36 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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Psycho by Robert Bloch

Mary Crane is tired and desperate when she pulls into the Bates Motel on a stormy night. The place looks quiet, almost too quiet, and Norman Bates, the young man who runs it, seems nervous but polite. He lives with his mother in the house behind the motel, or so he says. Mary only wants a night of rest, but her stay becomes the start of something far more terrifying. Norman is not just shy or awkward. He is a man torn between himself and his cruel mother, trapped in his own broken mind. Psycho  shows how danger can appear ordinary, and how madness can live behind a friendly smile.

It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd.

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The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

The Girl Next Door is set in a quiet suburban neighbourhood and follows  Meg and her sister Susan. After their parents die, they are left in the care of their aunt, Ruth. She begins with harsh words and cruel rules, but her cruelty grows darker each day. Ruth’s sons join in, and soon other children in the neighbourhood follow her lead. Meg and Susan are trapped in the basement, where pain and abuse replace kindness. Only one boy in the neighbourhood sees what is happening and struggles with the choice of whether to act. 

Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.

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Pet Sematary by Stephen King

Louis Creed moves with his family to a small town in Maine, ready for a new start. Their home is close to a busy road, where trucks pass by at dangerous speed. Behind the house lies a pet cemetery, where local children bury their animals. Further into the woods, there is another burial ground, older and filled with a darker power. Soon Louis is drawn to that place despite the warnings he has received. Pet Sematary  is about grief, the desperate need to undo loss.

When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic and rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Yet despite Ludlow’s tranquility, there’s an undercurrent of danger that exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the makeshift pet cemetery out back in the nearby woods. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. An ominous fate befalls anyone who dares tamper with this forbidden place, as Louis is about to discover for himself.

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Misery by Stephen King

Paul Sheldon is a famous writer who wakes up in a strange house after a car accident. His rescuer, Annie Wilkes, calls herself his number one fan. At first she seems caring, but soon her obsession shows itself. Annie is furious when she discovers Paul has killed off her favourite character. She demands that he write a new story to bring her back. Paul is trapped in her house, badly injured, and completely at her mercy. Annie’s kindness turns to violence, and Paul must fight for survival with nothing but his mind and his words. 

Stephen King is arguably the most popular novelist in the history of American fiction. He owes his fans a love letter. Misery is it.

Paul Sheldon, author of a bestselling series of historical romances, wakes up one winter day in a strange place, a secluded farmhouse in Colorado. He wakes up to unspeakable pain (a dislocated pelvis, a crushed knee, two shattered legs) and to a bizarre greeting from the woman who has saved his life: “I’m your number one fan!”

Annie Wilkes is a huge ex-nurse, handy with controlled substances and other instruments of abuse, including an axe and a blowtorch. A dangerous psychotic with a Romper Room sense of good and bad, fair and unfair, Annie Wilkes may be Stephen King’s most terrifying creation. It’s not fair, for example, that her favorite character in the world, Misery Chastain, has been killed by her creator, as Annie discovers when Paul’s latest novel comes out in paperback. And it’s not good that her favorite writer has been a Don’t-Bee and written a different kind of novel, a nasty novel, the novel he has always wanted to write, the only copy of which now lies in Annie’s angry hands.

Because she wants Paul Sheldon to be a Do-Bee, she buys him a typewriter and a ream of paper and tells him to bring Misery back to life. Wheelchair-bound, drug-dependent, locked in his room, Paul doesn’t have much choice. He’s an entertainer held captive by his audience. A writer in serious trouble. But writers have weapons too.

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The Collector by John Fowles

Frederick is a lonely man with little education, little charm, and almost no close relationships. He spends his time collecting butterflies and watching life pass by. Then he sees Miranda, a young art student, and becomes obsessed with her. When he wins money, Frederick buys a house in the countryside and kidnaps her, believing she will one day fall in love with him. He tries to justify his actions, but Miranda is his prisoner, forced to live according to his plan. The Collector shows how obsession can strip away humanity and turn love into a cage.

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. He is obsessed with a beautiful stranger, the art student Miranda. When he wins the pools he buys a remote Sussex house and calmly abducts Miranda, believing she will grow to love him in time.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

Eva never felt certain about becoming a mother. When her son Kevin grows older, she feels something is deeply wrong with him. He is cold, distant, and cruel in ways others refuse to see. On the day before his sixteenth birthday, Kevin kills classmates, a teacher, and a cafeteria worker in a school massacre. Two years later, Eva writes letters to her estranged husband, trying to understand how they arrived at this point. Was Kevin born evil, or did her doubts as a mother help shape him? We Need to Talk About Kevin  questions love, family, and responsibility, and forces the reader to face the fear that sometimes children grow into monsters.


