#please do ur own research for content warnings etc! be safe. enjoy <33

[mendingbone]

i keep seeing people in their late teens/early twenties having a "[X] content intended for younger audiences does not feel satisfying to me anymore but i don't know where to start to branch out into adult fiction" moment and i thought i would give some recommendations for adult fiction for my fellow creepy crawly queer people. all or at least a LOT of it will be on the darker and more fucked up side bc i primarily engage with horror and thriller media personally but feel free to add on with more or recommendations from other genres :)

edit: i am continuing to add to this list so there might be new recs (highlighted in pink) in here every once in a while! also want to add that there's a variety of POC, queer, and disabled authors in here as well, i am also all of the above (asian, bi/aro, poly, disabled) and tried to incorporate as many of their wickedly talented, compelling narratives as possible. that's all, happy reading!

A Certain Hunger, Chelsea G. Summers

A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E Schwab*

A Dowry of Blood, S.G Gibson

Animal, Lisa Taddeo*

A Ripple of Power and Promise, Jordan A. Day*

Bunny, Mona Awad*

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi*

Cursed Bread, Sophie Mackintosh*

Dark Places, Gillian Flynn

Dead Girls Don't Say Sorry, Alex Ritany*

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk*

Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh*

Fruiting Bodies, Kathryn Harlan*

Goddess of Filth, V. Castro*

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski

If I Had Your Face, Frances Cha*

Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao

Jackal, Erin E. Adams*

Juniper and Thorn, Ava Reid*

Kindred, Octavia Butler*

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin*

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Ninefox Gambit, Yoon Ha Lee*

Rabbits, Terry Miles*

Scorched Grace, Margot Douaihy*

Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn

She is a Haunting, Trang Thahn Tran

Slewfoot, Brom*

Sorrowland, Rivers Soloman

Summer Sons, Lee Mandelo

Supper Club, Lara Williams*

The Centre, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi*

The Change, Kirsten Miller

The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling*

The Dreamer Trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

The Hollow Places, T. Kingfisher*

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter, Soraya Palmer*

The Jasmine Throne, Tasha Suri

The Locked Tomb, Tamsyn Muir

The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling*

The Red Tree, Caitlin Kiernan*

The Unfamiliar Garden, Benjamin Percy*

Vicious, V. E Shwab

Wake, Siren, Nina MacLaughlin*

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher*