Books like 'Everything Is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here'
Readers who enjoyed Everything Is Beautiful and Nothing Bad Can Ever Happen Here by Michael Wehunt also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
horror mystery psychological supernatural fantasy ghosts paranormal folk-horror gothic rural
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The Room in the Attic by Louise Douglas
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsA child who does not know her name…In 1903 fishermen find a wrecked boat containing a woman, who has been badly beaten, and a young girl. An ambulance is sent for, and the two survivors are taken to All Hallows, the imposing asylum, hidden deep on Dartmoor... -
Ashes Beneath Her by J.R. Erickson
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsOrla has a gift, an ability to sense things she touches: memories, traumas… murders. On a sunny day in 1975, she sets off on a bike ride into the picturesque countryside and vanishes. She is not the first young woman to go missing and she will not be the last.Ashes Beneath Her is the third novel in the stand-alone Northern Michigan Asylum Series... -
Jessamine by Shani Struthers
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratings"The dead of night, Jess, I wish they'd leave me alone."Jessamin Wade's husband is dead - a death she feels wholly responsible for. As a way of coping with her grief, she keeps him 'alive' in her imagination - talking to him every day, laughing with him, remembering the good times they had together... -
The Evil That Was Done by Michele Pariza Wacek
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThe shocking conclusion to the award-winning Secrets of Redemption series. It’s happening again—people are disappearing. And just like before, the finger is pointed at Becca. She knows how it looks … and that she’s being set up. Someone is following her. Sneaking into her house. Planting evidence to make her look guilty. The problem is, she has no idea why... -
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The Prayer of the Night Shepherd by Phil Rickman
Rated: 4.21 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsAt Stanner Hall, a Victorian mansion-turned-hotel, Ben Foley hosts murder-mystery weekends and strives to prove that his hotel is the house on which Arthur Conan Doyle based his immortal Baskerville Hall. As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley’s dabbling uncovers more than he can handle... -
Lost Girl by Anne Francis Scott
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsLost Girl - Readers' Favorite Award Finalist in Paranormal FictionRenowned sculptor Allison Weathers doesn't believe in ghosts. But when a tragic twist of fate leads her to the small mountain town of Dawson Mills, Tennessee, she soon learns that the dead don't always stay silent. Shadows begin to shift in the rambling, old Victorian farmhouse she's purchased. Voices come from nowhere... -
The Children in the Lake: A Story You Will Never Forget by Mark Edward Hall
Rated: 4.25 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsIn 1925 three children vanish without a trace in Arrowhead Lake. Nearly a century later there are those who still report seeing the children swimming beneath the surface like elusive dolphins. After losing her husband in a violent car crash, Rachel King and her two young sons venture to Arrowhead Lake to heal... -
Tanners Dell by S.E. England, Sarah E. England
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsFollowing the hypnosis of violently disturbed psychiatric patient, Ruby Dean, an unholy dark force was unleashed on the medical staff who tried to help her. Now only one of the original team remains--Ward Sister, Becky. Despite her fianc�, D.I... -
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... -
Belle Manor Haunting by Cheryl Bradshaw
Rated: 4.20 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe door to Addison Lockhart's room opens. Five-year-old Sara Belle walks in. The child seems lost and confused. Addison reaches out, grabs Sara's hand, and the room goes black.Addison's eyes open to find she's been transported several decades into the past. She's sitting in the back seat of a car. Sara is beside her. The car stops at an intersection... -
The Quiet Boy by Nick Antosca
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsBut there was no Goldilocks in his story. There were only the Wolfs, who lived together in a cave above a town. Big Wolf, Middle Wolf, and Little Wolf. Big Wolf was a brute. Little Wolf was timid. Middle Wolf was the peacemaker... -
Ghostwritten by Ronald Malfi
Rated: 4.14 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsFour brand-new horror novellas from “a modern-day Algernon Blackwood” all about books, stories, manuscripts – the written word has never had sharper teeth…From the bestselling author of Come with Me, four standalone horror novellas set in a shared universe! In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride... -
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... -
The Patience of a Dead Man by Michael Clark
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsHe just spent everything on a house in disrepair, but he didn’t know someone was waiting inside. Tim Russell just put his last dollar on a handyman’s dream; a quaint but dilapidated farmhouse in New Hampshire. Newly single after a messy divorce, his plan is to live in the house as he restores it for resale... -
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Night Gallery by Rod Serling, Jim Benson
Rated: 4.17 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe Night Gallery is one of three books written by Rod Serling based on stories he created for the 1970 television series by the same name. Similar to his Stories From The Twilight Zone books, he novelized six of the show’s scripts for this volume, including They’re Tearing Down Tim Riley’s Bar, which was nominated for an Emmy award... -
The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories by Michael Cox, F. Marion Crawford
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsWith their evocative settings amid mists and shadows, in ruinous houses, on lonely roads and wild moorlands, in abandoned churches and over-grown gardens, ghost stories have long exercised a universal fascination... -
The Sense of Death by Matty Dalrymple, Sarah E. Purdum
Rated: 4.10 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAnn Kinnear has created a peaceful existence at her cabin in the Adirondack woods. But the calm is shattered after Philadelphia socialite Elizabeth Firth is reported missing. With few clues and fewer options, detective Joe Booth calls upon Ann's spirit sensing abilities to help solve the mystery... -
Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron
Rated: 4.06 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsWinner of the Shirley Jackson Award, nine stories of cosmic horror from the heir apparent to Lovecraft’s throne.Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti... -
The Ghosts of Thorwald Place by Helen Power
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsTrust no one. Especially your neighbors.Rachel Drake is on the run from the man who killed her husband. She never leaves her safe haven in an anonymous doorman building, until one night a phone call sends her running. On her way to the garage, she is murdered in the elevator. But her story doesn’t end there... -
Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson
Rated: 4.05 of 5 stars · 11 ratingsKnock Knock, Open Wide weaves horror and Celtic myth into a terrifying, heartbreaking supernatural tale of fractured family bonds, the secrets we carry, and the veiled forces that guide Irish life.Driving home late one night, Etain Larkin finds a corpse on a pitch-black country road deep in the Irish countryside. She takes the corpse to a remote farmhouse... -
The End of Temperance Dare: A Novel by Wendy Webb
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsHaunting and atmospheric, The End of Temperance Dare is another thrilling page-turner from the author reviewers are calling the Queen of the Northern Gothic.When Eleanor Harper becomes the director of a renowned artists’ retreat, she knows nothing of Cliffside Manor’s dark past as a tuberculosis sanatorium, a “waiting room for death... -
Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman, Reece Shearsmith
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsCold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full. The listener is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul... -
Don't Look Back by Ben Cheetham
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsAdam’s eyes swelled in horror at the sight that confronted him. Henry was standing with his back against the front door, pale and rigid, his left hand pressed to his neck. Blood was seeping between his fingers, running down his wrist and dripping from his elbow onto the back of Jacob’s head... -
The Haunting of Leigh Harker by Darcy Coates
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsSometimes the dead reach back...Leigh Harker’s quiet suburban home was her sanctuary for more than a decade, until things abruptly changed. Curtains open by themselves. Radios turn off and on. And a dark figure looms in the shadows of her bedroom door at night, watching her, waiting for her to finally let down her guard enough to fall asleep... -
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Love the Way You Lie by Lisa Unger
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsWhat's drawn four damaged people back to haunted land? The answer could destroy them all in a gripping short story about trapped memories and the lies we tell ourselves.Matthew, Claire, and Mason haven't been back to Merle House since the summer they were sixteen. They tried for years to put their history behind them, to forget the mystery of the girl who vanished so long ago... -
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... -
A Place for Vanishing by Ann Fraistat
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA teen girl and her family return to her mother's childhood home, only to discover that the house's strange beauty may disguise a sinister past, in this contemporary gothic horror from the author of What We Harvest.The house was supposed to be a fresh start. That's what Libby's mom said... -
Onyx Webb: Book One by Richard Fenton, Andrea Waltz
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsWho can she trust? What is the truth? Every decision has consequences. What you thought you knew about ghosts is wrong. Sometimes they can walk among the living. In Onyx Webb, the silk of time weaved between lives is generations apart. Follow a billionaire playboy who’s hit rock bottom in 2010, a girl off to prom in 1979, and Onyx Webb in 1906 on her sixth birthday... -
From Away by Phoef Sutton
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSammy Kehoe, his sister, Charlotte, and her four-year-old daughter, Maggie, are all each other have left since the car accident that killed the rest of their family. When they visit their beloved old family home on remote Fox Island, Maine, Sammy and Charlotte each have relationship sparks with island locals... -
The Fisherman by John Langan
Rated: 3.96 of 5 stars · 24 ratingsIn upstate New York, in the woods around Woodstock, Dutchman's Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked, fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true... -
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 65 ratingsIn this brilliant collection of stories, Stephen King takes readers down paths that only he could imagine.A supermarket becomes the place where humanity makes its last stand against destruction. A trip to the attic becomes a journey to hell. A woman driver finds a scary shortcut to paradise. An idyllic lake harbors a bottomless evil... -
Lineage by Joe Hart
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA LIFE FILLED WITH ANGUISH Pain, horror, fear- These are the things that bestselling novelist Lance Metzger's life have been comprised of. His childhood remains a riddled wasteland of abuse by a sadistic father and the abandonment of an apathetic mother. In turn, his only refuge became his writing... -
Circling the Drain by Lisa Unger
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsIs it a hoax, or is it something unspeakably real? In this short story about evil games and spiraling secrets, whatever bargain you strike, there's a price to be paid.Mason Brandt dropped out of seminary and found a job at a spiritual center offering guidance to troubled teens. Mason was on himself years ago - a suspect in a young girl's disappearance. When a female student is found murdered... -
Fog Descending by Lisa Unger
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA grief-stricken spiritualist thought his faith in life after death was broken. Until the ghosts of his past come calling in this short story of believing in what can’t be seen.Driven by an uncanny mystery from his youth, Ian Randall became a “spiritual cleanser,” ridding disturbances from homes. But his belief in the beyond was challenged by his wife’s death... -
