At The Week magazine the author tagged seven books that influence his writing, including:Wonder by R.J. Palacio (2012).Read about another entry on his list.
R.J. Palacio's masterpiece of empathy-evoking storytelling should be required reading in every fifth-grade classroom in the world. This story of a 10-year-old boy with facial differences who is enrolling in a public school for the first time should come with its own box of tissues.
Temple polled her LitHub colleagues for "ten books from the last ten years that they thought we’d still be reading—for good or ill—ten years from now, circa 2030."Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)Read about the other entries on the list.
The FriendRead about the other entries on the list.
Sigrid Nunez
The unnamed narrator of Sigrid Nunez’s National Book Award-winner isn’t mourning alone. She has the company of her departed mentor’s Great Dane, distressed over the sudden disappearance of his owner. His care becomes a channel for the narrator’s grief, who begins to spend every waking (and sleeping) moment with him in this pitch-perfect novel of companionship set in the ever-changing literary world.
Donna Tartt, The Secret HistoryRead about the other entries on the list.
Surprise, surprise. I mean, look, I know it has its detractors, but from where I’m standing, campus novels don’t get much better than this. Tartt’s debut has everything: snotty classics students, alluring and mysterious professors, convoluted social hierarchies, bad rich kids, good rich kids, murder, Bacchic rites, class warfare, allusions to the ancients, and some of the most intelligent, gorgeous writing going. You just can’t beat it.
Rachel Eve Moulton earned her BA at Antioch College and her MFA in fiction from Emerson College. Her work has appeared in The Beacon Street Review, Bellowing Ark, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Bryant Literary Review, among others.The Underground Railroad by Colson WhiteheadRead about the other entries on the list.
In Whitehead’s story world, trains run underground connected by safe houses. We follow Cora as she flees her plantation and the slave catcher who is hunting her. Ridgeway, her pursuer, also wants to know the secrets of the railroad, and the complicated chase brings back the horrors of slavery. Cora’s strength and determination to survive keeps us next to her the entire journey.
Toby Litt is best-known for writing his books – from Adventures in Capitalism to (so far) Patience – in alphabetical order (apart from the non-fiction ones); he is currently working on Q and R.Persuasion by Jane AustenRead about the other entries on the list.
Anne Elliot is the oldest of Austen’s heroines, and the longest-suffering. In order to reach her happy ending, she endures years of confinement. She isn’t literally in solitary, but – as an unmarried not-so-young woman, dependent on her demanding father, she is as trapped as any prisoner. Worse still, she has no true companionship. She is surrounded by a grotesque gallery of the neurotic and the interfering, the boring and the presumptuous.Only the reader knows Anne’s true worth. Her victorious escape from the hell of the English country house to be together with her true love, Captain Wentworth, makes her years of anguish worthwhile – almost.
New York Times bestselling author Tess Gerritsen earned international acclaim for her first novel of suspense, Harvest. She introduced Detective Jane Rizzoli in The Surgeon (2001) and Dr. Maura Isles in The Apprentice (2002) and has gone on to write numerous other titles in the celebrated Rizzoli & Isles series.Also focusing on the dark side of Maine is author James Hayman, whose hero Mike McCabe is a homicide detective in Portland,Read about the other entries on the list.Maine. In The Cutting (first in the series), McCabe and his partner Maggie Savage search for a killer who surgically excises the hearts of beautiful women. Real-life Portland is a vibrant city known for its lively arts and its foodie culture, but in the nightmarish world created by Hayman, a killer seems to be lurking behind every red-brick corner.
Her criticism has appeared in Tin House Online, Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, Speculative Fiction 2015, The Crooked Timber Symposium and Electric Literature.Emily of New Moon and Emily’s Quest by L.M. MontgomeryRead about the other entries on the list.
