Books like 'Medusa's Ankles: Selected Stories'
Readers who enjoyed Medusa's Ankles: Selected Stories by A.S. Byatt also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary fantasy horror gothic literary-fiction
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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... -
![Hades by Mark Z. Danielewski]()
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... -
![Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie]()
Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories by Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsOne of our most imaginative and accomplished writers, Angela Carter left behind a dazzling array of work: essays, citicism, and fiction. But it is in her short stories that her extraordinary talents—as a fabulist, feminist, social critic, and weaver of tales—are most penetratingly evident...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fairy-tale -
![Coyote Songs by Gabino Iglesias]()
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... -
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![Narraciones Extraordinarias by Edgar Allan Poe, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra]()
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... -
![The Lamb by Lucy Rose]()
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... -
![The Body at Auercliff by Amy Cross]()
The Body at Auercliff by Amy Cross
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"We'll bury her so deep, even her ghost will have a mouth full of dirt!" When Rebecca Wallace arrives at Auercliff to check on her aged aunt, she's in for a shock. Her aunt's mind is crumbling, and the old woman refuses to let Rebecca stay overnight. And just as she thinks she's starting to understand the truth, Rebecca makes a horrifying discovery in one of the house's many spare rooms... -
![Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan]()
Fruiting Bodies: Stories by Kathryn Harlan
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsIn stories that beckon and haunt, Fruiting Bodies ranges confidently from the fantastical to the gothic to the uncanny as it follows characters—mostly queer, mostly women—on the precipice of change. Echoes of timeless myth and folklore reverberate through urgent narratives of discovery, appetite, and coming-of-age in a time of crisis... -
![Flames by Robbie Arnott]()
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Rated: 4.16 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsA young man named Levi McAllister decides to build a coffin for his twenty-three-year-old sister, Charlotte—who promptly runs for her life. A water rat swims upriver in quest of the cloud god. A fisherman named Karl hunts for tuna in partnership with a seal. And a father takes form from fire... -
![The Tenant by Roland Topor]()
The Tenant by Roland Topor
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsThe Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment. More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment... -
![Selected Poems & Tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Neil Gaiman]()
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... -
![Sredni Vashtar and Other Stories by Saki]()
Sredni Vashtar and Other Stories by Saki
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsBorn in Burma in 1870, Scottish writer H.H. Munro (his pseudonym is from FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) satirized the social conventions, cruelty and foolishness of the Edwardian era with a highly readable blend of flippant humor and outrageous inventiveness, often overlaid with a mood of horror... -
![Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung]()
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 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary dark female-author -
![The Essential Clive Barker: Selected Fiction by Clive Barker, Armistead Maupin]()
The Essential Clive Barker: Selected Fiction by Clive Barker, Armistead Maupin
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratings"I wonder if the reverse is not also in some way true. That the artist is constantly working on anelaborate and fantasticated self-portrait, but at the end has drawn, unbeknownst, a picture of the world... -
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![American Gothic Tales by Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Brockden Brown]()
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... -
![The Bone Fire by György Dragomán]()
The Bone Fire by György Dragomán
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsFrom an award-winning European writer, a Gothic page-turner with all the menace and promise of a fairy tale In the aftermath of a revolution that has plunged her country into chaos, thirteen-year-old Emma’s small corner of the world is shattered after her dissident parents' death in a car crash...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction action-adventure adult book coming-of-age contemporary family -
![Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti]()
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 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies contemporary cosmic-horror -
![Rimas y leyendas by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer]()
Rimas y leyendas by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Rated: 4.09 of 5 stars · 33 ratingsDepicting the beauty of the written word, the handsome books in this series present an assortment of universal literature from the drama of Shakespeare to the words of many well-known authors from the first half of the 20th century... -
![The Sinner by Amanda Stevens]()
The Sinner by Amanda Stevens
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 17 ratingsI am a living ghost, a wanderer in search of my purpose and place… I'm a cemetery restorer by trade, but my calling has evolved from that of ghost seer to death walker to detective of lost souls. I solve the riddles of the dead so the dead will leave me alone. I've come to Seven Gates Cemetery nursing a broken heart, but peace is hard to come by…for the ghosts here and for me... -
![Peace by Gene Wolfe]()
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:
gothic literary-fiction 20th-century action-adventure adult book classics contemporary -
![Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti, Jeff VanderMeer]()
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:
gothic literary-fiction 20th-century 21st-century adult anthologies classics contemporary -
![Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake]()
Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake
Rated: 4.04 of 5 stars · 36 ratingsTitus Groan is seven years old. Lord and heir to the crumbling castle Gormenghast. A gothic labyrinth of roofs and turrets, cloisters and corridors, stairwells and dungeons, it is also the cobwebbed kingdom of Byzantine government and age-old rituals, a world primed to implode beneath the weight of centuries of intrigue, treachery, and death... -
![The Divine Farce by Michael S.A. Graziano]()
The Divine Farce by Michael S.A. Graziano
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratings“A Dante/Beckett reduction of human struggle to its lowest common denominator.”— Michael Mirolla, author of The Formal Logic of Emotion and Berlin“One of the most original and thought-provoking stories I have ever read...true literary art...Not a word is wasted in this masterpiece. Yes, I call it that... -
![The Farm by Amy Cross]()
The Farm by Amy Cross
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsOne farm. Two tragedies, thirty years apart. And a tortured figure whose presence connects both incidents... In 1979, the Bondalen family farm in Norway is home to three young girls. As winter fades to spring, Elizabeth, Kari and Sara each come to face the secrets of the barn, and they each emerge with their own injuries... -
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![The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai]()
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories by Jamil Jan Kochai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsA luminous meditation on sons and fathers, ghosts of war, and living history that moves between modern-day Afghanistan and the Afghan diaspora...Categorized as:
literary-fiction fiction horror war magical-realism contemporary audiobook anthologies -
![Windeye by Brian Evenson]()
Windeye by Brian Evenson
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA woman falling out of sync with the world; a king's servant hypnotized by his murderous horse; a transplanted ear with a mind of its own. The characters in these stories live as interlopers in a world shaped by mysterious disappearances and unfathomable discrepancies between the real and imagined... -
![Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati]()
Catastrophe: And Other Stories by Dino Buzzati
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn Catastrophe, the renowned Italian short story writer Dino Buzzati brings vividly to life the slow and quietly terrifying collapse of our known, everyday world. In stories touched by the fantastical and the strange, and filled with humor, irony, and menace, Buzzati illuminates the nightmarish side of our ordinary existence...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies classics contemporary fiction horror -
![Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu]()
Blinding by Mircea Cărtărescu
Rated: 4.08 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsPart visceral dream-memoir, part fictive journey through a hallucinatory Bucharest, Mircea Cărtărescu's BLINDING was one of the most widely heralded literary sensations in contemporary Romania, and a bestseller from the day of its release... -
![In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser]()
In the Penny Arcade by Steven Millhauser
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe seven stories of In the Penny Arcade blend both the real and the fantastic in a seductive mix that illuminates the full range of Steven Millhauser's gifts, from 'August Eschenburg', the story of a clockmaker's son whose extraordinary talent for creating animated figures is lost on a world whose taste for the perverse and crude supersedes that of the refined and beautiful, to 'Cathay', a...Categorized as:
literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies contemporary fiction horror low-fantasy -
![The Glass Guardian by Linda Gillard]()
The Glass Guardian by Linda Gillard
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsRuth Travers has lost a lover, both parents and her job. Now she thinks she might be losing her mind.When death strikes again, Ruth finds herself the owner of a dilapidated Victorian house on the Isle of Skye: "Tigh na Linne", the summer home she shared as a child with her beloved Aunt Janet, the woman she'd regarded as a mother... -
![Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai]()
Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 7 ratingsA tale of doom and ambition, loss and revenge, love and murder... -
![Quicksilver & Shadow, Volume 2: Collected Early Stories: Contemporary, Dark Fantasy, and Science Fiction Stories by Charles de Lint]()
Quicksilver & Shadow, Volume 2: Collected Early Stories: Contemporary, Dark Fantasy, and Science Fiction Stories by Charles de Lint
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsQuicksilver & Shadow is the second volume (of a projected three) of Charles de Lint's Collected Early Stories. At nearly 150,000 words it's even larger than volume one, A Handful of Coppers, and includes the very obscure 20,000 word novella, "Berlin," and its over 30,000 word counterpart "Death Leaves an Echo... -
![Weathercock by Glen Duncan]()
Weathercock by Glen Duncan
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe confession of Dominic Francis Hood - Roman Catholic, sadist, conspirator to murder, witness to a miracle. His childhood had the usual benefits, but after watching a miracle performed by Father Malone, Dominic realises a part of him is skewed, and that mere fantasy will never be enough... -
![The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy, Dennis Cooper]()
The Letters of Mina Harker by Dodie Bellamy, Dennis Cooper
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn Dodie Bellamy's imagined "sequel" to Bram Stoker's fin de siècle masterpiece Dracula, Van Helsing's plain Jane secretarial adjunct, Mina Harker, is recast as a sexual, independent woman living in San Francisco in the 1980s... -
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![Rose's Run by Dawn Dumont, Daniel Grenier]()
Rose's Run by Dawn Dumont, Daniel Grenier
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsRose Okanese, a single mother with two kids, has been pushed into a corner by Rez citizens to claim some self-respect, and decides that the fastest way to do that is to run the reserve’s annual marathon. Though Rose hasn’t run in twenty years, smokes, and initially has little motivation, she announces her intention to run the race... -
