IT IS TIME TO JOIN ME…in Reading: Best Books for Stranger Things Fans

The Upside-Down takes all the familiar locations of Hawkins and warps them with shadowy power, crafting a world teeming with vines and overrun with horrific creatures. In What Moves the Dead, retired soldier Alex Easton is greeted by a similar view when they arrive at their dying friend’s family estate. In this exquisite retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher,” Easton teams up with a doctor and a mycologist to uncover what plagues Usher House before it dooms them all. Check out our Poured Over episode with T. Kingfisher for a behind-the-scenes look at this horror masterpiece! 

What do you get when you have a ragtag group of kids in a small-town who are hunting down an evil monster who is trying to kill them? No – not Stranger Things. We’re talking about Stephen King’s epic novel It. The Duffer Brothers were inspired by the novel and many of Mr. King’s other books (the best of which are reviewed in our blog post), so if you haven’t had a chance to read the immense work by Stephen King, we highly recommend that you begin with this one. 

We’re not sure why the evil geniuses’ schemes for ultimate power always seem to involve raising children, but it makes for some great literature. Meet twins Roger and Dodger: the former with an affinity for words and language, and the latter with the ability to see the world in numbers and mathematical formulae. Despite living separate, normal lives unaware of each other’s existence, they keep finding their way back to each other – after all they were created specifically to wield their powers in tandem. Reed, their creator, is determined to exploit his only successful experiments in his quest for godhood. But as Dr. Brenner discovered with Eleven in Stranger Things, the problem with using people as vessels of power is that those vessels have minds of their own. 

The island of Sawkill Rock is much like Hawkins, Indiana: remote and almost painfully mundane with a population thoroughly convinced that there is nothing supernatural behind the decades-long string of disappearances. But whether the residents like it or not, the campfire legend is real and continues to prey on the people of Sawkill…until three girls decide to fight back.  

Yeah, we see you kids sneaking downstairs to watch Stranger Things in the middle of the night. You know who else snuck around at night? Nightbooks protagonist Alex, whose excursion ends with him trapped in the apartment of a powerful witch. He is saved by his collection of scary stories, composed in notebooks he calls “nightbooks.” Impressed by his creativity, the witch promises to let Alex live so long as he tells her a new tale of terror every night. The movie adaptation of Nightbooks starring Krysten Ritter can be found on Netflix and Alex’s tale continues in the recently released Gravebooks. 

Enter the world of the Endless: seven mystical beings whose unseen actions shape the path of our world and our lives. When a group of power-hungry mortals attempt to achieve immortality by trapping the Endless Death, they instead capture Dream, master of sweet sleep and nightmares alike. What follows is a thrilling dark fantasy where earthly and ethereal clash across realms and time. Like the gates to the Upside-Down, the doors between worlds are closer than you might think, if you’re willing to look for them. Sandman is also the newest binge-worthy show available on Netflix! 

Be sure to check out our Stranger Things Collection for more books to take you to the Upside-Down and back (demogorgons and grandfather clock not included, thank goodness)!