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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... -
Night After Night by Phil Rickman
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsA spooky supernatural thriller by the author of the Merrily Watkins seriesLiam Defford doesn't believe in ghosts. As the head of a production company, however, he does believe in high-impact TV. On the lookout for his next idea, he hires journalist Grayle Underhill to research the history of Knap Hall—a Tudor farmhouse turned luxury hotel, abandoned by its owners at the height of its success... -
314 book 3 by A.R. Wise
Rated: 3.90 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAlma Harper and her friends have been struggling to figure out the puzzle of lies weaved in the town of Widowsfield. They've escaped the grasp of The Watcher, but now The Skeleton Man is free as well, and no one's certain what he's capable of. The Watcher in the Walls is forced to craft new lies, and weave a new nightmare in Widowsfield, but he longs for the return of the Harpers... -
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron
Rated: 3.97 of 5 stars · 27 ratingsOver the course of two award-winning collections and a critically acclaimed novel, The Croning, Laird Barron has arisen as one of the strongest and most original literary voices in modern horror and the dark fantastic... -
The Redwood Asylum by L.A. Detwiler
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThe dead do talk ... if you’re brave enough to hear their sinister secrets.In a thick forest sits a forgotten stone building, The Redwood Asylum. Once inside, the criminally insane, the darkly disturbed, and the eternally confused residents learn one thing very quickly: they are at the mercy of ruthless evil in many forms... -
Midnight Picnic by Nick Antosca
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsIn the morning, Bram finds the bones of a murdered child. At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together and set off into the afterlife, where nothing is what it was, and death is only the beginning of punishment. An eerie story about the nature of death and the self, Midnight Picnic inhabits an American landscape made strange and unfamiliar... -
Thirty Scary Tales by Rayne Hall
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThirty creepy, atmospheric horror stories by Rayne Hall.These stories are 'quiet' horror, not overly violent and gory, although there are some graphic moments. Please note: these stories have been previously published in magazines, e-zines and anthologies as well as in the Six Scary Tales collections.British English... -
Wicked Innocents: Case No. 1 by S.H. Livernois
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsEveryone is good at heart. Until the heart is broken.Nelly Huggett swears something took her mother, brother, and father. She doesn’t know what, or when, or how. And she needs Hyla and Lizeth Frontenac to bring them all back.Trouble is, her story doesn’t make sense. Though one thing is certain: something evil has infected the Huggett house... -
3 Gates of the Dead by Jonathan Ryan
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsSometimes, the most evil things come from the most holy... Conflicted with his faith in God and the hypocrisy of the church, Aidan Schaeffer, a young assistant pastor, is in a constant state of spiritual turmoil. When Aidan learns that his ex-fiancee is the first victim in a string of ritualistic killings, he finds himself in the middle of an even deeper fight... -
Escape from Asylum by Madeleine Roux
Rated: 3.89 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThe nightmare is just beginning.Ricky Desmond has been through this all before. If he could just get through to his mother, he could convince her that he doesn’t belong at Brookline. From the man who thinks he can fly to the woman who killed her husband, the other patients are nothing like him; all he did was lose his temper just a little bit, just the once... -
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The Asylum Novellas: The Scarlets, The Bone Artists, & The Warden by Madeleine Roux
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThree chilling novellas set in the world of the New York Times bestselling novel Asylum, which Publishers Weekly called "a strong YA debut." For the first time, these three terrifying stories will appear together with new found photographs perfect for new readers or diehard series fans looking for new clues and insights into the thrilling world of Asylum... -
House of Many Shadows by Barbara Michaels
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMeg Rittenhouse fears she is losing her mind. The doctors tell her the strange and disturbing hallucinations she's been experiencing ever since her accident are all in her head, and that, with a little rest, the haunting visions will vanish. But accepting an invitation to stay with her cousin in the country may be the worst decision Meg has ever made... -
Be Buried in the Rain by Barbara Michaels
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThere are terrible secrets from generations past buried at Maidenwood. Medical student Julie Newcomb has returned to her family's decaying plantation—the site of so many painful childhood memories—to tend to her tyrannical grandmother, felled by a stroke... -
Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson
Rated: 3.86 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsA newborn's absent face appears on the back of someone else's head, a filmmaker goes to gruesome lengths to achieve the silence he's after for his final scene, and a therapist begins, impossibly, to appear in a troubled patient's room late at night. In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception... -
Into the Darkness by Barbara Michaels
Rated: 3.93 of 5 stars · 23 ratingsUpon the death of her grandfather, Meg Venturi unexpectedly inherits the eccentric millionaires antique jewelry business. There is one catch to her sudden windfall - she must share the wealth with a taciturn and oddly attractive young man who has an entire town stirring up rumors - about murderous secrets and a dark legacy... -
The Crying Child by Barbara Michaels
Rated: 3.83 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsTrapped between madness and imagination...From the moment she arrived on King's Island, Joanne McMullen knew that her sister's grief over losing her child had driven her dangerously close to madness. Jo grew anxious when Mary confided that she heard a thin, insistent wail that rose up beyond the dark Maine woods...
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