Five great novels that read like bad trips, fever dreams, or reality warps

Lindsay Kent, a.k.a. The Hallucinarrator, is a multimedia storyteller whose work explores the luminous edges of consciousness and culture. Over the past decade, she's directed three international feature films, produced a Hulu documentary on LGBTQ+ families, and created branded films for nonprofits and Fortune 500s alike. Her 2014 documentary "Going Furthur" retraced the arc of America's counterculture through a psychedelic lens, and her docuseries, "Plant Medicine," follows an Ayahuasca retreat center in Costa Rica. A few years ago, Kent returned to her first love―fiction. Blending the vision of a filmmaker with the curiosity of a psychonaut, her stories blur the boundaries between science and spirit, cinema and literature. At the heart of her work lies a singular mission―to bridge the gap between reality and the beyond, welcoming more seekers into the mystery through stories anyone can access, and everyone can feel.

Kent's new novel is My Twin the Murderer.

At CrimeReads the author tagged five "favorite trippy novels, where time distorts and nothing is what it seems." One title on the list:

Marisha Pessl, Night Film

When the daughter of a famous, deeply reclusive cult horror director is found dead under suspicious circumstances, investigative journalist Scott McGrath becomes consumed by the case. What starts as an attempt to uncover the truth pulls him into a shadowy world of underground art, buried histories, and escalating obsession, where myth and reality become increasingly difficult to separate.

What makes Night Film so absorbing is the way it draws you into a state of creeping paranoia. Pessl blends noir, investigative journalism, and psychological unraveling through multimedia elements, fake documents, and layered mysteries that make the story feel larger, stranger, and more unsettling with every chapter. The pacing feels like an all-night spiral, as though you’ve fallen down a conspiracy rabbit hole and can’t stop clicking, with each new clue feeling darker and less trustworthy than the last.

Read about another novel on the list.

Night Film is among Jenny Elder Moke's five mystery novels with unique settings, Lauren Acampora's nine top novels of art and seduction, Kate Reed Petty's seven thrillers about filmmakers & subversive art, and Jeff Somers's ten creepy Halloween books and four huge books that will hurt your brain—but in a good way.

--Marshal Zeringue