Seven diverse historical fantasy novels

At the BN Teen Blog, Nicole Brinkley tagged "seven wonderful historical fantasies that don’t center on straight, cis, able-bodied white people," including:

Iron Cast, by Destiny Soria

You know that book your best friend keeps talking about and foisting on every person you come into contact with? For me, Iron Cast is that book. This alternate history, set in Boston in 1919, highlights friendship and magic. Heiress Corinne and biracial immigrants’ daughter Ada are best friends and fellow hemopaths, folks whose blood gives them illusion magic. But when their boss at the nightclub they both perform at convinces them to con the wealthy, Ada lands in prison, Corinne must bust her out, and soon they find themselves on the run from the police.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirty of the worst couples in literature

One entry from Literary Hub's list of thirty of the worst couples in literature:

Jackson and Imabelle, A Rage in Harlem

Jackson’s love for Imabelle is never in question in Chester Himes’ first novel to feature his Harlem police detectives Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones (the detectives have a more peripheral role than in later installments in the series, playing second fiddle to the dysfunctional con artist couple of Jackson and Imabelle). Imabelle’s love for Jackson, however, is up for debate. In this 1950s tale of hustlers, con artists, cops, and dreamers, Jackson and Imabelle come to Ed and Jones’ attention for a scheme that purports to create gold out of cash, and when Imabelle does a runner, Jackson and the detectives work hard to track her down and figure out once and for all if she’s running the con for love or for money. Readers will have to wait to the very end to discover Imabelle’s true motivations.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Jeff Somers's five best worst couples in literature and Hannah Jane Parkinson's ten worst couples in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven complicated sibling bonds in SFF books

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog Nicole Hill tagged seven complicated sibling bonds in science fiction & fantasy books, including:

Taema and Tila
False Hearts, by Laura Lam

No sibling relationship could be quite so complicated as that between conjoined twins. For their first 16 years, that was Taema and Tila: raised in a reclusive cult, the sisters found salvation at death’s door; as their shared heart began to fail, they fled Mana’s Hearth for San Francisco, where they were saved and separated. After a decade apart, though, other fractures in their bond have appeared. It all comes crashing down with Tila, accused of murder and soaked in blood, appearing on her sibling’s doorstep. To absolve her sister, Taema goes undercover in the city’s underground crime syndicate, where Tila’s many, many secrets seem central to solving the other perverse mysteries surrounding the trade of a new drug.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books based in Tangier

Christine Mangan's new novel is Tangerine. One of the author's top ten books based in Tangier, as shared at the Guardian:

Street of Thieves by Mathias Énard, translated by Charlotte Mandell

A coming-of-age narrative set against the backdrop of the 2011 Arab spring uprisings, Street of Thieves follows young Moroccan narrator Lakhdar after he is expelled from his family home following an indiscretion with his cousin. Resorting to begging and prostitution to survive, his journey takes him across the Straits to the shores of Spain and the streets of Barcelona, where memories of his childhood friend, Bassam – who may have been involved in violence connected to the uprisings – haunt him.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifty science fiction essentials written by women

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog he tagged fifty science fiction essentials written by women, including:

Infomocracy, by Malka Older

Older’s debut novel imagines a world where the entire population is divided into groups of 100,000, known as centenals. Each centenal can vote for the government they wish to belong to—governments ranging from corporate-dominated PhilipMorris, to policy-based groups with names like Liberty. A global organization called Information seeks to police elections and ensure that the many governments keep their promises and play by the rules—and when a researcher for a government called Policy1st stumbles onto a conspiracy to rig elections, he’s teamed with an agent of Information as they struggle to find out the truth, expose the plot, and stay alive. Older’s fierce imagination and eye for detail make her future world entirely plausible, and her characters, believably flawed. It’s one of most promising debuts of recent years, and the sequels only further impress.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Infomocracy is among Joel Cunningham's twelve science fiction & fantasy books for the post-truth era and Sam Reader's six most intriguing political systems in fantasy and science fiction.

