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During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
Walking an empty stretch of New Jersey highway on an autumn night, a lonely gay teenaged boy meets a strange and beautiful guy who turns out to be a local legend who has haunted that stretch of road for decades. At the heart of this superb coming-of-age tale is the remarkable portrayal of the friendships of a group of Goth teens. This is an extraordinary, moving ghost story that will engage both young readers and adults.
On a chilly, autumn night, on a lonely New Jersey highway, a teenager meets the boy of his dreams dressed in vintage clothing. When the boy vanishes, the teenager discovers he’s encountered the local legend, the ghost of a young man who died four decades earlier and has haunted that stretch of road ever since. Curious and smitten, the next evening the teen returns with his best friend. So begins an unusual story of boy-meets-ghost complete with Ouija boards, hours spent in cemeteries, scares and macabre humor. This new edition of the book, to celebrate its thirteenth anniversary, features a…
During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
Set in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Corpus Calvin brilliantly unravels the haunting of the Cloverkist Inn from several points of view, including a gay visitor from Amsterdam, a sensitive ten-year-old boy, the diary of a Union Soldier, and the inner thoughts of a dog named Calvin. Things ramp up with the unexpected arrival of a psychic, but it’s the marvelous puzzle of the mysteries—Who painted the unsigned painting? Where is Room 13? Who are the Pumpkin People?—that propel this thrilling exploration into local legends.
Jason Dekker doesn’t believe in ghosts but is haunted by memories of Amsterdam. A move to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his dog, Calvin, promises a fresh start. College friend Tessa Bernstein enlists his help at Cloverkist Inn, where strange occurrences are scaring off customers and staff. Is someone trying to drive Tessa out of business, or are darker forces at work? Does an enigmatic boy who bonds with Calvin hold the key to a secret dating back to the Civil War? The unsolicited arrival of psychic medium Valraven creates further turmoil when his investigation into paranormal activity…
During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
Instead of rehab, a gay college student chooses to recuperate at his grandmother’s home in rural Alabama near the ruins of a plantation. But these rural backwoods aren’t a safe haven—there’s a meth lab nearby and the history of the county is written in bad blood. This is a Southern Gothic gem, an expertly written mystery of the unraveling truths behind mysterious apparitions and a family’s dark secrets.
After landing in the hospital after a bad breakup and an ensuing drug-and-alcohol binge, college student Jake Chapman is given two options: rehab, or spend the summer at his dying grandmother’s decaying home in rural Alabama. The choice is obvious.
His grandmother’s land has been in Jake’s family since the early nineteenth century; the ruins of the old plantation house are a short walk through the woods behind her home. An archaeological team is excavating the ruins, looking for evidence to prove an old family legend—and there’s a meth lab just over the ridge.
During the years that I have been writing ghost stories, many of them collected in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales, I have read a variety of classic and contemporary ghost stories, horror anthologies, and novels that included gay characters, written by authors who are also openly gay or whose legacy has identified the writer as homosexual. While there are a number of short stories that are personal favorites, this list focuses on novels.
A string of supernatural events occurs when a gay writer moves into a house in the San Diego mountains built by a legendary film star of the 1930s. But the writer is not alone at the house—he has invited his close friends for a housewarming—and they soon discover the deceased actor had some nasty habits and a gruesome behavior. The investigations and resolutions of this absorbing novel unveil some shocking and grisly details, but there is a masterful balance of comedy along with the horror.
Jim Brandon has a new house, and boy, is it a pip. Built high on the side of the San Diego mountains by a legendary B-movie actor of the 1930s, Nigel Letters, the house is not only gorgeous, but supposedly haunted. As a writer of horror novels, Jim couldn't be happier.
But after a string of ghostly events sets Jim’s teeth on edge and scares the bejesus out of his dog, Jim begins to dig into the house’s history. What he finds is enough to creep out anybody. Even Jim. It seems long-dead Nigel Letters had a few nasty habits…
I’ve always loved to read and laugh, and the weirder the humor, the better. It’s a strange and turbulent world out there, and sometimes, it seems like you have to laugh for crying. Fortunately, there are plenty of other talented writers and entertainers out there who share this outlook – and not just authors. Many musicians, actors, and comedians can convey this sense of cosmic absurdity, and I’m a huge fan of most of them. These books just skim the surface of the wild worldviews of kindred spirits who are capable of appreciating just how weird our society really is and can lampoon it to hilarious effect.
Forty years on, The Book of the SubGenius continues to mystify. Is SubGenius a joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as a joke? Either way, it’s hilarious.
I picked this book out at random at a bookstore and opened it to find a passage reading, “You probably think you may have wandered into a bookstore and picked this book out at random, but it was ordained that you would find this.” Spooky but intriguing.
I was taken in with the hilarious description of the religious teachings of award-winning siding salesman J.R. “Bob” Dobbs. The doctrine of the Church of the SubGenius is an incisive and unapologetic skewing of pop culture and religious dogma. Plus, tons of astounding artwork and demented collages to drive home the weirdness.
Either a hilarious parody of a religious text or an informative collection of totally real stories from a definitely real church that could be the foundation-stone of the promised kingdom of peace and harmony—the decision is yours to make.
What is the Church of SubGenius? Who is J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, and what kind of truths does he know? What is "Slack" and why do you need it? Will aliens truly descend upon our planet, and can you survive its destruction by becoming a member? Does The Book of SubGenius answer any of these questions? There are no straightfoward answers—you just…
I’ve been fascinated by Maya religion since college—ever since I took my first class on Maya hieroglyphics at Tulane University. At first, I was drawn to the visuals accompanying the glyphs: women running ropes through their tongues, men holding hands with gods, and animals (spirits) wielding sacrificial knives. Then I began chasing the meanings of those visuals until I found myself specializing in ancient Maya mortuary behavior and receiving a PhD in Anthropology from Harvard University. I am happy to say that I am still on the chase, having written or edited five books (with two more on the way). I hope you enjoy this list!
If I were talking about this book over coffee with a friend, I would say this: you cannot understand the ancient Maya without reading it. The Popol Vuh is the written version of an oral, indigenous creation myth more than two thousand years old. There are many English and Spanish translations of the Popol Vuh; but this one is my favorite because it is approachable and precise at the same time. For example, you can choose to ignore the footnotes and their implications. However, if you decide you want to go down the rabbit hole (as I always do), you will not be disappointed. I learn something new every time I pick up this book—it is that good.
The Popol Vuh is the most important example of Maya literature to have survived the Spanish conquest. It is also one of the world’s great creation accounts, comparable to the beauty and power of Genesis.
Most previous translations have relied on Spanish versions rather than the original K’iche’-Maya text. Based on ten years of research by a leading scholar of Maya literature, this translation with extensive notes is uniquely faithful to the original language. Retaining the poetic style of the original text, the translation is also remarkably accessible to English readers.
Illustrated with more than eighty drawings, photographs, and maps,…
When I completed one of my early novels, a really demented one called Factory Town, a fellow author emailed me with great concern for my mental health. He was convinced I was heading down a dark cave that I couldn’t be rescued from. But it wasn’t true. Writing and reading these dark novels doesn’t make me depressed. It makes me feel creatively revitalized. Dark literature reminds us that being alive is painful—but it’s also wonderful. I hope to never spend any real time with people as terrifying as the ones I’ve found on these pages. But I’m incredibly thankful they were a part of my imagined world for a time.
William Faulkner might have been the father of Southern Gothic, but Flannery O’Connor was the master. This is one of those books that makes you thankful for genius. Because everything about this book is genius. The story is about a young man named Hazel Motes who struggles to avoid his relentless fate. O’Connor’s writing is filled with religious extremism, grotesqueness, and mental illness—all the things that make America great. If I could have written a single book—this would be it.
Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, is the story of Hazel Motes who, released from the armed services, returns to the evangelical Deep South. There he begins a private battle against the religiosity of the community and in particular against Asa Hawkes, the 'blind' preacher, and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter. In desperation Hazel founds his own religion, 'The Church without Christ', and this extraordinary narrative moves towards its savage and macabre resolution.
'A literary talent that has about it the uniqueness of greatness.' Sunday Telegraph
'No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically…
I write about those people (geologists, art historians, historians, and curators), places (museums, universities, and societies), and things (fossils, paintings, and historical artifacts) that shape our understanding of the world. I am not so much interested in the history of ideas as in the very nature of art, geology, history, and the museum. And like my recommended authors, the approach I take to my subjects is, I hope, always rather novel. In The Great Fossil Enigma, for example, I felt that the tiny, suggestive, but ultimately ambiguous, nature of the fossils permitted me to see into the scientific mind. This tends to be where extinct animals live after their demise.
This classic book hooked me on page one. Björn Kurtén’s curiosity soon becomes your curiosity and before long you are thinking like a paleontologist. It may be an old book, but the author’s thinking remains modern. Indeed, a recent review of cave bear research suggests that our knowledge of these animals hasn’t changed all that much since Kurtén’s day. I love old geology books. Beautifully written, they enable you to discover, imagine, and ultimately to care about an animal that exists only as a pile of bones. This book proved to be very influential.
Combining ?biography and intellectual history, Steven Rockefeller offers an illuminating introduction to the philosophy of John Dewey, with special emphasis on the evolution of the religious faith and moral vision at the heart of his thought. This study pays particular attention to Dewey's radical democratic reconstruction of Christianity and his many contributions to the American tradition of spiritual democracy. Rockefeller presents the first full exploration of Dewey's religious thought, including its mystical dimension. Covering Dewey's entire intellectual life, the author provides a clear introduction to Dewey's early neo-Hegelian idealism as well as to his later naturalistic metaphysics, epistemology, theory of…
I had a friend that I knew since junior high. He was a straight-A student. He had both parents in the home. His future was bright. He spent the last minutes of his life hiding under a car after being shot several times during a drug deal gone wrong. He made poor decisions that cost him his life. I wanted to write about people who took the wrong path and found their way out.Growing up in a single-parent household, I turned to the streets and gangs. After incarceration I decided to not only turn my life around but to write fiction inspired by criminal activity that I had engaged in during my youth.
This was Eric’s first book, a novel celebration of Black sisterhood. Sister, Sister was the first bookI read that centered on a group of women and their relationships. Very different from what I was used to reading but it left an impression. The sisters are all dealing with crumbling relationships at various stages. As a reader you will devour and turn the pages quickly as you uncover the ways in which these women handle their love woes. Dickey came on the scene with a true page-turner. I appreciate his decision to give first-person narratives for each of the main characters so we can truly experience their emotional highs and lows.
Here is New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey's debut novel, a celebration of Black sisterhood hailed by Essence as one of the “50 Most Impactful Black Books Of The Last 50 Years”.
Valerie, Inda, and Chiquita are three women looking for love in Los Angeles.
Valerie became the perfect wife to please her husband, Walter, whose football career has gone nowhere—along with their marriage. Then she meets Daniel. Valerie's divorced sister, Inda, has Raymond, who has a hot body, smooth moves—and another girlfriend on the side. Now Inda's scheming to get even. After telling her last boyfriend to…
FernGully was one of my favorite movies as a kid, and it made me really think about the natural world and how humans interact with it. Now, aged 35 with kids of my own (who also love FernGully), I consider myself a climate activist for the work I do in helping everyday people to believe they can be a part of the solution to climate change. As an author, podcast host, and community builder, I've connected with other humans with fascinating passions, perspectives, and values. I want to show my audience that we can all view the world differently, but there is one important thing we need to all believe, that we matter.
While this is not written as a climate-related book, it was a powerful reminder that we all have goodness within us; we all have a role to play in moving the world into the place we believe it can be.
It addresses social and racial justice, which is part of the climate conversation, and gives us a framework to believe in our own journey and voice. I believe that every single one of us has an important role to play, and this book can help readers figure out what that could be for them.
“I love this book… It is rich in wisdom, religious and personal, and it is absolutely charming.” —Anne Lamott, author of Dusk, Night, Dawn and Help, Thanks, Wow
An inspiring approach to a happier, more fulfilling life through Sikh teachings on love and service.
As a boy growing up in South Texas, Simran Jeet Singh and his brothers confronted racism daily: at school, in their neighborhood, playing sports, and later in college and beyond. Despite the prejudice and hate he faced, this self-described “turban-wearing, brown-skinned, beard-loving Sikh” refused to give in to negativity. Instead, Singh delved deep…
