8 Books Help You Navigate a Post-Twin Peaks World

As of Sunday night, Twin Peaks is over. The series’ triumphant, and in some ways polarizing return to television after 25 years was pure fanservice for aficionados of surreal fiction and nightmare fuel alike, with its bold color palette, unsettling mythology, and full use of premium cable’s ability to explore mature themes (and curse a lot). But now that 18 weeks of evil spirits, caffeine binges, pie, and conversations with creepy godlike beings are behind us, it’s only natural if you’ve still for a craving for more twisted, surrealist fiction, whether to fill that unusual void in your life, or take the edge off that incredibly divisive final episode. Grab yourself some black (as in “midnight on a moonless night”) coffee and your choice of donuts or cherry pie, and consider this list of books to help you navigate a post-Peaks world.

Night Film, by Marisha Pessl
Pessl’s surrealist noir has a lot in common with Lynch’s work. It begins with the discovery of a body under mysterious circumstances that might involve demonic possession, and features a competent hero nonetheless out of his depth in a world of shadowy horrors and occult influences. There’s even the same dreamlike transition between worlds, or sometimes even between people, as identities shift and the lines between reality and whatever sinister beyond Lynch-like film director Stanislas Cordova might be in contact with blur and shift. A caveat: like Twin Peaks, Night Film is not a narrative that will answer all of your questions or resolve its more mindbending elements, but its world is deep enough, dark enough, and certainly strange enough to get lost in for a while—provided you like the dark.

A Man of Shadows, by Jeff Noon
Hallucinatory images and lucid dreams being Noon’s stock and trade, it’s no surprise he’d wind up on a list like this, but his newest novel goes a step further. A Man of Shadows is an absurdist detective story set in a city divided between the perpetually bright Dayzone and the incredibly dark Nocturna, with an area called Dusk that looks and feels like it rents space part-time from Lynch’s own supernatural locations. (A major showdown even occurs in a shadowy theater with red curtains.) Adding to the bizarre atmosphere is the fact the entire city appears to be going through time slippage, as each district is a different zone depending on the level of light, and there are people who can actually move between hours and use gaps in time to their advantage, creating a vibrant landscape of danger with a compelling mystery at its center.

The Stranger, by Max Frei
Published pseudonymously under its main character’s first name, The Stranger tells of a man who sleeps all day and has unusual dreams of a place called Echo, where he is offered a job working for the Department of Order as an occult detective. Having very little to do in the real world, Max immediately accepts and is borne into a strange universe where he must solve cases for the Secret Investigations unit while preserving the precarious balance between various magics, and within the city of Echo itself, which rests upon the World’s Heart, a gigantic source of magic depleted through repeated use. While it contains neither the suburban gothic tone nor the eccentricities of Twin Peaks, it is at least a thematic equal, featuring an occult detective working for a secretive department of characters to solve mysteries in an eldritch, dreamlike environment.

In Heaven, Everything is Fine: Fiction Inspired by David Lynch, edited by Cameron Pierce
For a more direct inspiration, you might want to try this collection of Lynch-inspired stories, titled after a line from Eraserhead and featuring pastiches from an all-star list of bizarro, horror, and surreal fiction authors. The works range from direct pastiches (a number of them set in diners), a short poem from V for Vendetta musician David J. about the effects of watching David Lynch’s films, and more disquietingly absurdist works in a similar vein. The result is a wide and varied range of stories, all of them unsettling in different ways, from Ben Loory’s story of a guard’s hapless attempt to cover up a prison escape to Jeff Burk’s satirical film script in which an outlaw couple guns down hipsters. No matter what you find, , In Heaven, Everything is Fine serves as an excellent compendium for Lynch-adjacent material, and a good jumping-off point for the world of bizarro fiction. (Standout stories: “Hadley” by Ben Loory, “First Movement” by Suzanne Burns)

The Shadow Year, by Jeffrey Ford
Ford’s fantastic fiction occupies an unusual place somewhere just short of your subconscious, where it seems like anything can and will happen, but which still adheres to a logic all its own. The Shadow Year takes his unique style and eye for the weird to 1960s Long Island, where an unnamed young man spends his summer playing boy detective with his older brother as they search for a ghostly neighborhood prowler, reading a mysterious series of books recognized only by their main character and the smell of pipe smoke on their pages, perusing hypnotic magazine centerfolds, and caring for the cardboard-and-clay replica of his town he and his siblings build in the basement of their house. Ford’s writing perfectly captures both the suburban setting and the unsettling darkness of possibly supernatural events, making The Shadow Year a perfect fit for you post-Peaks entertainment.

Private Midnight, by Kris Saknussemm
A psychosexual mystery that plays with noir tropes and retro style in much the same way as Twin Peaks, Private Midnight follows dirty cop Birch Ritter as he comes in contact with the mysterious Genevieve Wyvern, a femme fatale who looks like she walked right off a paperback book cover and seems to have an unusual hold over men. At first his prime suspect in a series of mysterious suicides, Genevieve soon leads Birch through a set of encounters similar to deranged therapy sessions, each designed to unlock repressed memories and hidden darkness for her own ends. But secrets of who Genevieve Wyvern is, and what she wants with Birch, go far beyond simple manipulation. Without giving too much away, the timeless feel of Saknussemm’s world, the mysterious nature of Genevieve and her associates, the eccentric cast of characters in Birch’s home city, and a particularly maze-like house wouldn’t feel a bit out of place in Twin Peaks, and the “nightmare just before waking” atmosphere matches perfectly with Lynch’s own liminal horror.

It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Craynor
The second companion novel to Welcome to Night Vale, the Lovecraft and Lynch-inspired podcast of small town terrors and the dangers of community radio, It Devours! deals with the Joyous Congregation of the Smiling God, a semi-corporate cult that worships a many-toothed Lovecraftian deity and has upsetting designs for existence as a whole. When a government scientist named Nilanjana Sikar is given the job of investigating a mysterious rumbling in the desert outside of Night Vale, she discovers the Congregation and its most dedicated member, Darryl, are doing something unnerving to bring their God’s plans to fruition. Night Vale is the kind of place that could very well exist on the border of a Lynchian nightmarescape, with people spouting absurd dialogue, upsetting gods, and conspiracies all over the place; the elements of cosmic horror present It Devours! only cement the similarities.

Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, by Mark Frost
This is a bit of a cheat, as it’s written directly as a companion volume for the series, and we haven’t read it yet: co-creator Mark Frost’s (The List of 7) second novel in the Twin Peaks universe is meant to tie up the loose ends present in the 25-year gap between the original series and The Return. Final Dossier will also attempt to close out the series, hopefully bringing clarity and much-needed context to the unusual universe explored in the revival—both its bomb-spawned cosmic horrors and its eccentric cast of characters. It might also serve as a good final fix, now that the series (sadly) looks like it’s over for good.
We’ve been meaning to ask you, how’s Annie?