43 of The Most Disturbing Novels You’ll Want to Read (If You Dare)

If you’re someone who loves to push boundaries and isn’t afraid to explore some of the most disturbing books, this booklist is for you. These 10 books are dark, intense, and thought-provoking—they’ll stick with you long after you’ve finished reading. If you’re up for the challenge, these books will leave an impact. Just make sure you have something light and comforting to read afterward—you’ll definitely need it.

Disturbing Novels To Read In 2025

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

A Little Life isn’t just a book—it’s an emotional bulldozer that will flatten you. I went into this thinking, I can handle it, I’ve read some heavy stuff before, but wow, I was not prepared. This book is heartbreak in paperback form, and it’s one of those novels that sticks with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

The story follows four friends—Willem, JB, Malcolm, and Jude—who meet in college and then move to New York to chase their dreams. At first, it feels like a typical coming-of-age tale: they’re struggling, figuring out their lives, and leaning on each other through the ups and downs. But soon, you realize this book is really about Jude. Jude is the center of their group.

Jude’s life is marked by a level of trauma that is hard to wrap your head around. I found myself needing to take breaks from the book because it was just that heavy. It’s not just that the things that happened to Jude are awful—it’s the way Yanagihara writes them. She doesn’t pull punches. The writing is so vivid and raw. At times, I wanted to reach into the book and give him a hug. Honestly, I’ve never felt this strongly about a character before.​

A Little Life is also incredibly compelling. I found myself needing to know what happened next, even when I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. It’s like watching a tragedy unfold in slow motion—you know it’s going to break your heart, but you can’t look away.

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The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry

The Perfect Child by Lucinda Berry is one of those books that sneaks up on you and then grabs you by the throat. What starts as a seemingly sweet story about a couple finally getting the child they’ve always wanted quickly spirals into a psychological nightmare that had me questioning everything and everyone.

Christopher and Hannah seem like the perfect couple: he’s a surgeon, she’s a nurse, and they’ve got this great life going on—except for one thing. They can’t have kids. Enter Janie, a six-year-old girl who’s been through some serious trauma and is in desperate need of a loving home. Christopher is immediately smitten, convinced this is the answer to their prayers.

As Janie becomes more attached to Christopher, she starts acting out in ways that made me physically uncomfortable.The tension between Christopher and Hannah increases as Janie gradually creates a divide between them. You can actually feel the growing sense of unease. I absolutely loved the short chapters. I read this book in almost one sitting because I had to know what would happen next.

The Perfect Child is a psychological horror story, but it’s also about the complexities of family, love, and how far you’ll go for the people you care about.

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The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

Set in a seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood, the story revolves around two sisters, Meg and Susan, who are left in the care of their aunt after their parents die. But this isn’t the kind of “aunt” you’d want to spend summer vacations with. She’s rapidly descending into madness, and she drags her sons—and eventually the whole neighborhood—down with her. The cruelty and torture that Meg and Susan endure at the hands of these people are beyond disturbing.

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American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

 I haven’t read American Psycho yet, but it’s known for showing a successful 1980s Wall Street guy, Patrick Bateman, who seems perfect on the outside but is actually a violent psychopath. The book mixes dark humor with shocking violence and points out the emptiness of a life focused on money and appearances. It’s a satire that highlights the dark side of the American Dream and the problems with a materialistic lifestyle. The story is intense, so be prepared for some disturbing scenes.

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Tampa by Alissa Nutting

This book follows Celeste Price, a middle school teacher who is also a sexual predator targeting her male students. Nutting doesn’t sugarcoat anything here, and the story is both disturbing and fascinating.

Celeste is beautiful, manipulative, and knows exactly how to get what she wants. The writing is sharp, witty, and uncomfortably honest. I caught myself cringing, yet I couldn’t put it down.

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The Groomer by Jon Athan

Andrew McCarthy’s life spirals into tension after he catches Zachary Denton taking photos of his daughter, Grace, and other kids at a park. Despite being confronted by the police, Zachary talks his way out of trouble, leaving Andrew uneasy. What follows is a chilling and disturbing thriller.

