88 books like Necronomicon

Published in Poland in 1961, this has been interpreted and misinterpreted a hundred different ways, and I won’t try to repeat that here. However, there is a loneliness haunting the book that I feel that it must be inspired by the social constraints behind the Iron Curtain.

The premise is that humanity has finally found a sentient being in the form of an ocean planet, but all attempts to communicate have failed (to say the least). The planet’s actions are incomprehensible and horrifying. Ultimately, humanity has found another lost soul in the universe, but we will never be friends. We won’t even be enemies. We will be two strangers shivering on a train platform, unable to share who we are or what we think, lonelier now that there are two of us waiting in the cold.

Vonnegut’s book is a unique combination of satire, science fiction, and raw war critique. Billy Pilgrim, the protagonist, lives out the trauma of surviving the Dresden bombing by becoming "unstuck in time," drifting through different moments of his life, from past to future. This strange, nonlinear structure mirrors how we process trauma in fragments and waves, never in a neat, chronological order. The randomness of death, the meaninglessness of war—all these themes come together in a way that’s both absurd and deeply moving. As we witness terror and violence continually unfold across the globe, the echoes of Slaughterhouse-Five feel ever-present.

The phrase “So it goes” serves as a refrain throughout the novel, after every death—reminding us of the inevitability of loss in wartime, no matter the scale. This book hit me hard with its dark humor and cynical commentary on the glorification of war. Vonnegut forces you to laugh in… show more.

Jackson’s Gothic horror flows like black chiffon over a yawing window. That’s how I felt reading about Hill House. I loved the way the house sneaks up with its psychological weights swinging and jarring. Eleanor possesses a dark ambiance. She desperately needed to belong to something or someone, and I couldn’t let go of that.

Her emotions and fears were right there with me. But it was the romantic underbelly that got me: Eleanor’s romance with Hill House. The statuesque gardens, the light, and shadows, all tempted her into its sinister realm. As it tempted me. I felt deeply for Eleanor, wanting to belong to something extraordinary to replace her dull life. Shirley Jackson is quoted as saying, “I delight in what I fear.” This book proves it.

I loved this book for the new concepts it brought to me about psychic abilities, specifically telepaths that could block other’s psychic abilities.

After this, I was drawn to the book for the way it blurred the lines of reality, making me question alongside the main character if anything they were experiencing was real. I also thought the idea of the UBIK drug that kept people in a 'half-life' was fascinating and a different way to show addiction and its consequences.

Lastly, the ending was quite thrilling and kept me reading into the wee hours of the morning, even though I had work the next day! 

C.J. Henderson is recognized as the father of modern-day occult detective fiction. He wrote his protagonists' encounters with the Cthulhu Mythos in beautifully effective prose. Sadly, C.J. passed away in 2014 and his passing is a great loss to the literary world and fans old and new.

This book was written as a tribute to C.J.’s finest occult detectives, twelve authors being chosen to contribute to this hard-boiled, tentacle-smacking anthology. All earnings from this book go to support C.J.’s family. An added bonus for fans of weird hardboiled fiction is the never-before published novella by C.J. Henderson, The Temporal Deception.

I love this collection for it expands on both the Cthulhu Mythos and C.J.’s own creations.

A powerhouse collection, familiar and innovative, at times agonizingly devastating and horribly entertaining. After reading John Langan's novel The Fisherman, I just had to pick up this one. A profoundly, gratifying dark read. With such a sublime and unwavering collection, Langan rises in my book as one of the most fascinating in the contemporary, horror writer circle.

Okay, so maybe you didn’t exactly miss at least hearing about this novel, but many readers skip over the original Lovecraft stories as being too difficult to read which is a shame.

This is the where the elder god mythos truly began for me, the first of any Lovecraft story I ever read. Split into three sections this book is linked together around nightmares, cults, and a sleeping god.

Call of Cthulhu was where I learned that not every question in a story requires an answer, and that heroes can face overwhelming odds and lose in the end. It is bleak and the perfect introduction to this world.

I don’t think most Lovecraft fans casual or devoted would single out The Music of Erich Zann, given the staying power of the Cthulhu mythos and everything associated with it. But what causes Lovecraft’s work to resonate so many decades later is his mastery over the disquieting, and this story about music channeled from a horrific place played on a street that doesn’t seem to exist by a violinist terrified and compelled to keep playing has stayed with me more than any of Lovecraft’s other stories in the years since I read it. Maybe it’s the musician in me, or maybe it’s the distortions of reality that tend to crop up in my own writing. Either way it’s striking, and a good introduction to the strangeness of H. P. Lovecraft.

This book features the best of author C.J. Henderson’s supernatural detective stories in one volume. Not only does it contain his creation P.I. Teddy London, he writes tales about many other supernatural detectives. There are stories here of Lin Carter's Anton Zarnak, H.P. Lovecraft's Inspector Legrasse, and more, including Cthulhu Mythos settings created by Brian Lumley and Ramsey Campbell. There are thirteen stories in total, this being an exciting collection detailing the adventures of investigators, both private and otherwise, taking on the horrors of the supernatural and the Cthulhu Mythos. I consider this book a must for all fans of detective fiction and horror.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and the Cthulhu Mythos? I cannot think of a finer genre cross than this. Holmes’s adventures often touched on the macabre, on the supernatural, and here in this anthology he faces the most monstrous and alien of foes: those created by H. P. Lovecraft. Cosmic horror, ancient mysteries, Doyle’s dauntless detective has his investigative work cut out for him. 

Twenty of the finest modern authors contributed to this book and I could not put it down. Neil Gaiman’s "A Study in Emerald" is a particularly horrific and effective tale.