What to read next
Books Like Sisters of the Lost Nation: Indigenous Horror and Supernatural Mysteries
Anna Horn has to work out what the stories she grew up with can tell her about a sister who's gone missing. Bad Cree comes close to that mix of sisterhood and supernatural fear. The rest of the list follows women looking for answers, returns to Takoda, and takes up other kinds of inherited danger.
Read my review of Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina.
Nick Medina's books in order and the Takoda connections
The full shortlist
Why each book belongs here
Anna's search is the starting point here. Some of these books keep a missing or absent relative at the center. Others give the supernatural threat a closer tie to something a family or a group of friends has done.
1
Bad Cree
- Similar because
- Mackenzie starts bringing disturbing traces of her dreams into waking life. Her dreams keep returning her to a weekend before her sister Sabrina died. Like Anna, she has to turn to family knowledge to understand something frightening that keeps following her.
- Different because
- Mackenzie goes home to her Cree family in Alberta for help. The story is about mourning a sister whose death is known, while Anna has to contend with the uncertainty of Grace's disappearance and the danger facing other girls on Takoda.
2
White Horse
- Similar because
- Kari James starts seeing visions of her mother after her cousin gives her a bracelet that belonged to her. Both Kari and Anna have questions about an absent woman, and both have reason to look closely at what the people around them will say about her.
- Different because
- Kari is an adult whose life in Denver includes heavy metal and the neighborhood bar that gives the book its title. Her questions lead into her mother's history. Anna's search begins in a teenager's everyday life on a reservation and has the urgency of a disappearance still unfolding.
3
Indian Burial Ground
- Pace
- Uneven across timelines
- Darkness
- Very dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Noemi Broussard also has to pay attention to things that could be easy to explain away on Takoda. When her boyfriend Roddy dies, the way people account for his death matters as much to her as the stories people tell Anna about danger.
- Different because
- Anna is trying to find a sister who may still be alive. Noemi is already grieving, and her uncle Louie's memories of 1986 take up a second timeline. That makes the past a place the book can spend time in while Noemi's questions wait.
- Reading note
- This return to Takoda follows its own central mystery and can be read on its own.
4
The Whistler
- Pace
- Quick start, slower middle
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- An old story gives both Anna and Henry Hotard a reason to take a presence seriously. The Whistler returns to the fictional reservation and makes a warning about a sound as unsettling as the story Anna hears at the campfire.
- Different because
- Henry used to film his searches for ghosts. His haunting is more direct and personal than Anna's investigation into disappearances. The pressure is on getting the people close to him to take his account seriously.
- Reading note
- Some earlier characters return, with the focus staying on Henry's own haunting.
5
The Haunting of Alejandra
- Similar because
- Alejandra sees a crying figure that other people can't see. As she learns more about the women in her family, a threat she has experienced on her own starts to have a history. That change in scale is familiar from Anna's search through stories she heard growing up.
- Different because
- Castro uses the Mexican legend of La Llorona and follows an adult mother looking into her ancestry with help from a therapist. The fear runs through the lives of women across generations. Medina follows one teenager trying to find her sister while girls are going missing around her.
6
The Only Good Indians
- Similar because
- Four Blackfeet friends have reason to think something from an elk hunt years ago is coming back for them. Like Medina, Jones gives a supernatural threat a history in a particular community and lets the characters' choices shape what they owe each other.
- Different because
- Jones starts with adult friends trying to live with what they did. Anna is a teenager trying to find out what happened to other people. The hunt puts guilt and retribution closer to the center than the missing-person mystery does.
Side-by-side
Pace, darkness, romance, and difficulty
| Book | Pace | Darkness | Romance | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indian Burial Ground | Uneven across timelines | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| The Whistler | Quick start, slower middle | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
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