Frankenstein
Mary Shelley
1818
Books with the “Morally Grey Character” trope
A character who is not a villain but will cross ethical lines to reach their goal.
Characters and archetypes · Morally Grey Character
Books with this trope
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
1890
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
1847
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
Robert Louis Stevenson
1886
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas
1844
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
1925
Six of Crows
Leigh Bardugo
2015
Circe
Madeline Miller
2018
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn
2012
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
2005
The Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
2006
Mistborn: The Final Empire
Brandon Sanderson
2006
Dune
Frank Herbert
1965
The Secret History
Donna Tartt
1992
Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo
2019
Gone with the Wind
Margaret Mitchell
1936
The Other Boleyn Girl
Philippa Gregory
2001
Kingdom of the Wicked
Kerri Maniscalco
2020
Throne of Glass
Sarah J. Maas
2012
Blood & Honey
Shelby Mahurin
2020
A Game of Thrones
George R. R. Martin
1996
The Blade Itself
Joe Abercrombie
2006
Best Served Cold
Joe Abercrombie
2009
The Black Company
Glen Cook
1984
The Shadow of the Torturer
Gene Wolfe
1980
The Poppy War
R. F. Kuang
2018
Nevernight
Jay Kristoff
2016
The Fifth Season
N. K. Jemisin
2015
Lord Foul's Bane
Stephen R. Donaldson
1977
The Last Wish
Andrzej Sapkowski
1993
The Shadow of the Gods
John Gwynne
2021
Nine Princes in Amber
Roger Zelazny
1970
Interview with the Vampire
Anne Rice
1976
Dark Lover
J. R. Ward
2005
Kiss of Midnight
Lara Adrian
2007
Hush, Hush
Becca Fitzpatrick
2009
The Darkest Night
Gena Showalter
2008
Corrupt
Penelope Douglas
2015
The Vampire Lestat
Anne Rice
1985
The Atlas Six
Olivie Blake
2020
Kaikeyi
Vaishnavi Patel
2022
Neuromancer
William Gibson
1984
Altered Carbon
Richard K. Morgan
2002
Schismatrix
Bruce Sterling
1985
The Maltese Falcon
Dashiell Hammett
1929
The Postman Always Rings Twice
James M. Cain
1934
Nightmare Alley
William Lindsay Gresham
1946
Strangers on a Train
Patricia Highsmith
1950
Double Indemnity
James M. Cain
1936
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver
2003
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk
1996
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
1899
Madame Bovary
Gustave Flaubert
1856
The Red and the Black
Stendhal
1830
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
2003
Scythe
Neal Shusterman
2016
Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally
1982
Treasure Island
Robert Louis Stevenson
1883
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
Jules Verne
1870
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
1979
If We Were Villains
M. L. Rio
2017
The Cruel Prince
Holly Black
2018
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Holly Black
2013
The Serpent and the Wings of Night
Carissa Broadbent
2022
A Dowry of Blood
S.T. Gibson
2021
Sunshine
Robin McKinley
2003
Halfway to the Grave
Jeaniene Frost
2007
Darkfever
Karen Marie Moning
2006
Kushiel's Dart
Jacqueline Carey
2001
Captive Prince
C.S. Pacat
2013
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
N. K. Jemisin
2010
The City of Brass
S. A. Chakraborty
2017
The Unspoken Name
A. K. Larkwood
2020
The Jasmine Throne
Tasha Suri
2021
Prince of Thorns
Mark Lawrence
2011
Elric of Melniboné
Michael Moorcock
1972
Empire of the Vampire
Jay Kristoff
2021
The Rage of Dragons
Evan Winter
2017
Vicious
V. E. Schwab
2013
The Traitor Baru Cormorant
Seth Dickinson
2015
The Way of Shadows
Brent Weeks
2008
Between Two Fires
Christopher Buehlman
2012
The Court of Broken Knives
Anna Smith Spark
2017
Priest of Bones
Peter McLean
2018
The Library at Mount Char
Scott Hawkins
2015
A Lady's Code of Misconduct
Meredith Duran
2017
The Highwayman
Kerrigan Byrne
2015
The Sea-Wolf
Jack London
1904
The Wicked King
Holly Black
2019
Iron Flame
Rebecca Yarros
2023
To Kill a Kingdom
Alexandra Christo
2018
These Violent Delights
Chloe Gong
2020
The Shadows Between Us
Tricia Levenseller
2020
Ancillary Justice
Ann Leckie
2013
All Systems Red
Martha Wells
2017
Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson
1992
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Philip K. Dick
1968
The Windup Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi
2009
A Simple Plan
Scott Smith
1993
Verity
Colleen Hoover
2018
The Housemaid
Freida McFadden
2022
My Lovely Wife
Samantha Downing
2019
A Hero of Our Time
Mikhail Lermontov
1840
Vanity Fair
William Makepeace Thackeray
1848
Frankenstein in Baghdad
Ahmed Saadawi
2013
The Gilded Wolves
Roshani Chokshi
2019
Foundryside
Robert Jackson Bennett
2018
The Blacktongue Thief
Christopher Buehlman
2021
Jhereg
Steven Brust
1983
Red Sister
Mark Lawrence
2017
The Amulet of Samarkand
Jonathan Stroud
2003
The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
2011
Dead Souls
Nikolai Gogol
1842
Catch-22
Joseph Heller
1961
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
John le Carré
1974
Red Sparrow
Jason Matthews
2013
The Ballad of Black Tom
Victor LaValle
2016
Tender Is the Flesh
Agustina Bazterrica
2017
Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoevsky
1866
Gild
Raven Kennedy
2020
The Sweetest Oblivion
Danielle Lori
2018
Poison Study
Maria V. Snyder
2005
Twisted Love
Ana Huang
2021
The Stars My Destination
Alfred Bester
1956
The Girl with All the Gifts
M. R. Carey
2014
The Space Between Worlds
Micaiah Johnson
2020
The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad
1907
Often found together with
Combinations that already exist in the catalog. Click to search for both.
Betrayal
Dark Fantasy
RevengeRelated tropes
Unreliable Narrator
The person telling the story hides the truth, is biased, or cannot be trusted about what is really happening.
Byronic Hero
A brooding, cynical, and magnetic rebel haunted by a dark secret from his past.
Mad Scientist
A scientist whose obsession with knowledge makes them break nature's or humanity's rules.
Sympathetic Monster
A creature rejected by the world that longs for acceptance and warmth but is doomed to rage.