What to read after “Picnic at Hanging Rock” by Joan Lindsay: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Orphaned heiress Maud Ruthyn is sent to Bartram-Haugh, the remote house of her uncle Silas, a man once suspected of murder. Isolated there with him, his strange son and a governess, she slowly realises the household is closing in on her.
After her mother's death, Mary Yellan goes to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn on the bleak Bodmin Moor. Her uncle keeps the inn closed to travellers and answers to dangerous men from the coast. Mary must work out what her one remaining family is hiding before the moor and its secrets close over her.
At the end of a quiet street live a man, his daughter and a cat, keeping to themselves. When a new neighbour comes looking into a child's long-ago disappearance, the house's careful routine bends and the story it protects begins to break apart.
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.
A strange, insect-like creature arrives in London bent on revenge against a member of Parliament, and its powers reach into the lives of everyone near him. The story is told through several witnesses who each encounter the being and try to stop it.
A shy young woman marries the widowed Maxim de Winter and arrives at Manderley, his grand estate by the sea. There she is measured against his first wife, the beautiful Rebecca, whose presence lingers in every room, in the servants' loyalty and in a secret nobody will speak.
After her parents die, Emily St. Aubert is left to the care of an aunt who marries an Italian nobleman. Taken to the gloomy castle of Udolpho, she is surrounded by unexplained sounds, sealed rooms and sinister men, while she tries to keep her love and her safety.
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.
In 1945 Barcelona, young Daniel is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and chooses a novel called The Shadow of the Wind. He becomes obsessed with its vanished author, Julián Carax, and his search through a scarred city uncovers a decades-old story of doomed love, madness and revenge.
A respected London doctor is oddly close to a violent, mysterious man named Hyde. When a friend investigates the link between them, he uncovers a scientific experiment that set loose a darker self.
Children who have returned from magical worlds struggle to readjust, so Eleanor West's home gives them somewhere to belong. When Nancy arrives from the Halls of the Dead, she finds the school hiding its own dangers and a mystery that threatens her new friends.
An orphan becomes a governess at the brooding Thornfield Hall. A bond grows between her and its stern master, but the house hides a dangerous secret that threatens the life she is beginning to hope for.
At Devon, a New England boys' boarding school, quiet Gene roommates with charismatic Finny during the summer before their senior year. Their friendship grows intense and competitive as the war outside presses closer, until one reckless afternoon changes both their lives.
In 1893 the newly widowed Cora Seaborne moves to a village on the Essex marshes, drawn there by reports of a winged serpent. A keen amateur naturalist, she befriends the local vicar, whose faith is tested as the rumours spread, while the doubtful and the devout hunt for signs. A slow, atmospheric story of belief and desire.
A scholar finds a manuscript telling of Melmoth, a man who centuries earlier traded his soul for knowledge and an unnaturally long life. Doomed to wander the earth, he appears to people in their worst moments and offers them the chance to take on his burden.
A young solicitor journeys to a remote castle in the Carpathians to settle a client's estate, only to find his host is no ordinary nobleman. As the count travels to England, letters and diaries record a creeping sickness spreading from Whitby to London.
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.
Legend says a demonic hound haunts the Baskerville family on the Dartmoor moors. Holmes and Watson look into the death of Sir Charles and protect his heir from whatever stalks the fog-bound landscape.
A bookseller's daughter is summoned by a reclusive author who has never told the truth about her life. As the old woman finally recounts her childhood at a crumbling country house, the listener realises the story hides one more secret. A gothic tale about stories, sisters and the gaps between them.
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.
Two related families spend a summer at Beldame, a lonely stretch of Alabama coast where three Victorian houses face the Gulf. The third house is slowly drowning in sand, and something inside it has been waiting for the children since they were small.
In a lonely Styrian castle, Laura longs for companionship. A carriage accident brings Carmilla, a charming guest her own age, to stay with the family. As Laura's health fades and strange dreams visit her at night, she begins to suspect that her new friend is not what she seems.
Chloe arrives in a Suffolk village on the edge of Mockbeggar Woods to prepare the old church of Small Angels for her wedding. The villagers are uneasy, her fiancé is distant, and the woods at the edge of the village are stirring. Something that was banished long ago is waking, and the wedding, the village and Chloe are all in its path.
A couple whose marriage is failing take a weekend trip to a remote chapel in the Scottish countryside. Cut off and cold, they each keep a secret, and the anniversary gift they open is not what either of them expects.
What should I read after “Picnic at Hanging Rock”?
Start with “Uncle Silas”, “Jamaica Inn”, “The Last House on Needless Street”: they are the closest to “Picnic at Hanging Rock” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Picnic at Hanging Rock” these are Boarding School, Missing Person, Gothic), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “The Last House on Needless Street”, “The Shadow of the Wind”, “Every Heart a Doorway”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
