76 books like With

By Donald Harington,

Here are 76 books that With fans have personally recommended if you like With. Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Ghosts

Kevin Brockmeier Author Of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories

From my list on ghosts.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.

Kevin's book list on ghosts

Kevin Brockmeier Why did Kevin love this book?

Aira is one of the most interesting novelists alive today, a writer whose wit, energy, and unfailingly restless imagination ensure that his books never follow a straightforward path, and thus always surprise you. Ghosts, my favorite of those books, presents the story of a half-constructed luxury apartment complex, the ghosts who wander its beams and its floors, and the adolescent girl to whom they call. Recommended if you like your ghosts circumambulating and avant-garde.

By César Aira, Chris Andrews (translator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"On a building site of a new, luxury apartment building, visitors looked up at the strange, irregular form of the water tank that crowned the edifice, and the big parabolic dish that would supply television images to all the floors. On the edge of the dish, a sharp metallic edge on which no bird would have dared to perch, three completely naked men were sitting, with their faces turned up to the midday sun; no one saw them, of course." - from Ghosts

Ghosts is about a construction worker's family squatting on a building site. They all see large and…


Book cover of A Fine & Private Place

Alan Russell Author Of Burning Man

From my list on featuring animals - lions, and tigers, and bears.

Why am I passionate about this?

In almost all of my eighteen published novels, animals have played a central role. When my first novel (No Sign of Murder) was published, The NY Times gave it a standalone review with the headline, “Even the Gorilla is a Suspect.” My wife was working with gorillas when I wrote the book. In Multiple Wounds, I cribbed a real-life experience of a double-homicide in our neighborhood, with the only survivor being a cat. We adopted that cat, and I had my protagonist do the same in telling the circumstances of her story to the world. Because animals play a big part in my own life, I feel the need to incorporate them into my words.

Alan's book list on featuring animals - lions, and tigers, and bears

Alan Russell Why did Alan love this book?

Yes, this novel is about life, death, and love, but if you’re envisioning a Bergman film full of angst, think again. For nineteen years, Jonathan Rebeck has been living in an abandoned mausoleum at Bronx’s Yorkchester Cemetery. Finding a way home has been as challenging for Rebeck as it was for Odysseus.  Rebeck has spent his time at the cemetery talking to ghosts, and to a raven quite the opposite of Poe’s. Usually, the human sees to the needs of the animal. In this instance, it is the raven who brings Rebeck pilfered food, and his unique wisdom.

As a romance blossoms between two of the ghosts at the cemetery, Rebeck and a widow he has become friendly with, try to help the spirits belatedly find love, and give Rebeck his own way back to life. 

By Peter S. Beagle,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked A Fine & Private Place as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A kindly raven brings food to and is the companion of a man who has taken refuge in an abandoned mausoleum in a New York City cemetery for nineteen years.
Title: A Fine & Private Place
Author: Beagle, Peter S.
Publisher: Tachyon Publications
Publication Date: 2007/05/28
Number of Pages: 264
Binding Type: PAPERBACK
Library of Congress: bl2007019271


Book cover of Alive in Necropolis

Kevin Brockmeier Author Of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories

From my list on ghosts.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.

Kevin's book list on ghosts

Kevin Brockmeier Why did Kevin love this book?

This, Dorst’s first novel, adopts the trappings of a police procedural but is at heart a character drama seasoned with elements of the supernatural. It follows the fortunes of a rookie cop in the “cemetery city” of  Colma, California, whose charges, he quickly discovers, include both the living and the dead. Recommended if you like your ghosts eerie and your human beings haunted not only by wakeful spirits but by their own personal blunders and false starts.

By Doug Dorst,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A "dark and funny debut"(Seattle-Times) about a young police officer struggling to maintain a sense of reality in a town where the dead outnumber the living.

Colma, California, the "cemetery city" serving San Francisco, is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and William Randolph Hearst. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a by-the-book rookie cop struggling to settle comfortably into adult life. Instead, he becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor, Sergeant Wes Featherstone, who spent his last years policing the dead as well as the living. As Mercer attempts to…


Book cover of Guestbook: Ghost Stories

Kevin Brockmeier Author Of The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories

From my list on ghosts.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve written and published one hundred very short ghost stories, plus a handful of longer ones, and have spent a lifetime reading and watching and thinking about stories of ghosts and the afterlife. My expertise, such as it is, involves ghosts as beings of narrative and metaphor. I’ve encountered great numbers of them on the page and on the screen—nowhere else—but I confess that I would love someday (though don’t expect) to encounter them in the flesh. My flesh, that is to say; their fleshlessness.

