12 Weird Fiction Books That Will Take You on Strange Literary Rides

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Weird fiction is a genre that pushes the boundaries of many genre conventions, such as horror, science fiction, fantasy, and gothic fiction. It plays around with established conventions, subverting them to create new kinds of narratives… that are pretty weird.

These kinds of stories are surreal and deeply unnerving. A creeping sense of dread is juxtaposed with our fascination with the dark.

Best Weird Fiction Books

If you’re into stories that make you feel that something’s wrong, or dark things lurking just beneath the surface, then weird fiction is the perfect genre to dive into. Below are some of the best weird fiction novels you can read!

1. Hammers On Bone By Cassandra Khaw

John Persons is a private investigator operating on the streets of London. One day, a 10-year-old kid sets down his piggy bank on Persons’ desk and asks Persons to kill his stepfather.

But the kid’s stepfather turns out to be an abomination that wouldn’t be out of place in Lovecraft’s cosmic horrors. Luckily for the kid, Persons is the right man for the job. After all, he’s a monster too.

2. The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

This collection of short stories revolves around a theatre play that brings about madness and despair to those who read it. One of the stories, In the Court of the Dragon, concerns a man who is pursued by an unimaginable horror for his soul.

3. The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

Ninety-two-year-old Marian is gifted a hearing trumpet only to hear her relatives say that she is to be sent far away. She’s been with them for years but they’ve finally grown tired of taking care of her. Now she’s on her way to a retirement home run by a cult and made up of weirdly-shaped buildings.

4. The Fisherman by John Langan

Abe and Dan are two widowers who find solace in their mutual passion for fishing. They hear of the Dutchman’s Creek, a little-known spot perfect for fishing. But what they find in its bountiful waters is an evil that forces them to face what they’ve lost and what they must do to regain them.

5. The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

A family of three take a vacation to a secluded cabin in New Hampshire for a chance to bond together. Their much needed relaxation is interrupted when four strangers barge in, claiming to be on a mission from God. To save the world from destruction, a member of the family must die.

6. The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge 

Charlie becomes obsessed with Lovecraft and a particular period of the author’s life where he spent time with a fan. Just when Charlie thinks he’s solved the puzzle, he disappears. Police think it’s suicide, but his psychiatrist wife knows better. Now it’s up to her to search for her missing husband and solve a mystery that reaches back across decades.

7. Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

Walking through the house one night, 15-year-old boy Junior catches his dead father walking through a doorway. Faced with the possibility of his father’s ghost haunting them, he begins to explore the house for answers. But the house is bigger, and far more secretive, than he thought.

8. The Hike by Drew Magary

Ben takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, where he decides to take a short hike before his meeting in the evening. But the path he takes seems reluctant to let him go. Forced to move forward, he finds himself digging deeper into a world of demons, man-eating giants, and foul-mouthed crustaceans.

9. Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Isaac is approached to help a member of birdlike species to fly again. While accumulating materials for research, he stumbles across a dangerous creature with destructive potential. When it escapes, he finds himself racing against time to save the city and all he holds dear.

10. Lakewood By Megan Giddings

When Lena’s grandmother dies, her family struggles with a debt that is impossible to pay off. To support her family, Lena takes on a job that is too good to be true—high pay, free lodgings, and no out of pocket expenses. All she has to do is participate in secret medical experiments that vary from eye drops that change eye color to pills that make all the bad things go away.

11. The Vorrh by Brian Caitling

The Vorrh is a large time-bending and possibly sentient swath of forest in Africa. Beside it sits Essenwald, a city imported piece by piece from Germany. To the city’s residents, the Vorrh is a concern best left alone and ignored, until a renegade soldier journeys too deep into its heart, on a mission to solve its mysteries.

12. The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Mouse takes up the task of clearing her dead grandmother’s home in North Carolina. She discovers her step-grandfather’s journal, which is full of rambling passages about otherworldly horrors lurking deep in the nearby woods. Soon these horrors make themselves known to her.

What Is Considered Weird Fiction?

Weird fiction is a genre without fixed boundaries. It holds no common tropes and stereotypes that make identifying the genre easier. This is why many, even weird fiction writers themselves, find it hard to explain what weird fiction is.

Perhaps the best way to identify a particular work as weird fiction is if it doesn’t conform with any genre’s normal conventions and characteristics. As it can’t be comfortably classified into one genre, it is termed as “weird.” That’s not a negative connotation, but merely the best word to use considering the limitations of language and genre classification.

What binds these kinds of stories together is their mutual acknowledgement that human knowledge is finite and there are things out there that we don’t know. This is what the genre banks on to create an atmosphere of anxiety that makes you think you’re missing important information, or that something hidden is waiting to reveal itself at the worst possible time.

Reading Weird Fiction

Weird fiction is a great genre to fall into if you’re looking for fresh stories that don’t follow normal storytelling conventions.

Because it frequently borrows, subverts, and restructures known elements from other genres, you’ll find wildly different weird fiction stories. While many are similar to horror, others have a more sci-fi and fantasy vibe, or whatever genre that particular work borrows from.

What are your favorite weird fiction novels? Share them in the comments below!

 

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