56 Books Like Ararat

When novelist Paul Sheldon suffers a terrible car accident, he finds himself in the care of Annie Wilkes, a woman who claims to be his biggest fan and wants to nurse him back to health. But Annie isn’t pleased with the way Paul has brought his beloved series featuring Misery Chastain to a close. 

I love that we get a front-row seat to this unhinged author-fan encounter. Despite the horror that’s inflicted, readers—especially ones who are also writers—may take a perverse pleasure in seeing a fan have such strong feelings about a fictional character. 

Another component I adore is the way an author’s ego often causes them to overlook warning signs that would set off alarm bells in others who have a clearer picture of what’s really going on.

When I think about the arctic, and horror, I immediately think of Dan Simmons and The Terror.

It’s an expansive, tense, visceral book that feels historical. The authority and details make this feel like fact when we know this is fiction. It’s also quite lyrical and haunting—the setting as a backdrop, the weather, and senses brutalized by this expedition, and the events that slowly unfold. Madness, mutiny, and cannibalism? Yes, please. There are so many ways you can die out here in the cold—starvation, hypothermia, scurvy, exposure, etc.

Whether you came to his work via this book, Carrion Comfort, or (like I did) with Song of Kali, this may be his best work to date. And the television series is worth a gander as well. Immersive, unsettling, gripping, and bleak this is one of my favorite Arctic horror novels to date.

While the aforementioned Ararat channels The Thing, Stranded leans into another classic horror film, Jacob’s Ladder.

Lost and completely alone, the crew of the Arctic Promise finds itself in dire straits as each one succumbs to a mysterious illness. Eventually, they are frozen in, landlocked, and forced to leave the ship.

There are so many ways to die in the Arctic, and this book explores them all. Visceral, disturbing, and rippling with psychological horror, it is a thrilling read. Known for his genre-bending work and original storytelling, this might be my favorite book by Bracken MacLeod.

Part of the challenge of writing my novel was trying to study the various cultures, people, rituals, economies, beliefs, and ways the locals survived. This anthology had a bounty of information and a variety of stories that were written by northern authors who knew the area, some of them living there for prolonged periods of time.

The word “Taaqtumi” is an Inuktitut word that means “in the dark”—which seems appropriate. With story titles like “Insinaqtutalik Piqtuq: The Haunted Blizzard” and “Wheetago War II: Summoners,” you can see that the native POV is important to these stories. It is so important that I hired one of the authors, Repo Kempt, to be my Arctic advisor on my book—to help me get the details right. 

During the Bronze and Iron Ages the first texts appeared that allow us an unadulterated glimpse into the prevalent beliefs of the time, in Egypt and in Mesopotamia.

Finkel, a consummate cuneiformist and expert in the literature of Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria, presents here a jaunty, entertaining, humorous but above-all scholarly account of his new understanding of the Sumerian-derived flood story, made possible by his discovery in the archives of the British Museum a missing clay tablet – a couple of chapters – of the flood myth.

What follows is a true detective story, in which Finkel cleverly plays some mental gymnastics in order to reconstruct exactly what the Ark would have looked like. In part ancient history, historiography, theology, and just a lesson in how stories turn into myths, Finkel reveals a very different story to the one we all grew up with.

I loved the naïve storyline and the skillful appliqué quilts that the author made to illustrate the story. This book is so different from anything I have read. The illustrations have rich earthy colours.

The take on the story of Noah’s ark is brilliant, and I love Janet Bolton's truly unique voice.

Whether you believe in Ed and Lorraine Warren’s now legendary cases of paranormal investigation or not is irrelevant to enjoying this “non-fiction” book. The Warrens investigated many of the most famous hauntings from the 1950s to the 1990s—most notably, a murder/haunting in Amityville, NY, a possessed doll named, Annabelle, and a reported poltergeist in the town of Enfield in north London, England—all of which have been dramatized in popular horror movies, further expanding their legacy. The Warrens have their supporters and detractors like anyone claiming to have evidence of the paranormal. The abundance of evidence (“haunted” artifacts, such as dolls, mannequins, stuffed animals deemed responsible for paranormal activity) in the Warren’s cases, however, was stored in their own home which also operated as an occult museum. If you are suffering from the onset of demonic possession, it could be beneficial to chuck Grandma’s hand-me-down Raggedy Ann doll out the window. 

I’ve never thrown a book across the room harder than this one. While book one of The Dark Artifices had a fabulous cliffhanger, nothing could ever compare to the utter devastation book two, Lord Of Shadows, managed.

I would recommend this Young Adult series to people who love a blend of action and romance in contemporary-fantasy, value modern representation such as trans characters and autism awareness, and readers who like to have their hearts tortured in the cruelest of ways. 

This was one of the first books I picked up after my reading slump in 2012, and I absolutely couldn’t put it down. The story concept was fascinating; I love it when story worlds have supernatural elements and societies hidden within the “regular world.” The characters are written very well, and you feel as though you are watching a movie while reading with the authors great attention to detail in the scenes she sets.

The world building is great and offers a unique take on the classic fantasy creatures, werewolves, vampires, and fey. You really feel that “found family” book trope in this series, and the ups and downs of book one will have you hooked. 

There are some artists who are so talented they are, simultaneously, incredibly inspirational and discouraging.

Mike Mignola is one of those guys. Mignola is the commander of figure/ground. His beautiful sense of shape and form and utter control of black and white is just amazing. He builds story beautifully and constructs his pages cinematically.

When I looked for people to grace the pages of my book, I shot for consummate talent like that, and, if I can blow my own horn just a bit, the book succeeds along those lines. When I grow up, I want to be able to draw like that.