Books like Bag of bones by J. North Conway

When car‑broking novelist Paul Sheldon is rescued by his obsessive fan, former nurse Annie Wilkes, she forces him to return his favorite character, Misery, to life as she keeps him captive in her isolated cabin.

Shirley Jackson’s classic psychological horror, *The Haunting of Hill House*, follows a lonely woman drawn into an abandoned mansion whose malevolent presence ultimately consumes her.

A young bride, the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter, arrives at Manderley on the Cornish coast and finds her new home haunted by the memory and housekeeper’s obsession with her mysterious, stylish predecessor—Rebecca.

A young governess in a remote estate discovers that the souls of two children are threatened by the malevolent ghosts of a former governess and her lover.

The Amityville Horror recounts the alleged terrifying paranormal experiences of the Lutz family at their Long Island home, sparking widespread debate and legal disputes over its authenticity.

U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule investigate a missing patient on Shutter Island’s Ashcliffe Hospital, only to confront sinister experiments and psychological horrors that threaten their sanity.

A clergyman‑turned‑surgeon, Hugh de Singleton, uses his Parisian training to solve a murder in Oxford, unraveling intrigue, medical mystery, and medieval society.

740 Park, built in 1930 on Manhattan's Gold Coast, has been home to America’s wealthiest families—Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Chrysler, Niarchos, and modern billionaires—offering a rare social history of elite New York life.

"I very much need to be dead." These are the chilling last words left by a man who had everything to live for but took his own life. In the void that remains stands his widow, FBI agent Jane Hawk, surrounded by questions destined to go unanswered unless she does what all the grief and fury inside her demand: Find the truth, no matter what. People of talent and accomplishment, people seemingly happy and sound of mind, have recently been committing suicide in surprising numbers. A disturbing pattern is beginning to emerge. Jane is determined to give up everything to find out why. And if that means going rogue and becoming America's Most Wanted, then so be it. Those arrayed against her are legion, and devoted to protecting something profoundly important-or terrifying-enough to exterminate any and all in their way. But Jane is as clever as these enemies are cold-blooded, as relentless as they are ruthless. And she is driven by a righteous rage they can never comprehend. Because it is born of love.

The Skeleton Crew explores how ordinary citizens use the internet and digital tools to help match missing persons with unidentified remains, shedding light on the vast number of unaccounted Americans and the modern hunt for cold case solutions.

Detective Milo Sturgis and psychologist Alex Delaware investigate a series of murders at Los Angeles’ Bird Marsh, uncovering dark secrets that threaten the city’s hidden underbelly.

A young solicitor arrives at Eel Marsh House for a funeral, where he discovers a ghostly woman in black whose presence unveils the house’s grim secrets.

"Mrs. Astor, undisputed queen of New York society in the decades before the First World War, used her prestige to create a social aristocracy in the city; an invitation to one of her parties was a coveted mark of social acceptance, and exclusion meant social banishment. Mrs. Astor's story, which reads like a novel by Edith Wharton, sheds important new light on the origins, extravagant lifestyle, and social competitiveness of this aristocracy, and it is told here with vigor and elegance by Eric Homberger.". "Homberger argues that the arrival in New York of a tidal wave of new wealth after the Civil War pushed the city's old families into a redefinition of the practices and responsibilities of aristocracy. The public wanted to know more about the neighborhoods, clothes, marriages, entertainments, scandals, and divorces of the wealthy, so during the 1880s, Mrs. Astor presided over a revolution in their social visibility. With Ward McAllister she created the Patriarchs, whose annual balls were the most sought after social events of the era. She also established the "Four Hundred," the definitive list of the socially acceptable, ordaining which families could be accepted and which must remain in social exclusion. Homberger describes the festivities of this social elite, their homes and neighborhoods, and their social struggles. His diverting account of lives of discreet and not-so-discreet excess vividly recaptures New York's high society and shows how its members were transformed into America's first celebrities."--BOOK JACKET.

Alex Palmer traces how John Duval Gluck, Jr. revived children’s Santa letters, founded the Santa Claus Association, and turned New York’s holiday traditions into the commercial spectacle we know, amid scandal, intrigue, and Hollywood glamour.

"What was the worst thing you've ever done? In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories--some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever ..."--

Jeffery Deaver’s bestselling suspense novel featuring his renowned characters Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs.

A good‑versus‑evil adventure in the Five Kingdoms, where a clever orphan named Loobly confronts the witch Truda Hangnail’s dark ambitions to claim Queen Bluebell’s throne.