Matt Ruff's 6 favorite works with supernatural themes

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Matt Ruff is the author of Lovecraft Country, the horror novel that inspired the HBO series of the same name. Ruff's new sequel, The Destroyer of Worlds, picks up the story in 1957, as racism and supernatural forces continue to plague the protagonists.

The Mad Scientists' Club by Bertrand R. Brinley (1965)

One of the most beloved books of my childhood. Its teenage protagonists use their STEM skills for worthy projects, such as building a fake Loch Ness monster. And there's a sequel, The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists' Club, that's just as good. Buy it here.

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The Sundial by Shirley Jackson (1958)

In this underrated black comedy by the author of The Haunting of Hill House, the members of a wealthy family take shelter on their country estate to await a prophesied apocalypse, which they believe only they will survive. But the promise of inheriting a new Eden brings out all their worst tendencies. Buy it here.

The Solitudes by John Crowley (1987)

This is a rich novel of ideas. It builds on the mantra "There is more than one history of the world," which is both a metaphor for the way different cultures view reality and a suggestion that the laws governing the universe might sometimes literally change. It even suggests that another change is due. Buy it here.

Fatherland by Robert Harris (1992)

An alternate history that, like Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, imagines a world in which the outcome of World War II is reversed. But where Dick's novel focuses on what losing the war would have done to America, Fatherland asks what I think is a much more interesting question: What would winning the war have done to Germany? Buy it here.

Gospel by Wilton Barnhardt (1993)

An ex-Jesuit, a rabbi, and a theology student set off in search of a lost gospel ... This might sound like the setup for an irreverent joke, but it's actually the premise of a fantastic religious adventure story that leaves Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code in the dust. Buy it here.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (2017)

This brilliant, impossible-to-categorize novel uses an obscure episode from the life of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft to create a complex and moving tale about literary scandals, human longing, and the fraught relationship between artists and their fans. Buy it here.

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