100 books like The Daughter of Doctor Moreau

Gabino Iglesias has become a phenomenon in horror through a lot of hustle and plain hard work. His 2022 novel cemented his reputation as the king of border horror.

This novel follows the fate of Mario, a man broken by debt due to his family’s crushing medical bills. With a failing marriage, he reluctantly takes a job as a hitman, agreeing to do one last job hijacking a cartel’s cash shipment before it can reach Mexico.

Mario reluctantly works with his meth-addicted friend and a cartel insider. To make this dangerous endeavor worse, enter supernatural horrors that shocked me—and I am not easily shocked.

Is there blood? Of course! Gore? Plenty! Monsters and demons? Yes! You are guaranteed to lose sleep after reading this novel.

V. (Violet) Castro’s debut novel, released in 2021, put her on the horror map, and for good reason.

I loved how she blended Mexican legend and culture to tell a supernatural horror story that is rich in detail, dialogue, and dark humor. The setting is a Texas wedding held on a renovated farm.

But very bad things start to happen, all seemingly tied to a legend of a 1950s murder of a Mexican farmworker. But—so people say—the woman’s death piqued the interest of the Aztec Goddess of Death, who pledges herself to the murdered woman.

Castro’s expert storytelling upends classic tropes to make this book an exhilarating and frightening literary ride that is smart and timely.

I had already sold my novel when my publisher highly recommended that I read this book, which—like my own novel—is a modern retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I devoured it in two sittings.

Tsai’s story is a biracial, queer, gender-fluid retelling that modernizes and expands Shelley’s themes of alienation and the dangers of unchecked scientific experimentation.

While Tsai explores such weighty themes as gender identity, racism, and medical ethics, there is no skimping on the horror that will haunt your dreams.

Sometimes I want to sink into the Sunken Place, and this collection of scary stories by authors ranging from sci-fi icon NK Jemisin to writer-illustrator Ezra Clayton Daniels does the trick.

Here’s the thing about short story collections: you’ll love at least one, right? Especially when the book’s edited by someone like quirky genius Jordan Peele, of Get Out, Us, Nope, and Key & Peele fame.

Without giving any spoilers, I’ll say this book’s got cops, creeps, and cousins, human and (utterly) inhuman monsters.

This book came out right after I completed Laika, but I wish I’d been able to use it in my research (although Dubbs’ earlier book, Space Dogs: Pioneers in Space Travel was extremely useful).

If Siddiqi’s book focuses more on the human journey behind the Soviet space program, this is a parallel account of some other unwitting (and undersung) pioneers: the experimental animals who were sent ahead of humankind. We share this world with animals and they were dispatched on our behalf to test the deep waters of the heavens also. It was thought - correctly - that if they could survive, so could we. Laika may very well be the most famous of these pathfinders (at least beyond Russia), but there were many more. This book is a history of all those other animal astronauts launched into space both prior to Laika and aboard more recent missions.

Ian presents the basic principles of animal welfare and how they relate to Industrial Meat Production in a most readable format. Although written many years ago, it tells the story of industrial meat production and offers some justifications for large-scale production. I believe this is a critically important work. I do not agree with all that is said, but Ian shares what the systems are and their limitations.

I loved this book because it was so gripping. It made me long to be a writer. Although it was written over a hundred years ago, the dark story spoke directly to me.

I read it at the darkest time in my life. I was fourteen, and my alcoholic father had become a terrifying force in our home, just like Dr. Moreau, who rules his island with vicious power. I had never dreamed that a crazed leader could break an entire population, but the idea seems shockingly prescient now.

The book made me realize that I, too, could escape from the trap around me, just like the book’s hero, and learn to use my imagination to tell stories.

Richard Adams himself signed my copy of this book when he visited New Zealand long ago. If he hadn’t looked deep into my eyes at the time and promised me it had a happy ending I might never have made it to the end, so harrowing was the story. But I finished it and he was right. The story questions the ethics of human exploitation of animals. To me, Plague Dogs was his greatest work, far more important than Watership Down, and certainly no children’s book. Adams is a true master at presenting the animal's point of view. This book hit me like a sledgehammer and like Watership Down, it beautifully evoked the natural world of its setting.

You’ve probably read The Rosie Project, but have you read the prequel? I’ve always been a sucker for back story and what happened before the moment a movie or novel starts. Well, that’s what you get in The Rosie Effect. And even better, its setting in the vibrant and thrilling New York City only adds to the romance and excitement in this beautiful romantic comedy.

I found this to be a hard list to put together because there are so many excellent books on animal history--on any given day I could have presented a completely different list. However, this was the one book that absolutely had to be on my list. Hilda Kean’s Animal Rights was the book that started me on this journey. I first encountered this book when I was a grad student, and it has shaped my thinking on animal history in many important ways over the years. Animals and concerns for their welfare have always been important to me in my personal life, but I hadn’t thought about incorporating human-animal histories into my scholarship until I read this book. It was a real game-changer for me. This is a very good introduction to some of the shifts in thinking that took place regarding relationships between humans and nonhuman animals in Britain… show more.