What are the most 'unsettling' books?
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INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
In this modern classic, the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author explores the incomprehensible depths of madness and captures the insanity of violence in our time or any other.
Patrick Bateman moves among the young ... More details on American Psycho
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE is scrawled in blood red lettering on the side of the Chemical Bank near the corner of Eleventh and First and is in print large enough to be seen from the backseat o...
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An epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian brilliantly subverts the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the "wild west."
Based on historical events that took place on the ... More details on Blood Meridian
See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few ...
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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
The searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive.
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. I... More details on The Road
When he woke in the woods in the dark and the cold of the night he'd reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. Nights dark beyond darkness and the days more gray each one than what had gone be...
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Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans-though no one calls them that anymore.
His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a liv... More details on Tender Is the Flesh
Carcass. Cut in half. Stunner. Slaughter line. Spray wash. These words appear in his head and strike him. Destroy him. But they’re not just words. They’re the blood, the dense smell, the automation, t...
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What do readers say about The Wasp Factory?
first person narrative frank's very strange altar/retreatThe polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath.
Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: ... More details on The Wasp Factory
At the north end of the island, near the tumbled remains of the slip where the handle of the rusty winch still creaks in an easterly wind, I had two Poles on the far face of the last dune. One of the ...
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"A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." -The New York Times
Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled... More details on House of Leaves
§Provide examples of hand shadows ranging from crabs, snails, rabbits,and turtles to dragons, panthers, tigers, and kangaroos. Also includehippos, frogs, elephants, birds of paradise, dogs, cockatoos,...
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Awe and exhiliration-along with heartbreak and mordant wit-abound in Lolita, Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Lo... More details on Lolita
Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh whe...
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A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable.
This novel contains graphic content and is recommended for regular readers of... More details on The Girl Next Door
She is driving down a rain-slick highway on a hot summer morning in a rented Volvo, her lover by her side, driving slowly and carefully because she knows how treacherous new rain on hot streets can be...
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Haunted is a novel made up of twenty-three horrifying, hilarious, and stomach-churning stories. They're told by people who have answered an ad for a writer's retreat and unwittingly joined a "Survivor"-like scenario where the host withholds heat, pow... More details on Haunted
When the bus pulls to the corner where Comrade Snarky had agreed to wait, she stands there in an army-surplus flak jacket—dark olive-green—and baggy camouflage pants, the cuffs rolled up to show infan...
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This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played t... More details on A Child Called "It"
March 5, 1973, Daly City, California – Im late. Ive got to finish the dishes on time, otherwise no breakfast; and since I didnt have dinner last night, I have to make sure I get something to eat. M...
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