![The Hunger: And Other Stories by Charles Beaumont]()
The Hunger: And Other Stories by Charles Beaumont
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWhen "The Hunger and Other Stories" (1957) appeared, it heralded the arrival of Charles Beaumont (1929-1967) as an important and highly original new voice in American fiction... -
![American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps by Peter Straub, Edgar Allan Poe]()
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps by Peter Straub, Edgar Allan Poe
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsStraub, a contemporary master of literary horror and fantasy, offers an authoritative and diverse gathering of stories calculated to unsettle and delight. Ghostly narratives of the Edwardian era, lurid classics from the pulp heyday, and modern-day masterpieces are included in these collections... -
![American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's Until Now by Peter Straub, John Collier]()
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:
gothic literary-fiction adult anthologies classics contemporary female-author fiction -
![Secrets and Seduction by Bianca Mov]()
Secrets and Seduction by Bianca Mov
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsDark academia meets forbidden loveWelcome to Preston Academy—watch your back, the walls have ears. You have been warned.Avery, a criminal, scarred and haunted by her past, finds herself at the Preston Academy—a boarding school for troubled juveniles.Alexander, a professor and heir to his parent’s legacy, is struck by Avery’s dark inner and bright outer beauty—and he hates her for it... -
![Verdigris by Michele Mari]()
Verdigris by Michele Mari
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsAt the tail end of the 1960s, the thirteen-year-old Michelino spends his summers at his grandparents’ modest estate in Nasca, near Lake Maggiore, losing himself in the tales of horror, adventure, and mystery shelved in his grandfather’s library... -
![Fallen Thorns by Harvey Oliver Baxter]()
Fallen Thorns by Harvey Oliver Baxter
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratings‘A great death is in the air.’Arlo is lost. He thought he had everything figured out. Go to university, fall in love, get a job.But life doesn’t always work like that, and before he has a chance to figure it out, he dies.In the space of a night, Arlo is plunged into a world of blood and immortality and finds a group of people who swear to always have his back... -
![Salt Slow by Julia Armfield]()
Salt Slow by Julia Armfield
Rated: 4.03 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsThis collection of stories is about women and their experiences in society, about bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of its characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession and love. Throughout the collection, women become insects, men turn to stone, a city becomes insomniac and bodies are picked apart to make up better ones...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction 21st-century adult anthologies audiobook body-horror contemporary -
![Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath]()
Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
Rated: 3.94 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsFaber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles.Lips the colour of blood, the sun an unprecedented orange, train wheels that sound like 'guilt, and guilt, and guilt': these are just some of the things Mary Ventura begins to notice on her journey to the ninth kingdom...Categorized as:
gothic literary-fiction 20th-century adult anthologies audiobook classics coming-of-age -
![Stitches in Time by Barbara Michaels]()
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... -
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![Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan]()
Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 15 ratings'Gripping . . . You won't put it down' Sunday TelegraphA shocking collection of dark stories, ranging from chilling contemporary fairytales to disturbing supernatural fiction.Alone in a remote house in Iceland a woman is unnerved by her isolation; another can only find respite from the clinging ghost that follows her by submerging herself in an overgrown pool... -
![Ghost Stories by Henry James]()
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... -
![A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll]()
A Child Across the Sky by Jonathan Carroll
Rated: 3.92 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsLibrarian's Note: this is an alternate cover edition for ISBN 071263441X / 9780712634410.Just as the the word "weird" has many implications and shades of meaning, so too does the latest--weird--work by this gifted and perplexing writer. As Carroll ( Bones of the Moon ; Sleeping in Flame ) himself says, "Life has a habit of turning dark corners... -
![100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories by Al Sarrantonio, Charles Dickens]()
100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories by Al Sarrantonio, Charles Dickens
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsScared? You will be! Feel your nerves jangle and chills run up and down your spine thanks to the hair-raising genius of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, E. F. Benson, H. P. Lovecraft, Fritz Leiber, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Stephen Crane, Charles Dickens, Robert Barr, and many others who know well how to manipulate a reader's emotions... -
![I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin by P.N. Elrod]()
I, Strahd: The War Against Azalin by P.N. Elrod
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFor more than a century, Strahd von Zarovich has ruled Barovia with an iron hand, feeding on the blood of his vassals and fearing no one. In all the years of his tortured rule, none have dared defy him... -
![Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel]()
Belly Up by Rita Bullwinkel
Rated: 3.88 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsBelly Up is a story collection that contains ghosts, mediums, a lover obsessed with the sound of harps tuning, teenage girls who believe they are actually plants, gulag prisoners who outsmart a terrible warden, and carnivorous churches. Throughout these grotesque and tender stories, characters question the bodies they've been given and what their bodies require to be sustained...
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