7 Books Like Lost Gods

Giles makes the "stacked against the odds" trope not only tolerable but meaningful. Such a punchy novella he has written. HIGHLY recommend.

What do you get when you mix Jaws, a creature feature and heavy handed Native American lore? Crota is a fantastic ride with not a wasted sentence. I will always recommend the writings of Owl Going back.

What? Something inhuman is stalking through the New York Museum of Natural History? Yes, please! This book started a phenomenal run for Preston and Child, and they continue to hatch more gems to this day. You really can’t go wrong with anything these guys write, whether as a pair or individually.

Its gripping narrative made me quickly rip through it and want much more. Fortunately, there’s a treasure trove of subsequent novels from these guys. This is just the kind of story I love—an intellectual mystery mixed with some good old archaeology/anthropology and a pinch of supernatural monster horror. It has strong characters, it’s fast-paced, and often spooky. And isn’t there something about museums that makes the creative mind wander?

I loved that about the novel’s main setting. The movie was not as good, so I recommend just reading the book.

This book messed with my head in all the right ways. I expected scares, but I didn’t expect the emotional gut-punch.

It’s not just about death; it’s about grief, denial, and how far someone will go to outrun the pain.

You feel the characters trying to escape what’s coming, running from fear, from loss, from truth, but it always catches up. The horror creeps in slowly, then hits like a truck, literally. Once the line between life and death is crossed, there’s no turning back. 

It’s one of the few books that left me genuinely unsettled because I understood the choices, even when they led straight into darkness.

I love that a normal human being, Ig Perrish (awesome character name), wakes up one morning and notices he is physically transforming into a supernatural being. The progressive growth of the horns (excellent anatomical descriptions of their extension from the cranium) coinciding with his gradual distaste and rejection of all things Judeo-Christian is brilliant.

I also love that Joe Hill turned the idea of what a demon is on its head, that they are not inherently evil but become that way because they can detect the hypocrisy of human thought, which drives them mad. They are so mad that they want to harm the very beings that tell them one thing but believe in another. Something I believe is responsible for all that is truly evil in the natural world. 

History and the supernatural are my literary biscuits and gravy—it doesn’t come around often, but I readily devour it when offered. (Well, now I’m hungry, dang it.) I haven’t often encountered a tale like this featuring an abandoned mining town (thus the book’s title) that isn’t exactly abandoned. I could tell things weren’t going to go well in this novel, but like a gawker at a car accident, I went ahead and looked anyway. I’m really glad I did.

I loved the premise of a crew investigating an abandoned mining town. Folks, I can’t think of many uglier places to have lived in history than a mining town, and that’s bound to leave some residue. Needless to say, the setting was amazing, and the action was intense. A setting like that is begging for the supernatural to come out, and yes, it does.

As if life in a Puritan colony isn’t horrifying enough, there’s a monster hanging around, ready to rip everyone to holy shreds for their sins. That’s Slewfoot in a nutshell, but there’s so much more than that. I loved the main character, a confident English woman who was sold into marriage to a Puritan colonial man by her father (gee, thanks, Dad). Big surprise—Puritan life isn’t all that great for her, especially due to her new husband’s smarmy brother, who wants what’s theirs.

I enjoyed this remarkable book, which I’d describe as part folktale, part historical fiction, and part monster-ghost-fest. I really felt that I was there, and as a New England transplant myself, I felt a bit ashamed of the local ancestry’s absurd ways long gone. But as is my taste, the fantastic supernatural element and its complex world held most of my attention. I found this novel to… show more.