Freaks in Fiction and Non-Fiction
Explore a captivating list of books featuring freaks in fiction and non-fiction. Discover thrilling stories, unique characters, and fascinating real-life accounts in this curated collection.
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Teratologist - Signed
by Edward Lee
Billionaire John Farrington is obsessed with the idea of offending God to the point that God would want to confront him in person. Farrington has abducted priests and nuns to commit sexual atrocities with the most grievously genetically deformed people he can find. People that he's also abducted and kept in such a high state of sexual intensity, with a drug his company produces, that they are just ravenous for physical contact. The abductees, with basically no self control, commit some of the most depraved sex acts, over, and over again. Westmore and Bryant, a photographer and journalist, are given the rare opportunity to interview the reclusive Farrington and see inside his mansion and operation. Only to find the horrors within, and who have become pawns in the mysteries they find behind every door. Farmington's plan may work, and to make sure he's successful, he will do whatever it takes to have the deity of man face him.
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Freak Show
by F. Paul Wilson
A collection of horror tales features the work of Brad Strickland, Gregory Nicoll, Rex Miller, Nancy Kilpatrick, Scott A. Cupp, Kathryn Ptacek, Douglas Borton, Morgan Fields, Richard Lee Byers, and others. Original.
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The Freakshow
by Bryan Smith
The Flaherty Brothers Traveling Carnivale and Freakshow has rolled into Pleasant Hills, Tennessee, and the quiet little town will never be the same. In fact, much of the town won't survive as unimaginable creatures lure locals to a fate worse than death. Original.
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Twilight Eyes
by Dean Ray Koontz
Sought by police for murder, slim Mackenzie, a young man both blessed and cursed by "twilight eyes," stalks the diabolical "Others," who feed their twisted needs with human suffering.
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Invisible Monsters: A Novel
by Chuck Palahniuk
The career of a model ends when she is disfigured in an accident. Suspecting the accident was the work of her ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, she takes revenge by slipping him a drug to grow breasts.
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Geek Love
by Katherine Dunn
National Book Award Finalist • Here is the unforgettable story of the Binewskis, a circus-geek family whose matriarch and patriarch have bred their own exhibit of human oddities—with the help of amphetamines, arsenic, and radioisotopes. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Their offspring include Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious—and dangerous—asset. As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
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Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Ninety-something-year-old Jacob Jankowski remembers his time in the circus as a young man during the Great Depression, and his friendship with Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, and Rosie, the elephant, who gave them hope. Reader's Guide included. Reprint.
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Freaks
by Daniel P. Mannix
Meet the strangest people who ever lived! Read all about: · the notorious love affairs of midgets · the strange sex lives of Siamese twins · the dwarf clown's wife whose feet grew directly from her body · the mule-faced woman whose son became her manager · the unusual amours of Jolly Daisy, the fat woman · the famous pinhead who inspired Verdi's Rigoletto · the tragedy of Betty Lou Williams and her parasitic twin · the midget, only 34 inches tall, who was happily married to a 264-pound wife · the human torso who could sew, crochet, and type · and bizarre accounts of normal humans turned into freaks-either voluntarily or by evil design! Originally printed in a small edition and withdrawn by the publisher after one month, this book (out of print for nearly 20 years), is brought back to eye-popping life with many new photos. Daniel P. Mannix, now enjoying a cult revival, is the author of noir classics such as Those About to Die, The History of Torture, The Hell-fire Club, Memoirs of a Sword Swallower, The Beast (the first biography of Aleister Crowley to enjoy wide readership), and many others. A former sword-swallower, fire-eater, fakir and world traveler, Mr. Mannix still lives on the family farm with his falcon, miniature horses and reptile collection.
