Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds

Books like Stranger Things: Suspicious Minds

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September 15, 2022
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#1 Books Like American Horror Story

The dramatic television programme “American Horror Story” was conceived and is produced by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. The series focuses on a different location and narrative each season.

A family moves to a home in Los Angeles during the first season without realizing it’s haunted. After having an affair with a student, Father Ben Harmon is dealing with the rejection he received from his wife and quickly falls under the influence of the house. Wife Vivien must also deal with the fallout from a miscarriage while trying to forgive her husband. Daughter Violet makes friends with Tate Langdon, the unstable adolescent patient of her father, and encounters hostile girls at her new school. Additionally, Constance, a neighbor who was formerly an actress, is hiding nearby. Adelaide, Adelaide’s special needs daughter, can smell the evil in the house, and Constance hates Adelaide while yet being curiously protective of her.

#2 The Queen’s Gambit

When Beth Harmon is committed to an orphanage at the age of eight, she quickly learns two methods to escape her circumstances, although briefly: chess and the little green tablets provided to her and the other children to maintain their silence. Soon, it becomes clear that she is a tremendous skill, and as she rises to the top of the US chess rankings, she is able to carve out a new life for herself. But she is unable to overcome her need to self-destruct. There’s more at risk for Beth than just winning and losing.

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#3 11 22 63

Three shots were fired in Dallas on November 22, 1963, killing President Kennedy and altering the course of history. What if you could reverse the change? A man goes back in time to thwart the JFK assassination in Stephen King’s new, heart-stoppingly dramatic novel, which is a thousand-page masterpiece. Following the phenomenal success of Under the Dome, King transports readers to another instance—a period in actual history—when everything goes awry: the JFK assassination. Additionally, he provides an introduction to a figure with the ability to alter the course of history.

Jake Epping, a 35-year-old English teacher at Lisbon Falls High School in Maine, also works as a GED instructor for adults. One of the students gives him an essay, a grisly, terrifying account of the night fifty years ago when Harry Dunning’s father returned home and murdered his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry survived with a broken leg, as was evident from his awkward gait. The owner of the neighborhood diner, Jake’s friend Al, reveals a secret shortly after that: his cellar is a doorway to 1958. In an insane—and absurdly possible—mission to try to stop the Kennedy assassination, he enlists Jake. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, a life that defies all the laws of time and is filled with Elvis and JFK, big American cars and sock hops, a disturbed loner named Lee Harvey Oswald, and a stunning high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who ends up being Jake’s love.

#4 Little Women

This book tells the story of the four March sisters named, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, as they live in the state of Massachusetts before, during, and after the American Civil War. Their adventures in love and loss take place before, during, and after the war. The events of the novel took place both before and during the war, as well as after it. The storyline of the book depicts the time leading up to, during, and immediately following the conflict.

The novel is filled with feminist themes, and it provides a wonderful glimpse into the way of life of the upper and middle-class families in America during the latter part of the nineteenth century. This is because the work was written in that era in which the events it describes took place.

#5 Books Like The Outsider

A terrible crime. An unclear investigation. King has written one of his most frightening and compulsively readable stories at a time when his brand has never been stronger.

The dismembered body of an eleven-year-old kid is discovered in a town park. Fingerprints and eyewitness account definitely identify one of Flint City’s most well-liked residents. Terry Maitland is a spouse, father of two kids, Little League coach, English teacher, and English teacher. Maitland previously coached Detective Ralph Anderson, whose son made the arrest. Maitland has a plausible explanation, but Anderson and the district attorney soon add DNA evidence to the fingerprints, witnesses, and other available proof. Their argument looks unbeatable. King’s compelling narrative picks up speed as the investigation deepens and frightening revelations start to surface, creating intense tension and nearly intolerable suspense. Although Terry Maitland appears like a kind guy, is there another side to him? You’ll be shocked by the response in the way that only Stephen King can.

#6 Mr Mercedes

Hundreds of unemployed men and women queue up in the early hours of the morning in a struggling American city to enter a job fair. They are drained, chilly, and in need. A lone driver in a stolen Mercedes speeds through the crowd after emerging from the fog, invisible until it’s too late. The driver runs over innocent people before reversing and accelerating again. There are eight fatalities and fifteen injuries. The murderer gets away.

