“Silence has a different quality to it when you’re the only one left alive. It’s thicker. Heavier somehow.”
Are you a fan of spine-chilling sci-fi horror like S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence? Released in 2022, Dead Silence ventures into the eerie realms of deep space in the far-flung future, following Claire Kovalik and her crew aboard a repair spaceship responding to a distress signal. Their investigation leads them to the Aurora, a vanished luxury space cruiser. What begins as a mission to uncover the truth and secure a life-changing score soon transforms into a paranoid-filled fight for survival as the haunted past and remaining terrors aboard the Aurora threaten their lives.
If you loved the eerie atmosphere, chilling suspense and gripping sci-fi setting of Barnes’ tale, check out the best horror books similar to Dead Silence at What We Reading!
Who Wrote Dead Silence?
S.A. Barnes is an American multi-genre author who also works in a high school library. Living in Illinois, she writes under the pen name ‘S.A. Barnes’ for her horror books, and Stacey Kade for her young adult and romance stories. Dead Silence was first published in 2022 and was nominated for Best Science Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards.
The Luminous Dead – Caitlin Starling
Kicking off our list of the best books like Dead Silence is The Luminous Dead, the Goodreads Award-nominated debut by Caitlin Starling. This atmospheric and intense story follows Gyre Price, a caver who forges her way onto an expedition as an easy way of getting her hands on a lucrative paycheque. But, her descent soon turns into a hellish physical and psychological battle for survival.
Strange inconsistencies with supplies, the route constantly being changed and the murky intentions of her company lead to Gyre slowly losing her bearings in this mysterious and deadly place. Like Dead Silence, this chilling supernatural space story explores paranoia and a protagonist struggling to hold on to their sanity in an unknown location.
The Scourge Between Stars – Ness Brown
Similar to Dead Silence, Ness Brown’s The Scourge Between Stars is a claustrophobic sci-fi/horror blend set on board a doomed ship where something terrifying is hiding within its walls.
Jacklyn Albright, acting captain of the Calypso, is in charge of keeping the last of humanity alive as the starship limps back from its failed colony. Having to constantly battle starvation and destruction, Jacklyn’s crew is, however, nearly at breaking point. Just as distrust begins reaching a fever pitch, an unknown entity begins picking off the ship’s workers one by one in a bloody, gruesome fashion.
From Below – Darcy Coates
Another book like Dead Silence that takes its terrors from venturing into the unknown comes from Darcy Coates in From Below. In it, she trades out the void of space for the darkest recesses of the ocean and the mystery of the SS Arcadia, a ship that disappeared sixty years ago during a routine voyage.
Its recent discovery hundreds of miles off course has granted Cove and her team the opportunity to uncover exactly what happened to the ship and those on board. They are sent to the wreckage and told to film everything. But, the ship hasn’t had its fill of death yet. Trapped below the ocean’s waves with no light and no oxygen, something evil and hungry has already begun to stalk the crew from below.
Leech – Hiron Ennes
In an isolated chateau in the frozen north, the baron’s doctor has just died. His replacement arrives at the eerie location tasked with uncovering how the Interprovincial Medical Institute has lost track of one of its many bodies.
Hiron Ennes’ Leech is another book like Dead Silence that was nominated for Best Science Fiction in the Goodreads Choice Awards and features one of the most innovative and chilling approaches in the genre. Told from the perspective of an unnamed parasite inhabiting the body of a doctor, Leech introduces readers to the institution, an organisation which infects young minds and shapes them to be doctors, perfectly adept at cradling, curing and protecting humans from all the unspeakable horrors their ancestors created.
Hide – Kiersten White
Kiersten White’s Hide is a story of an abandoned amusement park and a challenge that has the potential to change a person’s life forever. The challenge is simple: spend a week hiding in one park without being caught.
Whether it be to escape the pasts that haunt them or win enough money to build their dream future, fourteen competitors arrive desperate to win. But Mack is confident that she has what it takes to beat out the competition. But, as the competition around her begins disappearing one by one, she soon realises there are more sinister schemes being orchestrated at this park. And how it might only be by working together that any of them have any hope of seeing through all seven days.
Salvation Day – Kali Wallace
The House of Wisdom was a massive exploration vessel that had spent the past decade abandoned after a deadly virus wiped out everyone on board in a matter of hours. Yet, for Zahra, this spaceship represents an opportunity to take it for herself and her people. All they need is to kidnap Jaswinder Bhattacharya – the sole survivor of the tragedy, and whose genetic imprint is required to gain entry.
Yet, what Zahra and her crew don’t realise is that there are more evils buried in the House of Wisdom that Earth’s government has tried to keep secret. A terrifying threat to all of humanity. One that they soon wake up. Kali Wallace’s Salvation Day is a pulsating sci-fi thriller like Dead Silence that takes readers into another haunted abandoned spaceship and face-to-face with all the horrors lurking inside.
Paradise-1 (Red Space #1) – David Wellington
David Wellington’s Red Space series kicks off in Paradise-1 when Special Agent Petrov and Dr. Lei Zhang are awoken from their cryogenic sleep to the sounds of their ship’s alarms blaring away. Warned that they are under attack, they have no choice but to investigate.
It soon becomes clear that their vessel has been boarded by another ship, one that has come from Paradis-One, Earth’s deep-space colony. To make matters worse, the vessel is empty. To work out what has happened to the ship and the colony it took off from, Petrov and Zhang must delve deeper into the bowels of deep space where the true horrors await them.
Check Out Our Dead Silence Book Review
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
