Books like The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston

A young scholar uncovers a labyrinthine family legacy, tracing the truth of Vlad the Impaler and the myth of Dracula across centuries and borders, risking life and sanity to confront an ancient evil.

Mariamne, a visionary in Jerusalem, and her sister Salome study at Alexandria’s Great Library, then return to Judea where they encounter Yeshu'a and John the Baptist, weaving a reinterpretation of biblical history through learned, prophetic eyes.

A CIA operative travels to a remote Arizona mountain with a team of scientists to sabotage the world's largest supercollider, uncovering a secret that could either doom or save humanity.

Special Agent Pendergast investigates the mysterious death of his wife Helen, uncovering secrets linked to a vanished Audubon painting and a deadly betrayal in Louisiana.

Three investigators race to recover a mysterious book believed to have been written by Christ himself after a deadly earthquake exposes an ancient tomb on Masada.

A thriller that follows a secret expedition to Cambodia, a meteor strike on the Maine coast, and a mysterious impact crater on Mars—each revealing uncanny, otherworldly gems, gamma‑ray sources, and an escalating countdown of danger.

Could it be that the more we know about the world, the less we understand it? Could it be that, while everything has been explained, nothing has meaning? Extending the ideas presented in his book _In The Dust of This Planet_, Eugene Thacker explores these and other issues in _Starry Speculative Corpse_. But instead of using philosophy to define or to explain the horror genre, Thacker reads works of philosophy as if they were horror stories themselves, revealing a rift between human beings and the unhuman world of which they are part. Along the way we see philosophers grappling with demons, struggling with doubt, and wrestling with an indifferent cosmos. At the center of it all is the philosophical drama of the human being confronting its own limits. Not a philosophy of horror, but a horror of philosophy. Thought that stumbles over itself, as if at the edge of an abyss. _Starry Speculative Corpse_ is the second volume of the "Horror of Philosophy" trilogy, together with the first volume, [_In The Dust of This Planet_](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL17433870W/In_The_Dust_Of_This_Planet), and the third volume, [_Tentacles Longer Than Night_](https://openlibrary.org/books/OL29266655M/Tentacles_Longer_Than_Night).

In medieval Ireland, a bored scribe discovers plant‑based inks that allow his monastic brothers to illuminate manuscripts, weaving a tale of creativity, manuscript culture and monastic life.

The astonishing story of how the dead live on via memorials across the globe, from Ethiopia and Nepal to Cambodia and Rwanda, told through arresting images and captivating narration. A macabre, spectacular, and thought-provoking survey of death in life, this book collects the many ways human remains are used in decorative, commemorative, and devotional contexts around the world today. This compact edition of *Memento Mori* takes the reader on a ghoulish but beautiful tour of some of the world’s more unusual sacred sites and traditions, in which human remains are displayed for the benefit of the living. From burial caves in Indonesia festooned with bones to skulls smoking cigarettes, wearing beanie hats and sunglasses, and decorated with garlands of flowers in South America, author Paul Koudounaris ventures beyond the grave to find messages of hope and salvation. His glorious color photographs and insightful commentaries reveal that in many places, the realms of the living and the dead are nowhere near so distinct as contemporary Western society would have us believe.