Bill Hodges, an ex-cop who is still troubled by the unsolved crime, muses of suicide months later. Hodges awakens from his miserable and empty retirement when he receives a crazy letter from “the perk” accusing him of being responsible for the deaths. He is determined to stop the attack and fears an even more evil one.

#7 I’m Thinking Of Ending Things

Iain Reid delves into the depths of the human psyche in this brilliant and dramatic literary suspense book, examining consciousness, free choice, the value of relationships, terror, and the constraints of solitude. “Your dread and unease will rise with every passing page” (Entertainment Weekly) of this edgy, disturbing debut, reminiscent of Jose Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult masterpiece Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a tense, riveting, and atmospheric novel that draws you in from the first page…and never lets you go.

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#8 Bird Box

There is a horrible force outside that should not be seen. One look at that is all it takes to inspire terrible violence. Nobody is aware of its nature or origin. A few dispersed survivors are still alive five years after it started, including Malorie and her two young children. She had fantasized about escaping to a location where they might be secure while residing in an abandoned house next to the river. It’s time to leave now that the boy and girl are four, but the trip will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat while blindfolded, with nothing but her wits and the kids’ trained hearing as a guide.

They are doomed to one poor decision. They are constantly being followed, but is it a person, an animal, or a monster? Bird Box, which weaves together the past and present, is a glimpse of a world in disarray that will have you turning the pages quickly.

#9 Intensity

Chyna Shepard, 26, can’t sleep on her first night in her best friend’s family’s Napa Valley home as she stares out a starry window into midnight. The gut instinct works well. Edgler Foreman Vess, a vicious sociopath, has invaded the home with the intention of killing everyone there. Vess, a self-described “homicidal adventurer,” claims that his primary goals in life are to sate all of his cravings as they come, to lose himself in sensation, to live without regret or boundaries, and to live with “intensity.” In his lethal orbit, Chyna is imprisoned.

Chyna is a survivor who has become tougher after a lifetime of fighting for safety and self-respect. She will now be put to the ultimate test. Her initial goal is only to survive, but by coincidence, she discovers the identity of the nearby innocent Vess’s next target, a person only she can save. Chyna mobilizes all of her inner resources to save a girl in jeopardy as the frightening threat posed by Edgler Foreman Vess grows ever more imminent, driven by a recently discovered yearning for significance beyond simple self-preservation.

#10 Odd Thomas

He’s weird. Actually, Odd Thomas. Brilliant fry-cook at Pico Mundo Grill; lover of Stormy Llewellyn, a stunning woman; and perhaps the only one with a chance of halting one of the darkest crimes in the brutal history of murder…

Odd and Stormy’s desert village is now home to something sinister. It manifests as a shadowy figure with a morbid appetite, a filing cabinet stuffed with information on the world’s worst murderers, and odd shadows that follow him around like hyenas. Odd is anxious. He has knowledge and insight into the living, the dead, and the imminently deceased. Things that require action from him. He is now scared for Pico Mundo, Stormy, and himself. Because he is aware that the town would be destroyed on Wednesday, August 15, by a ferocious, bloody cyclone of violence and murder…

#11 Stalking Jack The Ripper

This fantastically spooky horror book, published by James Patterson’s brand-new children’s imprint, with a plot motivated by the Jack the Ripper murders and a shocking, terrifying ending. Audrey Rose Wadsworth, age 17, was born a lord’s daughter and had a life of wealth and pleasure ahead of her. She does, however, conduct a clandestine secret life in between the social teas and silk dress fittings.

Audrey frequently eludes her strict father’s orders and defies social norms to visit her uncle’s lab to learn about the horrific field of forensic medicine. When Audrey is drawn into the investigation of a serial killer while working on a spate of brutally murdered corpses, she is forced to confront her safe haven. This breathtaking, #1 New York Times bestselling debut from author Kerri Maniscalco will be tough to forget due to the story’s stunning turns and turns, which are complemented by actual, ominous vintage images.

