The Possession of Natalie Glasgow

The Haunted

Bentley Little2012

A family moves into a historic home where they are targeted by increasingly aggressive and bizarre supernatural occurrences.

pace0·prose0·bleak0

Android Karenina

Лев Толстой2010

The text of Tolstoy's classic is modified to include robots, cyborgs, and space travel in a 19th-century Russian setting.

tense → elegiac, still horror

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

Edgar Allen Poe (Black Cat / Cask of Amontillado / Fall of the House of Usher / Gold Bug / Metzengerstein / Murders in the Rue Morgue / Narrative of Arthur Gordn Pym / Never Bet the Devil Your Head / Pit and the Pendulum / Purloined Letter / Tell-Tale Heart)

Edgar Allan Poe2005

A collection of gothic stories and a novel. Narrators deal with psychological collapse, premature burial, and macabre crimes.

tense → bleak, still cosmic horror

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

Gormenghast

Mervyn Peake1950

A young heir and a social climber navigate the rigid rituals of a decaying, labyrinthine castle. The prose is dense and descriptive.

tense → dark

pace-1·prose+2·bleak+1

The Overdue Life of Amy Byler

Kelly Harms2019

An overworked single mother takes a summer break in New York City for a makeover and a dating life. She rediscovers her identity apart from her kids.

tense → playful

pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

Grunge

Larry Correia2016

A Marine killed in a bombing is resurrected to hunt supernatural creatures. He joins a private company that kills monsters for government bounties.

tense → sardonic, still horror

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-2

California Demon

Julie Kenner2006

A suburban mother balances raising her children with her secret life as a retired demon hunter. She must return to work when monsters reappear.

tense → playful

pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

Intercepts

T.J. Payne2020

A worker at a government facility monitors human test subjects driven insane by sensory deprivation. The experiment enters his private life.

Same tense register, still horror

pace+1·prose-1·bleak+1

Infected

Bobby Adair

A slow-acting virus turns the population into aggressive predators. The story follows a survivor navigating the initial societal collapse.

tense → propulsive, still horror

pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

The Undead Day One

R.R. Haywood

A supermarket manager attempts to survive the first twenty-four hours of a zombie outbreak in England. The story is told in real-time.

tense → propulsive, still horror

pace+1·prose-1·bleak-1

Dhalgren

Samuel R. Delany1975

An amnesiac wanderer enters Bellona, a city cut off from the world where time and geography shift. He joins a gang and writes poetry.

tense → dreamlike

pace-2·prose+2·bleak0

Gödel, Escher, Bach

Douglas R. Hofstadter1979

An exploration of how cognition emerges from hidden neurological patterns. It uses math, art, and music to explain self-referential systems.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+2·bleak-2

Ulysses

James Joyce1914

Three characters wander through Dublin on a single day in 1904. Each chapter uses a different literary style to mimic thoughts and sensations.

tense → playful

pace-2·prose+2·bleak-1

Mapping the Interior

Stephen Graham Jones2017

A teenager follows a figure resembling his dead father into the hidden spaces of his home. He maps a shifting, dangerous interior.

tense → elegiac, still horror

pace0·prose+1·bleak+1

Flowers in the Attic

V.C. Andrews1979

Four children are hidden in an attic for years by their mother and grandmother to secure an inheritance. They face gradual poisoning and abuse.

tense → elegiac, still horror

pace0·prose0·bleak+1

The Terror

Dan Simmons2007

Two British ships searching for the Northwest Passage in 1845 become trapped in ice and are hunted by a creature.

tense → bleak, still cosmic horror

pace-1·prose+1·bleak+1