If you liked
Books like The Only Good Indians
by Stephen Graham Jones
The Only Good Indians is Stephen Graham Jones's Bram Stoker Award winning literary horror novel — four young Blackfeet men committed a hunting transgression a decade earlier and the moral debt is now being collected, in a form that requires them to recognize the elk in their own hunting party returning for it. If you finished it and needed another book in the same register, these are our picks.
The shortlist
What to read next
Mexican Gothicby Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia 2020 review. Noemi Taboada is summoned to the remote Mexican mountain town of El Triunfo to rescue her cousin from her new husband's family. The canonical contemporary Latin American gothic horror novel and the 2020 Bram Stoker winner.”
There Thereby Tommy Orange
“There There by Tommy Orange 2018 review. Twelve Native American characters converge on the Big Oakland Powwow. PEN/Hemingway Award 2019 and the canonical contemporary urban Indigenous American literary novel.”
The Ocean at the End of the Laneby Neil Gaiman
“The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman 2013 review. A middle-aged man returns to his Sussex childhood home for a funeral and remembers something he had carefully forgotten. Late Gaiman at his most patient and most personal.”
American Godsby Neil Gaiman
“American Gods by Neil Gaiman 2001 review. An ex-convict named Shadow takes a job as bodyguard to a strange man named Wednesday and learns the old gods of immigration are still here, dying slow. The defining American urban fantasy of the 2000s.”
Belovedby Toni Morrison
“Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.”
The Handmaid's Taleby Margaret Atwood
“The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood 1985 review. In the near-future Republic of Gilead, women have been stripped of their rights, and the handmaid Offred remembers the world before. The most-cited dystopian novel of the late twentieth century.”
FAQ
Common questions about The Only Good Indians read-alikes
- What is the closest match for The Only Good Indians?
- Mexican Gothic. Both contemporary literary horror novels using folkloric and colonial-historical material to do work that contemporary American horror has not historically committed to. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Stephen Graham Jones are the two essential literary-horror writers of the current moment.
- I want more Stephen Graham Jones.
- My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021, Indian Lake trilogy opener), Don't Fear the Reaper (2023), and The Angel of Indian Lake (2024) are the recent slasher-genre work. Jones has more than thirty earlier novels and collections; the backlist is enormous and worth exploring.
- I want more contemporary Indigenous American literary writing.
- There There (Tommy Orange's urban Indigenous American ensemble) is the obvious next read in our catalog. Outside the catalog, Louise Erdrich, Joy Harjo, Brandon Hobson, and Stephen Graham Jones himself are the canonical contemporary picks.
- I want a louder horror recommendation.
- The catalog is light on louder horror. The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman's short literary-folk horror) is the closest match. Outside the catalog, T. Kingfisher (What Moves the Dead), Catriona Ward (The Last House on Needless Street), and Paul Tremblay (The Cabin at the End of the World) are the canonical contemporary picks.
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