Love The Forgotten Island? Readers share 100 books like The Forgotten Island...

By David Sodergren,

Here are 100 books that The Forgotten Island fans have personally recommended if you like The Forgotten Island. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Return to Dyatlov Pass

Steve Stred Author Of Mastodon

From my list on non-typical creature-feature books.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a little boy, Iā€™ve been fascinated by all things ā€˜creaturesā€™ā€“from massive Grizzly bears that roam the mountains to Kraken that swim in the depths of the oceans to massive Anaconda that are worshiped in the Amazon rainforest. Having discovered The Weekly World News tabloids at my grandmaā€™s, I couldnā€™t get enough of what makes us question what lurks in the trees or swim in the waters around us. Iā€™ve taken that love of all things cryptid and used those moments of awe and fear that I had while discovering these creatures all those years ago and placed them into the novels I write.

Steve's book list on non-typical creature-feature books

Steve Stred Why did Steve love this book?

Many people are aware of the story of Dyatlov Pass, where a group of Russian hikers were found frozen to death in mysterious circumstances, but Moncrieff takes it a step further and introduces a creature that very well might be the reason behind everything.

Told with whip-cracking prose, this novel is impossible not to finish in a single sitting.

By J.H. Moncrieff,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Return to Dyatlov Pass as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1959, nine Russian students set off on a skiing expedition in the Ural Mountains. Their mutilated bodies were discovered weeks later. Their bizarre and unexplained deaths are one of the most enduring true mysteries of our time. Nearly sixty years later, podcast host Nat McPherson ventures into the same mountains with her team, determined to finally solve the mystery of the Dyatlov Pass incident. Her plans are thwarted on the first night, when two trackers from her group are brutally slaughtered. The teamā€™s guide, a superstitious man from a neighboring village, blames the killings on yetis, but no oneā€¦


Book cover of Creature

Steve Stred Author Of Mastodon

From my list on non-typical creature-feature books.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a little boy, Iā€™ve been fascinated by all things ā€˜creaturesā€™ā€“from massive Grizzly bears that roam the mountains to Kraken that swim in the depths of the oceans to massive Anaconda that are worshiped in the Amazon rainforest. Having discovered The Weekly World News tabloids at my grandmaā€™s, I couldnā€™t get enough of what makes us question what lurks in the trees or swim in the waters around us. Iā€™ve taken that love of all things cryptid and used those moments of awe and fear that I had while discovering these creatures all those years ago and placed them into the novels I write.

Steve's book list on non-typical creature-feature books

Steve Stred Why did Steve love this book?

While this book is a work of fiction, Shea infused a significant amount of non-fiction elements into the novel from his own life.

The story rampages along, starting out creepy at firstā€“odd things happening around the lake cabinā€“but soon blossoms into a full-scale creature assault on the people within.

Heartstopping and heartbreaking, this is Sheaā€™s best work to date.

By Hunter Shea,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'It's much more than most creature features, it has heart and thought, and a superb, head-on horror conclusion. The best Hunter Shea I've read so far and by more than a little.' - Eddie Generous (Unnerving Magazine)
The monsters live inside of Kate Woodson. Chronic pain and a host of autoimmune diseases have robbed her of a normal, happy life. Her husband Andrew's surprise of their dream Maine lake cottage for the summer is the gift of a lifetime. It's beautiful, remote, idyllic, a place to heal. But they are not alone. Something is in the woods, screeching in theā€¦


Book cover of The Curse of the Viper King

Steve Stred Author Of Mastodon

From my list on non-typical creature-feature books.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a little boy, Iā€™ve been fascinated by all things ā€˜creaturesā€™ā€“from massive Grizzly bears that roam the mountains to Kraken that swim in the depths of the oceans to massive Anaconda that are worshiped in the Amazon rainforest. Having discovered The Weekly World News tabloids at my grandmaā€™s, I couldnā€™t get enough of what makes us question what lurks in the trees or swim in the waters around us. Iā€™ve taken that love of all things cryptid and used those moments of awe and fear that I had while discovering these creatures all those years ago and placed them into the novels I write.

Steve's book list on non-typical creature-feature books

Steve Stred Why did Steve love this book?

