Here are 83 books that The 12th Planet fans have personally recommended if you like
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Early in my career, I attended a writer’s conference in southern Louisiana. During a discussion of the best-selling Louisiana-based novels of Vermont-born author Francis Parkinson Keyes, a local historian said with great ire, “That woman came down here and picked our brains for her books!” As a follower of my state’s incredible past, I immediately saw the attraction. Since then, I’ve written more than 65 historical and contemporary novels, most set in New Orleans and broader Louisiana. Hours have been spent at the famed Historic New Orleans Collection, talking to people and walking the streets of the French Quarter—and, of course, collecting a library of famous Louisiana histories.
No one has ever captured the darkly lush and sensual atmosphere of New Orleans quite like Anne Rice.
I am in awe of this accomplishment, even as I suspect she came to it from a dark place of her own. Born in New Orleans, she moved away for a time, married, and had a daughter. This child died young, a tragedy from which Anne never fully recovered. Returning to the city afterward, she bought a home in the historic Garden District.
There, she wrote this incredible tale with its tortured protagonist, a story imbued with the tragedy of being ever an outsider, with the fascination for death and immortality she found within herself and in the city that surrounded her.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Anne Rice, this sensuously written spellbinding classic remains 'the most successful vampire story since Bram Stoker's Dracula' (The Times)
In a darkened room a young man sits telling the macabre and eerie story of his life - the story of a vampire, gifted with eternal life, cursed with an exquisite craving for human blood.
When Interview with the Vampire was published the Washington Post said it was a 'thrilling, strikingly original work of the imagination . . . sometimes horrible, sometimes beautiful, always unforgettable'. Now, more than forty years since its release, Anne…
I’ve been fascinated with ghost stories since I was a kindergartener hiding in the closet with a flashlight, swapping scares with my friends. To this day I don’t walk into a bathroom without turning the light on first, just in case Bloody Mary is lurking in there with any ideas. Add in a love of reading spurred on by early exposure to a copy of Jane Eyre and the discovery of my mom’s secret stash of gothic romance novels. I love a good romance as much as I love a good scare, and when you combine the two… well, you pretty much had me at hello.
While I didn’t set out to copy this novel, I have to admit that unconsciously this mashup of chick lit and horror with a vampire protagonist probably spawned my idea to write a romantic comedy/horror mashup with a protagonist who has just become a ghost. If you enjoyed Restless Spirits, this book has a similar vibe, albeit one that’s quite a bit more, ahem, spicy than you’ll typically find in my own writing. At turns hilarious, frightening, poignant, and steamy, this is probably the book that put paranormal chick-lit on the map.
First Betsy Taylor loses her job, then she's killed in a car accident. But what really bites is that she can't seem to stay dead. And now her new friends have the ridiculous idea that Betsy is the prophesied vampire queen, and they want her help in overthrowing the most obnoxious power-hungry vampire in five centuries.
I have had a passion for anything vampire since I was a child. This started with films with Bela Lugosi, Nosferatu, and Christopher Lee as Dracula but soon I was into everything and anything to do with these enigmatic immortal beings. Their strength, their passion, their possession, their sense of style, it all hit a nerve. There was something inherently sexy as they stalked their victims as they pursued their eternal love. I paired this with my love of ancient history, mythology, and my pagan roots then wove all these different facets together. I hope you enjoy the writers on my list and hope you enjoy my humble contribution.
Terry was not only a master at reflecting true human nature and touch upon many current issues within his Discworld novels but also a true wordsmith. Thoroughly entertaining, filled with an array of wonderful characters but now also, just when I thought his books could not get any better, vampires. This book has one of my all-time favourites characters in it namely Granny Weatherwax, the best witch that ever lived. She and her fellow witches and a befuddled priest take on the bloodsuckers who threaten the peaceful town of Lancre but be aware you will find yourself laughing out loud while reading this or any other of the disc world novels and incurring worried glances from the strangers around you. A great series to chase away the blues.
A beautiful hardback edition of the classic Discworld novel
In this and indeed other lives there are givers and takers. It's safe to say that vampires are very much in the latter camp. They don't have much time for the givers of this world - except perhaps mealtimes - and even less for priests.
Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest.
