My friends daughter turns 16 next week and wants a book for her birthday – she says something ‘dark and intruiging she can get lost in’.
I was thinking of ‘Sleeping in Flames’ by Jonathan Carroll ‘cos i enjoyed it myself, any other ideas though?

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Dracula by Bram Stoker

She’s already got those 🙂 She doesn’t read the regular teenagew fiction so need something more mature.

I recommend A Madness Of Angels, by Kate Griffin, then she can read The Midnight Mayor and The Neon Court. They are Urban Magic stories, set in London, and are very dark indeed, but with humour all the way through. Kate herself is only 25, and has eleven novels behind her, her first, Mirror Dreams a young adult book, was written when she was fourteen, under her real name of Catherine Webb. I think your friends daughter will really like her books, Kate is a very accomplished writer, and writes a very good blog as well; kategriffin.net

Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

Cannery Row and East of Eden by John Steinbeck. The first to introduce his style and the second because it’s one of the finest books yet written IMO.

My Idea of Fun by Will Self, though that might be a bit twisted for a 16 year old!

I enjoyed Poison Study recently, might float her boat?

alistair reynolds- revelation space
china mieville- perdido street station

How dark?

Atomized?

Actually, what about some Neil Gaiman?

Neverwhere or American Gods

Also, Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.

House of Leaves

Something by Iain (M) Banks?
The Wasp Factory?
Feersum Enjin?

1984?

+1 kimmbers, both great books.

Iain M Banks, has to be Player of Games or Use of Weapons. Proper dark screwed up books!

Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg.

dark and intriguing she can get lost in

Trust me:

What about the ‘Twilight’ series? I understand they are very scary.

Alternatively the Iain M Banks novels are certainly dark. It just depends if she can get over the SciFi element. Some people have a mental block about things like that.

Another dark one (or three)…

The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake

The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson

Reckon this fits the bill

Properly dark. Quite disturbing too!

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

Both wide-ranging and dark.

I would recommended the Rum Diary if the film wasn’t coming out and it didn’t look like a cash in.

The Master And Margarita..possibly the best book that I’ve read.

Oh and Shantaram

Woppit is right, not least because by the time you realize what is happening you are already ‘in’ the story and are not so shocked – amazing piece of writing.

Alternatively how about ‘the night watch’ by Sergey Lukyanenko? Great story that you care about with decent pace but at the same time mixed up with themes of good and evil and a great portrait of Moscow

Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman would be my choice

tolstoy’s anna karenina,kafka’s the castle,selection of plays by chechov,or ibsen.
flannery o’connor is good too.or end of an affair by greene.
man in the high castle?

thomas bernhard is pretty dark.
valeria and the week of wonders by nezval.nicely dark.
or maybe lighten her up a bit,my family and other animals,or apprenticeship of duddy kravitz, by richter.

Silence of the Lambs?
Dorian Gray?

I’m currently half way through the audiobook version of The Contortionists Handbook, a recommendation I noted down from a podcast a year ago but have only just got to starting. Cracking read.

Good suggestions there everyone, time for some ‘net browsing!

lolita?

people’s history of the us.howard zinn.
darkest book I’ve ever read.

Lots of good books suggested, not sure how they would play with a 16 year old girl.
The Master and Margarita for example is a wonderful book, but slightly dense for a 16 year old in my opinion.
I would second A Madness of Angels, its excellent and would be very enjoyable for a teenage girl I would have thought.
Winters Bone is excellent if perhaps a little short. I gather it was recently made into a film as well.
If she is interested in Sci-Fi then the Culture series by Iain M Banks is excellent with the standouts being Excession, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons. The latter two having quite dark moments.
Another Sci-Fi great is The Forever War. Very dark and also very funny, its very much a war story first and Sci-fi second.

Oh and Shantaram

+1 for this too. great book!

To get lost in, One hundred years of solitude

Dark, Fight Club, its about schizophrenia

Another +1 for Shantaram, occasionally violent but an absorbing read and interesting insight into the underbelly of Mumbai.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (The strange case of…)

I was giving this a bit of thought this afternoon, and there were some more that she might well enjoy. Kathy Reichs, who writes the Temperance Brennan ‘Bones’ books has written a Young Adult book called Virus, which has Tempé’s niece, I believe, and Tempé peripherally.
She might well like William Gibson’s most recent trilogy, the ‘Hubertus Bigend’ series. (Quiet at the back, there!).
Difficult to categorise, they’re sort of noir-ish, set in a kind of present day, but slightly out of phase, where tech is recognisable but just a bit more developed, great female characters, and fashion and clothes feature, too, with viral marketing of heavyweight denim, and obsessive Japanese replicas of American iconic Korean war flying jackets.
Look for Pattern Regognition, Spook Country, Zero History.

Diamond age by neil Stephenson