#12 Uzumaki

This town is filled with spirals, it seems. The small Japanese coastal village of Kurouzu-cho, which is shrouded in fog, is cursed. Teenager Kirie Goshima’s withdrawn boyfriend Shuichi Saito claims that their town is not haunted by an individual or being but rather by a pattern called uzumaki, the spiral, which is the hypnotic hidden shape of the universe. This peculiar horror manga masterpiece is now available in a single volume. Embark on a terrifying downward spiral!

Best Quotes from this Book:

#13 I Am Not A Serial Killer

John Wayne Cleaver is risky, and he is aware of this. He has worked hard his entire life to fall short of his potential. Despite his obsession with serial killers, he is not genuinely interested in becoming one. He, therefore, adheres to strict standards he has established for himself in order to protect himself and the people around him, living his everyday life as though it were a form of personal religion that could deliver him from eternal punishment.

John is accustomed to seeing dead bodies. Actually, he enjoys them. They do not ask for or anticipate the empathy he is unable to provide. Perhaps this is what gives him the objectivity to see that the body the police have just discovered behind the Wash-n-Dry Laundromat is different and to understand what that difference signifies.

#14 The Institute

Intruders discreetly murder Luke Ellis’s parents in the middle of the night in a home on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis before putting him in a black SUV. Less than two minutes are needed for the procedure. Luke will awaken at The Institute in a room that is virtually identical to his own, save for the absence of a window. Other children with exceptional abilities—telekinesis and telepathy—who arrived at this location similarly to Luke can be found behind other doors outside of his door, including Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. Everybody is in the front half. Luke discovers that some people advanced to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” as Kalisha puts it. You don’t check out; you just check-in.

The director, Mrs. Sigsby, and her staff are brutally committed to drawing out of these kids the power of their extraordinary abilities in this most evil of institutions. This place has no morals. You receive tokens for the vending machines if you comply. If you don’t, the penalty is severe. Luke grows more and more frantic to leave and obtain assistance as each fresh victim vanishes into Back Half. However, nobody has ever managed to leave the Institute.

#15 Deep And Dark And Dangerous

Ali, age 13, discovers a strange picture in the attic just before summer officially starts. She is aware that it contains her mother Claire and her aunt Dulcie’s two children. But who is the third individual, the one who has been erased from the scene?

While on vacation in Maine with Dulcie and Emma, 4, in the home where Ali’s mother’s family used to spend the summer, Ali assumes she’ll learn the truth. Thoughts of leisure are quickly dashed when the girls encounter Sissy, an ugly and spiteful youngster who has a negative impression of Emma.

#16 Battle Royale

A junior high school class is sent to a barren island where, as part of a brutal authoritarian program, they are issued with weapons and forced to murder one another until just one survives. This is the basis for Koushun Takami’s infamous high-octane thriller. Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the twenty-first century and a strong allegory of what it meant to be youthful and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog society. It was first criticized as violent exploitation when it was published in Japan, where it went on to become an instant hit. Battle Royale, a current Japanese pulp classic that was adapted into the contentious blockbuster film of the same name, is now available in English for the first time.

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#17 The Southern Book Club’s Guide To Slaying Vampires

In this Southern-inspired supernatural thriller set in the 1990s, Dracula and Fried Green Tomatoes collide with Steel Magnolias and Fried Green Tomatoes as a women’s book club fights to save their suburban community from a strange and attractive stranger who turns out to be a bloodsucking demon.

Patricia Campbell always envisioned a large life, but after giving up her nursing job to wedding a successful doctor and have children, Patricia’s life has never felt smaller. Her to-do list is never truly completed, her kids are ungrateful, her spouse is distant, and the days are long. Her book club, which consists of a group of Charleston mothers who are solely connected by their love of true-crime and suspenseful fiction, is the one item she has to look forward to. The FBI’s recent siege of Waco is more likely to come up in these discussions than the ups and downs of marriage and parenting.

#18 Everything I Never Told You

Dead is Lydia. But they are not yet aware of this. So starts this beautiful book about a Chinese American family living in a small Ohio town in the 1970s. Lydia is Marilyn and James Lee’s favorite child, and they are resolved that she will realize the goals they were unable to achieve. The careful balancing act that had been holding the Lee family together is upset when Lydia’s body is discovered in a nearby lake, throwing them into disarray.

Everything I Never Told You is both an intense page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, revealing the methods in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives find it difficult throughout their lives to understanding one another. It is a profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing.