82 books like Carpe Jugulum

My name is Annemarie and I’ve been reading stories almost as soon as I was taught how to read. I’ve also been writing them. My fascination with the supernatural came about, I guess because an active imagination for a small child comes almost naturally from a fear of the dark. The dark held many terrors for me, and in a perverse contrariness, this prompted an interest in supernatural beings. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all real, and the more we know about them, the better. Or at least, that’s what I deduce from my never flagging interest, and I guess that’s why there’s always an element of the supernatural/paranormal in all my stories. 

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.

Since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the supernatural. I’ve always been especially captivated by vampires. My love for vampires and many of the books I’ve read about them contributed to the inspiration that led me to write my own stories. My passion for the series I created drives me. Building my own fantasy world and creating the characters within it has been an amazing experience. Most days, I feel like I’m just a spectator in their world, and they’re writing the story themselves. I hope you, too, will find enjoyment and possibly inspiration in the books from this list, just as I have.

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.

Like a caricature, satire lets you see reality better by exaggerating it. When satire is done right, every element, from the overall plot to the characters to paragraph-level details, is there to cast an exposing light on some part of our real world. They are books that exist on many levels, expose hubris and essential misunderstandings, and generally speak truth to power. They should leave the reader reassessing core assumptions about how the world works. I’ve written a best-selling nonfiction book about machine learning in the past, and I probably could have taken that approach again, but AI and American politics are both ripe for satire.

I love reading adaptations of classics which complicate the original texts in interesting ways, I have just written one myself, The Middle Daughter. Transcultural adaptations, particularly remind us that we are all members of one human family, dealing with the same kind of problems across time and space and cultures. In these times of deepening polarization, it's important to see that there's more that unites us than not.

I’m a perfect of exemplar of an author whose party days are decidedly not over, but I’m doubtless at the age/stage where I’m bloody contemplating at least paring down my intakes plural. Not that I’m still at it like a Sophomore or anything but I’m hanging in there. I get a great, tingly buzz (you had to have seen this coming!) recommending great books to keen readers. I live in a library—essentially—and friends who visit for a beer or a spliff most often leave with a book I’ve given them. Now you lot are gonna ask me to lend you some scratch! Now you’ve gone and done it, John! Haha.

My first editor informed me I was a mystery writer and my first mystery conference categorized me as a Southern humorous mystery writer. I didn’t intend to write Southern humorous mysteries but find the world-view of my characters and the world they live in quite comical and southern (my characters and I live in Georgia). I also abhor crime, so the dead bodies that keep appearing in my stories need to be dealt with lightly. I’m happy to be a Wall Street Journal bestselling and international award-winning author with eighteen books and counting in three series, Cherry Tucker Mysteries, Maizie Albright Star Detectives, and Finley Goodhart Crime Capers. 

I have always loved literature, especially for its daring use of language. That’s how I became interested in the weird and strange styles of the nineteenth century. For many scholars, the Victorian novel is the most realistic form of writing ever produced and the closest that the novel comes to cinema—so if you notice an author’s style, then something’s gone wrong because it disrupts the illusion of reality. But it doesn’t take much to realise that even the most realistic novels have styles that are highly distinct and that the Victorian period is full of other writers whose styles are bizarre, extreme, or fascinatingly eccentric. 

I have spent my life both in the classroom (as a university professor) and out of it as a passionate, committed reader, for whom books are as necessary as food and drink. My interest in poetry dates back to junior high school, when I was learning foreign languages (first French and Latin, and then, later, Italian, German, and ancient Greek) and realized that language is humankind’s most astonishing invention. I’ve been at it ever since. It used to be thought that a writer’s life was of little consequence to an understanding of his or her work. We now think otherwise. Thank goodness.