What to read next
10 books like The Hollow Places
The Hollow Places makes a doorway feel like exposure, then gives Kara and Simon enough warmth to keep the fear human. These choices follow impossible spaces, inherited horrors, bodily uncertainty, or companionship under pressure. Few reproduce both its cosmic landscape and its reassuring friendship.
Read my review of The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher.
Best matches
Three strong places to start
If you only want three picks, start here.
Best overall
Short read
Best alternative
Choose by reading mood
Where to start
For the fastest pace
Wolf Worm
BalancedFor the darkest read
The Curse of Hester Gardens
Very darkFor the strongest romance
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
CentralFor the easiest entry
The Twisted Ones
AccessibleThe full shortlist
Why each book belongs here
The Twisted Ones keeps Kingfisher's ordinary comic voice beside wrongness in the landscape. What Moves the Dead is the tighter biological mystery. The Shining is slower and more psychologically severe; the romance and historical-horror picks follow narrower aspects of the appeal.
1
The Twisted Ones
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- The Twisted Ones also puts a practical narrator beside a landscape that begins obeying impossible rules. Like The Hollow Places, it gives cosmic or folkloric wrongness an ordinary emotional anchor.
- Different because
- The Twisted Ones uses a hoarded house, a discovered journal, and wrong-moving figures in the woods. Its inherited folk horror is less spatial than the bunkers and islands of The Hollow Places.
- Choose this if
- Stay with Kingfisher for ordinary humor beside frightening images, and a dog worth worrying about. It stands alone; give the house-cleaning opening time to become dangerous.
2
What Moves the Dead
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- What Moves the Dead turns strange surroundings into evidence: water, animals, and illness repeat an unsettling pattern. That rewards the same attention to physical wrongness as The Hollow Places.
- Different because
- What Moves the Dead is a compact Gothic investigation with a more biological explanation. Its dry military narrator offers less banter, and explaining the threat reduces some ambiguity.
- Choose this if
- A short investigation for the reader who kept watching the landscape for clues. This is Easton's first story, with queasy biological horror and less banter.
3
The Shining
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Moderate
Why this matches
- Similar because
- The Shining also makes a building's boundaries trap people with a danger they cannot fully interpret. Familiar rooms become threatening, as ordinary doorways do in The Hollow Places.
- Different because
- The Shining is longer and more psychologically dense. Addiction, entitlement, and family fear make the haunting intimate, replacing Kara and Simon's supportive friendship with a vulnerable household.
- Choose this if
- For slower dread grounded in a family's weaknesses. No earlier King is needed, but the long hotel haunting offers much less relief than Kara and Simon's friendship.
4
A Sorceress Comes to Call
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- A Sorceress Comes to Call puts dangerous magic inside apparently ordinary social arrangements. Like The Hollow Places, it allows humor and practical relationships to survive beside real menace.
- Different because
- A Sorceress Comes to Call is a smaller household drama about coercive magic and resistance. Social maneuvering replaces exploration of a vast hostile otherworld.
- Choose this if
- A standalone if the humane company mattered as much as the horror. The danger stays inside a household, so the relationship is a closer match than the scale.
5
Wolf Worm
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Very dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- Sonia's work depends on looking closely, until insects and animal behavior turn that attention into dread. It is a bodily counterpart to Kara's attempt to make sense of spaces that refuse familiar rules.
- Different because
- Wolf Worm follows a scientific illustrator at a North Carolina manor in 1899. Parasitic experiments replace the cosmic landscape, and the bodily fear has more force than the supporting relationships.
- Choose this if
- For scientific observation becoming bodily dread, with no previous book required. The illustrator's job provides the setting; the central fear is stronger than the supporting people.
6
The Curse of Hester Gardens
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Very dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- A familiar home and its surrounding streets stop feeling safe. The connection is ordinary life disturbed by an unseen threat, with family fear giving the haunting human weight instead of Kara and Simon's friendship.
- Different because
- The Curse of Hester Gardens follows a mother trying to protect her sons in a Michigan public-housing community. Gun violence, poverty, and a haunting replace the journey through impossible geography.
- Choose this if
- A standalone for family trauma and a community living with supernatural danger. Take it for the emotional pressure of home, rather than another portal expedition or rearranging landscape.
7
Between Two Fires
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Very dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- Between Two Fires also sends a small company through a world where physical horror has a larger, unseen order behind it. Companionship keeps the journey morally legible, as friendship does in The Hollow Places.
- Different because
- Between Two Fires is a medieval religious pilgrimage through plague and demonic violence. Its severity, hunger, and sexual violence are much harsher than Kingfisher's conversational cosmic horror.
- Choose this if
- Companionship gives this standalone journey its moral center. The medieval religious horror is much harsher, with sexual violence; pass if Kingfisher's reassurance was essential.
8
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Central
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- Someone You Can Build a Nest In gives bodily wrongness an emotional center through a caring relationship. It shares The Hollow Places' refusal to make horror synonymous with unbroken emotional bleakness.
- Different because
- Someone You Can Build a Nest In makes the monster the protagonist and the bond romantic. Alien bodies and abusive-family recovery take the place of an expedition into impossible spaces.
- Choose this if
- Tenderness survives some genuinely grotesque bodily detail. No earlier novel is needed; the caring relationship is the attraction here, rather than portals or strange landscapes.
9
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
Why this matches
- Similar because
- Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil also joins bodily horror to the desire for connection. The Hollow Places finds relief in friendship; these vampires find appetite and attachment harder to separate.
- Different because
- Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil moves across centuries with lush recurring imagery. Predation and loneliness replace the practical banter and concentrated spatial terror.
- Choose this if
- A longer, sensuous standalone about women, desire, and the cost of monstrous freedom. The vampires have less reassuring company, and their repeating appetite can become exhausting.
10
The Metamorphosis
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Moderate
Why this matches
- Similar because
- Gregor's first response to an impossible body is a practical worry about work. That calm language makes the transformation disturbing in a different way from Kara's self-correcting account of impossible spaces.
- Different because
- The Metamorphosis is brief and emotionally bleak. Work, rent, doors, and conditional family love replace exploratory adventure; there is no equivalent to Kara and Simon's dependable friendship.
- Choose this if
- A brief, severe standalone if ordinary speech beside impossible events was what unsettled you. The family provides conditional care, with no equivalent to Simon's dependable friendship.
Side-by-side
Pace, darkness, romance, and difficulty
| Book | Pace | Darkness | Romance | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hollow Places | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Twisted Ones | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| What Moves the Dead | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Shining | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Moderate |
| A Sorceress Comes to Call | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Wolf Worm | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Curse of Hester Gardens | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Between Two Fires | Balanced | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Someone You Can Build a Nest In | Balanced | Dark | Central | Accessible |
| Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Metamorphosis | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Moderate |
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