Lancre's newest residents are a thoroughly modern, sophisticated vampire family. They've got style and fancy waistcoats. They're out of the casket and want a bite of the future. But they haven't met the neighbours…
I’ve been reading paranormal fiction for as long as I can remember and it’s always been my favorite genre. I love sci-fi and fantasy as well, but keep coming back to paranormal. I’ve been enjoying authors like Terry Pratchett, Phillip Pullman, Guy Gavriel Kay since middle school, and will happily inhale any story that takes me out of reality into a world where magic is real and the princess saves herself. Now that I’m writing my own joyful escapes into this genre, it feels extra special to get to be a part of this club and create my own magical world for readers to enjoy!
While True Blood saw this series come to life on the small screen, the books are a lighter and deeper option for anyone who loved the show but wants to get more background info.
I read this series before the show came out and thoroughly enjoyed all the funny bits that weren’t as prevalent in the HBO version. Sookie was funny and fierce as I recall, which is an excellent combo for a leading lady to be.
Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much - not because she's not pretty - she's a very cute bubbly blonde - or not interested in a social life. She really is ...but Sookie's got a bit of a disability. She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill: he's tall, he's dark and he's handsome - and Sookie can't 'hear' a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting all her life for. But Bill has…
I have always been interested in ancient civilizations and have studied extensively from Egypt to Hebrew. One of the great mysteries is why all of our ancestors seem to be so concerned with powerful gods from other realms. Do such other realms exist? Did the ancients experience physical or spiritual phenomena? It remains a great mystery. However, as I read the ancient stories it became clear that perhaps our normal ways of interpreting their own experiences may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps they deserve another reading with a fresh set of eyes.
Black et. al. have compiled what is generally considered the definitive collection of Sumerian myths. The editors are the creme de la creme of the academic community of Sumerian literary experts, and the collection consists of works translated by them under the auspices of the University of Oxford. This book is the gold standard of mainstream literary study and understanding of Sumerian literature.
This anthology of Sumerian literature constitutes the most comprehensive collection ever published, and includes examples of most of the different types of composition written in the language, from narrative myths and lyrical hymns to proverbs and love poetry. The translations have benefited both from the work of many scholars and from our ever-increasing understanding of Sumerian. In addition to reflecting the advances made by modern scholarship, the translations are written in clear, accessible English. An extensive introduction discusses the literary qualities of the works, the people who created and copied them in ancient Iraq, and how the study of Sumerian…
I have always been interested in ancient civilizations and have studied extensively from Egypt to Hebrew. One of the great mysteries is why all of our ancestors seem to be so concerned with powerful gods from other realms. Do such other realms exist? Did the ancients experience physical or spiritual phenomena? It remains a great mystery. However, as I read the ancient stories it became clear that perhaps our normal ways of interpreting their own experiences may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps they deserve another reading with a fresh set of eyes.
Stephanie Dalley is another one of those Oxford scholars upon whose shoulders the rest of us Assyriologists stand. Her translations are eminently readable and enjoyable, and her focus on certain selected works of the later Akkadian language period sets her apart from the Sumerian specialist mentioned above. This fascinating era provides us with some of the most compelling stories, including the Atrahasis Epic and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The ancient civilization of Mesopotamia thrived between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates over 4,000 years ago. The myths collected here, originally written in cuneiform on clay tablets, include parallels with the biblical stories of the Creation and the Flood, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the tale of a man of great strength, whose heroic quest for immortality is dashed through one moment of weakness.
Recent developments in Akkadian grammar and lexicography mean that this new translation, complete with notes, a glossary of deities, place-names, and key terms, and illustrations of the mythical monsters featured in the text, will replace…
I am Jeff Clarke, author and graphic designer. I have always been interested in origins and beginnings, whether it be the universe, life on Earth, military aviation and ancient societies. I possess a valuable private library of my own and generally prefer to use this rather than on-line sources as the authors’ qualifications are more easily ascertainable. I design the covers for all my novels.
History Begins at Sumerexplains lucidly how the Sumerian people, particularly the city of Uruk on the banks of the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq, the city over which Gilgamesh is said to have ruled, was responsible for many world firsts.
These included the use of the wheel, literature, organised schooling, an administrative structure, and many of those features that enable the functioning of what we now would consider a true city. An example that others were soon to follow.
Which civilization had the first system of law? The first formal educational system? The first tax cut? The first love song? The answers were found in excavations of ancient Sumer, a society so developed, resourceful, and enterprising that it, in a sense, created history. The book presents a cross section of the Sumerian "firsts" in all the major fields of human endeavor, including government and politics, education and literature, philosophy and ethics, law and justice, agriculture and medicine, even love and family.
History Begins at Sumer is the classic account of the achievements of the Sumerians, who lived in what…
I have always been interested in ancient civilizations and have studied extensively from Egypt to Hebrew. One of the great mysteries is why all of our ancestors seem to be so concerned with powerful gods from other realms. Do such other realms exist? Did the ancients experience physical or spiritual phenomena? It remains a great mystery. However, as I read the ancient stories it became clear that perhaps our normal ways of interpreting their own experiences may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps they deserve another reading with a fresh set of eyes.
Crawford expands deeply on some of the ideas presented in Kramer, and really delves into more of the cultural aspects of agriculture, architecture, and writing to name a few. She clearly thinks of these ancient people as equals with whom we could easily empathize. Indeed, the book has a timeless quality of the human spirit which rings true even in a postmodern age.
Mesopotamia produced one of the best-known ancient civilizations, with a literate, urban culture and highly-developed political institutions. In this fully revised and expanded edition of her classic text, Sumer and the Sumerians, Harriet Crawford reviews the extraordinary social and technological developments in the region from 3800 to 2000 BC. Drawing on the most up-to-date historical and archaeological sources, she provides a thematic exploration of this ancient civilization, examining its physical and historical background, changing settlement patterns, public and private architecture and cultural developments of the period. In this new edition, the chapter on Manufacturing Industries and Trade has been enlarged…
Growing up in post-WWII Europe, young people’s anxiety was often channelled into searching for ‘lost worlds’, places hope could be nurtured and ancient solutions revived. So I encountered Atlantis and Lemuria and other imagined places but also learned, from training as a geologist, that once-populated lands had actually been submerged. Myths and legends often contain grains of observational truth at their heart. The more ‘submergence stories’ I research, from Australia through India and across northwest Europe, the more I realize how much we have forgotten about undersea human pasts. And how our navigation of the future could be improved by understanding them.
In the late 1990s when this book was published, it seems no scientist had ever given serious thought to the consequences for human evolution of the submergence of Sundaland in the aftermath of the last ice age. There is compelling scientific evidence, compiled and analyzed here in compendious detail, that Sundaland was a heartland of human innovation and that its drowning may have led to the spread of rice agriculture, pottery making, and even tales of lands being ‘fished up’ (as by the Pacific demigod Maui). An astonishing read that today I still regard as largely credible.
At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half-sunken continent is the Sunda shelf of Sundaland. In Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in Southeast Asia was the cradle of civilisation that fertilised the great cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete six thousand years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from Creation stories, myths and…
I've been fond of the Homeric poems since my youth. I followed classical studies in the high here in Rome, so I studied Latin and Greek before graduating in nuclear engineering. Then, in addition to my professional activity, I've devoted myself to the study of The Iliad and the Odyssey, with their huge contradictions between geography and their traditional Mediterranean setting. The book I published on this topic was translated and published into eight foreign languages (as The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales), and has given rise to many scientific discussions. I also published The Mysteries of the Megalithic Civilization, a Bestseller here in Italy.
Based on the "radiocarbon revolution" as a method of dating archaeological finds, the great English archaeologist Sir Colin Renfrew redraws the map of the dawn of civilization in the Mediterranean basin and in Europe. The result is a new framework, in which the idea of a single cradle, located between Egypt and the Middle East, from which civilization would have spread to the rest of Europe, is replaced by the identification of different places where it started, scattered throughout the continent.
The refinement of radiocarbon dating using the information form tree-ring counts has raised serious doubts about the accepted theoretical frameowkr of European prehistory. Monuments in Central and Western Europe have proved to be considerably older than their supposed Near-Eastern forerunners, and the record must be almost completely rewritten in the light of these new dates. Before Civilsation is a preliminary attempt to do this with the help of analogies from more recent and well-documented primitive societies. The more glaring inconsistencies in the old theory are re-examined and Professor Renfrew shows convincingly how the baffling monuments of prehistoric Europe, like Stonehenge,…