Kevin's book list on ghosts

Kevin Brockmeier Why did Kevin love this book?

One of the most inventive novels of recent years, Leanne Shapton’s Guestbook uses prose, photographs, and illustrations to find thirty-three ways of approaching the ghost story. The book moves swiftly and exhilaratingly through its pages, which are knit together by a sense of what it means for spirits to fasten themselves unexpectedly to people and what it means for people to feel haunted. Recommended if you like your ghosts both abundantly imagined and abundantly pictured.

By Leanne Shapton,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'Shapton has created a mystical territory - a performance, an exhibition, a guestbook - in which I felt the ghost within myself; the thing that will outlive me. A fearless and exquisite book' Miranda July

Guestbook explores the glimmering, unsettling things that haunt us in the midst of life, combining stories, vignettes and an evocative curiosity cabinet of artifacts and images - found photographs, original paintings, Instagram-style portraits - to transform the traditional ghost story into something else entirely.

'Leanne Shapton has a way of making books entirely new, surreal, and uncanny ... Guestbook contains ghost stories for a world…


Book cover of Sing, Unburied, Sing

Lucy Blue Author Of The Devil Makes Three

From my list on hauntings.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a goth chick from the American South, I’m obsessed with stories of old evil from the past finding its way into the present. I even live in a haunted house, a disintegrating Craftsman built in 1901. Our ghosts are very cozy, two cat-loving maiden ladies who were co-presidents of the local temperance society. We’ve given up on keeping liquor in our liquor cabinet; bottles cracking and leaking, glassware broken for no reason. And we’ve gotten so used to seeing and hearing their famous cat, Tom, we barely react anymore—a huge orange tabby tomcat who runs past our feet and jumps on the foot of our bed. 

Lucy's book list on hauntings

Lucy Blue Why did Lucy love this book?

Reading this book made me stop writing my own Southern gothic ghost book in the middle, rethink it completely, and start over again from scratch, and I wasn’t even mad about it. It’s just that good. It’s about thirteen-year-old Jojo and his family—his much-loved and very much dying grandmother, his strong, silent, and protective grandfather, his wild child mother, Leonie, his baby sister, Kayla, who looks to Jojo to keep her safe, and his white father, Michael, who just got out of jail. Everybody has secrets, and everybody sees ghosts. This literary novel won the National Book Award, but I promise you, horror readers, it will scare you silly and break your heart. 

By Jesmyn Ward,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2017 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 SELECTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW STATESMAN, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, TIME AND THE BBC Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalist for the Kirkus Prize Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award 'This wrenching new novel by Jesmyn Ward digs deep into the not-buried heart of the American nightmare. A must' Margaret Atwood 'A powerfully…


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 Shadowland

Jacqueline E. Smith Author Of Cemetery Tours

From my list on supernatural books to read all year long.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an independent author, photographer, wildlife advocate, paranormal enthusiast, and cat mom living in Dallas, Texas. In 2012, I earned my Master's Degree in Art and Performance from the University of Texas at Dallas and have been pursuing my writing career ever since. I published my first book, Cemetery Tours, in 2013 and it will forever be the book that changed my life.

Jacqueline's book list on supernatural books to read all year long

Jacqueline E. Smith Why did Jacqueline love this book?

Wow, where to even begin with Shadowland? Here’s the deal. I love Meg Cabot. I love everything she’s ever written. Of course, she’s known far and wide for her Princess Diaries series but as a paranormal enthusiast, the Mediator series has always been my favorite. I mean, wasn’t it every teenage girl’s dream to fall in love with the hot ghost haunting her new bedroom? I know that’s all I ever wanted.  

By Meg Cabot,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Shadowland as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 12, 13, 14, and 15.

What is this book about?

Shadowland is the first book in the thrilling, romantic Mediator series, from the New York Times bestselling author of the Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot. 

Suze is a mediator—a liaison between the living and the dead. In other words, she sees dead people. And they won't leave her alone until she helps them resolve their unfinished business with the living.

But Jesse, the hot ghost haunting her bedroom, doesn't seem to need her help. Which is a relief, because Suze has just moved to sunny California and plans to start fresh, with trips to the mall instead of the cemetery, and…


Book cover of The First Ghosts

Paul Pettitt Author Of Homo Sapiens Rediscovered: The Scientific Revolution Rewriting Our Origins

From my list on understanding the evolution of the human mind.

Why am I passionate about this?

I went to university wanting to become a Roman specialist, but ended up going backwards in time until I landed with a bump on the hard flints of the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age). I research aspects of the behaviour of the Pleistocene (Ice Age) indigenous Europeans – the Neanderthals – and the origins and evolution of our own species, Homo sapiens. I undertake fieldwork across Europe, and I’m particularly interested in the origins and early development of art – both on portable objects and cave walls – and the long-term evolution of our treatment of the dead. My scientific love is how we can try to get inside the mind of our most remote ancestors.