This is another not-quite-as-famous series by a beloved author. L.M. Montgomery is primarily know as the author of the resolutely realistic Anne of Green Gables series, which follows a young redheaded orphan (who kinda wants to be a writer) through romantic trials and triumphs in Edwardian Canada. Emily of New Moon, my preferred Montgomery work, follow a black-haired orphan (who really, really wants to be a writer) through romantic trials and triumphs in Edwardian Canada. The difference between the two series is that Emily actually dedicates herself to her writing and sees some success despite the misogyny of the time, and also she’s fucking psychic. Two separate times over the course of the series she has several three-dimensional, full color, totally immersive visions. One concerns her bestfriend, Ilse Burnley. Ilse is practically feral, having been abandoned by her father, Dr. Burnley, who believes that Ilse’s mother left him for another man. It’s all very tragic and convoluted (especially as filtered through the points of view of two prepubescent Edwardian children—thanks, Lucy Maude) but it leads to a lot of misery. UNTIL. Emily contracts measles, nearly dies, and has a vision of a young woman running through a field and falling into a well. She recites the vision in a terrifying voice, the well is investigated, and voila! There are the bones of Ilse’s mother, who didn’t run away at all (yayyy!) but fell into a well and died (um, yay?). This has the happy (???) outcome of Dr. Burnley actually caring for his daughter. The second incident is much creepier. When Emily’s on-again-off-again artist boyfriend, Teddy, is about to leave for Europe, she falls into a fit. Hundreds of miles away Teddy sees her across a crowded dock, and follows her until he loses sight of her. This causes him to miss boarding his ship—which then sinks, killing everyone aboard. This isn’t even just telepathy or a psychic vision of some type, this is full-on bi-location! Teddy lives, tells Emily about it weeks later when he sees her again, and everyone in the book just goes about life as though they don’t have a superhero in their midst.
Ben Westhoff is an award-winning investigative journalist who writes about culture, drugs, and poverty. His books are taught around the country and have been translated into languages all over the world.Johann Hari, Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on DrugsRead about the other entries on the list.
No matter where you come from or how old you are, you’ve likely been given misinformation about drugs for most of your life. Chasing the Scream is one of those“everything you know is wrong” texts that uses first-hand reporting from around the globe to show how we’ve gotten in wrong, and how we can right the ship. Hari travels from Arizona—where prison camps try to humiliate users into going straight—to Portugal, where decriminalization has actually helped solve drug problems. Most astonishing is his reporting on heroin abuse. Counter to the traditional narrative that once an opiate or opioid get its “chemical hooks” into users it’s nearly impossible for them to break free, Hari shows the situation to often be less chemical than psychological. If users can get their personal lives in order, they can frequently get clean.
Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, activist, and funeral industry rabble-rouser. In 2011 she founded the death acceptance collective The Order of the Good Death, which has spawned the death positive movement. Her books Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and From Here to Eternity were both New York Times bestsellers.
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander (2015).Read about the other entries on the list.
Alexander, who read her poem "Praise Song for the Day" at Barack Obama's 2009 inauguration, wrote this memoir on grief after the sudden death of her young husband three years later. You find yourself truly rooting for this intelligent, funny couple, and when he is taken, you feel the deep pain alongside her.
Bijal Shah is a poet, book therapist, and author of The Happiness Mindset.Fiction offers thoughtful insight into the conscientious work of therapists. Using the full breadth and depth of the creative licence, client cases are examined in blistering detail. The book that jumps to mind is Irvin D Yalom’s When Nietzsche Wept. A perennial literary guide for both therapists and therapists-in-training, it marries philosophy and psychoanalysis. Modern psychoanalysis founder, Joseph Breuer,Read about the other entries on the list.attempts to treat the influential philosopher, Nietzsche, who is on the brink of suicide. Breuer, himself, is recovering from a broken heart. They form a therapeutic alliance, each attempting to heal the other’s depression. Yalom’s other notable novels with protagonist therapists, also of interest, include Love’s Executioner & Other Tales of Psychotherapy and The Schopenhauer Cure.
Siri Mitchell is the author of over a dozen novels. She has also written two novels under the pseudonym of Iris Anthony. She graduated from the University of Washington with a business degree and has worked in various levels of government.The Girl in Green, by Derek Miller (2017)Read about the other books on the list.
