Best books…chosen by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones’ new novel, The Angel of Indian Lake, completes his trilogy about a horror superfan’s encounter with an Idaho slasher. Below, the best-selling author of The Only Good Indians names six books he can’t live without.

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich (1984). The way this book moves in stories, but then manages to bring it all home at the end with a single magical image—I’ll never stop reading this novel. It’s the standard I always try to write...not “to,” I’m not that presumptuous. But “toward,” anyway, the best I can.

Solaris by Stanisław Lem (1961). This is truly an encounter with an intelligence not human. And it’s thrilling and terrifying and wondrous and restorative. You can come back to Solaris again and again, and, just like the book’s titular vast ocean planet, it’s going to have something different for you.

It by Stephen King (1986). This novel’s nostalgia for a world that existed before I was born somehow makes me miss the ’80s I grew up in. It isn’t about a place, or a clown in the sewers. It’s about childhood, and friendship, and growing up.

Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1987). What if superheroes were real? This comic book is a model for how to truly engage with a premise, and then go beyond that premise. At its core, it’s a murder mystery, but that’s just the dramatic mechanism Watchmen uses to suggest and expose truths about the world, and us.

Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear (1999). I’m not sure my heart’s ever beaten as hard from reading fiction as it did while I read Darwin’s Radio. This is science fiction set pretty much in the world of today, but...it’s a world undergoing a profound change, one that’s maybe even necessary. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary.

Come Closer by Sara Gran (2003). Come Closer is a possession story that, each time I read it, completely possesses me all over again. Gran has done something magical and terrifying, here, in such a short space, and in such a spare style. Read this one at night if you can, and then: Good luck catching some sleep.