Books like 'Comfort Me With Apples'
Readers who enjoyed Comfort Me With Apples by Catherynne M. Valente also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary fantasy horror mystery dark fantasy supernatural psychological retellings myths dark
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The Magnus Archives: Season 4 by NOT A BOOK
15 ratingsThe Magnus Archives is a horror audiobook written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrates the stories in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly-appointed head archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute; an institution based in London centred on research into the paranormal... -
The Magnus Archives: Season 3 by Jonathan Sims
14 ratingsThe Magnus Archives is a horror audiobook written by Jonathan Sims, directed by Alexander J. Newall and distributed by Rusty Quill. Sims narrates the stories in-character as the main character, Jonathan Sims, the newly-appointed head archivist of the fictional Magnus Institute; an institution based in London centred on research into the paranormal... -
The Devil's Only Friend by Dan Wells
19 ratingsJohn Wayne Cleaver hunts demons: they've killed his neighbors, his family, and the girl he loves, but in the end he's always won. Now he works for a secret government kill team, using his gift to hunt and kill as many monsters as he can......but the monsters have noticed, and the quiet game of cat and mouse is about to erupt into a full scale supernatural war... -
A Wild Light by Marjorie M. Liu
14 ratingsView our feature on Marjorie Liu’s A Wild Light.For too long Maxine Kiss has felt an inexplicable darkness inside her-a force she channels into hunting the demons bent on destroying the human race. But when she finds herself covered in blood and crouched beside her grandfather's dead body with no memory of what happened, Maxine begins to fear that the darkness has finally consumed her... -
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Last Call by Tim Powers
18 ratingsTwenty years ago Scott Crane abandoned his career as a professional poker player and went into hiding, after a weird high-stakes game played with Tarot cards. But now the cards - and the supernatural powers behind them - have found him again.Crane's father killed gangster Bugsy Siegel in 1948 to become the Fisher King, and to keep that power he is determined to kill his son... -
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
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:
dark dystopia gothic literary-fiction magical-realism spooky 20th-century 21st-century -
Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko, Sergey Dyachenko
24 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 . .Categorized as:
dark dystopia gothic literary-fiction magical-realism 21st-century action-adventure audiobook -
Brother Odd by Dean Koontz
36 ratingsLoop me in, odd one.The words, spoken in the deep of night by a sleeping child, chill the young man watching over her. For this was a favorite phrase of Stormy Llewellyn, his lost love, and Stormy is dead, gone forever from this world. In the haunted halls of the isolated monastery where he had sought peace, Odd Thomas is stalking spirits of an infinitely darker nature...Categorized as:
dark magical-realism religion spirituality suspense 21st-century action-adventure audiobook -
Everville by Clive Barker
24 ratingsOn the borderland between this world and the world of Quiddity, the sea of our dreams, sits Everville. For years, it has lived in ignorance of the gleaming shore on which it lies. But its ignorance is not bliss...Categorized as:
dark literary-fiction myths retellings spirituality suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
Full Throttle by Joe Hill
24 ratingsA little door that opens to a world of fairy tale wonders becomes the blood-drenched stomping ground for a gang of hunters in “Faun.” A grief-stricken librarian climbs behind the wheel of an antique Bookmobile to deliver fresh reads to the dead in “Late Returns... -
Deadly Little Games by Laurie Faria Stolarz
20 ratingsHigh school juniors Camelia and Ben have discovered a powerful bond: They both possess the power of psychometry, the ability to see the future through touch. For Ben, the gift is a frightening liability. When he senses a strong threat or betrayal, he risks losing control. Camelia's gift is more mysterious. When she works with clay, her hands sculpt messages her mind doesn't yet comprehend... -
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
45 ratingsThe dead don't talk. I don't know why. But they do try to communicate, with a short-order cook in a small desert town serving as their reluctant confidant. Sometimes the silent souls who seek out Odd want justice. Occasionally their otherworldly tips help him prevent a crime. But this time it’s different... -
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King
41 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... -
The Fisherman by John Langan
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... -
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Forever Odd by Dean Koontz
38 ratingsI see dead people. But then, by God, I do something about it.Odd Thomas never asked for his special ability. He's just an ordinary guy trying to live a quiet life in the small desert town of Pico Mundo. Yet he feels an obligation to do right by his otherworldly confidants, and that's why he's won hearts on both sides of the divide between life and death... -
Dead Men's Boots by Mike Carey