The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother – and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklin. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.

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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

In a future city, youth violence has taken over the streets. Alex, a teenage gang leader, spends his nights stealing, fighting, and attacking without guilt. He tells his story in his own slang, sharp and shocking, filled with cruelty and energy. After being caught, Alex is sent into a new kind of prison program. The government tries to control his mind and cure him of his violence through painful treatment. A Clockwork Orange  asks whether a person who loses the ability to choose between good and evil is still truly human.


In Anthony Burgess’s influential nightmare vision of the future, criminals take over after dark. Teen gang leader Alex narrates in fantastically inventive slang that echoes the violent intensity of youth rebelling against society. Dazzling and transgressive, A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil and the meaning of human freedom. This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition, and Burgess’s introduction, “A Clockwork Orange Resucked.”

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Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Baby Teeth is about Hanna,  a little girl who refuses to speak, but she communicates in other ways. To her father, she is a sweet and silent angel. To her mother, Suzette, she is a constant threat. Hanna wants her father’s love all to herself, and she sees her mother as an enemy. The tricks she plays grow more cruel and dangerous, while her father stays blind to what is happening. Suzette feels her health and sanity slipping away as she tries to cope with a daughter who may be far more dangerous than anyone wants to believe. 

Meet Hanna.

She’s the sweet-but-silent angel in the adoring eyes of her Daddy. He’s the only person who understands her, and all Hanna wants is to live happily ever after with him. But Mommy stands in her way, and she’ll try any trick she can think of to get rid of her. Ideally for good.

Meet Suzette.

She loves her daughter, really, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. As Hanna’s tricks become increasingly sophisticated, and Suzette’s husband remains blind to the failing family dynamics, Suzette starts to fear that there’s something seriously wrong, and that maybe home isn’t the best place for their baby girl after all.

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You by Caroline Kepnes

You  centers around Joe Goldberg who works in a small New York bookstore, where he meets Beck, a young aspiring writer. He becomes obsessed with her and begins to follow every detail of her life online. Joe uses what he learns to arrange meetings, win her trust, and step into her world. To Beck, he looks like the perfect boyfriend. To the reader, he is a stalker who removes anyone who gets in his way, even through violence. The story is told through Joe’s voice, which makes it more unsettling, because he justifies every act as love. 

When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.

There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.

As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.

A terrifying exploration of how vulnerable we all are to stalking and manipulation.

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Vanessa is fifteen when she begins a relationship with Jacob Strane, her much older English teacher. She believes she is mature, that she understands love and desire. Strane tells her the same, convincing her she is special. Years later, when accusations of abuse against him come out, Vanessa must face the truth. Was it love, or was she manipulated by a man who used his power over her? Switching between past and present, the story shows how memory can confuse what happened and how trauma can live inside someone long after the events are over. My Dark Vanessa is unsettling. It captures the conflict of a girl who thought she was in control but was never truly free.


Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.

2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.

2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?

Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

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A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

A Head Full of Ghosts is about Marjorie who is fourteen when she begins to show signs of mental illness, but her family cannot agree on what is happening. Doctors suggest schizophrenia, but others say she is possessed by something darker. A priest offers an exorcism, and soon a television crew begins to film the family’s suffering. The Barrett home turns into the set of a reality show.Years later, Marjorie’s younger sister tells the story again, and her memories conflict with what the world saw on screen. The book questions what is real, what is imagined, and how easily suffering can be turned into a show for others.


The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents’ despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie’s descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts’ plight. With John, Marjorie’s father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie’s younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface–and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

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The Troop by Nick Cutter

Scoutmaster Tim Riggs takes a group of boys on a camping trip to the Canadian wilderness. It is supposed to be a simple weekend of hiking and campfires. Instead, they meet a man who is dangerously thin, sick, and hungry in unnatural ways. The infection he carries spreads quickly, and soon the boys are fighting not only for their survival but against each other. The forest becomes a trap, and every choice feels deadly. The Troop  is brutal and frightening.

