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From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury fits well alongside Gorey, I think. It's a vaguely novelized collection of short stories centered on a large, and very strange family - the original idea was brainstormed in cooperation with Charles Addams (who also illustrated the first published story, Homecoming), so there is a lot of common ground with the Addams Family (the original cartoons more than the TV show or movies). Bradbury does get oddly sentimental - that is, sentimental in an odd way - at points, but the prose reads like blowing Autumn leaves. There is humour in the stories, but it's more Bradbury's generally good-natured tone than "jokes," as such.
I second the suggestion of the Lemony Snicket books - I had to read a couple of them for work, and they were delightfully nasty, with an odd proportion of wordplay (in the guise of explaining vocabulary to young readers).
And, of course, all three orphans were still shuddering from how Dr. Orwell had met her demise, a phrase which here means "stepped into the path of the sawing machine." |
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