Books like “Hex”

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

About “Hex”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
Ghost Story
Peter Straub · 1979
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
Four elderly friends in a small New York town have spent a lifetime telling each other ghost stories at their club. Now something from a winter forty years earlier, a death they all helped to hide, has returned to collect the debt.
2
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
Patricia, a suburban housewife in 1990s Charleston, joins a true-crime book club that becomes the only excitement in her week. When a new neighbour is suspected of preying on local children, the women try to convince a town that would rather not listen, and then take matters into their own hands.
3
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson · 1962
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
Eighteen-year-old Merricat lives with her sister and uncle in a large house outside a village that despises them, after the rest of the family died years earlier from poison. When a cousin arrives hoping to claim the estate, the careful order of Merricat's world is broken.
4
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill · 1983
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
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.
5
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones · 2021
Same genre: “Horror fiction”
- Small Town Secrets
Jade, a high-school senior obsessed with slasher films, is sure a killer has come to her small Idaho town. Nobody believes her, so she pins her hopes on a new classmate she thinks is destined to be the final girl who survives. Her theory is also a way of outlasting her own life.
6
The House Next Door
Anne Rivers Siddons · 1978
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
A new house is built beside the Kennedys in their quiet Atlanta neighbourhood. Over two years the families who move in are destroyed by scandal and violence, and even visitors are touched. Colquitt begins to believe the house itself is malevolent, and decides to warn the world.
7
The Only Good Indians
Stephen Graham Jones · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
Years ago four Blackfeet men shot an elk on land they had no right to hunt. Now something is stalking them across the reservation, taking them one by one, in a story about grief, guilt and the debts that follow a person home.
8
The Reformatory
Tananarive Due · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
- Small Town Secrets
Florida, 1950. Twelve-year-old Robert is sent to a brutal reform school after a scuffle with a white teenager. He can see ghosts, including the boys who died there, and the warden wants to use that ability. Outside, his sister works with a lawyer to bring him home.
9
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
An investigator of psychic phenomena invites several people to stay at Hill House, a building with a long history of death and madness. Among them is the fragile Eleanor, and as the house begins to single her out, the group's stay becomes a struggle to keep hold of sanity.
10
Bird Box
Josh Malerman · 2014
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
Something outside drives anyone who sees it to violence, so the survivors live blindfolded. Malorie has kept two children safe for years. Now she must row them downriver without looking, toward a refuge that may or may not exist.
11
What Moves the Dead
T. Kingfisher · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
Alex Easton travels to the Ushers' decaying manor to see a childhood friend who is dying. Madeline's body is changing in ways the doctors cannot explain, down to the hairs on her arms, the local hares behave strangely, and the tarn beside the house seems to be watching.
12
The Spite House
Johnny Compton · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Creeping Dread
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.