Books like Melmoth — picked by fans

There is nothing like this groundbreaking memoir—it is as good as it gets—and it has probably influenced every memoir since (including my own).

Kingston is a poet, and I find it impossible not to sink into the striking, gorgeous language and imagery as she describes growing up between multiple worlds: the China her parents emigrated from, the California of a first-generation daughter of immigrants, the ghost-filled China of her mother’s “talk stories,” and her inner life and growing awareness. She weaves family stories, famous myths, and her own girlhood experiences into a beautiful and unforgettable narrative.

I probably re-read it once a year.

When I came across this book, I was on the point of giving up reading modern novels. Everything I had read recently was such a let-down at the end that sometimes I threw the book across the room in reader rage.

At last, in Rushdie, I found someone who did not disappoint. As I approached the end, I became breathless, worrying that the story was going to sink like a soufflé, but it didn’t. It just kept on rising.

Once upon a time in Fairgrounds, there was a contraption called the Hammer and Bell. It was a test of strength to see if you could make the bell ring. Most couldn’t. Most got the marker some way up the calibrated column only to see it hesitate, then begin its descent. Midnight’s Children made it to the top.

What makes a good ending? For me, it is some transcendent statement of… show more.

When I read So Far From God, it did two things. First, it helped me understand this genre that was created by Latin American authors. Lois Parkinson Zamora said, “Magical realism is characterized by...its capacity to create (magical) meanings by envisioning ordinary things in extraordinary ways.” I understood what that meant when I read So Far From God. In the first chapter alone, one of the main characters, La Loca, dies and comes back to life. Her death was ordinary and extraordinary. I was hooked. 

Perhaps more importantly, in reading Castillo’s novel, I saw our shared Latina history, culture, and perspective through the stories she told. It was the first book that validated my experience as a Latina which is why it’ll always be close to my heart.

Several Luis Alberto Urrea novels feature powerful women, but this one resonates with me the most. One reason is that, like my novel, his also reimagines the history of a real-life great-aunt from Mexico. Urrea’s protagonist, Teresita, Saint of Cabora, is so full of heart that she gives me hope more readers will embrace Latinas in American literature.

Teresita Urrea exemplifies the strength teenage girls can wield when people encourage them to speak up instead of pipe down and when people value all their gifts regardless of whether those gifts were once labeled “masculine,” like boldness, or “feminine,” like empathy. For me, Teresita offered timeless wisdom: because she led with love, she saw through the lies of the powerful to the hearts of people who needed healing and justice. 

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke’s Occult Roots of Nazism is arguably the first scholarly monograph to take the relationship between occultism and Nazism seriously, providing a fascinating overview of the “secret Aryan cults” and “Ariosophic” beliefs that ostensibly influenced Nazi ideology.

While Goodrick-Clarke stops short of drawing a direct connection between prewar occult doctrines and Nazi policies during the Third Reich– indeed, his study concludes in 1935––no historian before or since has done as thorough a job, based on copious empirical research, of chronicling the eclectic and ubiquitous occult underground that helped shape the interwar folkish movement that produced Nazism.

After years of practicing yogic-based meditation and qigong, I felt called to seek out spiritual Earth connection practices from my own European ancestral lineages.

This book stood out to me because it opens a path directly to the deep consciousness of the Earth, through journeys based on Celtic and pre-Celtic symbols. Each exploration has opened new insights and transformations, leaving me feeling a greater attunement with nature and with my own being.

There is a deep-time metaphysics underlying this book, connected to the ancient mysteries yet without the heavy trappings of elaborate outer ritual. This bare-bones simplicity makes the practice accessible in the midst of a full life.

There are so many reasons to love this book.

First, the main character is compelling–intelligent, strong, flawed, and courageous. Second, excellent research takes you into the difficult politics of medieval Europe, the tensions between religions, and the madness of European Courts. Third, it takes you into the dark world of medieval alchemists and their dangerous competition to find the Philosopher's Stone.

The crimes make your skin crawl. I also love it because my very own detective, Doctor John Dee, is ever present but never seen.

One of the reasons I read this genre is because so many of these stories include strong, fierce heroines and Calla Tor from Nightshade is one of the strongest. In a society and culture that imposes rules and oppression on their people, Calla is forced to test the limits and figure out who she really is and what she’s made of while still being a strong leader to her pack. This story is on my top 5 list because Calla is an unforgettable character, but so much of why you’ll love her is thanks to the world this author creates. Nightshade is another unique, fresh take on werewolves that you won’t want to put down.

This book is another that has a similar vibe to The Dresden Files and my books. This one had a really unique take that I liked, mixing in ghosts with the other supernatural creatures and elements. The main character has some fun, memorable quirks that I enjoyed, and the plot had some great twists that I didn’t see coming. The world is really broad, and there’s a lot more to uncover about how things work, so I liked that it didn’t tell everything in the first book, so it left me with the desire to read more.  

An unlikely complement to Huizinga tracing the overlap between magical beliefs in religion as well as astrology and the emerging accusations of witchcraft. Deeply immersed in research about 16th-17th century England, this book offers a form of historical anthropology for baseline views of the strange ideas that drove spiritual life.