59 Books Like Winter Tide

Noir can sometimes be hard to identify, but most readers are familiar with the tropes: the put-upon private investigator, the case that he can’t walk away from, the hunt for leads, the twists and double-crosses. With Hammers on Bone, we get all the aesthetics of a hardboiled detective story but also: Lovecraftian monsters. Noir stories lay bare individual and collective moral failings, and in adding eldritch horrors, the book further externalizes those ills, showing how monstrous humans can be.

Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw is a novella that melds the hardboiled detective novel with Lovecraftian monsters. Our private dick, John Persons, is hired by a ten-year-old kid to off his abusive stepfather. From this classic noir setup, to the character voice and dialect, to the shady characters, to the twists and reversals, this book really keys into the strengths of the genre, and amplifies them even further with… show more.

The Ballad of Black Tom rocked my world.

I was already writing stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft but I wasn’t sure I had a place in the genre. Then Victor LaValle took one of Lovecraft’s most racist works, The Horror At Red Hook, and produced an alternate version.

Black Tom touches on the events of Lovecraft’s original story but tells the tale from the point of view of a black musician named Tommy Tester. LaValle’s reimagining of Lovecraft is a revelation.

He showed me that I didn’t have to be like Lovecraft to write in his world. And LaValle perfectly captures the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, a world that Lovecraft’s racism prevented him from seeing, even though he lived in New York City at the time.

This book of poems is a truly unexpected combination of current pop culture, social commentary, and cosmic horror--and a hugely enjoyable read. It deals with the themes of sacrifice, thoughtless loyalty, collusion, survival, colonialism, and the very idea of the monstrous. How do we know when the forces around us are asking too much of us? How can we trust what we will get in return? How do our personal histories inform how we will respond to the void when it comes knocking? A lively, thoughtful read.  

You don’t have to travel far for very bad things to happen to you, as the main characters in this book discover when they ignore local warnings about fishing in a nearby creek. I consider this a masterwork in any genre, and I’m actually re-reading it right now, even though it kinda broke me the first time. 

It’s a Lovecraftian, cosmic horror story that also creates a kind of allegory for grief. Having lost my parents in my late twenties, it felt like a fantastical yet unnervingly accurate reflection of the experience. 

Haruki Murakami is probably the most famous Japanese author in the world and the father of Japanese magical realism. I have read a large portion of his work, and I have enjoyed many of his books (even with his weird ear fetish).

This one, however, is one of my favorites. It’s two stories in one, and although others sometimes criticize it for not being a good blend between the two stories, it is that separation that actually makes this book a gem for me. It captures your imagination as you follow a human computer down into a psychological miasma of perception and thought.

If that seems confusing, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to spoil for you one of my all-time favorite Murakami books. Also, if you want to know what I mean by human-computer, I guess you’ll just have to pick up the book.

Leaving me equally tickled as it did in awe, Flatland is easily one of my favorite books of all time.

Delving into concepts quite difficult to think about, let alone explain in such a delightful way, it expanded my mind into not only a better understanding of ‘dimensions’ but also the possibility, and even, the probability, that there is much more in existence than our rather limited little human brains can comprehend.

As weird as it is wonderful, I found myself stopping at various points to either laugh or to try to explain to someone else (to their annoyance I’m sure!) the profound details it explained to me. And when it was all over I was left humbled, and pondered what greater beings there may be all around me, that I simply cannot see.

This was one of the best books about werewolves—that isn’t really about werewolves—I have ever read. The story is told from the perspective of an unnamed boy who lives with his aunt and uncle—who happen to be werewolves—and the struggles he and his family face while living on the edge of society to avoid discovery.

What fascinated me the most was that Jones created entirely new werewolf lore with its own culture, rituals, and traditions, and it all felt real. I loved the non-linear timeline following the boy from 8 to 16, yearning to change like his aunt and uncle. Jones encapsulated the real difficulties of living on the fringes of society for whatever reason. It’s a dark book, raw and visceral, but also really funny. 

I’m listing this novel first because who’s worse than the devil? He’s the embodiment of a woman’s fears, there when we walk into a parking lot after dark, our keys clenched between our fingers in a makeshift weapon. And in a myriad of other forms. The devil is hard to get away from, especially as a woman.

In this novel, two childhood friends have to face off with the literal devil. And what they do to him—with him—is an anthem of female friendship, a love letter to our girlhood friends, and a book whose final line is as lasting as those years in our lives, the ones we believe at the time will never, ever have to end.

Although this book has been around for a very long time, I only encountered it earlier this year.

It is a scientific fiction novel based on a supposed treatment given to a mentally handicapped young man (Charlie) that gave him great intelligence. This treatment had been tried earlier on mice (one being Algernon), enabling them to do cognitive tasks impossible for ordinary mice. The basis for much of the book was that the treatment was not permanent, and first, Algernon and then Charlie deteriorated back to where they were cognitively before the treatment.

The book beautifully describes what it was like (in Charlie’s own words) to be cognitively disabled before the treatment and how he was treated by people; then, when the treatment was effective, and finally, as he was deteriorating, which he recognized was happening. Although fictional, the descriptions of the cognitive changes in Charlie are compelling.

I have a soft spot for stories written from non-human perspectives, and Footfall sticks out in my mind as a prime example of the subgenre. It follows the story of an invasion of Earth by a species called the Fithp, which has a herd-like social structure. The scenes told from the point of view of the invading Fithp present the first contact and alien invasion tropes in a new way. 

The unfolding conquest of Earth gives us a glimpse into Fithp minds and, most importantly, a look at ourselves from an outside perspective. It is a bit of a slow burn, but for me the world-building paid off in the end.

Footfall inspired me to write several short stories about alien invasion.