77 books like Encyclopaedia of Hell

By Martin Olson, Tony Millionaire (illustrator), Mahendra Singh (illustrator)

Here are 77 books that Encyclopaedia of Hell fans have personally recommended if you like Encyclopaedia of Hell. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of The Plague

Ty Roth Author Of Island No. 6

From my list on medical thrillers for doomsday phobics.

Why am I passionate about this?

Although I come from a family with a number of medical professionals, I am not one myself. My interest in medical thrillers is a three-strand braid that combines my learning and experiences in the fields of sociology, literature, and storytelling. Horrific as the stories on this list are, they share both a hopefulness that mankind is capable of overcoming whatever challenge nature presents, or they themselves conjure and a warning to get ourselves right before the next one comes along. At a time when it is tempting to despair over the human condition, I hope these books inspire your faith in mankind’s resourcefulness and ability to endure.

Ty's book list on medical thrillers for doomsday phobics

Ty Roth Why did Ty love this book?

I especially love this novel as Camus applies his background in existential philosophy to elevate the medical thriller genre into the realm of the metaphysical.

I love how the novel uses the plot device of an outbreak of the plague to force me as a reader to move  beyond the surface questions of “What?” “When?” and “Where?” to ask the deeper question of “Why?” and “What now?”

By Albert Camus,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked The Plague as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post 

A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus' iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. 

The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they…


Book cover of The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses

Darrel Perkins Author Of The End Is At Hand

From my list on to read as the world crumbles around us.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform. 

Darrel's book list on to read as the world crumbles around us

Darrel Perkins Why did Darrel love this book?

Dan Carlin is here to get the facts straight. The wildly intelligent and passionate historian released this book while I was working on mine, and it was a great resource for me. I’d recommend it to anyone looking to educate themselves on how civilizations fail. Hint: We keep making the same mistakes again. Read this and break the pattern!

By Dan Carlin,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The End Is Always Near as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A journey back in time that explores what happened-and what could have happened-from creator of the wildly-popular podcast Hardcore History and 2019 winner of the iHeartRadio Best History Podcast Award.

Dan Carlin has created a new way to think about the past. His mega-hit podcast, Hardcore History, is revered for its unique blend of high drama, enthralling narration, and Twilight Zone-style twists. Carlin humanizes the past, wondering about things that didn't happen but might have, and compels his listeners to "walk a mile in that other guy's historical moccasins." A political commentator, Carlin approaches history like a magician, employing completely…


Book cover of Bad Island

Darrel Perkins Author Of The End Is At Hand

From my list on to read as the world crumbles around us.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform. 

Darrel's book list on to read as the world crumbles around us

Darrel Perkins Why did Darrel love this book?

Prefer something a bit more visual as the world falls apart? Stanley Donwood fills a book with full-page black and white linocut illustrations, the same medium I use for my illustrations. Without relying on any text, Donwood is able to use classic sequential art techniques to move us through the continual destruction of a wild and devolving island habitat. You may recognize his work from his decades-long collaboration with Radiohead, but his distinct style of storytelling and art stands alone.

By Stanley Donwood,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bad Island as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and man appears, with clubs, with spears, with crueler weapons still-and things do not go well for the wilderness. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke choke the undergrowth and the creatures that once moved through it. This is not a happy story, and it will not have a happy ending.

Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood achieves with his art what words cannot…


Book cover of Mr. Burns

Darrel Perkins Author Of The End Is At Hand

From my list on to read as the world crumbles around us.

Why am I passionate about this?

Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform. 

Darrel's book list on to read as the world crumbles around us

Darrel Perkins Why did Darrel love this book?

A little levity may be required as we watch the world crumble around us. Anne Washburn’s play reads as a multi-generational game of telephone. Beginning shortly after the apocalypse, with television now obsolete, people gather round a campfire and begin retelling what they remember from random episodes of The Simpsons. In the second act, the retelling has evolved into an oral tradition far from the original. By the third act, we’re eighty years removed from the apocalypse, and the story has become its own bizarre and surreal performance. I read Mr. Burns and saw the play in person years ago, but I still think about it and laugh. It might also somehow be a fairly accurate depiction of our post-apocalyptic world.

By Anne Washburn,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mr. Burns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It's the end of everything in contemporary America. A future without power. But what will survive? Mr Burns asks how the stories we tell make us the people we are, explodes the boundaries between pop and high culture and, when society has crumbled, imagines the future for America's most famous family.


