5 Books to Read Based on Your Favorite AL Episodes
This blog is, in part, inspired by our new 2022 Astonishing Legends Reading Challenge! Since doing a reading-based IG story and with the new year rolling in, I’ve had about a dozen or so requests to do an AL monthly reading challenge!
The idea of this challenge is to read a book that matches the “theme” of each month! I’ll be sharing this on our other socials, as well as monthly check-ins and discussion threads in the Facebook Group, Reddit, here on the blog, and on IG to see what everyone read, sharing ideas, and discussing our experiences!
Please feel free to bookmark this page so you always have the challenge info! And now, onto some of the suggestions that inspired this!
If you would like to see more book -> episode suggestions, please let me know in the comments! Please note, all suggestions are fictional books. If you’d like books based on AL episodes and their research, please head over to our bookstore page or the individual episode web page.
If you liked…Houska Castle, Loftus Hall, and The Sallie House read →
If you love a good haunted house story, but love a mystery WITHIN a haunted house, join Kara as she finds the words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Dive into Kara’s mind as she becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities.
But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more one fears them, the stronger they become.
If you liked…Roswelsh, the Delphos Ring, and the Mothman series read →
Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Not disimilar to the forewarnings created in space and by the alleged visitors to our world, Ryland must come to terms with the ever-changing rules of reality in space.
To complicate other things? Like those who experience the unknown…he has suffered from temporary amnesia. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company.
Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. With the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone.
Or does he?
If you liked…The True Story Behind the Conjuring, Hosting Horror with Joe Bob Briggs, and The Villisca Ax Murders read →
It comes to no surprise to me that many Legenders enjoy the horror genre but, of, course, they take it a step further. Some Legenders love the history behind the stories that inspire movies like Friday the 13th, others just like the history of the genre and how it so often reflects our very human fears. And, just like Legenders, so does Jade Daniels. Jade is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them.
Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
If you liked…Monsters Among Us, Sarah & The Spiderwoman, and the Bell Witch series read →
Fairytale, the impossible, and the tense inability to know what is real and what is not all come to being in the episodes mentioned above…and in Nightbitch.
We join our main character, an ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms.
As the mother's symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers the mysterious academic tome which becomes her bible, A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography, and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel-marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem.
If you liked…The Black Monk of Pontefract, The Devil and Annelise Michele, and The Siren Call of Hungry Ghosts read →
You begin the book like you begin an episode of Astonishing Legends - with a tour. While exploring their new suburban home, Julie and James are stopped by a noise. Deep and vibrating, like throat singing. Ancient, husky, and rasping, but underwater. “That’s just the house settling,” the real estate agent assures them with a smile. And, as Legenders know, he was wrong.
The move—prompted by James’s penchant for gambling and his general inability to keep his impulses in check—is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to start afresh. But this house, which sits between a lake and a forest, has its own plans for the unsuspecting couple. As Julie and James try to establish a sense of normalcy, the home and its surrounding terrain become the locus of increasingly strange happenings. The framework— claustrophobic, riddled with hidden rooms within rooms—becomes unrecognizable, decaying before their eyes. Stains are animated on the wall—contracting, expanding—and map themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of painful, grisly bruises.
Like the house that torments the troubled married couple living within its walls, The Grip of It oozes with palpable terror and skin-prickling dread. Its architect, Jac Jemc, meticulously traces Julie and James’s unsettling journey through the depths of their new home as they fight to free themselves from its crushing grip.
