant knew that something dreadful was going to happen. It wasn’t the first time she’d been forewarned. But never before had anything so terrible happened... -
The China Garden by Liz Berry
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen Clare moves with her mother from London to Ravensmere, an historic English estate, she can't shake the feeling that the residents already know her, especially Mark, a maddeningly attractive biker. Clare also feels compelled to take midnight walks in Ravensmere's abandoned China Garden. Then her mother reveals that their own past is tragically linked to the estate... -
-
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThis collection features tormented individuals who play out their doom in various odd little towns, as well as in dark sectors frequented by sinister and often blackly comical eccentrics. The cycle of narratives that includes the title work of this collection, for instance, introduces readers to a freakish community of artists who encounter demonic perils that ultimately engulf their lives...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary cosmic-horror dark -
The Elementals by Michael McDowell
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsOn a split of land cut off by the Gulf, three Victorian summer houses stand against the encroaching sand. Two of the houses at Beldame are still used. The third house, filling with sand, is empty...except for the vicious horror which is shaping nightmares from the nothingness that hangs in the dank, fetid air... -
Livre de sang by Clive Barker
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThe Books of Blood combine the ordinary with the extraordinary while radiating the eroticism that has become Barker's signature. Weaving tales of the everyday world transformed into an unrecognizable place, where reason no longer exists and logic ceases to explain the workings of the universe, Clive Barker provides the stuff of nightmares in packages too tantalizing to resist... -
From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz, Stephen Lang
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 28 ratingsTwelve cassettes, 21 hrs.Read by Stephen Lang Bartholomew Lampion is born in Bright Beach, California, on a day of tragedy and terror, when the lives of everyone in his family are changed forever. Remarkable events accompany his birth, and everyone agrees that his unusual eyes are the most beautiful they have ever seen... -
Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsWhen police find two skeletons locked in a bony embrace deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, Natural History Museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid in the investigation. She soon realizes that the expertise the cops want is the result of her ordeal last year, battling the horrific beast loose in the basement corridors of the Museum... -
The Stephen King Collection: Stories from Night Shift by Stephen King, John Glover
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsincludes 16 of the 20 Night Shift short storiesThe BoogeymanI Know What You NeedStrawberry SpringGray MatterThe Woman in the RoomBattlegroundGraveyard ShiftThe Man Who Loved FlowersThe Last Rung on The LadderNight SurfJerusalem's LotLawnmower ManThe ManglerQuitters, Inc... -
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsJorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of The Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy’s novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary -
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...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics contemporary dark -
Relic by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsJust days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders... -
Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 66 ratingsRosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them... -
-
The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsKatie, who has supernatural powers, attempts to start a new life in another town with her mother. The attempt succeeds until Mr. Cooper asks Katie too many questions...Categorized as:
family female-mc 20th-century action-adventure audiobook book children children-books -
Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFor the first time in one volume, a collection of Shirley Jackson's scariest stories, with a foreword by PEN/Hemingway Award winner Ottessa Moshfegh After the publication of her short story "The Lottery" in the New Yorker in 1948 received an unprecedented amount of attention, Shirley Jackson was quickly established as a master horror storyteller...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense thriller 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics -
Peace by Gene Wolfe
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsMesmerizing sci-fi from the author the Denver Post calls "one of the literary giants of science fiction." The melancholy memoir of Alden Dennis Weer, an embittered old man living in a small midwestern town, reveals a miraculous dimension. For Weer's imagination has the power to obliterate time and reshape reality, transcending even death itself...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary fiction -
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti, Jeff VanderMeer
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTwo terrifying classics by “the best kept secret in contemporary horror fiction” (The Washington Post) Thomas Ligotti’s debut collection, Songs of a Dead Dreamer, and his second, Grimscribe, permanently inscribed a new name in the pantheon of horror fiction...Categorized as:
literary-fiction suspense 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
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
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...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.