18 ratingsYou might think that helping a friend's widow to stop a lawyer from stealing her husband's corpse would be the strangest thing on your To Do list. But life is rarely that simple for Felix Castor. A brutal murder in King's Cross bears all the hallmarks of a long-dead American serial killer, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved... -
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron
16 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... -
Ghost Story by Peter Straub
37 ratingsIn life, not every sin goes unpunished.GHOST STORYFor four aging men in the terror-stricken town of Milburn, New York, an act inadvertently carried out in their youth has come back to haunt them. Now they are about to learn what happens to those who believe they can bury the past -- and get away with murder... -
Murder of Angels by Caitlín R. Kiernan
10 ratingsFrom the award-winning author of Silk and Threshold...To find the solace she seeks, Niki Ky must return to the house on the side of Red Mountain in Birmingham, Alabama, to finish what her lover Spyder Baxter started. Her odyssey will take her places no human was meant to travel, and she will face creatures no human should ever have to face.. -
Gwendy's Button Box by Stephen King, Richard Chizmar
34 ratingsThe little town of Castle Rock, Maine has witnessed some strange events and unusual visitors over the years, but there is one story that has never been told... until now.There are three ways up to Castle View from the town of Castle Rock: Route 117, Pleasant Road, and the Suicide Stairs... -
Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart
10 ratingsWilliam ""Dead"" Kennedy has problems. He's haunted by family, by dead people with unfinished business, and by those perfect pop songs that you can't get out of your head. He's a 32-year-old Texan still in love with his ex-wife. He just lost his job at Pet-Co for eating cat food. His air-conditioning is broken, there's no good music on the radio, and he's been dreaming about ghost roads... -
Alice by Christina Henry
29 ratingsA mind-bending new novel inspired by the twisted and wondrous works of Lewis Carroll... In a warren of crumbling buildings and desperate people called the Old City, there stands a hospital with cinderblock walls which echo the screams of the poor souls inside. In the hospital, there is a woman. Her hair, once blond, hangs in tangles down her back... -
Strange Weather by Joe Hill
26 ratingsA collection of four chilling novels, ingeniously wrought gems of terror from the brilliantly imaginative, Joe HillSnapshot is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . -
The Tooth Fairy by Graham Joyce
16 ratingsSam and his friends are like any normal gang of normal young boys—roaming wild around the outskirts of their car-factory town, daring adults to challenge their freedom. Then one day Sam wakes to find the tooth fairy sitting on the edge of his bed—but this is not the benign figure of childhood myth. This is an enigmatic presence that both torments and seduces him, changing his life forever... -
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The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough
14 ratingsIn this emotionally gripping, genre-defying novella from Sarah Pinborough, a woman sits at her father's bedside, watching the clock tick away the last hours of his life. Her brothers and sisters--she is the middle child of five--have all turned up over the past week to pay their last respects... -
Darker Things by Rob Cornell
10 ratingsCraig Lockman—no one had called him that in fifteen years.Not since his days at the Agency. Not since he was trained to kill creatures that were supposed to exist only in nightmares.Yet the teenage girl on his doorstep not only knows his real name, she claims she's his daughter.Before Lockman can learn how the girl found him, he's attacked by a black-ops team of assassins... -
American Elsewhere by Robert Jackson Bennett
18 ratingsSome places are too good to be true. Under a pink moon, there is a perfect little town not found on any map. In that town, there are quiet streets lined with pretty houses, houses that conceal the strangest things. After a couple years of hard traveling, ex-cop Mona Bright inherits her long-dead mother's home in Wink, New Mexico... -
Insomnia by Stephen King
40 ratingsRalph Roberts has a problem: he isn't sleeping so well these days. In fact, he's hardly sleeping at all. Each morning, the news conveyed by the bedside clock is a little worse: 3:15...3:02...2:45...2:15. The books call it "premature waking"; Ralph, who is still learning to be a widower, calls it a season in hell...Categorized as:
dark gothic literary-fiction magical-realism spooky suspense 20th-century action-adventure -
The Dead Path by Stephen M. Irwin
14 ratingsA haunting vision in the woods sets off a series of tragic events, leaving Nicholas Close lost amid visions of ghosts trapped in their harrowing, final moments. These uniquely terrifying apparitions lead him on a thrilling and suspenseful ride to confront a wicked soul, and will leave an indelible mark on lovers of high-quality suspense and horror alike... -
The Croning by Laird Barron
18 ratingsStrange things exist on the periphery of our existence, haunting us from the darkness looming beyond our firelight. Black magic, weird cults, and worse things loom in the shadows. The Children of Old Leech have been with us from time immemorial. And they love us... -
Requiem by Graham Joyce
10 ratingsSACRED MYSTERIESFollowing the death of his wife, Tom Webster travels to Jerusalem in search of a friend from his college days. But the haunted city, divided by warring religious groups, offers him no refuge from guilt and grief.As he wanders through the streets and the archaeological sites, a mysterious old woman appears to him, delivering messages that seem beyond comprehension... -
