Books like “Beloved”

What to read after “Beloved” by Toni Morrison: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “Beloved”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
The Turn of the Screw
Henry James · 1898
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
A young governess takes charge of two children at a remote country house and soon notices figures watching from the grounds and the tower. She becomes convinced the children are being influenced by something from beyond the grave, though no one else confirms what she sees.
2
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters · 2009
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
In post-war England, a country doctor is drawn into the fading life of a once-grand family living in a decaying mansion. Strange events unsettle the house and its residents, and suspicion falls in every direction. An unnerving story about class, decline and things that may not be ghosts.
3
The Lovely Bones
Alice Sebold · 2002
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Ghost Story
Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is murdered near her home and watches from her own heaven as her family and her killer's neighbours try to carry on. From that distance she follows her parents' grief, her sister growing up and a small town's slow reckoning with what happened.
4
Sing, Unburied, Sing
Jesmyn Ward · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
- Ghost Story
Thirteen-year-old Jojo rides in the back of a truck as his mother drives across Mississippi to collect his white father from prison. The journey stirs up family history and two restless ghosts, drawing Jojo toward a harder understanding of his mother and his own name.
5
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill · 1983
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
A young London lawyer is sent to a remote house to sort the papers of a dead client. In the town nearby he meets an unfriendly silence, a sea mist that cuts him off, and a woman dressed in black whose appearances are followed by the deaths of children.
6
The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton · 1973
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
- Ghost Story
- Gothic
A collection of Edith Wharton's ghost stories, written across her career and gathered in one volume. Old houses, railway carriages and country estates hold grudges, apparitions return with unfinished business, and the supernatural creeps into the lives of people who insist they do not believe in it.
7
The Silent Companions
Laura Purcell · 2017
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
A young widow is sent to her late husband's crumbling estate and finds an eerie painted wooden figure that seems to move on its own. As the figures multiply, she begins to doubt her own mind. A gothic horror set in the English countryside, told through an asylum diary.
8
The Hacienda
Isabel Cañas · 2022
From the same world: “Gothic”
- Gothic
- Haunted House
After her father is killed in Mexico's war of independence, Beatriz marries a widower and moves to his country estate. The housekeeper burns copal and chalks signs on the doorways, and Beatriz begins to fear that her husband's first wife never left.
9
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
Leslye Walton · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Magical Realism”
- Magical Realism
Born with wings she cannot fly, Ava grows up in a Seattle house where the women carry a long history of love that ends badly. As she longs to be an ordinary girl, her family's sorrows keep shaping everyone around her.
10
The Spite House
Johnny Compton · 2023
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
- Haunted House
Eric Ross is on the run with his two daughters, taking whatever work he can find. He answers an ad offering a large sum to anyone who will stay in the Masson House, a spite house in Texas said to be the state's most haunted, and record what happens there. The house may also hold answers about his family.
11
The Shining
Stephen King · 1977
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
- Haunted House
Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, bringing his wife and young son to its empty corridors. As snow seals them in, the hotel's violent past works on Jack's temper and drinking, while Danny's gift shows him things the family should never have seen.
12
Hell House
Richard Matheson · 1971
From the same world: “Ghost Story”
- Ghost Story
- Haunted House
A dying millionaire funds an expedition to the notorious Belasco House, a mansion in Maine where every previous attempt to study its hauntings ended badly. The group includes a physicist, a medium and two survivors, and the house begins to work on their most private fears.