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My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

This story focuses on Vanessa, who looks back on her past relationship with her high school teacher, Jacob Strane. Back then, she believed it was love, but now she’s struggling with the realization that it was actually abuse. The book alternates between Vanessa’s teenage years and her adult life, showing how this relationship has haunted her.

This book is messy, confusing, and heartbreaking. I found myself feeling so much empathy for Vanessa, even when she made questionable choices. The book is heavy, but it’s also powerful in its exploration of victimhood, consent, and the lasting impact of trauma.

If you’re looking for a thought-provoking read that will stick with you, My Dark Vanessa is a must. However, it does deal with sensitive topics like sexual abuse and grooming, so keep that in mind.

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Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter

Pretty Girls is a dark thriller that hits you like a punch to the gut—over and over again. The story follows two sisters, Claire and Lydia, who are estranged after the disappearance of their sister Julia years ago. When Claire’s husband is murdered, the sisters reconnect and uncover some seriously twisted secrets.

This book is full of twists, turns, and moments that made me gasp out loud (seriously, don’t read this in public unless you want people giving you weird looks). The pacing is relentless, and just when you think things can’t get any worse for the characters, Slaughter cranks up the intensity even more.

I loved how gritty and raw this book felt, but be aware that it includes violence and some very graphic scenes. If you’re a fan of thrillers that go dark, this one’s for you.

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In the Cut by Susanna Moore

In the Cut is a seductive and chilling novel that you soundly be able to put down. The story centers on Frannie, an English professor in New York who becomes involved with a police detective investigating a series of brutal murders. This book is all about atmosphere—dark, moody, and tinged with an underlying sense of dread.

Moore’s writing is sleek and subtle. The book is a psychologically complex and unsettling, read.

If you enjoy psychological thrillers that mess with your mind, keep you guessing, and disturb you at the same time, In the Cut is definitely worth checking out.

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The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

Finally, we have The End of Alice, a book that is as disturbing as it is well-written. The story is told from the perspective of a convicted pedophile corresponding with a young woman who has similar desires. It’s dark, twisted, and deeply unsettling.

What really struck me about The End of Alice is Homes’ ability to make you feel trapped inside the mind of the protagonist. The writing is haunting, and the characters are horrifyingly real. It’s not an easy read, but it’s definitely compelling in a morbid way. If you like to explore the darkest corners of human nature, this book might be a choice.

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Raised by a Killer by Sea Caummisar

Raised by a Killer follows Deicide,  a young girl trying to live a normal life, but her father isn’t normal at all. He’s a serial killer, and she doesn’t even know it at first. As she gets older, little things start to seem off.Soon she realises that  her dad is a monster, and she’s been raised by him all along. The book shows how growing up around evil shapes someone. It’s not just about the killings, it’s about what that kind of life does to a kid’s mind.  You will feel sad and uneasy. You will  want to protect her, even though it might be too late. 

The story of a daughter being raised by a single father, who happens to be a serial killer.
Experience the sights, smells, sounds, and experiences of Deicide’s life.
With each book, Deicide will grow older, giving us an inside look at how her life has been affected due to her upbringing.

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The Slob by Aron Beauregard

The Slob is about Vera being raised in the kind of home that makes your stomach turn. It was filthy and full of pain. Now that she’s grown up, she’s obsessed with keeping things spotless. Cleanliness is how she feels safe. She starts selling cleaning products to make money before her baby comes, but one door-to-door visit changes everything. She ends up in a house that brings her worst memories back and adds new horrors on top. The nastiness in this book is no joke. It’s gross, disturbing, and intense. 


SOME STAINS DON’T COME OUT… Raised in a household that was so filthy it was stomach spilling, Vera has become a neat-freak. Her obsession with cleanliness sprouts the concept that her skills can be put to use in a unique way. In an effort to generate some income for her and her disabled husband Daniel just prior to the birth of their first child, she takes aim at the booming door to door sales business of the late 80s.

All is going well until she arrives at the steps of a house she wished she never had. The steps of an evil that brings back the ghastly memories she so desperately tried to wash away.

Nothing will prepare you for the nastiness, disorder and uncleansable horror brought forth by… The Slob.

