48 books like Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur

I was astonished when I opened this book and saw all the gorgeous art depicting heavens, hells, and afterlives from around the world. The colors and printing are lush, and it’s incredible to see everything from brightly colored Islamic art showing magnificent gardens of paradise to ancient illustrated manuscripts of Valhalla and mind-bending medieval portraits of Christian hell.

I also love the full, yet concise, descriptions of every hell, underworld, purgatory, and heaven that humans around the world and throughout history have imagined. I learned so much about the different cultures and religions through their visions of the afterlife, and all alongside the art depicting it. I feel like I got an art history class as a bonus!

I was so surprised to learn from this book how little the Bible actually focuses on heaven and hell, given how much emphasis I heard about them growing up. This book is written by a historian and scholar of early Christianity, and I found his analysis of the history of thought on heaven and hell and modern ideas about the afterlife to be thoughtful and thorough.

This book really made me think about the Christian ideas of heaven and hell in a new way.

I laughed out loud several times reading this guide to the afterlife; who knew Jeopardy Champion and host Ken Jennings was so funny? I really felt his sense of wonder and excitement come through as he explores the various forms of heaven, hell, purgatory, and underworld that people have described over the course of human history, including plenty from modern pop culture.

It’s all done with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, like the “travel tips” for the newly dead who wakes up in an unexpected afterlife. It’s a light, fun read, and I liked that I could pick it up and read a short section at any time.

When I needed a concise overview of the history of hell, from Egyptian Duat to modern-day versions of Christian hell and all the many other versions around the world, this book gave me just what I needed. The tone and language are lighthearted, which keeps the subject interesting without getting too dark or depressing.

I liked how the authors break down hell into its common components, asking questions like “Where is hell?” and “Who’s in charge?” and giving a sense of how people have answered these questions in different places and times. I walked away feeling like we were all connected through this shared history of curiosity about the afterlife.

Jenna Moran is an under-appreciated author who combines whimsy and darkness in equal measure, created worlds that are at once familiar and strange. This bittersweet picture book is her at her finest, accompanied by glorious artwork by Elizabeth Sherry as she tells the story of a picture-book world attacked by an invasion of terrible, otherworldly things—Ordinary Objects.

I generally don’t enjoy works of fiction that feature writers as their main characters. The process of writing, while influenced by life, is nevertheless a solitary process, difficult to capture in an interesting and meaningful way. William Goldman manages to do that, mostly by focusing on the backstory of story, on the flow and emotions of existence that contribute not only to the tales a writer tells, but their need to do so. The Color of Light feels both fantastical and real, steeped in preposterous events and genuine emotion, in a way that traces both the artistic process and the vagaries of life.

Big plans for the afterlife? Go prepared. Martin Olson’s Encyclopaedia of Hell and its sequel Encyclopaedia of Heaven can answer all your questions about God, the Devil, and whatever mess we’re currently stuck in. Every page is uniquely designed, entertaining, and beautifully illustrated. To remind you not to take the End so seriously, it satirizes the hell out of our world. Like my favorite things in life, it manages to be both dark and funny.

This gorgeously illustrated coffee-table volume draws on Black’s expertise in science writing and paleontology. She begins with the Big Bang that created the universe 13.8 billion years ago, then moves in short chapters through milestones of the rise of life on Earth. Prehistoric plants harden into coal in the Carboniferous Period, 359 million years ago; dinosaurs roam the Morrison Formation of the western US, 156 million years ago; and small blobs of molten glass from Laos reveal a powerful meteorite impact 790,000 years ago. You’ll never see the timeline of life the same way again. 

This book stands as one of the last great paper encyclopedias created for children in this day and age of digital searches, and that is what I love about it. As you leaf through its pages, it is reminiscent of turning the stone pages of our own planet’s 4.6 billion-year-old story, featuring the evolution of life, culminating in us! This beautifully illustrated and written encyclopedia presents the most up-to-date information about planet Earth in a style and format designed for children, but which will appeal to a wide range of readers. With hundreds of photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps, it presents an impressive overview of our globe—beginning with the history of the universe and ending with today's conservation issues. A truly spectacular reference. 

I have written speculative fiction, and the protagonist, Angel, a feisty, courageous, enigmatic, curious survivor is placed into such a setting. Climate change, one of my personal concerns, has wreaked havoc with the geographical, and therefore the political world, as we know it. It deals with the way elites take what they see as the necessary action to continue their privileged lifestyles.

The author managed to make me empathize with almost all the characters on some level, regardless how selfish, wicked, good, generous, or courageous they may be. I encountered elderly heroes and heroines, resourceful individuals and communities, victims, self-serving demagogues, cruel leaders, uncaring servants, unquestioning followers, and a group of talented and determined resistance fighters bent on turning a terrifying world into a just and equable future.