6 weird little books
strange stories you can finish in a weekend
The Reading List is a weekly newsletter that sends out a new list of book recommendations every Sunday, plus, a monthly guide on how to enrich your reading life.
Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm (Translated by Saskia Vogel)
A group of young women arrive at an isolated mountain hotel to train as waitresses under the watch of a mysterious older woman, settling into routines that begin to feel increasingly ritualistic and strange. The hotel itself seems suspended outside ordinary time, with endless corridors, formal dinners and rules that are never fully explained. As the women grow closer, tensions and dependencies begin to form within the group, while disappearances and unsettling details quietly disrupt the surface order of daily life. The novel moves like a fever dream, blurring the line between fairy tale and nightmare, with prose that is cold, hypnotic and deliberately disorienting, making the reader feel trapped inside the same uncanny atmosphere as its characters.
Narrated by a mountain lion living in the hills above Los Angeles, this novel follows a creature observing the city from its edges while struggling with hunger, displacement and a growing awareness of the humans moving through the landscape below. The lion watches hikers, overhears fragments of conversation and drifts closer to urban spaces as wild territory continues to shrink around it. Told in sparse, fragmented prose without conventional punctuation, the narrative moves through instinct, memory and observation in a voice that feels both animal and painfully human. The result is strange in a deeply intimate way, turning the perspective of a predator into a meditation on isolation, survival and the uneasy boundary between civilisation and wilderness.
A former artist now spending her days at home raising her young son becomes convinced that she is slowly turning into a dog. What begins as exhaustion and frustration starts to take on a physical dimension as strange changes appear in her body and behaviour, pushing her further away from the version of herself she once recognised. The novel follows her growing fixation on this transformation alongside the relentless demands of motherhood, blurring the line between metaphor and reality in increasingly bizarre ways. Funny, unsettling and occasionally grotesque, the book uses its strange premise to explore rage, identity and the feeling of disappearing inside domestic life.
Dorothy lives a quiet suburban life shaped by routine, disappointment and emotional distance, until a sea creature escaped from a nearby laboratory appears in her kitchen asking for food. Instead of reacting with horror, she gradually begins to build a relationship with him, folding this impossible presence into the rhythms of her everyday life. The novel follows the strange intimacy that develops between them against the backdrop of ordinary domestic pressures, allowing the absurd premise to unfold with complete seriousness. What makes the book so unsettling is the calmness of its tone, treating the bizarre not as spectacle but as something that exposes the loneliness and dissatisfaction already sitting beneath the surface.
Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (Translated by Anton Hur)
This collection of short stories takes familiar genres such as horror, folklore and speculative fiction, then twists them into stories that feel unsettling in ways that are difficult to predict. A seemingly harmless object becomes the centre of a generational curse, bodies transform in disturbing ways, and everyday situations slide gradually into nightmare logic. What makes the collection so compelling is how matter-of-factly these impossible events are treated, allowing the emotional consequences to land with surprising force. Bora Chung shifts constantly in tone and style, moving from dark satire to outright horror while keeping a sharp focus on power, exploitation and resentment simmering beneath ordinary life.
The Doloriad by Missouri Williams
Set after an unspecified catastrophe, this novel follows a family living in isolation in a ruined landscape where generations of incest have reshaped both their bodies and their understanding of the world. At the centre of the household is an overbearing matriarch who rules through fear, ritual and control, maintaining a fragile order within a family bound together as much by dependence as by violence. The story focuses on one daughter beginning to push against this oppressive structure, creating tensions that threaten the balance the family has built around survival. Missouri Williamswrites in dense, unsettling prose filled with grotesque imagery and dark humour, creating a world that feels claustrophobic, bizarre and impossible to look away from.
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previously on the reading list…
Strega really calls to me, too. I read two Sophie Mackintosh novels this past month and it’s giving me similar vibes!
love love love Open Throat, great list!