The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan
16 ratingsSarah Crowe left Atlanta--and the remnants of a tumultuous relationship--to live in an old house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls she discovers an unfinished manuscript written by the house's former tenant--an anthropologist obsessed with the ancient oak growing on a desolate corner of the property... -
Seed by Ania Ahlborn
24 ratingsFans of Stephen King, Jack Kilborn, and Blake Crouch… prepare to meet the Devil.In the vine-twisted swamps of Louisiana, the shadows have teeth.Jack Winter has spent his entire life running from something no one else can see. His childhood is his darkest secret, but after a near fatal accident along a deserted road, the darkness he was sure he’d escaped rears its ugly head… and smiles... -
Lisey's Story by Stephen King
36 ratingsLisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools... -
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The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
25 ratingsInspired by the W.B. Yeats poem that tempts a child from home to the waters and the wild, The Stolen Child is a modern fairy tale narrated by the child Henry Day and his double.On a summer night, Henry Day runs away from home and hides in a hollow tree. There he is taken by the changelings—an unaging tribe of wild children who live in darkness and in secret... -
I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan
20 ratingsThe Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, provided he can live out a reasonably blameless life on earth. Highly sceptical, naturally, the Old Dealmaker negotiates a trial period - a summer holiday in a human body, with all the delights of the flesh...Categorized as:
dark literary-fiction magical-realism myths religion spirituality 21st-century adult -
A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons
20 ratingsA once-respected college professor and novelist, Dale Stewart has sabotaged his career and his marriage -- and now darkness is closing in on him. In the last hours of Halloween he has returned to the dying town of Elm Haven, his boyhood home, where he hopes to find peace in isolation... -
Chalk by Paul Cornell
10 ratingsAndrew Waggoner has always hung around with the losers in his school, desperately hoping each day that the school bullies — led by Drake — will pass by him in search of other prey. But one day they force him into the woods, and the bullying escalates into something more; something unforgivable; something unthinkable... -
314 by A.R. Wise
18 ratingsAlma Harper has been trying to forget what happened in Widowsfield 16 years ago. She has a good life as a music teacher now, and might rekindle her relationship with her one true love. However, the number 314 haunts her, and threatens to bring her back to the day that her brother disappeared... -
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons
24 ratingsCalcutta: a monstrous city of immense slums, disease and misery, is clasped in the foetid embrace of an ancient cult. At its decaying core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of death and destruction... -
Ash by James Herbert
18 ratingsDavid Ash – detective of the paranormal – is sent to the mysterious Comraich Castle, secluded deep in the Scottish countryside, to investigate a strange, high-profile case: a man has been found crucified – in a room that was locked. The reports suggest that the cliff-top castle is being haunted . . -
The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue
18 ratingsFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors... -
The Vines by Christopher Rice
16 ratingsThe dark history of Spring House, a beautifully restored plantation mansion on the outskirts of New Orleans, has long been forgotten. But something sinister lurks beneath the soil of the old estate.After heiress and current owner Caitlin Chaisson is witness to her husband’s stunning betrayal at her birthday party, she tries to take her own life in the mansion’s cherished gazebo... -
Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé
12 ratingsThe Blair Witch Project meets Imaginary Girls in this story of sisterhood turned toxic, imaginary monsters brought to life, and secrets that won't stay buried. Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. And moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over as someone different... -
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The Glittering World: A Book Club Recommendation! by Robert Levy
12 ratingsIn the tradition of Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane), Scott Smith (The Ruins), and Jason Mott (The Returned), award-winning playwright Robert Levy spins a dark tale of alienation and belonging, the familiar and the surreal, family secrets and the search for truth in his debut supernatural thriller.AS A BOY, HE VANISHED INTO THE WOODS. SOMETHING ELSE CAME BACK... -
What Should Be Wild by Julia Fine
16 ratingsIn this darkly funny, striking debut, a highly unusual young woman must venture into the woods at the edge of her home to remove a curse that has plagued the women in her family for millennia—an utterly original novel with all the mesmerizing power of The Tiger’s Wife, The Snow Child, and Swamplandia!Cursed...Categorized as:
dark gothic literary-fiction magical-realism myths retellings action-adventure audiobook
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