10 Tales to Tide You Over Until the Premiere of Jordan Peele's Us

Gretchen McNeil weaves a masterful tale with 3:59, about Josie and Jo, two teenage girls who are doppelgängers living in parallel universes that overlap every 12 hours at exactly the same time. Fascinated by Jo's perfect world, Josie agrees to pass through the portal and switch places for a day. But Jo's existence is far from perfect — it's more like a nightmare where shadowy creatures feed on human flesh. By the end of the 12 hours, Josie longs to return to her own life. One problem: Jo has sealed the portal and trapped Josie in a world of terror. Can Josie discover a way home before it's too late?

British writer Richard K. Morgan constructs a complex science-fiction thrill ride set in a future where interstellar travel occurs by transferring human consciousness between bodies in Altered Carbon. So when Takeshi Kovacs, a former UN soldier turned private investigator, has his consciousness and skills downloaded into the body of a criminal, he's forced into a terrifying conspiracy that begins with a billionaire's murdered body and ends in digital torture.

This novel is the first in a series followed by Broken Angels and Woken Furies. In 2018, Netflix adapted the book into a television series of the same name.

Replica is a groundbreaking story from Lauren Oliver, who uses the perspective of two girls — one who is a clone raised in a lab for the purpose of experimentation, and the other whose father is responsible for the research project — to explore issues of identity and what it means to be human. Written as a flip book containing two separate novels, the main characters' narratives can be read as individual adventures or as alternating chapters of a larger tale. Oliver penned a follow-up novel, Ringer, in 2017.

Stephen King explores the complexities of the conscience mind vs. the subconscious identity in this tale about literary fiction writer Thad Beaumont — who also writes a series of violent crime novels under the pseudonym George Stark. But when Thad's pen name becomes public knowledge, he decides to stage a symbolic burial for his alter ego. However, Stark emerges from the grave and manifests as a corporeal entity. He then hunts down and gruesomely murders everyone he perceives responsible for his so-called death. Meanwhile, Thad is plagued by headaches and the police are convinced, despite Thad's solid alibi, that he has a hand in the tragedy.

The Dark Half was deemed the second bestselling book of 1989 and adapted for the big screen in 1990 by famed horror director George A. Romero.

In The Double, high school history teacher Tertuliano Máximo Afonso rents a movie recommended by a friend and discovers one of the background players is his exact double. Tertuliano becomes obsessed with meeting the actor and spends weeks stalking his duplicate, only to have the tables turned on him once he gets too close. The film adaptation of this novel by José Saramago is titled Enemy (2013) and stars Jake Gyllenhaal in the dual role.

Edgar-winner Tana French obliterates the lines between remembrance and reality in this sequel to her debut novel, In the Woods. The Likeness picks up six months later, with Cassie Maddox transferred out of the Dublin Murder Squad — that is, until an urgent call summons her to a grisly crime scene. The victim looks exactly like Cassie and carries a license identifying herself as Alexandra Madison, an alias Cassie once used as an undercover cop. Cassie's colleagues convince her to impersonate the victim to investigate the crime, but the truth begins to blur as Cassie's real and undercover personas collide.

Christopher Priest's novel tells the story of two stage magicians locked in a fatal feud. Set in England in the late 1800s, the book follows an epistolary in structure — acting as a collection of diaries kept by the protagonists. The title derives from the magicians' assertion that a stage illusion has three parts: the setup, the performance, and the effect also known as "the prestige."

While The Prestige received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for best fiction and the World Fantasy Award for best novel, audiences may best remember this work for its 2006 film adaptation. Christopher Nolan directed the movie starring Hugh Jackman as Robert Angier and Christian Bale as both Alfred Borden and his shadow twin.

The Double Life of Cassiel Roadnight, Jenny Valentine's YA thriller, revolves around Chap, a 16-year-old runaway mistaken for a missing boy named Cassiel. Chap adopts Cassiel's identity, gaining the family and friends of his dreams, but adapting to the new lifestyle proves difficult when Chap discovers he isn't the only one hiding a secret. As he begins to untangle the mystery behind Cassiel's disappearance, Chap finds himself in more danger than he could have imagined.

Hilary Thomas is attacked in her Los Angeles home by Bruno Frye, a mentally disturbed man haunted by the voice of his mother. The intruder eventually leaves. But when she reports the crime, detectives tell her he has an airtight alibi. Frye then returns the next day and attacks Hilary again. This time she calls the police, who explain Frye has been found dead.

Hilary is attacked a third time by a man who appears to be Frye, but the man escapes before the police can arrive. After some investigation, one of the detectives puts her in touch with Frye's psychologist, who lets her listen to one of his recorded therapy sessions. On the tape, Frye expresses his theories about identical twins and shares his obsession with women he believes possess the spirit of his dead mother, who abused him and swore she would return from the dead.

A direct-to-video version of Whispers was released in 1990, directed by Douglas Jackson and starring Victoria Tennant as Hilary.

William Wilson is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in October 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine.

The tale is inspired by Poe's formative years on the outskirts of London, and the plot revolves around a troubled narrator named William, who dominates his classmates, except for one boy who shares the same name. Secretly afraid of this formidable classmate, William attempts to outwit his adversary despite the fact that none of the other students notice the heated rivalry or the growing resemblance between the two Williams. As the boys mature, William's doppelgänger pursues him across the globe, interfering in his affairs in such a duplicitous manner that the audience is forced to ponder whether one's conscience can become a distinct and separate personality.