Once a year, scoutmaster Tim Riggs leads a troop of boys into the Canadian wilderness for a three-day camping trip; a tradition as comforting and reliable as a good ghost story and a roaring bonfire. But when an unexpected intruder — shockingly thin, disturbingly pale, and voraciously hungry — stumbles upon their campsite, Tim and the boys are exposed to something far more frightening than any tale of terror. The human carrier of a bioengineered nightmare. An inexplicable horror that spreads faster than fear. A harrowing struggle for survival that will pit the troop against the elements, the infected … and one another.

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Little Deaths by Emma Flint

Little Deaths is set in Queens, New York in 1965. Ruth Malone wakes to find her two children missing. Within days, both are found dead. Ruth becomes the main suspect, judged not only by the police but by her neighbours, the press, and the public. Her lifestyle, her drinking, and her relationships are all used against her. A young reporter begins to doubt the simple story being told and looks closer at Ruth’s life. The novel, based on true events.It is really disturbing as it shows how quickly society can decide guilt before the truth is known.


It’s 1965 in a tight-knit working-class neighborhood in Queens, New York, and Ruth Malone–a single mother who works long hours as a cocktail waitress–wakes to discover her two small children, Frankie Jr. and Cindy, have gone missing. Later that day, Cindy’s body is found in a derelict lot a half mile from her home, strangled. Ten days later, Frankie Jr.’s decomposing body is found. Immediately, all fingers point to Ruth.

As police investigate the murders, the detritus of Ruth’s life is exposed. Seen through the eyes of the cops, the empty bourbon bottles and provocative clothing which litter her apartment, the piles of letters from countless men and Ruth’s little black book of phone numbers, make her a drunk, a loose woman–and therefore a bad mother. The lead detective, a strict Catholic who believes women belong in the home, leaps to the obvious facing divorce and a custody battle, Malone took her children’s lives.

Pete Wonicke is a rookie tabloid reporter who finagles an assignment to cover the murders. Determined to make his name in the paper, he begins digging into the case. Pete’s interest in the story develops into an obsession with Ruth, and he comes to believe there’s something more to the woman whom prosecutors, the press, and the public have painted as a promiscuous femme fatale. Did Ruth Malone violently kill her own children, is she a victim of circumstance–or is there something more sinister at play?

Inspired by a true story, Little Deaths, like celebrated novels by Sarah Waters and Megan Abbott, is compelling literary crime fiction that explores the capacity for good and evil in us all.

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We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter

We Are All Guilty Here is set in the small town of North Falls, where everyone knows everyone. During the Fourth of July fireworks, two teenage girls disappear, and the whole community is shaken. Officer Emmy Clifton feels the weight of the case even more because one of the girls is her best friend’s daughter. As the search stretches into years, the book shows how the town changes and how relationships fracture under the pressure of guilt and grief. It’s a tense and emotional story about community, responsibility, and the things people try to hide.

The first thrilling mystery in the new North Falls series from Karin Slaughter, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Girls and the Will Trent series.

Welcome to North Falls—a small town where everyone knows everyone. Or so they think.

Until the night of the fireworks. When two teenage girls vanish, and the town ignites.

For Officer Emmy Clifton, it’s personal. She turned away when her best friend’s daughter needed help—and now she must bring her home.

But as Emmy combs through the puzzle the girls left behind, she realizes she never really knew them. Nobody did.

Every teenage girl has secrets. But who would kill for them? And what else is the town hiding?

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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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Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Pretty Girls starts with a woman looking into her sister’s disappearance, but what she finds is way worse than she ever expected. It’s the kind of book that leaves your stomach in knots.

Twenty years ago Claire Scott’s eldest sister, Julia, went missing. No one knew where she went – no note, no body. It was a mystery that was never solved and it tore her family apart.

Now another girl has disappeared, with chilling echoes of the past. And it seems that she might not be the only one.

Claire is convinced Julia’s disappearance is linked.

But when she begins to learn the truth about her sister, she is confronted with a shocking discovery, and nothing will ever be the same.

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The Summer I Died by Ryan C. Thomas

The Summer I Died kicks off like a laid-back summer hangout between two best friends until everything flips into a nightmare. It feels like you’re trapped right there with them, fighting to survive.

