9 Books Like Tales of Mystery and Imagination

I have been writing for more than 40 years, and while I don’t normally write gothic literature, it is a genre that has fascinated me since my early youth. While I have written a couple of gothic or horror short stories, I tend to write other types of literature. However, I was pulled into this novel by something I saw on the TV news, and so I put away the novel I was originally working on and set to work on this one instead. The setting and the characters immediately pulled me in. I hope that it’s mystery and unusual characters will do the same for you.

I was twelve years old when I first read Jane Eyre, the beginning of my love for gothic fiction. Murder mysteries are fine, but add a remote location, a decaying old house, some tormented characters, ancient family secrets, and I’m all in. Traditional Gothic, American Gothic (love this painting), Australian Gothic, Mexican Gothic (perfect title by the way), I love them all. The setting in gothic fiction is like a character in itself, and wherever I travel, I’m drawn to these locations, all food for my own writing.

I am a Pulitzer-nominated writer who began as a poet, then shifted to prose during a period of aesthetic and personal crisis in my life. I am interested in how the novelist can gather and curate fascinating facts for the reader and incorporate them into the text. I see writing as a great adventure and investigation into issues of empathy, power, and powerlessness, and the individual in an increasingly technological world.

When I wrote my first novel, I began investigating modern-day technology—robotics, bioengineering, AI, and information technology—and have read and worked in this area for over 15 years. It is a pleasure to share some of the books that have informed my own journey.

I’ve been fascinated by how people behave and how in-group bias can change who they are. That interest led me into computational sociology (I study human behavior for a living), with my work appearing in The New York Times, USA Today, WIRED, and more. But my deepest fascination has always been with people’s propensity for the horrific. I LOVE the liminal space where fear, secrecy, and belonging collide. Being neurodivergent, living in a small Virginia town with my wife and our neurodivergent, queer son, I see how communities can both shelter and suffocate. That tension is why I’m drawn to stories saturated in dread, beauty, and what lives in the shadows.

I’ve always been a fan of dark stories and unsolved mysteries. As I grew older, this led me to read true crime, historical mysteries, horror stories, and mystery detective fiction. I also have a preference for classic stories from decades gone by, as I have a strong interest in how genre-defining stories that appear at a certain time can have great influence over a generation of writers. So, it’s fitting to say that all my recommendations tend to be great stories from long ago. Much like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, people still read these stories today and probably will in the future since great stories are timeless.

Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by scary movies, creature features, and books that tell tales of the strange and supernatural. Years later, my own books explored those things that scare us, from monsters of the deep and the ways we die to the mythology of blood. Research for those books led me into realms that explained why we fear the things we do. Many of those fears are found in horror novels, which provide an endless source of fright, release, and entertainment within their haunting pages. I can’t think of any other genre of writing that takes its readers on such a joyously terrifying ride.

I am Frederick L. McKay, the youngest son of the composer and author George Frederick McKay (1899-1970), and I have re-issued and edited Professor McKay’s theory books and also authored his biography titled McKay’s Music: The Composer Chronicles. George Frederick McKay hoped to have more American music performed in the concert halls of our country and also involved cultural elements from around the world in his musical works, including poetry and whimsical pieces for young people studying music. His other works include Creative Harmony, How Music Begins and Grows, and Workbook for Creative Orchestration.

I’m the author of the Peter Pike private eye series. Detective, PI, and mystery fiction have come a long way since Poe’s Dupin and Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. The genre allows you to explore almost any theme you want. What is Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment if not crime/detective fiction? My passion is history and the evolution of societies, and writing in this genre lets me explore the huge, sophisticated ancient Indian civilizations that were here before the white invasion. The ugly history of the Mormons, not taught in school. Lincoln’s murky sexuality. The Russian Revolution, Lenin and Stalin, the downfall of the Romanovs. Nazis and war dogs. The U.S.-Soviet space race. The -- well, you get the idea. 

As an academic, I have been researching Canadian police and criminal justice history since the 1980s and I teach courses on the history of policing, crime, drugs and homicide, and capital punishment. In 2014 I began to cover a high-profile murder trial in my region of Canada and ended up writing a best-selling book on the case. The Oland case reinforced my interest in true crime, both as a research topic and a cultural phenomenon. True crime, whether set in the distant past or contemporary times, offers writers and readers alike fascinating forays into specific societies and communities as well as human nature.