ROAD TO STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ OFF THE RESERVATION: An Obsessive’s Fiction Review Column
We’ve come to the last stretch of road. In just one week, the new novel from award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones, Off the Reservation, will be out there waiting for you. And if you’ve hitched along this six-column road trip I’ve been taking, you’re more than ready for it.
You’ve checked out my recommendations for which of his books to start with
You’ve fallen in love with the best Final Girl to ever do it, Jade Daniels.
You’ve lost yourself in hundreds of short stories.
You’ve ventured into the minds of several sick, devious serial killers.
You’ve lived through zombie outbreaks, homicidal video games, and Martian caterpillars.
Today, I’ve saved for the end the four SGJ works that I find to be his most crucial. His heavy hitters. Sure, some of these may also happen to be his most popular, the most read, but I saved them for last because I believe their weight is best felt with the full context of his bibliography. We wade into his most lauded works with the knowledge of their forebears, their ancestors, the ones who came before.
Class, let’s begin.
Stephen Graham Jones’ Required Reading
We’ve covered a broad spectrum of genres across this column series, often multiple within a single title; certainly, Jones seems decidedly uninterested in the constraints of genre (except, of course, the slasher), even while gravitating largely toward horror as he does. But another source from his website describes his writing in general as “Native American Gothic,” a way of using, subverting, and transforming Euro- and Colonial-centric genre conventions, often through fantasy, science fiction, and horror. While many books in this column series use this writing convention, especially the Indian Lake Trilogy, none capture its essence so perfectly as today’s Required Reading titles.
MONGRELS
Published 2016 by William Morrow
Stephen Graham Jones likes werewolves (see: that same FAQ page from his website as mentioned in my last column; scroll down to that last question, Jones: WEREWOLVES? SGJ: Yes). Nowhere is that more clear than within the pages of his debut Big 5 novel, Mongrels.
Mongrels tells the story, in the grand, coming-of-age tradition of bildungsromane, of a young boy growing up in a family used to being shunned from society. A family, the boy is pretty sure, of werewolves. Together, he and his aunt and uncle roam the American South, living day to day, chapter to chapter. The boy comes to a crossroads and must decide: Is he one of them, a mongrel? Or is he an outsider even within his own family?
This one was my first SGJ read. I even remember the moment I found it, trawling the horror section of a Half Price Books in Austin, Texas, late January 2020. This used paperback with a yellow spine, provocative title, and a new author (for me) to discover—the cover even promised bonus content in the bottom right corner, “P.S. INSIGHTS, INTERVIEWS & MORE…” I had just published my first book, a weird, unwieldy collection of short stories, and I was ravenous for more horror, wanted to steep myself in the genre as I attempted my own career in the space. I don’t remember much from my countless other trips to various Half Price Books scattered around the city, or the other books I found there, but the day I bought Mongrels is sunshine bright. Even now, twenty-plus SGJ reads later, this book holds a special place for me. It’s hard to say for sure, but it might be the one I’ve recommended to readers the most over the years.
Werewolves not your thing? Read this. Let Dr. Jones change your mind.
MAPPING THE INTERIOR
Originally published 2017 by Tor Dot Com Publishing
Re-issued 2025 by Tor Nightfire
Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction
Shortly after reading Mongrels, having been previously obsessed with the Tor.com Books line of slim print novellas, I was delighted to discover Jones had one himself—Mapping the Interior! (A few months later, he’d publish another one, Night of the Mannequins.) I snatched it up instantly, devoured it; for years, this was a favorite go-to recommendation I’d give to readers—it’s short enough to be read in one sitting, it’s weird as fuck, it’s gorgeous, it’s emotional, it’s timey-wimey… what’s not to love?
Mapping the Interior tells of twelve-year-old Junior, who sees his dad one night walking through a doorway of their modular in full Blackfeet regalia. Problem is, his dad is dead. This uncanny ghost sighting leads Junior to take on the project of measuring and mapping the entirety of the interior of his small home… and things aren’t adding up. There are more things that go bump in the night than he could have imagined.
This is a ghost story with hints of House of Leaves; a father-and-son tale that scares and thrills while moving you to tears. In short it’s, well, required reading. Get out your maps and hop to it.
THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS
Published 2020 by Saga Press
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Ray Bradbury Prize, Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
If you’ve done the math, you may have guessed that I stumbled upon that paperback copy of Mongrels at kind of the perfect time. I found it right before the whole country would go into lockdown and I had all the time in the universe, when my only connections to the outside world were Bookstagram and package deliveries (usually books). And then, just a few months later (and just a couple days after my thirtieth birthday), Stephen Graham Jones’ first Saga Press hardcover and current most-read and celebrated work first arrived in print.