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The Two-headed Boy, and Other Medical Marvels
by Jan Bondeson
A successor to his popular book A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, this new collection of essays by Jan Bondeson illustrates various anomalies of human development, the lives of the remarkable individuals concerned, and social reactions to their extraordinary bodies.Bondeson examines historical cases of dwarfism, extreme corpulence, giantism, conjoined twins, dicephaly, and extreme hairiness; his broader theme, however, is the infinite range of human experience. The dicephalous Tocci brothers and Lazarus Colloredo (from whose belly grew his malformed conjoined twin), the Swedish giant, and the king of Poland's dwarf--Bondeson considers these individuals not as "freaks" but as human beings born with sometimes appalling congenital deformities.He makes full use of original French, German, Dutch, Polish, and Scandinavian sources and explores elements of ethnology, literature, and cultural history in his diagnoses. Heavily illustrated with woodcuts, engravings, oil paintings, and photographs, The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels combines a scientist's scrutiny with a humanist's wonder at the endurance of the human spirit. Contents: The Two Inseparable Brothers, and a PrefaceThe Hairy Maid at the HarpsichordThe Stone-childThe Woman Who Laid an EggThe Strangest Miracle in the WorldSome Words about Hog-faced GentlewomenHorned HumansThe Biddenden MaidsThe Tocci Brothers, and Other DicephaliThe King of Poland's CourtDwarf Daniel Cajanus, the Swedish GiantDaniel Lambert, the Human ColossusCat-eating Englishmen and French Frog-swallowers
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A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities
by Jan Bondeson
Discusses several strange diseases, remarkable malformations, uncommon and gruesome ways of death, and unlikely feats of fasting or gluttony, which proliferated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries' medical literature, and shows that sometimes these curiosities did occur
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Side Show
by Howard Bone
Reminisces about life as a member of a traveling carnival troupe, about girlie shows, magic acts, pickled punks, torture acts, and the carnival in general.
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Freak Show
by Robert Bogdan
From 1840 until 1940, freak shows by the hundreds crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today's standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America's most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan's fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, becoming the celebrities of their time, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimans.
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The Girls
by Lori Lansens
Rarely has the experience of being a sister been so poignantly and memorably captured as in Lori Lansens's triumphant novel. The Girls celebrates life's fundamental joys and trials as it presents Rose and Ruby, sisters destined to live inseparably but blessed with distinct sensibilities that enrich and complicate their shared experiences-of growing up, of finding their way in the world, of saying good-bye.Readers who encounter the girls will find it hard to resist falling under their spell.
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Half Life
by Shelley Jackson
Nora and Blanche are conjoined twins. Nora is strong, funny, and deeply independent, thirsting for love and adventure. Blanche, by contrast, has been asleep for twenty years. Sick of carrying her sister's dead weight, Nora wants her other half gone for good—a desire that takes her from San Francisco to London in search of the Unity Foundation, a mysterious organization that promises to make two one. But once in England, Nora's past begins to surface in surprising and disturbing ways, pushing her to the brink of insanity and forcing her to question her own—and Blanche's—grip on the truth.
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The Pilo Family Circus
by Will Elliott
"Delivered by a trio of psychotic clowns, this ultimatum [to pass his audition for the circus] plunges Jamie into the horrific alternate universe of the Pilo Family Circus, a borderline world between Hell and Earth from which humankind's greatest tragedies have been perpetuated. Yet, in this place--peopled by the gruesome, grotesque, and monstrous, where violence and savagery are the norm--Jamie finds that his worst enemy is himself. When he applies the white face paint, he is transformed into JJ, the most vicious clown of all. And JJ wants Jamie dead..."--Page [4] of cover.
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Freak Babylon
by Jack Hunter
A comprehensive study of freaks and freakshows, FREAK BABYLON also includes Doctor Frederick Treve's classic case history The Elephant Man and an illustrated account of the classic movie Freaks.
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Human Oddities
by Noria Jablonski
A collection of short works focuses on a central theme of the human body as a landscape, in a volume that relates the experiences of such characters as separated conjoined twins, drag queens, and hospital orderlies. A first collection. Original.
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The Tsar's Dwarf
by Peter Fogtdal
Soerine, a deformed female dwarf from Denmark, is given as a gift to Tsar Peter the Great, who is smitten by her freakishness and intellect. Against her will, she becomes a jester in his court, in this masterfully told and brilliantly translated novel about aberration, endurance, and the human condition.
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The Bighead
by Edward Lee
Who, or what, is the "Bighead"? Could it be a supernatural psychopath? Whatever it is, it's on a roll now, raging out of the Virginia backwoods and leaving a trail of blood and horror in its wake. Includes 21 full-page illustrations and the original ending.