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Gone to See the River Man by Kristopher Triana

In Gone to See the River Man, Lori is obsessed with a killer named Edmund Cox. She sends him letters and visits him in prison like he’s some kind of celebrity. When he asks her to go on a trip to find something for him, she says yes without hesitation. She brings her disabled sister with her, which makes the trip even harder. The woods, the cabin, and what she finds there it’s all terrifying. But the scariest part is what’s inside Lori. Her love for a killer shows how twisted obsession can get. 


Super fans. Groupies. Stalkers.

These people will give anything for the idols they worship, be they rock stars, actors or authors. Or even serial killers.

Lori is just such a fanatic. Her obsession is with Edmund Cox, a man of sadistic cruelty who butchered more than twenty women. She’s gone so far as to forge a relationship with him, visiting him in prison and sending him letters on a regular basis. She will do anything to get close to him, so when he gives her a task, she eagerly accepts it.

She has no idea of the horror that awaits her.

Edmund tells her she must go to his cabin in the woods of Killen and retrieve a key to deliver to a mysterious figure known only as The River Man.

In her quest, she brings along her handicapped sister, and they journey through the deep, dark valley, beginning their trip upriver. The trip quickly becomes a surreal nightmare, one that digs up Lori’s personal demons, the ones she feels bonds her to Edmund. The river runs with flesh, the cabin is a vault of horrors, and ghostly blues music echoes through the mountains. Soon they will learn that The River Man is not quite fact or folklore, and definitely not human — at least, not anymore. And the key is just the beginning of what is required of Lori to prove she’s worthy of a madman’s love.

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Keep It in the Family by John Marrs

Keep It in the Family is one of my favorite books from John Marrs. Mia and Finn just bought their dream home. It’s old, needs work, but they’re excited to fix it up especially now that Mia is pregnant. Then Mia finds a weird message carved into the wood. That message leads them to the attic, where they find something truly awful. After that, nothing feels right. Mia becomes obsessed with finding the truth. The deeper she digs, the more it takes over her life. Finn doesn’t understand what’s happening, and the distance between them grows. This book was really addictive. It made me think about how the past can live inside a house and inside a person.

In this chilling novel from bestselling author John Marrs, a young couple’s house hides terrible secrets—and not all of them are confined to the past.

Mia and Finn are busy turning a derelict house into their dream home when Mia unexpectedly falls pregnant. But just when they think the house is ready, Mia discovers a chilling message scored into a skirting board: I WILL SAVE THEM FROM THE ATTIC. Following the clue up into the eaves, the couple make a gruesome discovery: their dream home was once a house of horrors.

In the wake of their traumatic discovery, the baby arrives and Mia can’t shake her fixation with the monstrous crimes that happened right above them. Haunted by the terrible things she saw and desperate to find answers, her obsession pulls her ever further from her husband.

Secrecy shrouds the mystery of the attic, but when shards of a dark truth start to emerge, Mia realises the danger is terrifyingly present. She is prepared to do anything to protect her family—but is it already too late?

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Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier

Jar of Hearts follows Geo who seemed like she had it all together, but she is hiding a huge secret. Her best friend Angela was murdered when they were teens, and Geo knew the truth the whole time. Now, years later, Angela’s body is found and Geo goes to prison. The story jumps between past and present, showing how love, guilt, and lies are all tangled up. Just when it seems like everything is over, the killings start again. 

This is the story of three best friends: one who was murdered, one who went to prison, and one who’s been searching for the truth all these years . . .

When she was sixteen years old, Angela Wong—one of the most popular girls in school—disappeared without a trace. Nobody ever suspected that her best friend, Georgina Shaw, now an executive and rising star at her Seattle pharmaceutical company, was involved in any way. Certainly not Kaiser Brody, who was close with both girls back in high school.

But fourteen years later, Angela Wong’s remains are discovered in the woods near Geo’s childhood home. And Kaiser—now a detective with Seattle PD—finally learns the truth: Angela was a victim of Calvin James. The same Calvin James who murdered at least three other women.

To the authorities, Calvin is a serial killer. But to Geo, he’s something else entirely. Back in high school, Calvin was Geo’s first love. Turbulent and often volatile, their relationship bordered on obsession from the moment they met right up until the night Angela was killed.