While this is technically book three in the Grant Coleman series, it was my first book by James, and I had no issues diving into it without knowing what happened in the first two books.

Coleman is a paleontologist who ends up in crazy situations, and this one had everything I love in creature feature booksā€“huge snakes, the Amazon jungle, and next-to-no odds of survival.

By Russell James,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Curse of the Viper King as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Paleontologist Grant Coleman and environmentalist Janaina Silva, lost in the Amazon rain forest, discover an isolated logging camp, and the chance to hitch a ride back to civilization. But the workers uncover a fossil of a giant snake, almost fifteen meters long. Grant is thrilled, but the superstitious workers believe they have let loose a demon. That night, the world begins to unravel. A mysterious creature attacks the camp, kills several men, and sinks the only boat that can get them home. Soon Grant and the others are in a battle against colossal spiders and a descendant of that greatā€¦


Book cover of False Bodies

Steve Stred Author Of Mastodon

From my list on non-typical creature-feature books.

Why am I passionate about this?

Since I was a little boy, Iā€™ve been fascinated by all things ā€˜creaturesā€™ā€“from massive Grizzly bears that roam the mountains to Kraken that swim in the depths of the oceans to massive Anaconda that are worshiped in the Amazon rainforest. Having discovered The Weekly World News tabloids at my grandmaā€™s, I couldnā€™t get enough of what makes us question what lurks in the trees or swim in the waters around us. Iā€™ve taken that love of all things cryptid and used those moments of awe and fear that I had while discovering these creatures all those years ago and placed them into the novels I write.

Steve's book list on non-typical creature-feature books

Steve Stred Why did Steve love this book?

McConvey does a remarkable job of giving us a detective novel masquerading as a horror novel. I loved the main character, Eddie ā€˜The Yetiā€™ Gesner, a deeply flawed and grief-stricken man who is a cryptozoologist. 

Having this novel take place in Newfoundland, Canada, worked perfectly to allow McConvey to fill the story with squid-based events and profound historical elements, and with the addition of the corporate greed angle, it felt timely and topical.

By J.R. McConvey,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A genre-bending noir, and perhaps the squiddiest novel ever written, False Bodies creates a horror/thriller blend of the renowned Newfoundland culture seen in shows like Come From Away with the heart-pounding tension and creeping fear of Alien.

False Bodies follows monster hunter Eddie ā€œThe Yetiā€ Gesner to Newfoundland, to investigate a mass death on an offshore oil rigā€”which some say is the work of a kraken. A mysterious incident in Eddieā€™s life has made him obsessed with chasing unfathomable things, but when an antique diary plunges him into a watery world of squid cults, tentacled beasts and corporate greed, Eddieā€¦


Book cover of Very Thai: Everyday Popular Culture

Tom Vater Author Of The Monsoon Ghost Image

From my list on Thailand from some unique perspectives.

Why am I passionate about this?

Iā€™m a writer and journalist with an eye on South and Southeast Asia. I first worked in Thailand in 1999, researching the Thailand chapter for the first edition of the Rough Guides Southeast Asia Guide. Since 2001, Iā€™ve been a Thailand correspondent for German publisher Reise Know How. For the past decade, I have worked as Thailand Destination Expert for The Daily Telegraph. I co-wrote the bestselling Sacred Skin ā€“ Thailandā€™s Spirit Tattoos with photographer Aroon Thaewchatturat, and have written countless articles about Thai culture, politics and tourism. It took 20 years to write a novel set in Thailand ā€“ The Monsoon Ghost Image ā€“ a testament to the complexities of Thai society. 

Tom's book list on Thailand from some unique perspectives

Tom Vater Why did Tom love this book?

A brilliant reference book on all aspects (and yes, this book is very thorough) of Thai popular culture. Concise chapters on anything from spirit tattoos to meat on a stick illuminate the far corners of contemporary Thai society, illustrated by hundreds of great photographs. This is a standard work for anyone interested in how Thai society ticks. Cornwel-Smith has served up a second title recently ā€“ Very Bangkok ā€“ which offers a similarly thorough picture of the Thai capital. 

By Philip Cornwel-Smith, John Goss (photographer),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This pioneering insight into contemporary Thai folk culture delves beyond the traditional Thai icons to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle. From floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in a bag, the same exquisite care, craft and improvisation resounds through home and street, bar and wardrobe. Never colonised, Thai culture retains nuanced ancient meaning in the most mundane things. The days are colour coded, lucky numbers dictate prices, window grilles become guardian angels, tattoos entrance the wearer. Philip Cornwel-Smith scoured each region to show how indigenous wisdom bothā€¦


Book cover of Many Lives

Dian Seidel Author Of Kindergarten at 60: A Memoir of Teaching in Thailand

From my list on helping ā€œfarangsā€ understand what makes Thailand tick.

Why am I passionate about this?

After retiring from a career in climate science, I reinvented myself as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, and a writer. I write personal essays about my life experiences, in particular my time teaching in Thailand. Before I traveled to Thailand, while I was there, and when I returned home to the US, I devoured every book I could find that could help me make sense of Thai culture and manage as a farang (foreigner, Westerner) in the Land of Smiles. Here are my five picks for helping other farangs understand Thailand.

Dian's book list on helping ā€œfarangsā€ understand what makes Thailand tick

Dian Seidel Why did Dian love this book?

The ā€œmany livesā€ in this series of linked short stories are those of eleven passengers who perish when a Bangkok-bound boat capsizes in a fierce storm.

I relished each story of each life, both as a literary gem and as an insight into something fundamental about Thai society, such as the importance of social class, the role of urban migration in altering provincial life, the potentially stifling aspects of intergenerational family obligations, and the overriding role of karma in Thai conceptions of life and death.

To me, Many Lives is to Thai culture what Thornton Wilderā€™s classic Our Town is to American culture.

By M. R. Kukrit Pramoj, Meredith Borthwick (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"That night, the rain poured and wind howled, raindrops crashing like solid objects onto the ground and water. A passenger boat from Ban Phaen to Bangkok, packed with people, pressed on through the current amidst the rising clamor of the rain and storm. . . ." The boat capsizes in the torrent, and washed up on the shore the next morning are the sodden bodies of the many passengers who lost their lives.

Thus begins M. R. Kukrit Pramoj's classic novel set in the Thailand of the early 1950s and first published in 1954. The life of each passenger whoā€¦


Book cover of Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind

Dian Seidel Author Of Kindergarten at 60: A Memoir of Teaching in Thailand

From my list on helping ā€œfarangsā€ understand what makes Thailand tick.

Why am I passionate about this?

After retiring from a career in climate science, I reinvented myself as an English teacher, a yoga instructor, and a writer. I write personal essays about my life experiences, in particular my time teaching in Thailand. Before I traveled to Thailand, while I was there, and when I returned home to the US, I devoured every book I could find that could help me make sense of Thai culture and manage as a farang (foreigner, Westerner) in the Land of Smiles. Here are my five picks for helping other farangs understand Thailand.

Dian's book list on helping ā€œfarangsā€ understand what makes Thailand tick

Dian Seidel Why did Dian love this book?

I devoured Carol Hollingerā€™s 1964 memoir of her years teaching English in Thailand as I was preparing to do the same thing.

Though Thailand and the wider world had changed enormously in the six decades separating Hollingerā€™s adventure from mine, I loved this self-described American ā€œmatronā€™sā€ story about raising a family, running a household, fulfilling social obligations, and, oh yes, teaching English at one of Thailandā€™s premier universities.

With a refreshing openness of mind and spirit, and despite using some dated language, her observations about Thai people, culture, and customs still resonate today. And her title, Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind, really captures an essential and enduring aspect of Thai culture.

By Carol Hollinger,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Thongchai: Siam Mapped Paper

Laura Hostetler Author Of Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China

From my list on geo-politics and rise of the nation state in China.

Why am I passionate about this?

As Professor of History and Global Asian Studies and Director of the Engaged Humanities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I'm interested in intersections at the margins between cultural systems. I first became drawn to Chinese history after visiting the country in 1982 and returned to teach English there before undertaking graduate studies. My work on eighteenth-century China focuses on ethnography and cartography as tools of empire building during its period of growth and expansion. My current project, Bridging Worlds: Reflections on a Journey, chronicles a quest for personal integration when obtaining an education has too often become predicated on the ability to cut oneself off from aspects of oneā€™s own inner knowing and lived experience.