Book cover of A Most Improbable Journey: A Big History of Our Planet and Ourselves

Lewis Dartnell Author Of Origins: How Earth's History Shaped Human History

From my list on big history.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’m a science researcher and writer living in London. My research field is astrobiology and the possibility of life on other planets – it brings together lots of different areas of science with engineering and space exploration and so is deeply ‘interdisciplinary’. And as a science writer, I try to bring this same broad perspective and unifying approach to other profound questions. My fascination with understanding our own origins was sparked by my childhood growing up in East Africa, the cradle of humanity. In Origins I explored different ways that planet Earth has influenced our human story across the millennia - it’s an example of ‘Big History’.

Lewis' book list on big history

Lewis Dartnell Why did Lewis love this book?

This is a much lesser-known book than the others I’ve picked, and I feel it deserves a load more attention. Walter Alvarez was instrumental to the development of the theory that the dinosaurs were wiped-out by an asteroid impact. Here, he casts his professor-of-geology eye across the whole of Earth’s history to show us the astonishing ways that our world – and the cosmos around us – have nurtured life on the planet and influenced the human story.

By Walter Alvarez,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Most Improbable Journey as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Big History, the field that integrates traditional historical scholarship with scientific insights to study the full sweep of our universe, has so far been the domain of historians. Famed geologist Walter Alvarez-best known for the "Impact Theory" explaining dinosaur extinction-has instead championed a science-first approach to Big History. Here he wields his unique expertise to give us a new appreciation for the incredible occurrences-from the Big Bang to the formation of supercontinents, the dawn of the Bronze Age, and beyond-that have led to our improbable place in the universe.


Book cover of Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil

Babs Kirby Author Of Love and Sexuality: An Exploration of Venus and Mars

From my list on astrology with a psychological perspective.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was a humanistic psychotherapist first and came to astrology later and loved the way it didn’t pathologize and gave insight into our character and how that affects our destiny. I started to gather the charts of my psychotherapy clients (with their permission of course) and while not using this in their sessions, I was inspired by how they spoke their charts. Much of my understanding of how planetary positions and aspects manifest has been discovered by listening. I love how aspect patterns repeat through the generations within a family and what ramifications this has on the individuals. Who’s carrying the families karma?

Babs' book list on astrology with a psychological perspective

Babs Kirby Why did Babs love this book?

I bought this book in 1976, when it first came out and it’s now held together with Sellotape.

It offers an in-depth description of Saturn, a much misunderstood and maligned planet, through the signs and houses it occupies in a birth chart and includes a section on aspects as well aspects in synastry. No one else offers as much insight into the Saturnian principle and the painful lessons in life it can describe as Liz Greene. She does this planetary principle justice. 

By Liz Greene,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Saturn as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?


This classic astrology text, revered by beginners and professional astrologers alike, is now available in a Weiser Classics edition.

“The most important single contribution of twentieth-century astrology is that astrology is not a map of one’s fixed destiny but is a potential map of the unfolding of the authentic, higher self.” —Robert Hand, from the foreword

Saturn’s darker persona is recognized universally in myth and fairytale. In this classic astrology text, renowned astrologer and Jungian analyst Liz Greene offers a fresh perspective on how to handle the influence of this much-maligned astrological symbol.

In Saturn, Greene shows us how the…


Book cover of The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

Charles Spinosa Author Of Leadership as Masterpiece Creation: What Business Leaders Can Learn from the Humanities About Moral Risk-Taking

From my list on creating thoughtful good lives in our current age.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a freshman in my Columbia University humanities class, I remember when we debated whether Achilles did the right thing in fighting Hector when Achilles could have led a peaceful life as a shepherd. I was arguing that only in risking our lives could we fully live them. A senior challenged me, saying, “I’ve struggled here for four years. I want a life of ease.” That debate has guided me through my years as a professor of English literature and philosophy and then as a management consultant. Only in conversations over the good life do admirable ways of treating customers, managing employees, or competing come to life. 

Charles' book list on creating thoughtful good lives in our current age

Charles Spinosa Why did Charles love this book?

This is the most readable philosophy book I know. Nietzsche wrote it in his brilliantly witty, epigrammatic style. Each episode is about a page long.

Concentrate on "Book Four." There, Nietzsche famously tells us that God is dead. Find out what he really means. (We criticize everything and can feel no true reverence.) Consequently, we seek convenience and flexibility over and over again. Stunningly, Nietzsche sets out four contrarian, incompatible good lives. (Philosophers have always sought to define one good life.)

If you read nothing else, read epigrams 290, 295, and 303: "The life of constant revision to perfect a style," "The life of short stories," "The life of brilliant improvisation," and "The risk-taking life." I use Nietzsche’s model of good lives to help business leaders restore their businesses and themselves.

By Friedrich Nietzsche, Walter Kaufmann (translator),

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Gay Science as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The book Nietzsche called "the most personal of all my books." It was here that he first proclaimed the death of God—to which a large part of the book is devoted—and his doctrine of the eternal recurrence.

Walter Kaufmann's commentary, with its many quotations from previously untranslated letters, brings to life Nietzsche as a human being and illuminates his philosophy. The book contains some of Nietzsche's most sustained discussions of art and morality, knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience and the origin of logic.

Most of the book was written just before Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the last part five years…


Book cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Rui Diogo Author Of Meaning of Life, Human Nature, and Delusions: How Tales about Love, Sex, Races, Gods and Progress Affect Our Lives and Earth's Splendor

From my list on understand human nature and sexuality.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an unusual scientist in the sense that I have doctorates in both biology and anthropology, so I am very interested in the dichotomy between what our bodies truly want (biology) and how we are supposed to behave, or tell others to behave, in our cultural settings (cultural anthropology). Amazingly, studies show that we spend more time and attention in our lives living for others for what they think of us, than doing what we truly want, and that we often regret that, when we are close to dying. These books make us reconsider that way of living, so we can change this before it is too late. 

Rui's book list on understand human nature and sexuality

Rui Diogo Why did Rui love this book?

This book was written by a biologist with a profound knowledge of the natural world, including our species. It is one of the best books written by a scientist. It combines biology, anthropology, and history to explain a lot about where we came from and why some countries are wealthier than others, rooting such discussions on biology.

By Jared Diamond,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked Guns, Germs, and Steel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.

The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China,…


Book cover of Humankind: A Hopeful History

Nada Orlic

From my list on deepen our understanding of the world around us.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about the selected books because they have a unique way of broadening one's horizons and inspiring change in life. Their diverse narratives and profound insights invite all of us to discover new perspectives, challenge our beliefs, and deepen our understanding of the world.

Nada's book list on deepen our understanding of the world around us

Nada Orlic Why did Nada love this book?

I was deeply captivated by Rutger Bregman’s book. In a world that often feels dark, this book was like a beam of light.

What resonated with me the most was how Bregman masterfully combines compelling stories with solid scientific research to argue that empathy and cooperation aren’t just societal constructs; they’re imprinted in our very nature.

His optimistic view of the human behavior was both surprising and reassuring at the same time. This book left me feeling hopeful not just for the present but for the future as well.

By Rutger Bregman, Erica Moore (translator), Elizabeth Manton (translator)

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Humankind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year

'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry
'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford
'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah Harari

It's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have…


Book cover of Being Salmon, Being Human: Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild

Gavin Van Horn Author Of Planet

From my list on a living kinship with the more-than-human world.

Why am I passionate about this?

I remember, as a very young child, clandestinely sneaking out of the house on humid Houston nights to gather toads. How my parents never caught me in the act, I do not know. I only know holding these amphibians in my hands felt special, magical even. This compulsion toward other creatures speaks to the unfolding of my lifelong learnings, a path that led me to a PhD in Religion and Nature and then to work for the Center for Humans and Nature. I’ve never stopped reflecting on how humans might better care for our earthling kin, and I don’t suspect I’ll ever cease marveling at the earth’s wild generativity. 

Gavin's book list on a living kinship with the more-than-human world

Gavin Van Horn Why did Gavin love this book?

Hailed as a “new genre of nature writing,” Mueller’s book is species-specific, dwelling upon the lives and deaths of salmon, yet the subject matter could apply to any creature that has become a commodity within late-stage capitalism. Mueller contrasts the Norwegian farmed-salmon industry and the increasing mechanization and reduction of living beings to things with wild salmon populations and Native people’s perspectives from the Pacific Northwest. Critically, he dares to take on the perspective of salmon, sprinkling memorable and moving vignettes throughout the book, helping readers imagine the world from a salmon’s-eye-view. This work of interspecies empathy is a rare and welcome contribution to thinking about personhood through a lens that is other-than-human.

By Martin Lee Mueller,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Being Salmon, Being Human as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Nautilus Award Silver Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment

In search of a new story for our place on earth

Being Salmon, Being Human examines Western culture's tragic alienation from nature by focusing on the relationship between people and salmon-weaving together key narratives about the Norwegian salmon industry as well as wild salmon in indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest.

Mueller uses this lens to articulate a comprehensive critique of human exceptionalism, directly challenging the four-hundred-year-old notion that other animals are nothing but complicated machines without rich inner lives and that Earth is a passive backdrop to human experience. Being fully…


Book cover of The Plague
Book cover of The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses
Book cover of Bad Island

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