For fourteen years, Geo knew what happened to Angela and told no one. For fourteen years, she carried the secret of Angela’s death until Geo was arrested and sent to prison.

While everyone thinks they finally know the truth, there are dark secrets buried deep. And what happened that fateful night is more complex and more chilling than anyone really knows. Now the obsessive past catches up with the deadly present when new bodies begin to turn up, killed in the exact same manner as Angela Wong.

How far will someone go to bury her secrets and hide her grief? How long can you get away with a lie? How long can you live with it?

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Dead inside by Chandler Morrison

Dead Inside  follows a hospital security guard . He’s numb to the world and doesn’t care about right or wrong. Then he meets a maternity doctor who’s even worse. Their relationship isn’t love, it’s violent, twisted, and hard to stomach. The story pushes every boundary. It talks about death, pain, and how some people feel more alive doing horrible things. There’s no hope here, just two broken people feeding off each other’s darkness. 


In this bleak and disturbingly erotic debut novel, iconoclast Chandler Morrison provides readers with a dark exploration of the nature of death, individuality, and generational identity. Along the way, lines will be crossed, taboos will be violated, and common decency will take an extended leave of absence. This is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Or anyone who enjoyed Fifty Shades of Grey.

A young hospital security guard with a disturbingly unique taste in women. A maternity doctor with a horrifically unusual appetite. When the two of them meet, they embark on a journey of self-discovery as they shatter societal norms while engaging in destructive and abhorrent behavior. As they unwittingly help each other understand a world in which neither of them seems to belong, they begin to realize what it truly means to be alive…and that it might not always be a good thing.

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Am I beautiful by Jon Athan

Adam is a married man on a business trip in Tokyo. He sleeps with a young woman named Miki, then regrets it. When she won’t leave him alone, he panics. He attacks her in a rage and scars her face permanently. He runs away, thinking it’s over. But years later, kids go missing in his city and he thinks she’s back.  The scarred woman might be a ghost or she might be very real. It makes you wonder what you’d do if your worst secret came back to ruin your life.

Adam Miller, a successful marketing manager at a travel agency, visits Tokyo, Japan on business. During his trip, he has a one-night stand with a young Japanese woman, Miki Someya. But Miki latches onto him. She follows him—stalks him—through the streets of Tokyo, professing her love and begging for his. Adam manages to avoid her, but he loses control of himself when she confronts him and threatens to follow him home to tell his wife about their affair.

In a fit of drunken rage, Adam attacks her. He beats her black and blue, then he carves a smile on her face with a pair of shears. Afraid and ashamed, he flees the country and escapes prosecution.

But years later, when children start vanishing in his city and the only suspect is a woman with a scarred face, he suspects his past has followed him home…

Inspired by a classic urban legend, Jon Athan, the author of Lovesick and Maneater, brings you a disturbing new vision of sadistic romance.

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Basement Games by Simone Trojahn

Basement Games  centers around Karl who lives with his brother Toni, who’s a sadist. One day Toni brings home a kidnapped girl and locks her in their basement. Karl doesn’t call the police. He’s torn, he feels bad for the girl, but he’s also got his own twisted side. The girl, Laura, tries to survive. She sees Karl as her only way out. He seems nicer than Toni, but can she trust him? The whole book feels like a tight box you can’t escape. It’s disturbing and uncomfortable. 


Karl is shocked when Toni kidnaps a young woman to keep her imprisoned in the basement of their house. His brother is a sadist. He’s always been.
Karl is torn between pity, emotional dependence on his brother, and the need to satisfy his own urges on pretty Laura, who sees in him the only hope of rescue.
Will Karl do the right thing and help the girl escape, or will his dark side prevail?

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A Gathering of Evil by Gil Valle

A Gathering of Evil  is about a group of rich people who meet online to act out violent fantasies. They use the dark web to plan the kidnapping and murder of women. Two young women, Sarah and Jennifer, are their next targets. The predators think they’re untouchable because of their wealth and power. One couple hosts the “event” like it’s a party.


Gil Valle, the former NYPD patrol cop who rose to infamy in 2012 after he was wrongfully arrested by the feds for allegedly plotting to kidnap, cook, and eat women, fleshes out his fantasies in his debut novel, A Gathering of Evil, serving up a feast of gut-churning horror.

