11 Books That Will Disturb You on a Whole New level

If you are looking for books that’ll really mess with your head, you’re in for a wild ride. I am here to give you the selection of reads that disturb on a whole new level. These novels are definitely not the books that you can read just before bed. Instead these books will leave you questioning everything and maybe even peeking over your shoulder once or twice. From twisted plots to chilling characters, these books push boundaries and stir up emotions you never knew you had.

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica

Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica takes a chilling look at a world where humans are turned into meat for consumption. It’s a disturbing ride through a society where eating human flesh is legal, and the protagonist, Marcos, finds himself caught in a moral dilemma as he grapples with his humanity.

Blurb: Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans —though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

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The Cellar by Natasha Preston

The Cellar by Natasha Preston is a gripping thriller that follows the harrowing ordeal of a kidnapped girl held captive in a cellar. As the story unfolds, the chilling reality of her situation and the twisted mind of her captor create an atmosphere of constant tension and fear.

Blurb: Nothing ever happens in the town of Long Thorpe – that is, until sixteen-year-old Summer Robinson disappears without a trace. No family or police investigation can track her down. Spending months inside the cellar of her kidnapper with several other girls, Summer learns of Colin’s abusive past, and his thoughts of his victims being his family…his perfect, pure flowers. But flowers can’t survive long cut off from the sun, and time is running out.

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A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara delves into the dark corners of trauma and its lifelong impact. Through the intertwined lives of four friends, the novel explores themes of abuse, addiction, and the struggle for redemption. The haunting portrayal of Jude’s past and its effects on his present make for a deeply disturbing read.

Blurb: When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

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Awake by Natasha Preston

Awake by Natasha Preston explores the terrifying consequences of uncovering buried memories. Scarlett’s journey to reclaim her lost memories takes a dark turn as she discovers a past shrouded in secrets and danger.

Blurb: Scarlett Garner doesn’t remember anything before the age of four—but a car accident changes everything. She starts to remember pieces of a past that frighten her. A past her parents hid from her…and a secret that could get her killed.

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Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn plunges readers into a world of psychological suspense and family dysfunction. As journalist Camille Preaker delves into the murders of two young girls, she confronts her own demons and uncovers dark truths that threaten to consume her.

Blurb: Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming.

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The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux is a classic tale of obsession and tragedy set in the grandeur of the Paris Opera House. The story of the deformed and murderous Phantom’s obsession with the beautiful Christine is as haunting as it is tragic.

Blurb: First published in French as a serial in 1909, The Phantom of the Opera is a riveting story that revolves around the young, Swedish Christine Daaé. Her father, a famous musician, dies, and she is raised in the Paris Opera House with his dying promise of a protective angel of music to guide her. After a time at the opera house, she begins hearing a voice, who eventually teaches her how to sing beautifully. All goes well until Christine’s childhood friend Raoul comes to visit his parents, who are patrons of the opera, and he sees Christine when she begins successfully singing on the stage. The voice, who is the deformed, murderous ‘ghost’ of the opera house named Erik, however, grows violent in his terrible jealousy, until Christine suddenly disappears. The phantom is in love, but it can only spell disaster.Leroux’s work, with characters ranging from the spoiled prima donna Carlotta to the mysterious Persian from Erik’s past, has been immortalized by memorable adaptations. Despite this, it remains a remarkable piece of Gothic horror literature in and of itself, deeper and darker than any version that follows.

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Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a powerful exploration of the legacy of slavery and its impact on generations of families. Through the intertwined stories of two half-sisters and their descendants, the novel paints a vivid and heartbreaking portrait of the human cost of historical atrocities.

Blurb: A novel of breathtaking sweep and emotional power that traces three hundred years in Ghana and along the way also becomes a truly great American novel. Extraordinary for its exquisite language, its implacable sorrow, its soaring beauty, and for its monumental portrait of the forces that shape families and nations, Homegoing heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia’s descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

Generation after generation, Yaa Gyasi’s magisterial first novel sets the fate of the individual against the obliterating movements of time, delivering unforgettable characters whose lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. Homegoing is a tremendous reading experience, not to be missed, by an astonishingly gifted young writer.

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Heaven by Mieko Kawakami

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami offers a raw and unflinching look at the devastating effects of bullying. The protagonist’s resigned acceptance of his torment and the stark portrayal of the violence inflicted upon him make for a deeply unsettling read.

Blurb: Hailed as a bold foray into new literary territory, Kawakami’s novel is told in the voice of a 14-year-old student who subjected to relentless torment for having a lazy eye. Instead of resisting, the boy chooses to suffer in complete resignation. The only person who understands what he is going through is a female classmate who suffers similar treatment at the hands of her tormentors.

These raw and realistic portrayals of bullying are counterbalanced by textured exposition of the philosophical and religious debates concerning violence to which the weak are subjected.

Kawakami’s simple yet profound new work stands as a dazzling testament to her literary talent. There can be little doubt that it has cemented her reputation as one of the most important young authors working to expand the boundaries of contemporary Japanese literature.

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The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry

The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry is a chilling psychological thriller that explores the dark side of parenthood. As Christopher and Hannah welcome Janie into their lives, they soon discover that their new daughter harbors disturbing secrets that threaten to tear their family apart.

Blurb: A page-turning debut of suspense about a young couple desperate to have a child of their own—and the unsettling consequences of getting what they always wanted.

Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.

But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.

Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.

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Bunny by Mona Awad

Bunny by Mona Awad is a twisted and surreal story of friendship and belonging. As Samantha Heather Mackey is drawn into the bizarre world of the Bunnies, the line between reality and imagination blurs, leading to a collision of friendship and desire with deadly consequences.

Blurb: We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn’t we?

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

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What Lies Between Us by John Marrs

What Lies Between Us by John Marrs is a gripping psychological thriller that unravels the dark secrets hidden within the walls of a house. As Maggie and Nina’s twisted relationship unfolds, the true extent of their shared past comes to light, revealing a chilling narrative of manipulation and revenge.

Blurb: They say every house has its secrets, and the house that Maggie and Nina have shared for so long is no different. Except that these secrets are not buried in the past.

Every other night, Maggie and Nina have dinner together. When they are finished, Nina helps Maggie back to her room in the attic, and into the heavy chain that keeps her there. Because Maggie has done things to Nina that can’t ever be forgiven, and now she is paying the price.

But there are many things about the past that Nina doesn’t know, and Maggie is going to keep it that way—even if it kills her.

Because in this house, the truth is more dangerous than lies.

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There you have the list of books that can be unsettling and challenging.

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