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Made you feel so scared you felt unsafe

Not a jolt and done — the kind of fear that follows you out of the book, has you checking the lock and the dark behind you. Some of it really happened.

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The 10 books on this stack

  • The Handmaid's Tale

    The Handmaid's Tale

    Margaret Atwood · 1986

    ** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER ** Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon. Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs. 'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist' Bernadine Evaristo ‘As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it’ Guardian

    Dystopian Literary Science fiction Dark Tense Haunting Defiant Urgent
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  • Parable Of The Sower

    Parable of the Sower

    Octavia E. Butler · 1993

    From a celebrated, award-winning author, a modern classic about a young girl fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Margaret Atwood. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny. Includes a foreword by LeVar Burton and an afterword by N. K. Jemisin Lauren's story continues in The Parable of the Talents. "In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched."—The New Yorker

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  • Nuclear War

    Nuclear War

    Annie Jacobsen · 2024

    The INSTANT New York Times bestseller Instant Los Angeles Times bestseller Finalist, Dayton Literary Peace Prize One of NPR's Books We Love One of Newsweek Staffers' Favorite Books of the Year Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize “In Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen gives us a vivid picture of what could happen if our nuclear guardians fail…Terrifying.”—Wall Street Journal There is only one scenario other than an asteroid strike that could end the world as we know it in a matter of hours: nuclear war. And one of the triggers for that war would be a nuclear missile inbound toward the United States. Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have. Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency.

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  • Communion

    Communion

    Whitley Strieber · 1987

    On December 26th 1985 Whitley Strieber was woken in his isolated cabin in upstate New York, he saw a creature in his bedroom. His next memory is sitting in the woods around the cabin. Hypnosis revealed that Whitley Strieber had been abducted by a UFO and that he had been subjected to medical testing by aliens. Strieber came to realise that he had been abducted by these alien life forms for most of his life, and began to record his experiences with visitors from 'elsewhere'.Whether the reader believes or not his story it will fascinate and terrify. The sincerity and detail of Strieber's account of his experiences is powerful and it will force every reader to ask: what are the aliens trying to communicate, are they here to guide and transform mankind, has the greatest mystery of our time been solved? Is Whitley Strieber an ambassador for beings from another world to contact mankind?

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  • Bird Box

    Bird Box

    Josh Malerman · 2001

    Malorie raises the children the only way she can: indoors, with the doors locked, the curtains closed, and mattresses nailed over the windows.The children sleep in the bedroom across the hall, but soon she will have to wake them and blindfold them.Today they will risk everything. Today they will leave the house.Josh Malerman's Bird Box is a terrifying psychological thriller that will haunt you long after reading.

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  • Red Dragon

    Red Dragon

    Thomas Harris · 1981

    THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Feed your fears with the terrifying classic that introduced cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter. FBI agent Will Graham once risked his sanity to capture Hannibal Lecter, an ingenious killer like no other. Now, he’s following the bloodstained pattern of the Tooth Fairy, a madman who’s already wiped out two families. To find him, Graham has to understand him. To understand him, Graham has only one place left to go: the mind of Dr. Lecter.

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  • Shining

    The Shining

    Stephen King · 1992

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF TIME 'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • In this masterpiece of modern American horror that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Jack Torrance takes a job as the caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel. As the brutal winter sets in, the hotel’s dark secrets begin to unravel. “An undisputed master of suspense and terror.” — The Washington Post Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

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  • House of Leaves

    House of Leaves

    Mark Z. Danielewski · 1998

    THE MIND-BENDING CULT CLASSIC ABOUT A HOUSE THAT’S LARGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE • A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel. ''Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent—it renders most other fiction meaningless." —Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho “This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore.” —Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged. Similarly, the cultural fascination with House of Leaves remains as fervent and as imaginative as ever. The novel has gone on to inspire doctorate-level courses and masters theses, cultural phenomena like the online urban legend of “the backrooms,” and incredible works of art in entirely unrealted mediums from music to video games. Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

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  • Haunting of Hill House

    The Haunting of Hill House

    Shirley Jackson · 2002

    Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House- Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead. For Hill House is gathering its powers - and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

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