100 Books Like The Traveling Vampire Show

I was riveted in a world of young boys searching for more than just a body. So much of coming-of-age stories delve deep into the minds of these kids as they navigate both the familiar and unfamiliar. I was lifted to a time and place that resonates with my desire for nostalgia.

While The Body is poignant and nostalgic, and The Traveling Vampire Show is goofy fun, A Boy’s Life is simply a very solid, weighty, well-written tale. McCammon nails the mindset of his young protagonist so much so it’s hard for the reader not to feel like a twelve-year-old kid again, viewing the world through impressionable and innocent eyes. It’s a book that will evoke memories of your own childhood, and it is one you will remember long after you have stopped reading.

To set the record straight, I do not love this book. I still haven’t come to a decision if I even like it. It isn’t the “best” book on my list, yet it is the most disturbing. And it is a must-read.

A warning, though. It’s a book that you won’t be able to stop and you’ll likely feel very guilty for even reading it. It dives into human behaviors that we don’t want to think about and surely would not intentionally want to take part in. I’ve a question for you: Is there a limit to what you would do to another human being if others were doing it too? How confident are you in your answer? The worse part about this novel is that it is based on a true story.

Unlike the other authors on this list who mostly write about adult characters, John Saul writes almost exclusively about children (at least he has in all the books I’ve read by him). I chose Suffer The Children for this list because it was the first book he wrote back in 1977, I believe. There are some disturbing moments in it, as there are in most horror novels, so be aware of that. However, Saul is a talented author who can effortlessly get into the heads of the kids he writes about. He’s also a master of the slow-burn, building suspense page by page until the big pay-off, so if you don’t need action every other sentence, he might be right up your alley.

In choosing a theme for this list, I was very careful to think of one that would allow me to include this book, my favorite haunted house novel of all time. It’s gay; it’s weird; its central mystery is never fully resolved, which may be why it’s stuck with me for years and is one of the few novels I’ve reread more than twice as an adult.

Miranda Silver is neither a classic Gothic heroine nor an ass-kicking Sidney Prescott type, but someone stranger and more opaque. She’s confused and lonely and an unreliable narrator. Her romance with classmate Ore might offer some respite from the terrors of her family’s ancestral home, but it’s not enough to save her.

I love a queer story without a happily ever after. Knowing who you are and who you love doesn’t always make everything turn out okay. Sometimes, it just means you have… show more.

This is a great book without a great title. It refers to Spinoza’s Ethics and speaks to the strength of emotions.

Philip Carey has it rough from the outset: he’s disabled, he’s an orphan, and the story traces his travails—bullying, neglect, career misfires, and romantic and other calamities—along with his triumphs. These include some of my very favorite topics (beauty and belonging) along with the questions of adolescence that never leave us.

You could never get away with a book like this now—a 600-page chronological coming-of-age with one POV and narrator, swelling with social commentary and philosophical musings? But it’s a classic for a reason, and it saved my life during the pandemic (I listened, whereas I usually read).

It’s an inspiration and a great ride if you can slow down and savor.

A girl is haunted by events that shaped her destiny early on. A father who vanished without a trace. A mother who took her own life along with those of her other children by leaping from the roof of a building. There is a witness and a survivor, and this beautiful novel is the latter's story, as well as an examination of race. She is her father's Black and her mother's White daughter. Her racial identity therefore is both and neither, dependent on how one sees her, or how she chooses to see herself on any given day. Exploration of racial as well as family dynamics are themes that I am strongly drawn to read as well as write about. Durrow blends the two masterfully.

Early African American fiction is not as well-known as the slave narrative genre, but the few novels that do exist before the Civil War are sophisticated interpretations and developments of sentimental fiction. Harriet E. Wilson’s Our Nig is a bildungsroman charting the life of free Black servant girl Frado who is exploited and abused by her adopted white family. Wilson challenges the passive and flat portraits of Black men and women in most antebellum fiction, by portraying a complex and multifaceted character in Frado.

From the first chapter, as I read Charlie’s letter to a friend, I wished I could meet the man this teenager would become. The magic of this book is that it is related entirely through journal-like letters. Charlie writes with so much authenticity, curiosity, and vulnerability that I’m glad he has three friends who hold him with love as he faces his demons and comes of age.

I found the ways he makes sense of the world fascinating, humourous, and admirable, and at other times heartbreaking. I sincerely admire Charlie’s strength as he manages to sustain vulnerability and a constant rope of connection to himself, even though it gets very thin at times. 

What’s so neat about this book is that it doesn’t just capture a light-hearted and moving glimpse into English academia; it provides glimpses into a man’s—an institution in himself—relationships with his wife, coworkers, and students.

I enjoyed the progression of time. Several generations of students interact with the aging, albeit the same, “Mr. Chips.”  There’s something neat about that.