77 books like The Purge of Babylon

This is a gem of a novel and one that should not ever be skipped over. The author’s humor bleeds through every page. This novel, and the entire series, literally had me in tears of laughter at many points. Even though the comedic aspect does tend to be the overarching theme, it does not detract from the horror of the situations the main characters find themselves in. The main character is obviously based on the author himself, as well as his family and his dog. This is fascinating because many authors may take certain aspects of themselves or loved ones and create characters with a trait or two, but Tufo goes all out and just makes himself a (hopefully!) exaggerated character in his own novel. The series starts small and centralized and builds itself into an entire world (or ten) of horrific and hilarious zombie craziness. You love many of… show more.

At a whopping 1,152 pages, Stephen King’s The Stand was just too much to capture in a single movie.

That’s why, in 1994, CBS adapted it across four, ninety-minute episodes of a limited run “mini-series” (a fancy way of saying “a really long movie”). In all fairness, it had a great cast and was better than it had any right to be, and was far more enjoyable than CBS’s 2020 attempt at a do-over.

But even with a total six-hour runtime, it couldn’t capture all the story, heart, and nuance that made the book so incredible. It’s a feat to read, one I did to pass the time when bored in school, and one I will surely do again in the future.

This novel takes a more serious tone from the outset, though there are humorous situations in the later books. This is one that will keep you up at night, reading and biting your fingernails as the characters struggle to survive. It begins somewhat slowly, but quickly gains steam and keeps you wanting more. The action is fast-paced and realistic and the military aspects are spot on. There is a character for everyone in this series, and it was the idea of Sky that loosely inspired a character in my own series.

The way that Campbell wrote this heroine and followed her progress from a young and naïve college girl to powerful and able to face down every threat thrown her way was so engaging and powerful that I bought the entire series as soon as it was released. The male characters were so diverse and far-ranging that none of them… show more.

Infection, the first of the Sympatico Syndrome series, starts with a simple but chilling phone conversation between two old friends. Sounds a bit boring, right? Wrong. The main character and his friend on the phone are epidemiologists and they understand with terrifying clarity just how dangerous the newly spreading illness is. Then, it becomes a race against time for the main character as he rushes to stockpile supplies and convince his family that they need to come quarantine with him right away. You can feel his dread and his anxiety in every paragraph and it only gets worse as the story moves on. What makes this novel unique is the illness itself. The disease produces peculiar symptoms that I’ve never seen in any other apocalyptic book.

Infection begins to become seriously creepy right about the time that you learn the infection causes euphoria and feelings of well-being, making the… show more.

I love this novel. I read it well after my own came out, but the strong, badass, stoic female main character reminded me a lot of Delia from What Branches Grow (despite Brittle being a robot). The often dark and gritty scenes interspersed with moments of emotion and laugh-out-loud absurd humour turned a story that could have been depressing into one that was a helluva lot of fun. The raiders in this novel also fit the trope in the same homage to Mad Max/Fallout that mine do in What Branches Grow, albeit in a way I didn’t expect. The novel is also a quest through the wasteland with a ragtag group that culminates in a final battle, which is a similar trajectory to my novel (and a plotfline in this genre I very much enjoy).

Another book on money. I couldn’t have survived the leaner times as an actor without the lessons in this book about how important saving money is. It seems logical, but most people don’t do it or don’t do it correctly.

This book helped me to further increase my financial acumen. What happens to a successful actor who knows little about money? He loses his house and his car and loses out on great opportunities. I vowed never to be that type of actor. I vowed to be the entrepreneur that I know I am.

I’ve been a fan of horror stories for as long as I could read.

(God bless those librarians who talked my mother into letting me bring home the books that I wanted to check out, or I wouldn’t be the person I am today.)

The scariest element of horror in my opinion, is a predator without boundaries in the physical world. Combining that element with rattlesnakes, uninterred graves, and river-soaked apparitions, you’ll get a southern gothic tale of revenge on a young girl’s murderer who usually finds himself immune to the law. 

Although this technically isn’t a fantasy book, it’s still one of my favorites. Dr. Michael Murphy is a biblical prophecy scholar and archaeologist. A modern-day Indiana Jones with a mysterious and dangerous benefactor who gives him clues to find ancient biblical artifacts while a diabolical cabal is intent on stopping him. A thrilling read that’s hard to put down.

I just could not put this book down. Apart from learning new things a mile a minute, my vocabulary increased. Sinclair takes a deep dive into the life and culture of Rastafarians, and since I love Bob Marley, this was especially intriguing. Most of all, she can write—I mean really write.

A man is teleported from modern times to ancient Babylon when he touches an artifact in a museum. While a lot of the Biblical narrative is not covered, it does allow one to really get a feel of what ancient Babylon would have been like and allows one to almost be a part of that culture. A truly intriguing storyline.