Take a break from books with happy endings. The next time you want to read, pick up one of these stories suggested by users on Ask Reddit.

“A total of 67 people passed out or needed medical assistance when he did a national speaking tour where he read it aloud.” — JellybeanFernandez

“It’s the most cynical, pessimistic, ‘darkest’ thing I’ve ever read. The story is essentially about three Austrian children and their encounters with Satan. Satan attempts to convince the children that God is either nonexistent or indifferent to human suffering, that life is ultimately meaningless, and that humans are doomed, ignorant creatures. Many scholars believe The Mysterious Stranger expresses Twain’s own despair towards the end of his life.” — MVB1837

“The word ‘sadism’ is derived from this guy’s name! It tells the story of four wealthy male libertines who resolve to experience the ultimate sexual gratification in orgies. To do this, they seal themselves away for four months in an inaccessible castle… with a harem of 46 victims, mostly young male and female teenagers, engage in the sexual abuse and torture of the victims, which gradually mounts in intensity and ends in their slaughter.” — snackbot7000

“It’s one of Stephen King’s lesser known works and it is pretty fucking disturbing. It’s about a nine year old girl who gets lost in the Northeast American wilderness. It’s pretty dark given the fact that it mostly focuses on the girls mental state as hunger, exposure and dehydration cause her to loose touch with reality and go insane as she is faced with death. Also, over the course of the book, there are increasing signs that she is being stalked by a supernatural creature hell bent on killing and eating her. It was quite hard to make it through the whole book.” — quitpayload

“Probably the darkest book I’ve ever read, personally. Biblical in prose, disturbingly violent detail, all wrapped up in a nihilistic interpretation of the West. Plus, it has the most unsettling/interesting villain of all time in it. A man who seems to represent the vast sum of human violence, encapsulating both all its knowledge and all its depravity. Cormac McCarthy may have missed out on being hugged as a child, but he’s an indisputable literary genius.” — Interminable_Turbine

“Hopeless from the start, and only goes downhill. You’re stuck with him as a prisoner in his own mind, and you get to bear witness as he goes stark-raving mad.” — tumblechuckles

“Pun intended. It’s a pretty fucked up book though. I think for me the shocking part was how fucked it got. I mean, if you read ‘American Psycho,’ you kind of know what you’re getting into. But in ‘Blindness; as things gradually become worse and worse for the characters it’s like the boiling lobster metaphor, and suddenly it hits you that holy shit… This is really fucked up and humans are basically monsters.” — Shigdig7

“I’m no literary expert, but the book seems kinda normal until you get near the end and then you realize everything you thought you knew was wrong and it’s actually a hundred levels of fucked up.” — hermitsdayout

“Garth Ennis’ Crossed has my vote for ‘darkest comic book’, at least. The antagonists rape/kill a couple and their young daughter when they catch up to them in the first few pages. The husband’s intestines are hanging out while he is being raped, still alive. That’s how the comic starts. It gets bleaker from there. It was one of the only two things I’ve ever noped out of finishing reading.” — JDAlvey

“It will make you feel cold and closed off from the world, and alone in a vast universe of darkness and gritty human emotions. It pulls you in slowly, making you experience every emotion the protagonist feels as his fate unfolds in a beautiful literary masterpiece.” — demonchefofportland

“It’s a teen book written from the perspective of a girl who was kidnapped by a pedophile as a child. She has been living with him ever since, but he is no longer as attracted to her since she reached puberty and he is making her help him kidnap her replacement. She knows that he intends to kill her once her replacement is found, and she knows she’s not the first girl he’s kidnapped.” — Elphabeth

“Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk (guy who did fight club) is pretty messed up. After a string of misterious infant deaths, a journalist discovers that a poem in a lullabies book is actually a curse that kills whoever the speaker is saying it to to. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a story about this guy tracking down all the copies of that book and poem and all the crazy horrible and bizarre things that happen along the way.” — SoWhatComesNext

“Author offed himself after writing it allegedly.” — devoricpiano

“This book is set during World War II and the narrator is death, which is an extremely interesting perspective. Its a hauntingly beautiful story and I highly recommend it to everyone.” — penea2

“It’s a visual novel that’s not terribly well known, but it’s crazy Lovecraftian levels of fucked up.” — Penguin_Out_Of_A_Zoo

“1984 is the darkest I know of. Humans have built a society that exists for no purpose but to be a boot grinding the individual into the ground. If you rebel in the smallest way, you won’t be killed. You will be tortured and tortured and tortured by all you fear most in the world. This will continue until you love your lot in life. You will be tortured into loving all you hate, and hating all that you love. This is inevitable. And then they kill your body.” — tyguytheshyguy

“I’ve never been able to finish Notes From the Underground by Dostoyevsky. I’ve read so much shit. Barker, King, Brite, Gaiman, filthy love letters by european swingers. Nothing makes me as depressed as Notes From the Underground.” — MidasVirago

“It’s ultimately about the darkness at the heart of human existence. The journey into the colonized and exploited jungles of Africa was an incredibly apt and timely parable, rendered with unsparing detail. Kurtz’s madness is inevitable.” — ialsohaveadobro

“What other book makes you nod in agreement with a pedophile child rapist?” — automator3000

“I nominate Gerald’s Game by Stephen King due to the graphic incest and the creep factor. There’s a bit about 80 pages in that almost made me crap myself. And Closing Time by Neil Gaiman. Short story with an unreliable narrator but very dark and creepy. They made it into a short film for Neil Gaiman’s Likely Stories but it needs to be read first.” — howkflakegirl

“It’s about a teenage boy (Ezra Miller) who commits a school massacre and how his mother deals with it afterwards with flashbacks to his childhood and growing up. It’s a really dark story because it has no catharsis or any answers whatsoever and truly is gazing into the abyss.” — Noggin-a-Floggin

“This book is amazing until you make the mistake of listening to the audiobook outside in the dark… and then you just want to run as far away as possible.” — Crytetra

“I would encourage anyone into medieval fantasy to give berserk a shot. Its is an exceedingly highly acclaimed dark fantasy manga, but relatively unheard of in the west due to the medium.” — ElectricDruid

“American Psycho, for many reasons, but mainly the child in the zoo chapter.” — regretienne

“Not hugely well known, but also not the darkest book EVER but it is the most beautiful book I’ve read about a child serial killer. The author’s sci-fi is the tits, though.” — Damnyoureyes

“The Metamorphosis by Kafka is pretty fucking dark. A man who single handedly supports his family (parents and sister) wakes up one morning as a giant bug. His family gradually comes to resent and despise him now that they have to work to make ends meet and keep him hidden. His father inadvertently injures him and he spends most of the book in utter torment and resolves to die in the end to stop being a burden. In the end, his entire family is relieved he is finally dead basically their lives are great after he’s gone. Read Kafka if you want to experience true self loathing.” — Mat_the_Duck_Lord