100 books like The Dominion of the Dead

This book enlightened me by learning that people have long travelled to visit the dead. With ‘dark tourism’ initially portrayed as an imitation of postmodernity, Westover dispelled that perspective. Instead, I learnt that travelling to meet the dead had long been a feature of the literary tourism landscape. A provocative play on the word ‘necro’ with visiting deceased authors’ homes, haunts and graves during the Romantic period, Westover offers an inspired contribution to understanding Romanticism within the context of death studies and travel history. I argue that in an age of antiquarian revival and a love of books, the emergent ‘Necromantic’ culture that created touristic habits continues to the present day. To that end, Necomanticism exposes a nexus of book love and memorial ritual that has deeply influenced (Western) literary culture. 

With a healthy dose of gallows humour, Sarah Vowell explores glorious conundrums of American history, politics, and culture. As such, the book provoked me to appreciate how visiting sites of the significant dead has long been in the touristic imagination. The book takes you on a journey – part history lesson, part travelogue – through the black spots of American political violence. Through a bizarre road trip to places where American politicians met a bloody end, I found Vowell’s own thoughts on the American character both witty and quirky. I also love how she explodes myths and, consequently, exposes a profound level of hypocrisy in the quest for (American) political and cultural advantage.  

P.J. O’Rourke, a former war correspondent cum travel author of Holidays in Hell, informs us that there are rules about travelling for fun. One of those rules is that tourists must find the most crowded airplane and be treated as self-loading freight! However, O’Rourke does not travel for fun. Yet, I discovered in this book that his travels to places associated with the odd or macabre are fun – and indeed funny. O’Rourke travels with his wife and young family and we accompany them as he reveals witty and irrelevant perspectives on the places he visits. In his concluding thoughts, when he asks what is the point of the Washington Memorial, it was then I realised I had chuckled all the way through this droll travelogue as a backseat passenger.  

During a personal pilgrimage visiting Ireland’s dissonant heritage sites, Gillian O’Brien takes us on a dark tourism odyssey. This book should inspire all to embrace dark tourism and shine light on the recesses of troubled histories. What I love about this book is that O’Brien invites us to explore notions of nationhood by visiting sites of war, revolution, famine, death, emigration, and even diasporic ghosts. It is this strange allure of Ireland’s difficult past that creates a unique and unmistakable sense of ‘Irishness’. The book is not a scholarly monologue but an authoritative account of a dark quest. Witty and well-written, the book connected me to Irish landscapes, its places, and people, and most of all, to the strange enhancement I found in the island’s dark past. 

The touching story of navigating the loss of a child that illuminates the strategies most helpful in navigating overwhelming grief, and steadily, reliably, recovering new joy and new meaning in life going forward.

Jessica Warman’s Between is a marvelous study in flawed characters, who, by their very nature, are at times unlikeable. Ironically, I love unlikeable characters—because they’re written realistically and with plenty of potential for growth. Because I prefer to write characters with realistic attributes, and those in my own book are no exception, I love reading their points of view. Additionally, it’s always interesting when these characters are dropped into situations requiring suspension of disbelief, and it’s even better when protagonists lead a cast of such characters. Between checks all of these boxes. It’s delicious!

This is an outlier book here, the “true” story about a man who led a rather messy life, was killed in an accident, and communicated with his sister from the other side. The core messages are uplifting: we never really die, and no matter the mistakes we make in our life here, we are always loved and on track with our soul’s journey and growth. 

If you’ve chafed at the limitations of scale by these suggestions, this is the book for you.

All the stories on this list, including my own, take pains to couch the supernatural in such a way that the political, social, and economical natural orders are not threatened by the introduction of speculative elements. Not in Summerland.

Their pseudo-science real, Victorian spiritualists find a way to the afterlife and back. Within decades the strange, alien city on the other side is flooded with the principles of industry, commerce, and espionage.

Taking place between the World Wars, the existence of Summerland, and the technologies that unfold from its discovery change the landscape of pre-World War II Europe, but not the inevitability of human nature.

Spong is an Episcopalian bishop who has no qualms questioning the fundamental aspects of religion. He uses familiar, non-scholarly language anyone can understand. I had spiritual experiences in my journey from being a healthy 45-year-old to a locked-in to a finally quadriplegic person. I couldn’t embrace all the tenets of religion, yet how could I explain what I experienced? Spong helped me be comfortable with my spirituality.

Sometimes, as if by magic, a book arrives at exactly the right moment.

When my 7-year-old grandson’s cat was killed by a bobcat earlier this year it was his first experience with loss, and we all struggled to find language to help him. I remembered hearing about Judith Viorst’s book many years ago but had never read it. The Tenth Good Thing about Barney was published in 1971 and is still in print fifty-two years later – for good reason.

After his beloved cat dies, the unnamed boy in the story struggles to think of ten good things to say about Barney at the funeral his mom has organized in the backyard. I won’t give away the tenth thing that the boy finally thinks of other than to say it helped my grandson enormously and all of us along with him.