Stirringly atmospheric and unsettling, full of grief and love and darkness but also hope, this is completely compelling! The blessed yet cursed town of Mistaken, the vivid cast of townspeople, and the mysterious threats of the world beyond their Warding Stones all captured my imagination. Greer is a character who will stick with you long …
Jane Eyre meets Shirley Jackson (think: We Have Always Lived in the Castle) in this Victorian horror-comedy. In the movie in my mind, Tim Burton is the director. Upon arriving at Ensor House, the new governess informs the reader with casual cruelty that, “It is early fall, the cold is beginning to descend, and in three months …
When a book starts off with sarcastic humor, I know I am going to like it. What’s a girl to do when she wakes up and has no clue who she is, why she’s in Paris, and why the bad guys and good guys are all chasing her? It might have something to do with …
Now this is a crowd-pleaser. A novel set in contemporary India featuring political corruption, intricate family dynamics, and crimes violent and clandestine, it’s highly literate yet built for speed—it might best be considered as a Godfather for the 21st century. It’s won praise from both Booker Prize-winners such as Marlon James and blockbuster thriller writers including …
[In David Yoon’s City of Orange, a] man wakes up. He has no memory. He’s not sure where he is. He’s injured and thirsty. As he explores what looks like an apocalyptic landscape for food, water, and answers, he gradually realizes everything is not as it seems. Show up for the “what the heck?” Stick …
Battle of the Linguist Mages is a mad bastard of a book, and that is high praise. On the one hand, it’s a pretty familiar story (young woman learns that magic in a video game has real power) with familiar elements of course there are nefarious forces arrayed to exploit them AND her)… but they …
Kevin Emerson’s newest middle grade novel, Drifters, is a mystery/sci-fi about a 13-year-old girl searching for her missing friend on the Washington coast. While a tale with multiple timelines and universes, Drifters is also a simple story about holding onto friendship. It is also a love letter to the PNW coast. RK: What was your …
Tupac Shakur’s poetry collection, The Rose that Grew from Concrete, and the safety of a diary were my entries into becoming a writer. For the entirety of middle school and the first half of high school, I was the kid who came into class late while cracking jokes or quips and sat in the back …
Iron Widow is a book born from female rage. I often pitch it as “Pacific Rim” meets The Handmaid’s Tale because those are two properties familiar to Western audiences, but in truth, I was more inspired by Japanese mecha anime and Chinese harem dramas. The gilded palaces of Imperial China, where thousands of women must …
By the time he was twenty-nine, Charles Darwin had puzzled his way toward two-thirds of his theory of natural selection. He understood that plants and animals passed traits (hair color, say, or beak shape, or flower scent) down to their offspring. And he understood that those traits were not passed down perfectly. We resemble our …