The Girl in Green was shortlisted for the 2017 CWA Gold Dagger Award. A soldier and a journalist team up just after the Gulf War to rescue a girl caught in the ensuing civil war between Iraqi factions. Despite their best intentions, the girl is killed. Twenty-two years later, the men meet up again and have the chance to redeem the past. This story underscores the cultural differences between the Middle East and the West.
The Remains of the DayRead about the other entries on the list.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Wistfully elegiac and simmeringly romantic, The Remains of the Day is Ishiguro’s meditation on duty, repressed desire and self-sacrifice, as seen through the eyes of a dedicated, unshakeably loyal butler. Expertly capturing a moment in time, this tale of convention and lost opportunities in an interwar stately home is both a deeply affecting and richly atmospheric read.
Evelyn Toynton’s most recent novel is Inheritance.William Trevor, Felicia’s JourneyRead about the other entries on the list.
Mr. Hilditch, the bland-seeming catering manager who lures vulnerable, friendless young women into his house and murdersthem, is the sinister bogeyman in this novel, a truly horrifying portrait of a serial killer. As certain facts about his shadowy past emerge, we watch in mounting dread, expecting the worst for poor, pregnant, friendless Felicia, whose only money he steals and whom he manipulates into having an abortion. But then Trevor brings the horror full circle: he shows flashbacks of Mr. Hilditch’s life with his mother, a drunken “loose” woman who, when she could no longer entice the policeman or the insurance salesman or any other man into her bed, drew her son into it, always promising she would never make him have sex with her again, always breaking that promise.
Jennifer Giesbrecht's debut novel is The Monster of Elendhaven.Everfair—Nisi ShawlRead about the other entries on the list.
Everfair is a work of Steampunk-tinged alternative history that imagines a group of socialists and African-American missionaries buying a slice of the Belgium Congo out from under the genocidal grip of King Leopold II. Then it follows the evolution of this new proto-Utopia over the course of nearly three decades, using a “longue durée” narrative device that touches on a broad multiplicity of perspectives at every level of society. In many ways, the novel is more that “meaningful historiographical discourse” I was talking about in the introduction than it is fiction. Understanding the way Steampunk is utilized in this story is like getting a high-speedcrash course in how the study of history rapidly changed in the 20th century, from something that was understood on an unspoken level to have a culturally edifying, propagandic purpose, to the multi-faceted, deconstructive school of thought it is today. Steampunk first gained popularity as a highly romanticized view of the Victorian Era, but was quickly co-opted and intelligently deconstructed through the lens of post-colonialism and third-worldism by non-white authors. Everfair goes for the jugular by derailing one of the most horrific tragedies of late colonialism. It’s a beautiful example of how fantasy can reveal just as much about where humanity has been, where we can go, and what we can be as the very best science fiction.
Sif Sigmarsdóttir is a writer and a journalist. She was born in the apparent feminist utopia that is Iceland and now lives in London.American Wife by Curtis SittenfeldRead about the other books on the list.
If it weren’t for Donald Trump, we’d still be gasping over what anawful president George W Bush turned out to be. American Wife is the literary reimagining of one man’s journey to the White House seen through the eyes of his long-suffering wife – a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to Laura Bush.
Sarah Lotz is a novelist and screenwriter with a fondness for the macabre.
The Caveman’s Valentine, by George Dawes GreenRead about the other entries on the list.
The protagonist, Romulus Ledbetter, once a brilliant pianist, now struggles with mental health issues and lives in a cave in a New York park. When the frozen body of a photographer’s model is found outside his cave, he decides to conduct his own deeply unconventional investigation. Original and lyrical.
Edith Hall is Professor in the Classics Department at King's College London.A speaker who is anything but neutral is the civil rights activist Angela Davis. Her collection The Meaning of Freedom, and Other Difficult DialoguesRead about the other entries on the list.gathers 12 previously unpublished speeches, delivered between 1994 and 2009, which expose the beating heart of the racist carceral state, global neoliberalism, and patriarchy’s symbiosis with capitalism. This is rhetoric at its compelling best, because skill is allied with moral conviction. Unlike many politicians, Davis’s authenticity shines through every phrase.