The Page 69 Test: Infomocracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books to change your mind

At the Guardian Elif Shafak tagged five books to change our minds and heal our souls, including:

Anti-intellectualism in American Life was written in the 1960s but, again, couldn’t be more timely today. It is an insightful study that gained its author, Richard Hofstadter, a Pulitzer prize. Later on, the book was forgotten for a while but now it is becoming a bestseller and is visible on bookstore shelves once again. Hofstadter explored how resentment of the life of the mind was a long-standing undercurrent in US culture and society. With the rise of populism and illiberal democracies today, anti-intellectual rhetoric has increased. The romanticisation of “the real people” and the denigration of the intellectual are familiar signs for anyone who has studied ultranationalism and tribalism. Hofstadter shows us that this anti-intellectual strand is nothing new, yet it might bring unexpected consequences.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five classic books Hollywood should adapt into corny sitcoms

At the B&N Reads blog Brian Boone tagged five classic books Hollywood should adapt into corny sitcoms, including:

Skellig, by David Almond

There have been so many high-concept sitcoms about normal people trying to keep some extraordinary creature hidden from the neighbors or the authorities—an alien on ALF, an alien on American Dad, a robot on Small Wonder, a genie on I Dream of Jeannie, and so on. Just sub in “wise and mystical human/owl/angel creature” for alien, robot, or genie and you’ve got Skellig!, the hilarious tale of a little boy who keeps his garage friend a secret.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Anna Quindlen's six favorite books by contemporary female authors

Anna Quindlen's new novel is Alternate Side. One of her six favorite books by contemporary female authors, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

The latest of McDermott's deeply felt novels is the story of a girl who grows up among the Little Sisters of the Poor in a Brooklyn convent. With her deft use of detail and her profound understanding of human nature, McDermott creates a world entire in a slender volume.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten literary classics we (not so) secretly hate

At LitHub Emily Temple asked her colleagues about the literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't. One title from the survey:

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

I [Molly Odintz] know, none of us like to think of culture in competition, but the fact remains that we can only read a certain number of books in our lives (a total you can calculate based on this simple formula). My resentment of Wuthering Heights stems from high school English, when I was robbed of my chance to discuss Kafka’s Metamorphosis for longer than a week, because Wuthering Heights, and its concomitant endlessly boring romanticism, had taken up two months of stultifying class discussion time I would never, ever get back.

Read about the other books on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Cristina Merrill's list of eight of the sexiest curmudgeons in romance, Kate Hamer's list of six top novels with a strong evocation of atmosphere, Siri Hustvedt's six favorite books list, Tom Easton's top ten list of fictional "houses which themselves seem to have a personality which affects the story," Melissa Harrison's list of the ten top depictions of British rain, Meredith Borders's list of ten of the scariest gothic romances, Ed Sikov's list of eight top books that got slammed by critics, Amelia Schonbek's top five list of approachable must-read classics, Molly Schoemann-McCann's top five list of the lamest girlfriends in fiction, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the worst wingmen in literature, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Jimmy So's list of fifteen notable film adaptations of literary classics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best thunderstorms in literature, ten of the worst nightmares in literature and ten of the best foundlings in literature, Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages, Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession, and Melissa Katsoulis' top 25 list of book to film adaptations. It is one of John Inverdale's six best books and Sheila Hancock's six best books.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen terrific Easter picture books

At the BN Kids Blog the B&N editors tagged fifteen terrific Easter picture books, including:

Bunny Bus, by Ammi-Joan Paquette and Lesley Breen Withrow

Animals get to hop on the Bunny Bus—yes, an actual bus shaped like a bunny!—and take a ride through town to the Easter Parade. Cats and owls and other well-dressed animals climb on board and make room for more as they go up and down, and temporarily break down. This colorful picture book takes readers on a different Easter adventure and is a great pick for kids who love transportation and animals.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five essential mind-bending novels

Chuma Nwokolo's is the author of the novel The Extinction of Menai and other works. One of five essential mind-bending novels he tagged at Publishers Weekly:

Search Sweet Country by Kojo Laing

You will need your wits about you when reading Kojo Laing (Woman of Aeroplanes, Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters). In his fiction, a sentence is a recreational universe with its own internal logic and world order, free to contort, invert, and luxuriate in a love of lexicon, free from any obligation to conform with the sentence before, or the sentence afterwards. This is the recipe, of course, for bedlam. But Kojo Laing is an innovative stylist whose fiction is saved from the madhouse by its sheer inventiveness, and by its wit. In Search Sweet Country, the characters are searching for Change, and the author serves up change in spades in a narration that bucks novelistic conventions.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about the history of booze

At B&N Reads Madina Papadopoulos tagged five books about the history of booze, including:

Moonshine: A Cultural History of America’s Infamous Liquor, by Jaime Joyce

Moonshine is perhaps one of the more elusive liquors with possibly the best name, and a slew of great nicknames as well (white lightning, choop, mountain dew, etc.). The lore of Moonshine is braided into American history, and this book takes the reader through colonial times, the American Revolution, prohibition, and onto moonshine in the modern era. Writer Jaime Joyce tells an intoxicating tale that mixes anecdotes, folklore, history, and even a few cocktails, like the Moonshine-based take on the Margarita, aptly called the ‘Moon-a-Rita.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue