100 books like True Religion

By J.L. Weinberg,

Here are 100 books that True Religion fans have personally recommended if you like True Religion. 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 Vintage

Jameson Currier Author Of The Wolf at the Door

From my list on ghost stories with gay characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Jameson's book list on ghost stories with gay characters

Jameson Currier Why did Jameson love this book?

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. 

By Steve Berman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Vintage as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 15, 16, and 17.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Corpus Calvin

Jameson Currier Author Of The Wolf at the Door

From my list on ghost stories with gay characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Jameson's book list on ghost stories with gay characters

Jameson Currier Why did Jameson love this book?

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.

By David Swatling,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Bury Me in Shadows

Jameson Currier Author Of The Wolf at the Door

From my list on ghost stories with gay characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Jameson's book list on ghost stories with gay characters

Jameson Currier Why did Jameson love this book?

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. 

By Greg Herren,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bury Me in Shadows as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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.

Once Jake is there, he begins…


Book cover of The Boys on the Mountain

Jameson Currier Author Of The Wolf at the Door

From my list on ghost stories with gay characters.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Jameson's book list on ghost stories with gay characters

Jameson Currier Why did Jameson love this book?

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.

By John Inman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Boys on the Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Freethunk

Jass Richards Author Of The Blasphemy Tour

From my list on that dare to make fun of religion and/or gods.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was raised to be a Roman Catholic. I was not raised to think very deeply, but I did anyway. Eventually.  When I was around fifteen, I started asking questions that irritated my parents. They referred me to our priest. Who basically patted me on the head and showed me the door. When the Pope said 'no contraception,' the shit really hit the fan. I haven't looked back. And I'm quite vocal about it because, damn it, religious beliefs and religions do damage, not the least of which involves hurting and killing people. (As for being funny, that's just icing on the cake.)

Jass' book list on that dare to make fun of religion and/or gods

Jass Richards Why did Jass love this book?

This is a very daring collection of cartoons. (And Jeff actually sent me a signed copy of it!) It includes cartoons previously published in Freethunk! The Complete Edition: Cartoons from 2000-2007, but also includes cartoons from 2008 and 2009. Mention of anything specific will be a spoiler, but... 'Let there be light' involves God and a lightbulb...

By Jeff Swenson,

Why should I read it?

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


Book cover of Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam

Romina Istratii Author Of Adapting Gender and Development to Local Religious Contexts: A Decolonial Approach to Domestic Violence in Ethiopia

From my list on gender, religion, and domestic violence.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a Moldovan emigrant growing up in Greece, I believed that Western institutions were centers of excellent knowledge. After studying in the USA and the UK and conducting research with Muslim and Christian communities in Africa, I became aware of colonial, ethnocentric, and universalizing tendencies in gender, religion, and domestic violence studies and their application in non-western contexts. International development had historically followed a secular paradigm congruent with Western societies’ perception of religion and its role in society. My work has since sought to bridge religious beliefs with gender analysis in international development work so that the design of gender-sensitive interventions might respond better to domestic violence in traditional religious societies.

Romina's book list on gender, religion, and domestic violence

Romina Istratii Why did Romina love this book?

Talal Asad’s genealogical analysis of the concept of religion in Western thought is a classic.

Asad, a Saudi-born anthropologist, proposed that it was the unique product of Western modernity and secularism to perceive religious discourse in the public arena as a disguise for power, which created a bias towards it in public life. This bias was then internationalized through the transposition of an inherently ethnocentric concept of religion.

Among other insights, Asad stressed the need to approach religious traditions in reference to the experience of the believers and the texts or traditions they invoke in their everyday life. A seminal piece of work that can provide a point of reference for anyone working to decolonize religious studies.

By Talal Asad,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

In "Geneologies of Religion", Talal Asad explores how religion as a historical category emerged in the West and has come to be applied as a universal concept. The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation-from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign-is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invokved to explain and justify the liberal politics and world view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions. He argues that "religion" is…


Book cover of The Cave Bear Story: Life and Death of a Vanished Animal

Simon J. Knell Author Of The Great Fossil Enigma: The Search for the Conodont Animal

From my list on extinct animals.

Why am I passionate about this?

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. 

Simon's book list on extinct animals

Simon J. Knell Why did Simon love this book?

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.

By Björn Kurtén,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Wise Blood

Wes Blake Author Of Pineville Trace

From my list on how it feels to be an outsider.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve always loved books about outsiders and stories that make you palpably feel what others do. In real life and fiction, the characters that interest me most are often outsiders. Because characters on the outside of social groups and norms are often isolated and lonely, there is something so powerful about works that can bring you inside their experience and relate what their inner life is like. Interiority is the great strength of literature, and stories that convey the inner architecture of outsiders have always attracted me. I love books that make me feel deeply connected and that linger in my subconscious long after I’ve read them. 

Wes' book list on how it feels to be an outsider

Wes Blake Why did Wes love this book?

This book haunted me for days after I finished reading it. I felt like someone I loved had died. Few works of art have stuck with me the way O’Connnor’s book did. Its main characters—Hazel Motes and Enoch Emery—are the epitome of outsiders. I grew up in a religious family in Kentucky, so I can understand Motes’ struggle with faith. The way that Motes and Emery are so severely separated from the rest of humanity is affecting them.

The book caused me to passionately take their side, rooting for them and their cause, sharing in their anger towards the rest of mankind. This book had such a powerful emotional impact and influence on me, leaving me with a palpable feeling of hopelessness and catharsis over several weeks—unlike I’ve experienced with any other work of art. 

By Flannery O'Connor,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Wise Blood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of The Light We Give: How Sikh Wisdom Can Transform Your Life

Tina Muir Author Of Becoming a Sustainable Runner: A Guide to Running for Life, Community, and Planet

From my list on helping you process emotions around climate.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Tina's book list on helping you process emotions around climate

Tina Muir Why did Tina love this book?

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.

By Simran Jeet Singh,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A National Bestseller

“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…


Book cover of Victory to the Mother: The Hindu Goddess of Northwest India in Myth, Ritual, and Symbol

Caleb Simmons Author Of Singing the Goddess into Place: Locality, Myth, and Social Change in Chamundi of the Hill, a Kannada Folk Ballad

From my list on goddesses in India.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been intrigued by the Hindu goddess traditions since I first read Is the Goddess a Feminist as an undergraduate student. After reading this book, I changed my course of study and life, writing my Ph.D. dissertation and my first few books on Indian goddess traditions. Now, I continue to share my passion for Indian goddesses as a professor of Religious Studies at the University of Arizona.

Caleb's book list on goddesses in India

Caleb Simmons Why did Caleb love this book?

This is my favorite book on Indian/Hindu goddesses. Even after all these years, I believe it to be the erudite and accessible book that portrays the complexity of goddesses and their relationships with devotees. Each time I re-read the book, I glean additional insights into India, Hinduism, and the ways that the sacred feminine shapes the lives of people in the Northeast region of India. 

By Kathleen M. Erndl,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Victory to the Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The worship of Devi (the Goddess) is one of the most vigorous and visible religious phenomena in northwest India today. This study uses interviews, participant observations, and textual analysis to explore the nature of the Goddess and her devotees' experience of her.


Book cover of Vintage
Book cover of Corpus Calvin
Book cover of Bury Me in Shadows

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