Samantha Power is the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and William D. Zabel ’61 Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School.Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi (1947).Read about the other entries on the list.
Levi's searing account of the Nazis' "demolition of man" raises often unanswerable moral questions. I read this memoir in my early 20s, and it helped ignite an abiding interest in the causes and consequences of the Holocaust. Rereading the book recently, I was struck again by the depth of Levi's character and the enduring power of his understanding of human nature.
Lizzy Barber studied English at Cambridge University. Having previously dabbled in acting and film development, she has spent the last ten years as head of marketing for a restaurant group.Carrie, by Stephen KingRead about the other entries on the list.
Stephen King’s first published novel was a big influence on A Girl Named Anna —I even reference the book, when school bullies place a bucket of blood in Anna’s locker with a note referring to her as “Carrie.” Carrie’s mother, Margaret White, rules over her teenage daughter with an iron fist, striking fear into her heart should she do something deemed “unproper.” Religion is the scapegoat here, and also the punishment: the words ‘go to your closet and pray’ haven’t stopped echoing in my mind since that unsettling first read.
John Birmingham is the author of Emergence, Resistance, Ascendance, After America, Without Warning, Final Impact, Designated Targets, Weapons of Choice, and other novels, as well as Leviathan, which won the National Award for Nonfiction at Australia’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and the novella Stalin’s Hammer: Rome. He has written for The Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Playboy, and numerous other magazines.The Salvagers series by Alex WhiteRead about the other entries on the list.
Okay, yes, it starts with a magic car race. But it's very colorful magic, and a very exciting car race, and White is a supercool stylist who soon drags you into the search for A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe. A misfit crew, a ship of legend, a universe in peril, all of the big boxes are ticked with big colorful technomagical pens. Boots Ellsworth, White’s washed up and not entirely trustworthy treasure hunter, and Nilah Brio, a brilliant racer framed for murder, make an engaging team as they heist, scheme, and copulate their way across the cosmos.
Deborah Hewitt lives in the UK, somewhere south of Glasgow and north of London. She’s the proud owner of two brilliant boys and one very elderly dog. When she’s not writing, she can be found watching her boys play football in a muddy field, drinking tea or teaching in her classroom. Occasionally she cooks. Her family wishes she wouldn’t. The Nightjar is her first book.Smoke by Dan VyletaRead about the other entries on the list.
In an alternate Victorian London, the people are marked, literally, by sin. Smoke is expelled from the body and soot appears every time a minor misdeed, act of greed, small fib or criminaltransgression is committed. This is a world in which every wicked thought and wrongdoing can be seen by others, and no one can hide what lurks beneath the surface. This London, appropriately, is the London of chimney sweeps, factory smokestacks and grimy slums; the city as soiled as its lower-class inhabitants. Yet there is a ruling class who have learned to restrain their more base desires and live smoke-free, their cleanliness and virtue a sign of their right to rule. We follow two young aristocrats, Thomas and Charlie, as they witness an event that makes them question the rules of their society—and uncover the truth about the nature of smoke.
Susan Elia MacNeal is the author of The New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today-bestselling Maggie Hope mystery series, starting with the Edgar Award-nominated and Barry Award-winning Mr. Churchill’s Secretary.The Alice Network by Kate QuinnRead about the other entries on the list.
Quinn spins a tale inspired by a real-life incident a small town in German-occupied northwestern France, a few days after the D Day landings in Normandy. Great War spy Louise de Bettignies, whose code-name was “Lili,” is joined by fictional British/French Evelyn Gardiner, code-named “Marguerite.” Marguerite works in a collaborator’s restaurant, serving Germans and picking up information along the way to pass to Lili, her British handler. To learn more about Bettignies’s WWI spy work, try Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War by Tammy M. Proctor.
Isabel Vincent is a Canadian investigative journalist who writes for the New York Post, an alumna of the University of Toronto Varsity newspaper, and the author of several books, including Gilded Lily: Lily Safra, The Making of One of the World's Wealthiest Widows and Dinner with Edward: A Story of an Unexpected Friendship.Talking With My Mouth Full: My Life as a Professional Eater by Gail SimmonsRead about the other entries on the list.
Simmons is a presenter/judge on Bravo’s Top Chef, but she’s also a fellow Canadian who found herself struggling to make it in a tough industry in New York. In this memoir, she writes about growing up in Toronto with a mother who wrote food columns and conducted cooking classes in their suburban home. Simmons’s trial-by-fire in some of the toughest high-end restaurant kitchens in New York City makes for a great read.
T. M. Logan, the bestselling author of Lies, was born in Berkshire to an English father and a German mother. He studied at Queen Mary and Cardiff universities before becoming a national newspaper journalist.An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah PekkanenRead about the other entries on the list.
When Jessica Farris signs up for a psychology study on ethics and morality conducted by the mysterious Dr. Lydia Shields, she thinks all she’ll have to do is answer a few questions, collect her money and leave. Anonymity is guaranteed – or so she is led to believe. Suffice it to say that things get weird… As the questions grow more and more invasive, and the sessions become outings where Jess is told what to wear and how to act, she begins to lose track of what is real and what is just part of Dr. Shields’ manipulative experiment.
Becky Chambers is a science fiction author based in Northern California. Her most recent work is To Be Taught, If Fortunate, a standalone novella.Packing for Mars, by Mary RoachRead about the other entries on the list.
Space travel is weird! It is weird, and gross, and incredibly difficult. Packing for Mars strips the world’s spacefaring heroes of their right-stuff sheen, bringing the clumsy, grubby, human aspect back to human spaceflight. This massively entertaining bookcovers everything from bathroom procedures to bonkers psych tests to sleep and sex and centrifuges. Packing for Mars is to blame for sparking my insatiable interest in astronaut food, plus cementing my conviction that I will not make my home elsewhere until the Enterprise-D gets built. It’s not always a pleasant read (my embarrassing degree of squeamishness admittedly led me to skip the chapter on cadaver testing), but it’s a hell of a lot of fun.
Alex Segura is a novelist and comic book writer. He is the author of the Pete Fernandez Miami Mystery novels, all via Polis Books.Knots and Crosses, Ian RankinRead about the other entries on the list.
Though Rankin’s Inspector Rebus has become more known for his affinity for artists like The Rolling Stones and Muddy Waters, the early Rebus novels feature the scruffy detective leaning more toward classical and jazz. But as Rankin got toexplore his creation’s habits more, readers saw his musical tastes updated. Also, the introduction of younger characters later in the series opened the door to more modern acts, like Belle and Sebastian. Like the Bosch books, you’re well served starting at the beginning—with Rankin’s sharp, blue-collar, and evocative Knots and Crosses.
and have written for Popular Science, The New Yorker, and the Washington Post. They founded the science fiction website io9 and served as Editor-in-Chief from 2008–2015, and then became Editor-in-Chief at Gizmodo and Tech Culture Editor at Ars Technica. Their book Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction was nominated for the LA Times Book Prize in science. Their first novel, Autonomous, won a Lambda award. The Future of Another Timeline is Newitz's latest book.The Murderbot series by Martha Wells and the Cordelia’s Honor duology by Lois McMaster BujoldRead about the other entries on the list.
I wanted to mention these two series together because they both feature heroes who are part of planetary survey teams. This is an old trope inscience fiction, and shows up a lot in Golden Age stories about people exploring other worlds. Often they’re taking environmental samples and studying geology for the purpose of future mining operations. The Murderbot series begins with a group landing on a planet and studying it for resource exploitation, while the Cordelia’s team in Bujold’s duology—which began her legendary Vorkosigan Saga—appear to be doing basic research for scientific discovery. Either way, the planetary survey team is key to geoscience fiction because they treat planets as holistic systems, looking at everything from their internal composition and ecosystems, to atmosphere and magnetic field.
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