Books like “The Turn of the Screw”

What to read after “The Turn of the Screw” by Henry James: 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 Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton · 1973
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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.
2
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
M. R. James · 1904
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
Eight ghost stories in which scholars and clergymen uncover things better left alone. An old manuscript, a whistled tune and a locked country house each hold a presence that follows the people who found it back into ordinary life.
3
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
Shirley Jackson · 1962
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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”
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
Uncle Silas
J. Sheridan Le Fanu · 1864
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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.
6
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Ann Radcliffe · 1794
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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.
7
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 1959
Similar atmosphere: “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.
8
The Elementals
Michael McDowell · 1981
Similar atmosphere: “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.
9
Dracula
Bram Stoker · 1897
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
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.
10
The Beetle
Richard Marsh · 1897
Similar atmosphere: “Creeping Dread”
- Gothic
- Creeping Dread
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.
11
Beloved
Toni Morrison · 1987
From the same world: “Ghost Story” and “Gothic”
In 1873 Ohio, Sethe lives in a house still haunted by the daughter she lost. When a young woman who calls herself Beloved appears at the door, the family's buried past, and the cruelty of slavery, returns to claim what it is owed.
12
What Moves the Dead
T. Kingfisher · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “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.