Bookdriftopen the map →

Books like John Dies at the End

Jason Pargin · 2007 · US · horror · fantasy
Book 1 of 4 in John Dies at the End
★ 3.85 Goodreads · 87,979 ratings

Two slackers in an unnamed Midwestern town take a street drug called soy sauce that lets them see the monsters hiding in plain sight, and now the monsters can see them too.

Explore books like this on the map

12 books for readers of John Dies at the End

The Library at Mount Char

Scott Hawkins · 2015 · US 93% match ★ 4.05 Goodreads · 90,676 ratings
shares: cosmic, dark humoured · uncanny, easy read

Carolyn and the other adopted children of a godlike figure called Father have each spent years mastering one catalogue of his library, and when he goes missing, the contest to replace him turns lethal.

Uzumaki

Junji Ito · 1998 · Japan 92% match ★ 4.45 Goodreads · 96,101 ratings
shares: cosmic, grotesque, small town · uncanny, easy read

In the small coastal town of Kurouzu-cho, teenager Kirie Goshima watches her neighbours become obsessed with spirals, starting with her boyfriend's father, as the pattern takes hold of the town in ever stranger and more horrible ways.

Horrorstör

Grady Hendrix · 2014 · US 92% match ★ 3.64 Goodreads · 137,440 ratings
shares: Midwest, comic · easy read, fast-paced

Strange damage keeps turning up in the mornings at the Cleveland branch of Orsk, a Scandinavian-style furniture superstore, so a few employees agree to spend a night shift in the showroom to find out why.

The Hollow Places

T. Kingfisher · 2020 · US 92% match ★ 3.77 Goodreads · 62,534 ratings
shares: cosmic · easy read, uncanny

Newly divorced, Kara moves in with her uncle above his Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities and Taxidermy in a small North Carolina town, and finds a hole in the wall that opens onto somewhere else.

Mr. X

Peter Straub · 1999 · US 90% match ★ 3.61 Goodreads · 4,694 ratings
shares: cosmic, Midwest · uncanny, violent

Every year around his birthday Ned Dunstan has a spell in which he sees a stranger committing murder. On his thirty-fifth he goes home to Edgerton, Illinois, where his mother is dying, and starts to learn who his father was.

Deadeye Dick

Kurt Vonnegut · 1982 · US 90% match ★ 3.84 Goodreads · 32,691 ratings
shares: absurdist, Midwest, small town · easy read, plain prose

At twelve, Rudy Waltz fires a rifle from the cupola of his father's house in Midland City, Ohio, and kills a pregnant woman eight blocks away. He spends the rest of his life, and a fair number of recipes, trying to live it down.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman · 2020 · US 89% match ★ 4.42 Goodreads · 691,641 ratings
Book 1 of 8 in Dungeon Crawler Carl
shares: buddy, dark humoured, comic · easy read, fast-paced

When aliens demolish Earth's surface for an intergalactic game show, Carl and his ex-girlfriend's prize-winning cat, Princess Donut, plunge into an eighteen-level dungeon where the audience loves blood.

The September House

Carissa Orlando · 2023 · US 89% match ★ 3.84 Goodreads · 117,785 ratings
shares: dark humoured, comic · easy read, uncanny

Margaret loves the big Victorian house she and her husband Hal bought, even though every September the walls bleed and the ghosts turn violent, so when Hal disappears and their grown daughter comes looking for him, Margaret has to keep the house's rules and her own secrets.

Damned

Chuck Palahniuk · 2011 · US 88% match ★ 3.41 Goodreads · 59,894 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Damned
shares: absurdist, dark humoured · easy read, ironic

Madison Spencer, the thirteen-year-old daughter of film stars, wakes up in Hell, which turns out to be run like a corrupt, bureaucratic high school, and sets out to make the best of it.

How to Sell a Haunted House

Grady Hendrix · 2023 · US 87% match ★ 3.63 Goodreads · 185,534 ratings
shares: dark humoured, comic · easy read, uncanny

After their parents die, Louise has to go home to Charleston and work with her estranged brother Mark to clear out and sell the family house, which is full of their mother's puppets and dolls and does not want to be sold.

Summer of Night

Dan Simmons · 1991 · US 86% match ★ 4.05 Goodreads · 30,674 ratings
Book 1 of 2 in Seasons of Horror
shares: Midwest, small town · easy read, action-packed

In the summer of 1960 in Elm Haven, Illinois, a gang of eleven- and twelve-year-old boys on bicycles discover that something evil has woken in Old Central, the huge old school that is about to close for good.

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom

Jason Pargin · 2024 · US 86% match ★ 3.92 Goodreads · 19,282 ratings
shares: buddy, dark humoured · easy read, funny

A broke rideshare driver agrees to drive a woman and a mysterious box across the country to Washington, D.C., and the trip turns into an internet obsession as strangers online decide what is inside and whether to stop them.