Hidden Pictures
Jason Rekulak, 2022
Mystery, thriller & crime HorrorContemporary fiction
A nineteen-year-old in recovery takes a nanny job and finds a five-year-old's drawings predicting things no one should know. A quiet nanny job turns uneasy as a child's drawings sharpen into dread, with a plain first-person voice and a slow, creeping pace.
Feels like dread, serenity and unease. About family, adventure and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense with a supernatural edge and a young narrator finding her footing. Be aware that the dread builds slowly around disturbing drawings and a child in danger, so it may feel too tense if you want comfort reading.
Why read it
It gives you a tense, grounded mystery about what a small child might be seeing, and the nanny's recovery adds stakes without turning into a lesson.
A page from the book
The difference between knowing you're watched and proving it.
It’s very weird, standing still for five minutes, blindfolded, in a perfectly silent room, knowing that guys might be looking at your boobs or your butt or whatever. There were no sounds or clues to help me guess what was happening. But I definitely felt them watching. I raised and lowered my hand several times, and the five minutes seemed to last an hour. After we finished, Susan asked me to repeat the experiment, and we did it all over again. Then she asked me to repeat the experiment a third time! And when she finally pulled off the blindfold, all the guys stood up and started clapping, like I’d just won an Academy Award. Jason Rekulak.Jason Rekulak was a longtime Quirk Books editor and dreamed up the idea for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies before writing Hidden Pictures.
Books that feel like this
More by Jason Rekulak
Κρυμμένες ζωγραφιές
Jason Rekulak, 2022
A recovering young woman takes a nanny job in a polished new home, where a child’s drawings begin to unsettle the calm.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is Hidden Pictures for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy domestic suspense with a supernatural edge and a young narrator finding her footing. Be aware that the dread builds slowly around disturbing drawings and a child in danger, so it may feel too tense if you want comfort reading.
- What is Hidden Pictures like?
- A quiet nanny job turns uneasy as a child's drawings sharpen into dread, with a plain first-person voice and a slow, creeping pace. Feels like dread, serenity and unease. About family, adventure and society.
- What should I read after Hidden Pictures?
- If you liked Hidden Pictures, try The Night She Disappeared (Lisa Jewell), Cell (Stephen King) and We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Shirley Jackson).
A taste of the feed
The speed with which ordinary life becomes archaeology.
Civilization slipped into its second dark age on an unsurprising track of blood, but with a speed that could not have been foreseen by even the most pessimistic futurist. It was as if it had been waiting to go. On October 1, God was in His heaven, the stock market stood at 10,140, and most of the planes were on time (except for those landing and taking off in Chicago, and that was to be expected). Two weeks later the skies belonged to the birds again and the stock market was a memory. By Halloween, every major city from New York to Moscow stank to the empty heavens and the world as it had been was a memory.
Cell · Stephen King
A self-portrait in dislikes, lucky fingers, and one very flat sentence.
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle · Shirley Jackson
The moment a quiet house becomes the wrong kind of quiet.
Anne feels her scream inside her own head and reverberating off the walls-her scream is everywhere. Then she falls silent and stands in front of the empty crib, rigid, her hand to her mouth. Marco fumbles with the light switch. They both stare at the empty crib where their baby should be. It is impossible that she not be there. There is no way Cora could have gotten out of the crib by herself. She is barely six months old.
The Couple Next Door · Shari Lapena
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