Sarah McConnell and Jennifer Miller are two young, attractive New Yorkers leading seemingly normal lives. Unbeknownst to them, they have been targeted by a group of wealthy and violent sadists, who meet through the Dark Web and share some rather unusual and deviant sexual desires, along with a desire to turn those twisted fantasies into reality.

Marilyn and Bruce, the wealthy couple from upstate New York who have organized the event, have gathered this group of people from all different backgrounds and brought them together through a common bond: The lust and desire to kidnap a young woman and brutally end her life.

The hunt is on. Will the prey survive this gathering of evil?

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The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road is a postapocalyptic novel about a father and his young son walking through a ruined America. The world is cold, gray, and burned. They have almost nothing, only a pistol, a little food, and each other. Along the way they face hunger, fear, and dangerous people.

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

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Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo

Johnny Got His Gun is about a soldier hurt in war. He loses his arms, legs, face, and voice, but his mind is still alive. Trapped in silence, he thinks about his life and the meaning of war. The book is shocking and painful, but it shows how war destroys people in more ways than death.


This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered – not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives…

This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome… but so is war.

Winner of the National Book Award.

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Quaking by Kathryn Erskine

Quaking is about a girl named Matt who feels alone and angry. She wears black, keeps to herself, and doesn’t trust anyone. When she moves in with a kind Quaker family, she begins to see a different way of living. 
Don’t call her Matilda. Her name is Matt. And don’t even think about getting close to her. She doesn’t need anyone. Can’t you tell by looking at her, dressed all in black with a spider painted on her face and her ice-cold stare? But most of all, do not bully her. She has been through it all already. But everything changes for fourteen-year-old Matt when she moves in with peaceful Quakers Sam and Jessica Fox, who are active in the movement against the war in the Middle East. Soon, conflict arises in town over the war, and suddenly, no one is safe. Matt fears for her safety and the safety of her new family. Could the boy who terrorizes her at school be behind it all? And how can she save the family she is actually growing to love when her fear always leaves her quaking?

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I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a collection of dark and strange stories. The title story is about a machine that has destroyed most of humanity. It keeps a few people alive only to torture them forever. The stories are haunting, creative, and unlike anything else, showing the dark side of technology and fear.


First published in 1967 and re-issued in 1983, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream contains seven stories with copyrights ranging from 1958 through 1967. This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition. Among Ellison’s more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume’s concluding one, Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes.

Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won’t call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.

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Push by Sapphire

Push is about a girl named Precious living in Harlem. She is sixteen, pregnant, and hurt by her own father. Her life is full of pain and hardship. But everything starts to change when a strong teacher pushes her to learn to read and write. Through education and her own voice, Precious begins to find hope and a way to fight for a better life.


An electrifying first novel that shocks by its language, its circumstances, and its brutal honesty, Push recounts a young black street-girl’s horrendous and redemptive journey through a Harlem inferno. For Precious Jones, 16 and pregnant with her father’s child, miraculous hope appears and the world begins to open up for her when a courageous, determined teacher bullies, cajoles, and inspires her to learn to read, to define her own feelings and set them down in a diary.

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Promises to the Dead by Mary Downing Hahn

Promises to the Dead is about a white boy who helps a young enslaved Black boy escape during the Civil War. Their journey is dangerous, and they face fear and hate as they travel. The story shows courage, friendship, and the risk of doing the right thing in the hardest times.

A white boy helps a young black runaway slave to freedom in Baltimore City, in the most dangerous days of the Civil War.

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Deliverance by James Dickey

Deliverance is about four men who go on a canoe trip in the wild rivers of Georgia. At first, it feels exciting and free, but then the trip turns into a nightmare. They face violence, fear, and the fight to survive in the wilderness. It is a story about adventure, danger, and the thin line between man and nature.


The setting is the Georgia wilderness, where the state’s most remote white-water river awaits. In the thundering froth of that river, in its echoing stone canyons, four men on a canoe trip discover a freedom and exhilaration beyond compare. And then, in a moment of horror, the adventure turns into a struggle for survival as one man becomes a human hunter who is offered his own harrowing deliverance.

