Cult indie-folk band the Mountain Goats is known for having fans that are rabidly devoted--and you'd almost have to be like that just to keep up. Led by John Darnielle--a charmingly nerdy 49-year-old songwriter whose professed admirers include Stephen Colbert, and whom Rolling Stone recently dubbed rock's "best storyteller"--the Goats have put out 15 albums since 1994, using simple chord structures as a framework for Darnielle's complex lyrical narratives. Fans have even petitioned to make him America's Poet Laureate, so maybe it's no surprise that Darnielle recently stumbled into literary success as well. His debut novel, Wolf in White Van, about a reclusive, disfigured game designer who seeks refuge in a role-playing game, was a 2014 National Book Award finalist. Out February 7, Darnielle's latest, an enchanting horror mystery called Universal Harvester, follows a video store clerk in small-town Iowa whose customers begin complaining of disturbing footage spliced into their rented VHS tapes. When he's not writing something, Darnielle, raised in a progressive activist household, is out fighting for reproductive justice--serving, for instance, on the board of the National Abortion Rights Action League and performing in support of Planned Parenthood.