So much screaming. When Roger Huntington comes home from college for the summer and is met by his best friend, Tooth, he knows they’re going to have a good time. A summer full of beer, comic books, movies, laughs, and maybe even girls. So much pain. The sun is high and the sky is clear as Roger and Tooth set out to shoot beer cans at Bobcat Mountain. Just two friends catching up on lost time, two friends thinking about their futures, two friends– So much blood. –suddenly thrust in the middle of a nightmare. Forced to fight for their life against a sadistic killer. A killer with an arsenal of razor sharp blades and a hungry dog by his side. So much death. If they are to survive, they must decide: are heroes born, or are they made? Or is something more powerful happening to them? And more importantly, how do you survive when all roads lead to death.

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The Favorite Girl by Monica Arya

The Favorite Girl is set in a fancy mansion where nothing is what it seems. A woman takes a strange job out of desperation, only to realize she was handpicked for something terrifying.

Every family has secrets—dark ones, twisted ones, ones they hide. The Ivory family is no different. From the outside of their gated estate, one would see a beautiful, wealthy family. But the more perfect they seem, it only shows how many imperfections they are trying to bury. When Demi Rao, a young woman is at her wits’ end and on the run from escaping her captor, she comes across an employment ad from the Ivory family, looking for someone to help maintain their elaborate estate. Although the ad is strange with meticulous directions to wear all-white, no makeup and speak quietly, Demi applies. With no choices, Demi gets and accepts the job and when she does, she quickly realizes she’s not there to clean, she’s there for a purpose. They picked her. They chose her. They’ve always known her. Behind the doors of the pristine estate lies secrets, a lethal human experiment and Demi’s entire life planned out for her.

The Ivory’s have picked a favorite girl.

And it might just be her.

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The Last Party by A.R. Torre

The Last Party follows a picture-perfect mom who’s hiding a terrible secret from decades ago. The most chilling part is how carefully people can hide the worst parts of themselves behind a smile.

A loving mother. A notorious murderer. They both have reasons to hide their secrets in a novel of escalating shock and suspense by New York Times bestselling author A. R. Torre.

Perla Wultz lives with her husband, Grant, and their precious daughter, Sophie, in a gated Pasadena community. Affluent, sociable, and accomplished, Perla plays the part of loving wife and mother to perfection. It seems an ideal life, if not for a decades-old crime that has become Perla’s dark and consuming secret obsession.

Twenty-three years ago, Leewood Folcrum confessed to murdering two young girls during a birthday party. Though he’s been condemned to a life sentence, his crime is not forgotten. Not by Perla, nor by an inquisitive doctoral student interviewing Folcrum for his dissertation. He’s getting the killer to open up—about his motives, his confession, and the truth of what really happened on that horrible night.

As the past and the present entwine, the deceptions behind the infamous murder begin to surface. But who’s deceiving who now? And why? And as an ingeniously twisted plan is set in motion, who will be the next to die?

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Brother by Ania Ahlborn

Brother takes place in a creepy farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, where a family has a dark and deadly habit. One boy wants out, but breaking away isn’t easy. This one sticks with you because of how twisted the family is and how real it all feels.

Brother follows a teenager determined to break from his family’s unconventional—and deeply disturbing—traditions.

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the Morrows’ backyard.

But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he’s immediately smitten. For a moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he’s become. But his brother, Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place.

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If You Tell by Gregg Olsen

If You Tell is a true story about three sisters who survived years of horrible abuse from their own mom. It’s disturbing in a raw, heartbreaking way. The worst part is knowing it all really happened. Still, their strength makes it worth reading.

A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood

After more than a decade, when sisters Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek hear the word mom, it claws like an eagle’s talons, triggering memories that have been their secret since childhood. Until now.
For years, behind the closed doors of their farmhouse in Raymond, Washington, their sadistic mother, Shelly, subjected her girls to unimaginable abuse, degradation, torture, and psychic terrors. Through it all, Nikki, Sami, and Tori developed a defiant bond that made them far less vulnerable than Shelly imagined. Even as others were drawn into their mother’s dark and perverse web, the sisters found the strength and courage to escape an escalating nightmare that culminated in multiple murders.

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Intensity by Dean Koontz

Intensity follows a woman who ends up in the same house as a killer and then tries to stop him from hurting someone else. What makes it so intense is how the fear never lets upnot even for a second.

Past midnight, Chyna Shepard, twenty-six, gazes out a moonlit window, unable to sleep on her first night in the Napa Valley home of her best friend’s family. Instinct proves reliable. A murderous sociopath, Edgler Foreman Vess, has entered the house, intent on killing everyone inside. A self-proclaimed “homicidal adventurer,” Vess lives only to satisfy all appetites as they arise, to immerse himself in sensation, to live without fear, remorse or limits, to live with “intensity.” Chyna is trapped in his deadly orbit.