Paul's book list on understanding the evolution of the human mind

Paul Pettitt Why did Paul love this book?

As a specialist in the funerary practices of our earliest ancestors, I avidly awaited the publication of Finkel’s latest, this time deploying his considerable scholarship to the question of how Sumerians, Assyrians, and Babylonians thought of ghosts, spirits, demons, and the underworld.

You don’t need to be a believer to enjoy this intimate picture of the minds of some of the earliest known urbanites and intellectuals at a time when history was just emerging. Out of the fired clay leap stories of underworld journeys such as that of Gilgamesh, of spirits that rise up from below, of exorcisms, omens, and the shadows that lurk in the corners of the house.

To me, this is the most profound statement on early humans at their most imaginative, and if you believe it a useful manual for the prospective ghost hunter.

By Irving Finkel,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'It's enthralling stuff, mixing the scholarly with the accessible and placing storytelling right at the heart of the human experience.' - History Revealed

'A fascinating journey' - Yorkshire Post

'The book is a delight to read: each chapter is as academically astute as you would expect from this author, but delivered with a light touch and entertaining writing-style that sweeps the reader through the pages.' - Archaeology Worldwide

In The First Ghosts, he has found the perfect medium for bringing the ancient Mesopotamians back from the dead... Despite the morbid theme and remote cultural milieu, this is not a sombre…


Book cover of Angel Manor

JG Faherty Author Of The Wakening

From my list on evil houses.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve been a fan of horror books since I was old enough to read, and one of my favorite subgenres has always been the haunted/evil house. Ghosts, demons, unnamed forces – I love it. One of the first books I ever wrote was about a demonic carnival, and I’ve returned to the theme of the haunted/evil house or place many times in both my long and short fiction. Even in real life, I have a fascination for visiting so-called haunted places: abandoned asylums, murder houses, etc. So it’s no surprise that I’d create a list of my favorite evil house books. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

JG's book list on evil houses

JG Faherty Why did JG love this book?

Although this book is only a few years old, it should be considered a classic in the genre of evil houses. A young woman inherits her mother’s childhood home and decides to convert it into a hotel. Only the place comes with some surprises: ghosts, demons, and an ancient evil that has been locked away in the dark basement. Now that evil is loose again, and the bloodshed and death are just beginning. Author Chantal Noordeloos doesn’t hold back with the frights or the blood, as person after person suffers a horrible death while poor Freya discovers her true destiny is not what she planned, and that the place they call Lucifer Falls might never let her go. 

By Chantal Noordeloos,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A beautiful house – with a dark and deadly secret.

When Freya inherits her mother's childhood home, she sees it as an opportunity. A chance for a new life with her best friends, as they convert the crumbling mansion into an exclusive hotel.

Instead, they'll be lucky to escape with their lives.

As the first hammers tear through the bricked up entrances, a dark, terrible and ancient evil stirs beneath the house. An evil that has already laid claim to Freya and her companions' souls.


Book cover of Wonderlands: Essays on the Life of Literature

Margot Livesey Author Of The Hidden Machinery: Essays on Writing

From my list on reading and writing fiction.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up in the Scottish countryside, reading passionately. When adults asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, the answer came from my latest book: a nun, an outlaw, a queen, or an explorer. Not until I was in my twenties did I realise that I wanted to be the person behind the covers of a book, not between them. My early stories, written between waitressing shifts, were bafflingly bad. Gradually I began to understand that the fiction I loved was driven by a hidden machinery. I now teach at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and have been lucky enough to explore this idea with many talented students.

Margot's book list on reading and writing fiction

Margot Livesey Why did Margot love this book?

As a boy, Baxter stood at the window of his mid-western home and looked out at the empty street. He went on to fill that street with stories. In Wonderlands he talks about how those stories were made in terms of craft—he writes vividly about requests, lists, dreams, ghostsand the events in his own life that shaped his fiction, including a long period of failure. An deeply companionable book.  

By Charles Baxter,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Searching and erudite new essays on writing from the author of Burning Down the House.

Charles Baxter’s new collection of essays, Wonderlands, joins his other works of nonfiction, Burning Down the House and The Art of Subtext. In the mold of those books, Baxter shares years of wisdom and reflection on what makes fiction work, including essays that were first given as craft talks at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

The essays here range from brilliant thinking on the nature of wonderlands in the fiction of Haruki Murakami and other fabulist writers, to how request moments function in a story.…


5 book lists we think you will like!

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