Laura's book list on geo-politics and rise of the nation state in China

Laura Hostetler Why did Laura love this book?

Tracing the emergence of the modern nation of Thailand from the Kingdom of Siam, Thongchai Winichakul demonstrates that the rulers of the emergent nation gradually adopted the same logic of national sovereignty and geopolitics as its colonial neighbors in the region, France and Britain. The implication is that in modernizing and reconfiguring what constitutes sovereignty Asian nations are not necessarily more benign than their western counterparts in extending their ruleā€™ victims of western colonial aggression are not exempt from exercising similar forms of coercion against their own inner others. 

By Thongchai Winichakul,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

This unusual and intriguing study of nationhood explores the 19th-century confrontation of ideas that transformed the kingdom of Siam into the modern conception of a nation. Siam Mapped challenges much that has been written on Thai history because it demonstrates convincingly that the physical and political definition of Thailand on which other works are based is anachronistic.


Book cover of Stone Yard Devotional

Tara Calaby Author Of The Spirit Circle

From my list on fresh interpretations of religious communities.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have always been fascinated by religion from an intellectual perspectiveā€”the way it can be such a powerful force for both good and evil and is such a constant facet of humanity, regardless of the time or place. Iā€™m also interested in community and the complexity of human relationships, so itā€™s only natural that Iā€™m particularly excited about books set within religious communities. And, as much as I appreciate a true crime cult expose, I am a lover of great fiction first and foremost, so novels that explore religion with intelligence and artistry are my personal holy grail. 

Tara's book list on fresh interpretations of religious communities

Tara Calaby Why did Tara love this book?

This was my favorite read of 2024. I thought it was utterly wonderful and well-deserving of its Booker shortlisting. Itā€™s full of gorgeous, subtle writing with a great deal of power contained both in and between its lines.

Wood uses prose with great precision, so that not a word is wasted and every sentence has an impact. Iā€™m not usually someone who writes on my books, but Stone Yard Devotional made me want to grab a pencil and underline chunks of text so that I could reread them again and again. 

By Charlotte Wood,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE PRIME MINISTER'S LITERARY AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE VICTORIAN PREMIER'S LITERARY AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AGE BOOK OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ABIA AWARD FOR LITERARY FICTION

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BARBARA JEFFERIS AWARD

LONGLISTED FOR THE MILES FRANKLIN LITERARY AWARD

BOOK OF THE YEAR, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

BOOK OF THE YEAR, ABC

A woman abandons her city life and marriage to return to the place of her childhood, holing up in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of the Monaro.

She does not believe in God, doesn't knowā€¦


Book cover of The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice

Maya Balakirsky-Katz Author Of Freud, Jung, and Jonah: Religion and the Birth of the Psychoanalytic Periodical

From my list on the work of contemplation and physical space.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am attracted to people and ideas that bridge the internal and external life through their art and writing. I was driven to pursue art history and psychoanalysis for this reason. In one field, we have the external object as the center of inquiry, and in the other, the Self. These books all inspired me to see the world through a new lens.

Maya's book list on the work of contemplation and physical space

Maya Balakirsky-Katz Why did Maya love this book?

Morgan illuminates and analyzes the visual culture of religion that scholars have neglected to consider seriously. His lyrical and incisive deep dive into the visual aspects and social contexts of a broad range of case histories, including religious Americana, opens up the ā€œfieldā€ of visuality beyond the object itself and to the phenomenology of seeing.

By David Morgan,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Sacred gaze' denotes any way of seeing that invests its object - an image, a person, a time, a place - with spiritual significance. Drawing from many different fields, David Morgan investigates key aspects of vision and imagery in a variety of religious traditions. His lively, innovative book explores how viewers absorb and process religious imagery and how their experience contributes to the social, intellectual, and perceptual construction of reality. Ranging widely from thirteenth-century Japan and eighteenth-century Tibet to contemporary America, Thailand, and Africa, "The Sacred Gaze" discusses the religious functions of images and the tools viewers use to interpretā€¦


Book cover of Return to Dyatlov Pass
Book cover of Creature
Book cover of The Curse of the Viper King

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5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in Thailand, changelings, and violence?

Thailand 47 books
Changelings 20 books
Violence 103 books