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Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls is about two best friends, Lia and Cassie, who struggle with eating disorders. They compete to be thinner, but tragedy strikes when Cassie dies. Lia is left with guilt, pain, and haunting memories. The story follows her battle with her own illness and her search for recovery and hope.

Lia and Cassie are best friends, wintergirls frozen in fragile bodies, competitors in a deadly contest to see who can be the thinnest. But then Cassie suffers the ultimate loss—her life—and Lia is left behind, haunted by her friend’s memory, and feeling guilty for not being able to help save her.

In her most powerfully moving novel since Speak, award-winning author, Laurie Halse Anderson explores Lia’s struggle, her painful path to recovery, and her desperate attempts to hold on to the most important thing of all—hope.

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Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Unwind is about a future where parents can choose to have their teenagers “unwound.” That means their bodies are taken apart and given to others, piece by piece, so their lives don’t “end.” Three teens—Connor, Risa, and Levm are chosen to be unwound. They run away and try to survive. The story is emotional, and asks hard questions about life and freedom.


The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child “unwound,” whereby all of the child’s organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn’t technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.

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The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

The Exorcist is about a young girl named Regan who begins to act in strange and terrifying ways. Her mother tries doctors, but nothing works. A priest, Father Karras, believes she is possessed by a demon. With another priest, Father Merrin, he tries to save her soul. It is one of the most famous horror stories ever written.


Georgetown, Washington D.C. Actress and divorced mother Chris MacNeil starts to experience ‘difficulties’ with her usually sweet-natured eleven-year-old daughter Regan. The child becomes afflicted by spasms, convulsions and unsettling amnesiac episodes; these abruptly worsen into violent fits of appalling foul-mouthed curses, accompanied by physical mutation. Medical science is baffled by Regan’s plight and, in her increasing despair, Chris turns to troubled priest and psychiatrist Damien Karras, who immediately recognises something profoundly malevolent in Regan’s distorted fetures and speech. On Karras’s recommendation, the Church summons Father Merrin, a specialist in the exorcism of demons.

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After by Amy Efaw

After is about a teenage girl named Devon, a top student and soccer player. One day, a baby is found in the trash, and the truth comes out the baby is hers. Devon had been in deep denial about being pregnant. The story follows her arrest, trial, and the painful journey of facing what she has done.


An infant left in the trash to die. A teenage mother who never knew she was pregnant . . . Before That Morning, these were the words most often used to describe straight-A student and star soccer player Devon: responsible, hardworking, mature. But all that changes when the police find Devon home sick from school as they investigate the case of an abandoned baby. Soon the connection is made—Devon has just given birth; the baby in the trash is hers. After That Morning, there’s only one way to define attempted murderer. And yet gifted author Amy Efaw does the impossible: she turns Devon into an empathetic character, a girl who was in such deep denial that she refused to believe she was pregnant. Through airtight writing and fast-paced, gripping storytelling, Ms. Efaw takes the reader on Devon’s unforgettable journey toward clarity, acceptance, and redemption.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin is about a mother named Eva, who writes letters to her husband about their son, Kevin. Kevin has killed several people in a school shooting. Eva looks back on Kevin’s childhood, her feelings about motherhood, and whether she failed him. The story is chilling and explores family, guilt, and violence.

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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The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

The Lovely Bones is about a girl named Susie Salmon, who is murdered at 14. From heaven, she watches her family, her friends, and even her killer. Her family struggles with grief and pain while trying to move on. The story is sad but also full of love, hope, and healing.


“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her — her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

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I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb

I Know This Much Is True is about twin brothers, Dominick and Thomas. Thomas struggles with mental illness, and Dominick feels the weight of caring for him. The book follows Dominick’s life, family history, and his search for healing. It is an emotional story about pain, love, and the bond between brothers.

On the afternoon of October 12, 1990, my twin brother, Thomas, entered the Three Rivers, Connecticut, public library, retreated to one of the rear study carrels, and prayed to God the sacrifice he was about to commit would be deemed acceptable. . . .

One of the most acclaimed novels of our time, Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much Is True is a story of alienation and connection, devastation and renewal, at once joyous, heartbreaking, poignant, mystical, and powerfully, profoundly human.

