If you loved riding shotgun with Miriam as she hustles through truck stops and fleabag motels, trying to wreck the death she’s seen coming, you’ll click with James Stark in Sandman Slim. Like Miriam, Stark isn’t noble—he’s a weapon with a wicked mouth, carving through L.A.’s occult underbelly to settle scores. The same punchy, profane energy and willingness to get filthy to get results is here in spades, with demon brawls and back-alley magic replacing highway cons and fatal visions.

Miriam’s gallows humor—joking through visions of how and when someone dies—hits the same nerve as John Dies at the End. Where Blackbirds finds punchlines between fate and murder, this book wrings cracked, frantic laughs from eldritch horrors and terrible choices. If you grinned when Miriam bantered her way through doom-laced handshakes and ugly confrontations, you’ll enjoy David and John wisecracking their way through reality-warping nightmares and disastrously bad plans.

The grime, violence, and inevitability that stalk Miriam after she touches someone and sees the moment they die echoes the relentless dread of NOS4A2. As Miriam races highways to derail a killing she’s foreseen, Vic McQueen rides her own uncanny path to confront a child-stealing monster. Both stories steep you in a hard-edged world where every choice has teeth and the danger feels bodily—like broken glass under your boots.

If Miriam’s curse—one touch, one death—hooked you because it felt so stark and grounded against the real world of diners, grifters, and getaway cars, Vicious will hit the same sweet spot. Victor and Eli acquire powers through a brutal, specific method, then play out their feud in hospitals, college towns, and city streets. Like Miriam trying to outmaneuver a fate she’s seen coming, these characters weaponize their uncanny edge in a recognizably human, messy world.

You tore through Blackbirds as Miriam barrels toward (and away from) the murder she knows is coming; Already Dead delivers that same velocity. Joe Pitt, a vampire enforcer in a noir New York, sprints from one brutal encounter to the next while tracking a case that spirals into gangland carnage. The clipped chapters, punchy voice, and constant forward motion will feel familiar—like Miriam knifing through danger with nothing but grit, bad options, and a ticking clock.