Books like 'Starlight'
Readers who enjoyed Starlight by Stella Gibbons also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary horror mystery classics gothic magical-realism cozy literary-fiction
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 70 ratingsPiranesi's house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsTHE PURLOINED LETTER THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM. VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY MESMERIC REVELATION THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR THE BLACK CAT. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER SILENCE—A FABLE THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO... -
Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories by Franz Kafka, John Updike
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsThe only available collection that brings together all of Kafka's storiesthose published during his lifetime and those released after his death...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary drama -
Del tiempo y sus demonios by Diego Armando Arciniegas Malagón
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsDEL TIEMPO Y SUS DEMONIOS: PERSIGUIENDO LA VERDADEsta novela se desarrolla en un pequeño y misterioso pueblo. En un territorio hermoso, inhóspito a la luz de aquellas certezas que las mayorías consideran irrefutables. Lejos del tiempo que, arbitrariamente, tomara la sabia decisión de separar el bien del mal...Categorized as:
magical-realism classics literary-fiction mystery fiction horror psychological fantasy -
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Hades by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWhen a viral video puts twelve-year-old Xanther under a spotlight of scrutiny at school, her little white cat—still slumbering, still unnamed—offers the only escape, though it comes at a price. Not even Xanther’ parents can deny the strange currents now shuddering around their eldest, touching off inexplicable happenings. Entities troubling the dreams of the twins seem to have singled out Freya... -
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... -
I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories by William Gay
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWilliam Gay established himself as "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit" (Esquire) with his debut novel, The Long Home, and his highly acclaimed follow-up, Provinces of Night. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls... -
Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIn Gabino Iglesias’ second novel, ghosts and old gods guide the hands of those caught up in a violent struggle to save the soul of the American southwest.A man tasked with shuttling children over the border believes the Virgin Mary is guiding him towards final justice. A woman offers colonizer blood to the Mother of Chaos... -
Narraciones Extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsEdgar Allan Poe created some of the finest literature the world has ever known. His name conjures up thoughts of hearts beating long after their owners are dead, of disease and plague amid wealth, of love that extends beyond the grave, and of black ravens who utter only one word. Poe perfected the psychological thriller... -
Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Rated: 4.22 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsA young girl spends her summer vacation in a country house where a tiger roams . . . A man reading a mystery finds out too late that he is the murderer's victim . .Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction -
The Lamb by Lucy Rose
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsMargot and Mama have lived by the forest ever since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door—"strays," Mama calls them, people who have strayed too far from the road. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm... -
Emma Frost Mystery Series: Vol 4-6 by Willow Rose
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsASIN moved from less recent editionCROSS YOU HEART AND HOPE TO DIE:We all know that high school reunions can be a daunting and sometimes horrifying experience. Well, for Emma Frost that is exactly what it becomes when she is invited to meet with all of her old classmates at a desolated hotel in the most Northern part of Denmark...Categorized as:
cozy literary-fiction action-adventure adult anthologies contemporary female-mc fiction -
Charleston Green by Stephanie Alexander
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsIf Tipsy Collins learned one thing from her divorce, it's that everyone in Charleston is a little crazy--even if they're already dead.Tipsy, a gifted artist, cannot ignore her nutty friends or her vindictive ex-husband, but as a lifelong reluctant clairvoyant, she's always avoided dead people... -
High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006 by Joyce Carol Oates
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAn unprecedented collection of the best of Joyce Carol Oates's short stories combined with eleven new storiesNo other writer can match the impressive oeuvre of Joyce Carol Oates, and High Lonesome: Selected Stories, 1966-2006 gathers stories from Oates's seminal collections, including The Wheel of Love (1970), Marriages and Infidelities (1972), and Heat (1991), arranged by decade...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction adult anthologies contemporary female-author fiction -
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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... -
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? by Joyce Carol Oates
Rated: 4.18 of 5 stars · 30 ratingsThe sixties and seventies witnessed the emergence of Joyce Carol Oates as one of America's foremost writers of the short story. In 1962, 'The Fine White Mist of Winter, ' composed when the author was 19 years old, appeared in The Literary Review and was selected for both the O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories of that year...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies coming-of-age contemporary -
The Dead Girls by Jorge Ibargüengoitia
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsThis is the first appearance in English of a Mexican novelist of enormous talent. His brilliant novel is based on fact: the discovery in the yard of a small-town brothel of the corpses of six prostitutes... -
Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization) by David Fishelson, Aaron Leichter
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsNote - This is not the novel by Franz Kafka! For the novel see The... -
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 68 ratingsYears ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure adult book -
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Rated: 4.30 of 5 stars · 5 ratingsSly, surprising, and razor-sharp, Natural Beauty follows a young musician into an elite, beauty-obsessed world where perfection comes at a staggering cost.Our narrator produces a sound from the piano no one else at the Conservatory can. She employs a technique she learned from her parents—also talented musicians—who fled China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution... -
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... -
The Magus by John Fowles
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsThis daring literary thriller, rich with eroticism and suspense, is one of John Fowles's best-loved and bestselling novels and has contributed significantly to his international reputation as a writer of the first degree. At the center of The Magus is Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman who accepts a teaching position on a remote Greek island, where he befriends a local millionaire...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
Selected Poems & Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsFor more than a century-and-a-half, Edgar Allan Poe's poems and tales have thrilled readers with chilling accounts of matters mysterious and macabre... -
Night Games: And Other Stories and Novellas by Arthur Schnitzler, John Simon
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThese artful new translations of nine of Schnitzler's most important stories and novellas reinforce the Viennese author's remarkable achievement... -
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Hideaway by Fern Michaels
Rated: 4.13 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsPart One of the New Three-Part Godmothers Serial!The best of friends, Toots, Ida, Mavis, and Sophie have been there for each other through thick and thin. Now Sophie needs the rest of the Godmothers to help her through something they’ve never faced before . . .As Sophie De Luca has learned, many things really are better the second time around...Categorized as:
cozy literary-fiction magical-realism adult book breakup contemporary domestic-drama -
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsCursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary dark -
American Gothic Tales by Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Brockden Brown
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsJoyce Carol Oates has a special perspective on the “gothic” in American short fiction, at least partially because her own horror yarns rank on the spine-tingling chart with the masters. She is able to see the unbroken link of the macabre that ties Edgar Allan Poe to Anne Rice and to recognize the dark psychological bonds between Henry James and Stephen King... -
Where I End by Sophie White
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsMy mother.At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her.Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body just like the water in the walls of the house...Teenage Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent, bed-bound mother is a wreckage, the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about... -
The Past Is Never by Tiffany Quay Tyson
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA compelling addition to contemporary Southern Gothic fiction, deftly weaving together local legends, magical realism, and the search for a missing child.Winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, and Mississippi Author Award for Adult fiction...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism adult audiobook book coming-of-age contemporary -
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:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary -
Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko
Rated: 4.07 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsThe definitive English language translation of the internationally bestselling Ukrainian novel—a brilliant dark fantasy with "the potential to be a modern classic" (Lev Grossman), combining psychological suspense, enchantment, and terror that makes us consider human existence in a fresh and provocative way.Our life is brief . . -
Trader by Charles de Lint
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsA novel of loss, identity, and, in the strangest of places, hope.Max Trader is a luthier, a maker of guitars. Johnny Devlin is chronically unemployed. Max is solitary, quiet, responsible. Johnny is a lady-killer, a drunk, a charming loser... -
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yōko Ogawa
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsAn aspiring writer moves into a new apartment and discovers that her landlady has murdered her husband. Elsewhere, an accomplished surgeon is approached by a cabaret singer, whose beautiful appearance belies the grotesque condition of her heart. And while the surgeon’s jealous lover vows to kill him, a violent envy also stirs in the soul of a lonely craftsman...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook -
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:
classics gothic literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook contemporary -
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A Feast of Snakes by Harry Crews
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFrom the acclaimed author of such novels as "Blood and Grits" and "Childhood" comes a wildly weird and breathtakingly original visit to the rural South that reveals the exotic subculture that erupts in all its glory at the Rattlesnake Roundup in Mystic, Georgia. "No number of adjectives in the thesaurus can do full justice to the dazzlingly bizarre nature of Crews' creations"... -
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:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult book -
2666, Part 1: The Part About The Critics by Roberto Bolaño
