LitQueuelitqueue

After

Kin

Kealan Patrick Burke2011

6 of 6 directions open

More like it

1 more ↓

  • Ghoul

    Brian Keene2007

    A group of children in the 1980s discover a creature eating bodies in a local cemetery. The story follows their attempt to stop the monster.

    tense → bleak, still horror

    pace0·prose0·bleak0

Denser prose

tense → dreamlike

3 more ↓

  • 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

  • Racconti [55 stories]

    Edgar Allan Poe2011

    A collection of 55 stories featuring unreliable narrators and gothic settings. Themes include obsession, premature burial, and the macabre.

    tense → dreamlike, still horror

    pace-1·prose+2·bleak0

  • 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

To recover

tense → playful

3 more ↓

  • Tall, Tatted and Tempting

    Tammy Falkner2013

    A tattoo artist who communicates through sign language falls for a woman who enters his shop. The story follows their domestic courtship.

    tense → tender

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • Vows in Name Only

    Naima Simone2020

    A woman enters a marriage of convenience with a wealthy man to escape her family's control and protect her inheritance.

    tense → earnest

    pace0·prose-1·bleak-2

  • A Veiled Deception

    Annette Blair2009

    A vintage shop owner investigates a murder during her sister's wedding preparations to clear her family's name.

    pace-1·prose-1·bleak-2

Faster

3 more ↓

  • Friday Night in Beast House

    Richard Laymon2010

    Two teenagers sneak into a notorious house after hours to explore its violent history. They quickly find they are not alone.

    Same tense register, still splatterpunk

    pace+1·prose-1·bleak0

  • 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

  • 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

Slower

3 more ↓

  • 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

  • Absalom, Absalom!

    William Faulkner1936

    The rise and fall of Thomas Sutpen is recounted through multiple, conflicting memories. The prose uses extremely long, complex sentences.

    tense → elegiac

    pace-2·prose+2·bleak+1

Heavier

tense → bleak, still horror

3 more ↓

  • Desperation

    Stephen King1996

    A demonic entity possesses a small-town sheriff and begins slaughtering travelers. A young boy who hears God leads the survivors.

    pace+1·prose0·bleak+1

  • The Burning Side

    Sarah Damoff

    Same tense register, still horror

    pace+1·prose+1·bleak+1

  • And By God's Hand You Shall Die

    David Sodergren2023

    A woman working in a brothel built on a ruined church experiences visions of an apocalypse. Violence and gore ensue as a priest's warnings come true.

    tense → bleak, still splatterpunk

    pace0·prose0·bleak+1