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The End of Alice by AM Homes

The End of Alice is about a man in prison for terrible crimes. He begins a strange and disturbing letter exchange with a young woman. Together they share their dark thoughts and desires. The book is shocking and unsettling.

Only a work of such searing, meticulously controlled brilliance could provoke such a wide range of visceral responses. Here is the incredible story of an imprisoned pedophile who is drawn into an erotically charged correspondence with a nineteen-year-old suburban coed. As the two reveal—and revel in—their obsessive desires, Homes creates in The End of Alice a novel that is part romance, part horror story, at once unnerving and seductive.

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Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma

Forbidden is about two siblings, Lochan and Maya, who raise their younger brothers and sisters because their mother is absent. In the middle of this responsibility, they fall in love with each other. They know it is wrong, but they cannot stop. 

She is pretty and talented – sweet sixteen and never been kissed. He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But… they are brother and sister.

Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

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Flowers In the Attic by VC Andrews

Flowers in the Attic is about four children locked away in an attic by their mother and grandmother. At first, they think it will be for a short time, but the days turn into years. They suffer from loneliness, cruelty, and dark secrets. The story is really haunting.

Such wonderful children. Such a beautiful mother. Such a lovely house. Such endless terror! It wasn’t that she didn’t love her children. She did. But there was a fortune at stake—a fortune that would assure their later happiness if she could keep the children a secret from her dying father. So she and her mother hid her darlings away in an unused attic. Just for a little while. But the brutal days swelled into agonizing years. Now Cathy, Chris, and the twins wait in their cramped and helpless world, stirred by adult dreams, adult desires, served a meager sustenance by an angry, superstitious grandmother who knows that the Devil works in dark and devious ways. Sometimes he sends children to do his work—children who—one by one—must be destroyed…. ‘Way upstairs there are four secrets hidden. Blond, beautiful, innocent struggling to stay alive.

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Hogg by Samuel Delany

Hogg is brutal and disturbing from start to finish. It follows a man named Hogg who commits the worst kinds of sexual violence. Nothing is off-limits. It doesn’t read like a normal novel, it’s raw and chaotic. There’s no break from the horror. It’s not meant to entertain. It’s meant to expose something ugly about human nature. 


The classic and controversial novel made available again; Acclaimed winner of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to gay and lesbian literature, bestselling and award-winning SF author Samuel R. Delany wrote Hogg three decades ago. Since then it has been one of America’s most famous ‘unpublishable’ novels. The subject matter of Hogg is our culture of sexual violence and degeneration. Delany explores his disturbing protagonist Hogg on his own turf – rape, pederasty, sexual excess – exposing an area of violence and sexual abuse from the inside. As such, it is a brave but necessary book.
A shocking and contemporary insight into a parallel world of sex and cravings that lies in wait in the shadows of our own world.

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Still Beating by Jennifer Hartmann

In Still Beating we follow Cora and Dean who  hate each other until they’re kidnapped and chained up in the same basement.  What starts as fear turns into something more complicated. There’s trauma, but there’s also trust. And then something like love. This story messed with my emotions. It made me cry and feel angry. 

When Cora attends her sister’s birthday party, she expects at most a hangover or a walk of shame. She doesn’t anticipate a stolen wallet, leaving her stranded and dependent on Dean—her arch nemesis and ultimate thorn in her side.

And she really doesn’t anticipate waking up in shackles in a madman’s basement.

To make matters worse, Dean shares the space in his own set of chains.

After fifteen years of teasing, insults, and practical jokes, the ultimate joke seems to be on them. The two people who always thought they’d end up killing each other must now work together if they want to survive.

But Cora and Dean have no idea their abductor has a plan for them. A plan that will alter the course of their relationship, blur the line between hate and love, and shackle them together with far more than just chains.

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Portrait of a Nuclear Family by J.P. Behrens

Wanda seems to have it all: perfect house, perfect family. But then she finds out a secret that could ruin everything. Instead of facing it, she tries to keep things “normal.” Portrait of a Nuclear Family  was painful and sad, but also very real.