The Only Good Indians…
Jones has written, with this novel, a modern literary classic. We follow Rick, Lewis, Gabe, and Cass, four Blackfeet friends who made a regrettable hunting trip in their youth and are now facing the consequences. Through humorous, biting social commentary, Jones once again uses slasher tropes—namely, revenge—for his own means, writing about the cost of cultural identity for Native men on and off the reservation in 21st century America… and how a parent can shape their child’s destiny.
This stands, years later, as one of the best novels I have personally read, even now as I finish my first re-read in preparation for its sequel, Off the Reservation. It is the novel that finally blasted Stephen Graham Jones into the echelons of Greatest Living Authors that, as it could be said this whole column series has been arguing, he had long deserved.
THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER
Published 2025 by Saga Press
Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, Nebula Award for Best Novel, Locus Award for Best Horror Novel
If The Only Good Indians is Stephen Graham Jones’ slice-of-life for the 21st century American Indian, then The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is that for the 19th century. Further, if the former is what earned him literary fame and acclaim, the latter is what cemented it. As Daniel Kraus called it before winning the Pulitzer, “Very likely Jones’s masterpiece.”
In 1912 Montana, a man named Good Stab enters a Lutheran church and begins a confession that the pastor will never be allowed to forget. For Good Stab’s tale of revenge is not yet over…
And that, as far as plot, is all I’ll give you. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is a literary work that must be experienced. In this way it reminds me of Marlon James’ fantasy novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf: it is the type of work whose scope resembles that of some force of nature, a monsoon—or maybe even the blood-filled hurricane from All the Beautiful Sinners—and all you can do as the reader is surrender to it. This is a singular work among Jones’ oeuvre, even to the point that his typical style and voice are largely missing from his prose, replaced instead, in the grand tradition of epistolary historical fiction, by two distinct narrative voices in Good Stab and the Lutheran pastor.
I began this column series by celebrating SGJ’s winning of the Stoker, Nebula, and Locus awards for this novel, and in less than a week’s time he may have added the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel to that. But in this column writer’s humble opinion, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter will rise further still, and stand as a contender for the Great American Novel. And I doubt I’m the first or tenth person to have said so.
For Extra Credit
And that, friends, is the end of the column. Yes, we’ve come to the end of The Road to Off the Reservation… but even after you’ve read all the books discussed here, and all his short stories haunting the interwebs and his graphic novels, and you’ve rushed out next Tuesday to buy his new novel… the good news is that there’s always more.
I won’t name them all here—where’s the fun in making your map for you?—but don’t worry. Even if some can be hard to track down (for now), their titles are easy to find. Go check out his first novel, or the one most studied in classrooms, or the one he wrote with his buddy Paul Tremblay.
And while you’re reading those?
He’s writing more.
Quick. Grab your maps.
Spencer Hamilton
OUR ROAD MAP
All the Beautiful Sinners †
The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti ‡
It Came from Del Rio †
The Ones Who Got Away ***
Zombie Bake-Off ‡
Three Miles Past: Stories †
Zombie Sharks with Metal Teeth ***
The Least of My Scars †
Sterling City ‡
The Gospel of Z ‡
States of Grace ***
After the People Lights Have Gone Off ***
Mongrels §
Mapping the Interior §
Night of the Mannequins *
The Only Good Indians §
My Heart Is a Chainsaw **
Don’t Fear the Reaper **
The Angel of Indian Lake **
I Was a Teenage Slasher *
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter §
Killer on the Road/The Babysitter Lives *
Off the Reservation, out October 13, 2026
OUR ROAD MAP KEY
* SGJ Starter Pack
** Slasher 101 with Professor Jones
*** Short Fiction of SGJ
† Serial Killers of SGJ
‡ Hidden Gems of SGJ
- SGJ’s Required Reading
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SPENCER HAMILTON is a queer horror author living in Pennsylvania. His fiction includes the novel The Fear and novellas Welcome to Smileyland and Sister Funtime. His short fiction has been collected in Kitchen Sink and I Will Devour You and Other Promises, and has appeared in several anthologies, most recently Punk Goes Horror II from Truborn Press. He is the editor of the queer horror anthology There’s More of Us Than You Know. You can find him on Instagram as @spencer.hamilton.books.
