5 literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible

Murder, manipulation, and nightmarish “romance”: Kaira Rouda from CrimeReads on seven of the most disturbed couples in literature.

Here are 5 literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible:

Revolutionary Road

by Richard Yates

Kindle price: $9.99

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank’s job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.With heartbreaking compassion and remorseless clarity, Richard Yates shows how Frank and April mortgage their spiritual birthright, betraying not only each other, but their best selves.

My Lovely Wife

by Samantha Downing

Kindle price: $12.99

Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

Kindle price: 45 cents

Emily Brontë’s only novel was published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

Now considered a classic of English literature, “Wuthering Heights” met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, with many horrified by the stark depictions of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” was originally considered the best of the Brontë sisters’ works, many subsequent critics of “Wuthering Heights” argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.

The Windup Girl

by Paolo Bacigalupi

Kindle price: $9.66

Recipient of the Sturgeon Award, Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and the environmental journal High Country News. His non-fiction essays have appeared in Salon.com and High Country News, and have been syndicated into numerous western newspapers.

Gone Girl: A Novel

by Gillian Flynn

Kindle price: $9.99

Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

The #1 New York Times Bestseller

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?

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