The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

An inventory of a father delivered with terrifying calm.

He is exceptionally charismatic and charming—at least, when he wants to be. He is a narcissist and a psychopath, who likely killed at least thirty women without a trace of remorse. He is insane. He is a monster. He is also my father.

The Locked Door · Freida McFadden

A house with no shadows at all, and every guest locking a door.

The oth­ers went up­stairs, a slow unwilling pro­ces­sion. If this had been an old house, with creak­ing wood, and dark shad­ows, and heav­ily pan­elled walls, there might have been an eerie feel­ing. But this house was the essence of moder­ni­ty. There were no dark corners - ​no pos­si­ble slid­ing pan­els - it was flood­ed with elec­tric light - every­thing was new and bright and shining. There was noth­ing hid­den in this house, noth­ing con­cealed. It had no at­mo­sphere about it. Some­how, that was the most fright­en­ing thing of all. They ex­changed good-​nights on the up­per land­ing. Each of them went in­to his or her own room, and each of them automatical­ly, al­most with­out con­scious thought, locked the door....

And Then There Were None · Agatha Christie

Some people keep a darker world on hand so the real one stays bearable.

I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.

Verity · Colleen Hoover