Books like Accursed — picked by fans

A brilliant collection of horror stories, my favourite being Sometimes They Come Back.

I recommend this ghostly tale for its depiction of the fine line between the spirit realm and the world we live in. The narrative of earth-bound ghosts and their determination to exact revenge on the living bringing forth a fierce battle between good and evil. The latter played on my mind as I empathised with the main character’s psychological struggle with recapitulated past events, leaving those around him to question his sanity.

This was an obvious pick. As a Black girl who grew up loving zombies but could never find girls who looked like me slaying and slashing through hordes of monsters – this book cover had me at ‘hello’. Inside is all of the magic you could ever dream in color. And the title is explained in the introduction: Sycorax was the deceased African sorceress referenced in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Demons, vamps, witches (oh my!), and more compiled into more than 500 pages of both stories and poetry. I was floored to discover so many more Black women writers of dark and speculative fiction! I can’t pick a favorite but ‘Kim’ by Nicole Sconiers always comes to mind first when I talk about this collection.

I’m a big fan of themed anthologies! Most horror anthologies I find are similar to Night Shift in that they are all random stories of dark fiction but with no recurring theme. It’s extra fun for the reader (and the writer) when all of the stories reverberate around a single topic or scenario. The Savage B’s: A Tribute to Horror is a proclamation of love for B movies. I remember the fun and splashy gore of movies like The Blob or Swamp Thing. You were horrified at the splatter of brains but also tickled by the sheer absurdity of the splatter of brains. From flesh-eating monsters to toxic spills, each of these stories is finely crafted by authors with their own B movie-style spin. 

Did someone say monsters? As much as I love the stories about the dark sides of human souls, there is nothing quite better than actual monsters. And this anthology packs them in, I’m talking the literal stuff of nightmares! Creatures designed by writers who obviously love monsters as much as the readers; demons with frames and features that only a mother could love. This parade of monsters was a lot to absorb in one sitting, which is the whole point of my list – collections that give you so much to dig into that it leaves you breathless. Short of being an all-out gore-fest, Monster Brawl! is so well curated that you might be surprised to find that you care about a few of them. 

The “deep map” that Least Heat-Moon unfolds for us in this revelatory book is the history of Chase County, Kansas, home of the largest and least corrupted stand of tallgrass in America. He takes us with him—by car, on foot, and in mind—as he explores this story-rich land, its plants, animals, and the homespun people who have struggled to occupy this forbidding landscape.

In one breath, he reminds us it was the tall grasses of the African savannah that first made humankind stand up. In another, he tells us that the humans who peer across America’s tall grasses have “prairie eyes.” In “a place where you see twenty miles sitting down,” you have prairie eyes if you take in the horizon with stoic calm, knowing it can bring the deliverance of rain or the destruction of a tornado, dust storm, prairie fire (the “red buffalo”), or locusts. 

Least Heat-Moon reports… show more.

Every once in a while, I like a good, scary movie (as long as there’s a limit on the gore). Little Darlings is one of a collection of short stories featuring a murder taking place on Friday the 13th. I made the dubious decision to start reading it one night before bed. Immediately, I was sucked into the story of three friends on a weekend getaway who find themselves terrorized by four black-eyed children who come knocking. The author did a fantastic job of creeping me out to the point where I was listening for the story’s “little darlings” long after turning out my light. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep well that night. I see this as an episode in a Twilight Zone-type series.

Horror-themed summer camp for Black queer girls? Yes, I don’t mind if I do!

Reading Ellis’ book is like returning to the summer going into my junior year of high school and the angst and drama of summer camp, only with the addition of woods and crappy cabins where the danger is very real and at least one camp counselor has an agenda that involves her genetic legacy of being the daughter of a convicted serial killer.

Temple, our angry (peer) counselor, is on a mission to find her mother’s corpse, even though she doesn’t buy that her dad actually killed her. The novel gives me a real Friday the 13th vibe, mixed with a tangled family history that rivals Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches series. I can't refuse a complicated family mess, and this has it… a lot!

Read this book while you’re taking a break from a solo hike… show more.

Yu’s screenplay-novel hybrid skewers Hollywood stereotypes, racial tokenism, and assimilation in America.

It’s immigrant satire with cinematic flair—funny, inventive, and emotionally grounded in the absurdity of chasing approval in a rigged system.

This is a short book in which Newman explores the changes in what the term ‘video’ means.

The term is closely intertwined with the history of television, describing first television broadcasts and then how taping was used to bridge the time differences between the American east and west coasts. The term then described the ways home video revolutionized how video was used in the private sphere. Today, we receive videos as the digital snippets we see on YouTube or the short clips we post on social media. 

I like Newman’s work in general. But this book tells us so much about TV history in the US; I find it an incredibly fascinating work.

This is the companion book for Des Doyle's acclaimed documentary with the same title (also highly recommended).

Described as “the first ever feature-length documentary to explore the world of U.S. television showrunners and the creative forces they employ”, the documentary is an insightful overview of the TV creative process, featuring interviews with some of the best showrunners in the business.

There is simply nothing that beats this if you want to get a sense of how the industry works and measure the stakes, the energy, the pressure, the creativity, the professionalism, and the humor experienced or displayed by these awe-inspiring storytellers.

The book features a foreword by Hart Hanson (Showrunner of Bones, The Finder, Backstrom), an introduction by Doyle, and expands on the interviews featured in the documentary.