Chyna is a survivor, toughened by a lifelong struggle for safety and self-respect. Now she will be tested as never before. At first, her sole aim is to get out alive – until, by chance, she learns the identity of Vess’s next intended victim, a faraway innocent only she can save. Driven by a newly discovered thirst for meaning beyond mere self-preservation, Chyna musters every inner resource she has to save an endangered girl… as moment by moment, the terrifying threat of Edgler Foreman Vess intensifies.

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Gerald’s Game by Stephen King

Gerald’s Game starts off with a woman and her husband playing a private game at a lake house until he suddenly dies, leaving her trapped. She’s stuck alone, handcuffed, with no help in sight. What gets to you is how she has to face her past and her fears, all by herself.

Master storyteller Stephen King presents this classic, terrifying #1 New York Times bestseller. When a game of seduction between a husband and wife ends in death, the nightmare has only begun…“And now the voice which spoke belonged to no one but herself. Oh my God, it said. Oh my God, I am all alone out here. I am all alone.” Once again, Jessie Burlingame has been talked into submitting to her husband Gerald’s kinky sex games—something that she’s frankly had enough of, and they never held much charm for her to begin with. So much for a “romantic getaway” at their secluded summer home. After Jessie is handcuffed to the bedposts—and Gerald crosses a line with his wife—the day ends with deadly consequences. Now Jessie is utterly trapped in an isolated lakeside house that has become her prison—and comes face-to-face with her deepest, darkest fears and memories. Her only company is that of the various voices filling her mind…as well as the shadows of nightfall that may conceal an imagined or very real threat right there with her.

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Woom by Duncan Ralston

Woom takes place in a rundown motel room where a man tells a woman the awful things that happened there. It’s disturbing because the stories go from bad to worse real fast. It’s one of those books that makes you feel like you need a shower after reading.

The Lonely Motel holds many dark secrets… and Room 6 just might possess the worst of them all.

Angel knows all about pain. His mother died in this room. He’s researched its history. Today he’s come back to end it, no matter the cost, once and for all.

Shyla, a plus-sized prostitute, thinks the stories Angel tells her can’t be true. Secrets so vile, you won’t want to let them inside you.

But the Lonely Motel doesn’t forget. It doesn’t forgive. And it always claims its victim.

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All the Little Raindrops by Mia Sheridan

All the Little Raindrops follows two kids who were kidnapped, escaped, and years later have to face the past all over again. The real horror is how the trauma never really left them and how the danger might still be out there.

The chilling story of the abduction of two teenagers, their escape, and the dark secrets that, years later, bring them back to the scene of the crime.

It’s senior-year spring break, and Noelle Meyer and Evan Sinclair have been kidnapped. Neither knows why they were chosen, only that they share a tragic past: Evan’s father got away with killing Noelle’s mother, effectively ruining her family when the death was ruled an accident.

Despite the connection that should have made them enemies, the teens instead unite to face their other common denominator—their abductors. Noelle and Evan survive one sadistic circumstance after another, eventually making a harrowing escape. But every happy ending comes at a price…

Years later, Evan, now a private investigator, revisits the crime when he learns it may be ongoing. He reaches out to Noelle for help, and they discover that the answers lie with a man known only as the Collector. To close their case and solve the ones that followed, Noelle and Evan must unmask this mysterious spectator—the only man who knows enough secrets to take their captors down.

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Appetite for Innocence by Lucinda Berry

Appetite for Innocence tells the story of a serial predator who uses social media to hunt teenage girls. One brave girl manages to escape. It feels too real, like something that could happen today, just from oversharing online.

Be careful what you post online. Your next check-in might lead him right to you…

A serial rapist is kidnapping teenage girls. But he’s not interested in just any teenage girls—only virgins. He hunts them by following their status updates and check-ins on social media. Once he’s captured them, they’re locked away in his sound-proof basement until they’re groomed and ready. He throws them away like pieces of trash after he’s stolen their innocence. Nobody escapes alive.

Until Ella.

Ella risks it all to escape, setting herself and the other girls free. But only Sarah—the girl whose been captive the longest—gets out with her. The girls are hospitalized and surrounded by FBI agents who will stop at nothing to find the man responsible. Ella and Sarah are the key to their investigation, but Sarah’s hiding something and it isn’t long before Ella discovers her nightmare is far from over.

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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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