Books like “The House Next Door”

What to read after “The House Next Door” by Anne Rivers Siddons: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Elementals
Michael McDowell · 1981
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “Creeping Dread”
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.
2
Ghost Eaters
Clay McLeod Chapman · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “Creeping Dread”
- Southern Gothic
- Creeping Dread
Erin is still grieving her ex-boyfriend Silas when a friend offers her Ghost, a drug that lets users see the dead. She takes it hoping for one more conversation with him, and finds the boundary between the living and the dead starting to give way around her.
3
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix · 2020
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “Creeping Dread”
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.
4
The Spite House
Johnny Compton · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “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.
5
The Woman in Black
Susan Hill · 1983
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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
Hell House
Richard Matheson · 1971
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Haunted House
- Creeping Dread
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.
7
The Reformatory
Tananarive Due · 2023
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic” and “Creeping Dread”
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.
8
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski · 2000
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Haunted House
- Creeping Dread
A tattoo artist assembles the scattered notes of a blind old man who wrote a study of a film. The film records a family discovering that their house is larger inside than out, with a hallway that opens onto darkness where the rules of space break down.
9
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Haunted House
- 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
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.
11
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee · 1960
Similar atmosphere: “Southern Gothic”
- Southern Gothic
- Small Town Secrets
A girl grows up in a sleepy Alabama town where her father, a lawyer, defends a Black man falsely accused of a crime. Through her eyes we watch the town's prejudice, the trial, and a reclusive neighbour's secret. A classic about childhood, race and courage.
12
The Shining
Stephen King · 1977
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Haunted House
- Creeping Dread
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.