Books like “The Silence of the Lambs”

What to read after “The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

About “The Silence of the Lambs”

Another favorite book?

Or start with a well-known book

1
A Head Full of Ghosts
Paul Tremblay · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
Fourteen-year-old Marjorie Barrett begins to act strangely, and her family turns first to a priest and then to a reality-television crew. Years later her younger sister tells the story of what happened in the house, though her memory is not entirely trustworthy.
2
The Last House on Needless Street
Catriona Ward · 2021
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
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.
3
The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks · 1984
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
On a remote Scottish island, sixteen-year-old Frank lives by strange rituals and guards family secrets. His routine shifts when his older brother escapes from a hospital and comes home, and the story Frank tells about himself begins to come apart.
4
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
Through letters to her estranged husband, Eva looks back on the life of their son Kevin and on the years she struggled to feel any bond with him. She tries to understand the person he became, and to face her own part in what happened.
5
Misery
Stephen King · 1987
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
After a car crash in a snowstorm, novelist Paul Sheldon wakes in the remote home of Annie Wilkes, who calls herself his number one fan. She nurses him back to health, then learns he has killed off her favourite character, and will not let him leave until he writes her a new book.
6
Shutter Island
Dennis Lehane · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
In 1954 two US marshals travel to a hospital for the criminally insane on an island off Massachusetts to find a patient who has disappeared. As a storm cuts the island off, one of them begins to suspect the investigation is not what he was told.
7
The Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides · 2019
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
- Asylum
- Psychological Thriller
Alicia Berenson shot her husband five times and then never spoke again. Six years later, psychotherapist Theo Faber takes a job at the secure unit where she is held, determined to make her talk. As he digs into her diary and her past, his own reasons for being there come into question.
8
House of Leaves
Mark Z. Danielewski · 2000
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- 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
I'm Thinking of Ending Things
Iain Reid · 2016
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
A man and his girlfriend drive to his parents' remote farm so she can meet them. Through the long winter journey she keeps turning over a private thought about ending the relationship, while small details around them begin to feel wrong.
10
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
- Psychological Thriller
- Missing Person
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears from a rented house and her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect. Two narrators tell very different versions of the same marriage.
11
Heart-Shaped Box
Joe Hill · 2007
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
Aging rock star Judas Coyne collects macabre curiosities. When he buys a haunted suit online, the dead man tied to it begins to stalk him and the women in his life. To survive, Jude must confront the violence in his own past. A supernatural horror about guilt and revenge.
12
The Push
Ashley Audrain · 2021
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller” and “Creeping Dread”
- Psychological Thriller
- Creeping Dread
A new mother is certain something is wrong with her daughter, though everyone insists she is imagining it. Told across three generations of women, the story follows her fear and guilt as her doubts about her child harden into certainty.