“Maturity, one discovers, has everything to do with the acceptance of ‘not knowing.”
Originally published back in 2000, Mark Z. Danielweski’s House of Leaves is a multilayered and complex horror story. The story follows a tattoo parlour employee named Johnny Truant, who discovers a manuscript written by a man named Zamprano. This manuscript is a study of a documentary called ‘The Navidson Record’, created by journalist Will Navidson who recounts the experiences of he and his family after they move into a house in Virginia that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. The dimensions of the house shift and expand, leading to the family navigating this vast labyrinth and the dark, surreal secrets it holds. If you loved Danielweski’s debut novel, join us at What We Reading for the best books like House of Leaves! From unconventional structuring and existential and psychological themes to unreliable narrators, these reads are all unique, eerie and utterly gripping.
The Raw Shark Texts – Steven Hall
First up on our list of books like House of Leaves is Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts. Eric Sanderson wakes up in a house one day with no idea where or who he is. A note instructs him to see Dr. Randle immediately, who informs him that he is experiencing another bout of acute memory loss, a symptom of his severe dissociative disorder. Eric has been under the care of Randle for the past two years – ever since the tragic death of his partner, Clio, during the pair’s vacation in the Greek islands.
But, is there more to the story? As Eric begins to examine letters and papers left behind by the ‘first Eric Sanderson’, an altogether far more shocking explanation for what is happening to Eric emerges. He and the reader embark on a quest to uncover the truth and escape the predators around him. Similar to House of Leaves, The Raw Shark Texts is a kaleidoscope novel that explores the devastating imprints love, loss and trauma can leave.
S. – J.J. Abrams And Doug Dorst
A young woman picks up a book left behind by a stranger. Inside it are his margin notes, revealing a reader enthralled by the story and its mysterious author. She responds with notes of her own, triggering an unlikely conversation that plunges them both deep into the unknown. Jennifer and Eric are both facing crucial decisions about who they are, what they might become and how much they’re willing to trust another person with their secrets, passions and fears.
Conceived by acclaimed filmmaker J.J. Abrams and penned by award-winning novelist Doug Dorst, S. is a story of one book, two readers and a world of mystery, menace and desire. Finding each other in the margins of a book, Eric and Jennifer immerse themselves in a deadly struggle between forces they do not understand.
Episode Thirteen – Craig DiLouie
Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost-hunting reality TV show. Led by the husband and wife duo Matt and Claire Kirklin, it brings weekly hauntings investigated by a team of veteran and dedicated experts of the unexplained and paranormal. Episode Thirteen takes them to the most prized location in all of ghost hunting: the Paranormal Research Foundation.
This derelict mansion holds dark secrets about the bizarre and disturbing experiments that once took place there. The crew hope their modern technology will be able to prove them. Told through broken pieces, tapes, journals and correspondence, Craig DiLouie’s Episode Thirteen is the story of how filming went terribly, horribly wrong and the perfect follow-up for anyone looking for a read-alike similar to House of Leaves.
Check Out The Best Found Footage Horror Books
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building. Its rooms are infinite, the corridors endless, the walls lined with thousands of statues, each of them different from one another. Within the labyrinth of halls, an ocean is buried. Waves pound up the staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. Yet Piranesi isn’t afraid. He understands the pattern of the maze and lives to explore the house.
Another person lives in the house, a man called The Other. He visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But, the more Piranesi explores, the more evidence he uncovers of another person and a terrible truth about a world beyond what he has always known. Nominated for Best Fantasy in the Goodreads Choice Awards, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is the perfect book like House of Leaves for readers looking for another story set in a magical and impossible building.
You Should Have Left – Daniel Kehlmann
“It is fitting that I’m beginning a new notebook up here. New surroundings and new ideas, a new beginning. Fresh air.” – These are the opening lines of the journal kept by the narrator in Daniel Kehlmann’s horror novella, You Should Have Left. The journal recounts the seven days that this narrator, his wife and four-year-old daughter spent in a rented house in the German mountains – a house that seems to defy the very basic laws of physics.
The narrator is keen to finish a screenplay named Marriage, a sequel to the movie that helped launch his career. But something he can’t explain is eroding away his confidence in his work. The journal is his attempt to document this process and the unnerving events that unfold as he tries to understand what, exactly, is happening around him – and within himself.
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
Set in an addicts’ halfway house and a tennis academy and featuring the most endearingly messed-up family in the world of fiction, Infinite Jest is a mind-altering tragi-comedy about what entertainment is, and how it has come to dominate our lives in the modern world.
Weaving together various narratives around these two settings, David Foster Wallace paints a portrait of how our desire for entertainment affects our need to connect with others, and how the pleasures we choose to indulge in say everything about who we are as people. One of the best books like House of Leaves, Infinite Jest features complex structures and footnotes, explores entertainment and addiction and is a deep, sprawling and interconnected story.
The Plight House – Jason Hrivnak
Another great read for fans of Mark Z. Danielweski is Jason Hrivnak’s The Plight House. As children, the story’s unnamed narrator and his friend, Fiona, had constructed a dark and violent fantasy world. Made up of a network of laboratories, they would concoct experiments on their neighbours, friends and families. When the narrator learns that Fiona has taken her own life, using a document from their shared world as her suicide note, he becomes increasingly obsessed with the possibility that he unknowingly held the key to preventing her death.
Invoking the half-forgotten methods from his childhood, he attempts another test. The test is designed to drive from Fiona all traces of the self-destructive impulse. Yet, as he pushes things further, he opens the door to a new form of grief in his already-troubled life. Part love letter, part elegy, The Plight House is one of the best books similar to House of Leaves with its themes of trauma and our attempts to resurrect the memories of lost loved ones.
Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) – Jeff VanderMeer
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the world for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last remnants of human civilisation. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Eden-like landscape. The second ended in a mass suicide. The third in a hailstorm of gunfire as the participants turned on one another. The members of the eleventh expedition all returned as shells of their former selves and, within weeks, had all passed away. In the opening entry in his Southern Reach trilogy, readers join the twelfth expedition to Area X in Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.
The expedition is made up of four women. Their mission is to map the terrain and record all observations of the landscape, their surroundings and each other. Similar to House of Leaves, Area X certainly delivers the unexpected. But it’s the surprises that each of the expedition members are keeping from one another that truly change everything.
The Red Tree – Caitlin R. Kiernan
Sarah Crowe left Atlanta – and the remnants of a troubled relationship – to live in a house in rural Rhode Island. Within its walls, she discovers an incomplete manuscript written by the former tenant of the property – an anthropologist obsessed with the ancient oak tree growing in the corner of the estate.
Tied to the local legends about supernatural magic, as well as documented accidents and murders, this sprawling tree begins to occupy Sarah’s imagination. She decides to write her own account of its unsavoury history. And, as it continues to take up residency in her dreams and waking thoughts, Sarah risks her health and her sanity to unearth a revelation planted centuries ago in Caitlin R. Kiernan’s The Red Tree.
Night Film – Marisha Pessl
On a damp October night, twenty-four-year-old Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is recorded as suicide, seasoned journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he investigates the disturbing circumstances of Ashley’s life and death, he comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the infamous reclusive horror film director, Stanislaus, a man who hasn’t been seen publicly for over three decades.
Whilst plenty has been written about Stanislaus’ dark cult films, very little is known about the man himself. And, for McGrath, another strange death in the family is too much of a coincidence. But, as he is pulled deeper into the eerie, hypnotic world of the Cordovas, the stakes in play only become more deadly. Another one of the best books like House of Leaves, Marisha Pessl’s Night Film is an atmospheric and mysterious story all about the power of obsession.
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).