Wanda has uncovered a dark secret that could shatter the image of her perfect family. Attempting to force the situation back into the societal framework she’d strived for years to present, events spiral out of control. Secrets threaten to emerge from a carefully suppressed past and become public. To save her family’s reputation, Wanda succumbs to a madness no one could have expected.

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The Roanoke Girls by Amy Engel

The Roanoke Girls follows Lane who goes to live with her wealthy grandparents after her mom dies. Her cousin Allegra welcomes her, and life seems okay, at first. But the Roanoke family has a dark secret. When Lane finds out, she runs far away. Years later, she returns after Allegra goes missing. Facing the past isn’t easy, especially when it’s full of pain. The story flips between then and now, slowly revealing the truth.


Lane Roanoke is fifteen when she comes to live with her maternal grandparents and fireball cousin, Allegra, at the Roanoke family estate in rural Osage Flats, Kansas, following the suicide of her mother. Lane knows little of her mother’s family, other than the fact that her mother ran away years before and cut off all contact with her parents. Allegra, abandoned by her own mother at birth and raised by her grandparents, introduces Lane to small-town life and the benefits of being one of the rich and beautiful Roanoke girls. But there is darkness at the heart of the Roanoke family, and when Lane discovers its insidious pull she has no choice but to run, as far and as fast as she can.

Eleven years later, Lane is scraping by in Los Angeles when her grandfather calls with the news that Allegra has gone missing. “Come home,” he beckons. Unable to resist his pleas, Lane returns to Osage Flats, determined to find her cousin and assuage her own guilt at having left Allegra behind all those years ago. Her return might mean a second chance with Cooper, the boyfriend whom she loved and destroyed that fateful summer. But it also means facing the terrible secret that made her flee, one she may not be strong enough to run from again.

As it weaves between the summer of Lane’s first arrival and the summer of her return, The Roanoke Girls shocks and tantalizes, twisting its way through revelation after mesmerizing revelation, exploring the secrets families keep and the fierce and terrible love that both binds them together and rips them apart.

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All the Little Raindrops by Mia Sheridan

All the Little Raindrops is about two teens, Noelle and Evan, who get kidnapped during spring break. They don’t know each other well, but they have a connection. Evan’s dad killed Noelle’s mom. Still, they work together to survive. What they go through is awful, but they escape. Years later, Evan is a private investigator, and he thinks the kidnappings are still happening. He needs Noelle’s help to stop it. This story is about survival, trauma, and facing the pain head-on. It made me feel a mix of hope and fear. 

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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Within These Walls by Ania Ahlborn

Within These Walls is about Lucas, a writer who’s desperate for a comeback. He takes an offer to write about a cult leader on death row. To do it, he moves into the cult’s old house. At first, it seems like a fresh start. But the house has a history and maybe even a soul. Weird things start happening. Lucas feels watched, and the past starts bleeding into the present. The story builds slowly but it’s very addictive. 


From indie horror author and bestselling sensation Ania Ahlborn, this brand-new supernatural thriller questions: how far would you go for success, and what would you be capable of if the promise of forever was real?

With his marriage on the rocks and his life in shambles, washed up crime writer Lucas Graham is desperate for a comeback. So when he’s promised exclusive access to notorious cult leader and death row inmate Jeffrey Halcomb, the opportunity is too good to pass up. Lucas leaves New York for the scene of the crime—a split-level farmhouse on the gray-sanded beach of Washington State—a house whose foundation is steeped in the blood of Halcomb’s diviners; runaways who, thirty years prior, were drawn to his message of family, unity, and unconditional love. Lucas wants to tell the real story of Halcomb’s faithful departed, but when Halcomb goes back on his promise of granting Lucas exclusive information on the case, he’s left to put the story together on his own. Except he is not alone. For Jeffrey Halcomb promised his devout eternal life…and within these walls, they’re far from dead.

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Appetite for Innocence by Lucinda Berry

Appetite for Innocence is every parent’s worst nightmare. A serial rapist is targeting teenage girls through social media. He only wants virgins and uses their online posts to find them. He locks them in a basement, grooms them, then gets rid of them. One girl, Ella, escapes and frees another girl, Sarah. Sarah is hiding something, and it might put them all in danger. I felt scared reading this. It felt way too real. The idea that sharing your location online could get you killed is terrifying. 

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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