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsComposed in the last two years of Bolaño's life, 2666 has been greeted as his greatest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness,beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters include academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student caring for her widowed, mentally unstable father... -
In The Blink Of An Eye by Wendy Corsi Staub
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA new novel of suspense that promises to propel USA Today bestselling author Wendy Corsi Staub into the ranks of the masters of the genre.When a medium returns to the small-town home where her childhood friend was killed, she intends to coax the secrets of the house out into the light -- before the murderous force residing there makes both she and her friend's daughter its next victims... -
Miriam by Truman Capote
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsMiriam" is about a 61-year-old widow named Mrs. H. T. Miller who wants to spend the remaining years of her life alone in her apartment near the East River after the death of her husband, H. T. Miller. She is very lonely, has no friends to speak of and does not keep in touch with any of her relatives.One day, going into a movie theater, she meets a young, intelligent girl named Miriam. Mrs... -
Resurrectionists by Kim Wilkins
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsYoung Australian cellist Maisie Fielding is bored with her career and her overpowering, manipulative musical family. Faking a wrist injury, she takes time off to return to England, her mother's home country, to search for her own roots and to find out more about her grandmother, a 'white witch' who settled in a bleak village on the North Yorkshire coast... -
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now by Peter Straub, John Collier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsLike its companion volume, this Library of America hardcover contains 750 pages of classic tales of horror, hauntings, terrifying obsessions, and unearthly presences...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism adult anthologies contemporary female-author -
Cuentos de Amor de Locura y de Muerte by Horacio Quiroga
Rated: 4.02 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsThis collection of stories includes tales about illness, despair, exile, and human brutality. The author himself compiled the selection. Held to be among the greatest writers of short-fiction, Horacio Quiroga has been compared to Kipling and Poe...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies -
Suddenly Last Summer by Tennessee Williams
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsKerr, in the NY Herald-Tribune, describes: "This, says Mr. Williams through the most sympathetic voice among his characters, 'is a true story about the time and the world we live in.' He has made it seem true-or at least curiously and suspensefully possible-by the extraordinary skill with which he has wrung detail after detail out of a young woman who has lived with horror... -
The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat, Porochista Khakpour
Rated: 3.99 of 5 stars · 38 ratingsRecognized as the outstanding Iranian writer of the twentieth century, Sadegh Hedayat is credited with having brought his country's language and literature into the mainstream of contemporary writing. The Blind Owl, long considered a classic and often compared to the works of Poe, chillingly recreates the labyrinthine movements of a deranged mind...Categorized as:
classics gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult audiobook -
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Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA young woman must shake off a family curse and the widely held belief that she is the reincarnation of her dead cousin in this wickedly funny, brilliantly perceptive novel about love, female rivalry, and superstition from the author of the smash hit My Sister, the Serial Killer (“A bombshell of a book..Categorized as:
literary-fiction magical-realism fiction contemporary fantasy mystery horror audiobook -
Stitches in Time by Barbara Michaels
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWhen an antique bridal quilt appears under mysterious circumstances at the vintage clothing shop where Rachel Grant works, she is fascinated. She has never been able to resist handmade textiles from the past, for she believes that through the ages, women wove protective magic into their fabrics in order to mark the important events of their lives: birth, marriage, and death... -
Felidae by Akif Pirinçci
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAn internationally acclaimed suspense novel features the adventures of Francis, a house cat who, in trying to catch the murderer of his feline friends, meets up with a bizarre cat cult, a kitty computer whiz, and a perceptive Persian... -
I Am No One You Know by Joyce Carol Oates
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsI Am No One You Know contains nineteen startling stories that bear witness to the remarkably varied lives of Americans of our time. In "Fire," a troubled young wife discovers a rare, radiant happiness in an adulterous relationship. In "Curly Red," a girl makes a decision to reveal a family secret, and changes her life irrevocably...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction adult anthologies coming-of-age contemporary female-author fiction -
Ghost Stories by Henry James
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsWith an Introduction and Notes by Martin Scofield, University of Kent at Canterbury. Henry James was arguably the greatest practitioner of what has been called the psychological ghost story. His stories explore the region which lies between the supernatural or straightforwardly marvellous and the darker areas of the human psyche... -
Switch Bitch by Roald Dahl
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 32 ratingsIn Switch Bitch four tales of seduction and suspense are told by the grand master of the short story, Roald Dahl.Topping and tailing this collection are The Visitor and Bitch, stories featuring Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius (or plain old Uncle Oswald) whose exploits are frequently as extraordinary as they are scandalous...Categorized as:
classics literary-fiction magical-realism 20th-century action-adventure adult anthologies audiobook
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