I’ve been immersed in Norse Myth for more than a decade and writing books about the Gods I’ve always wanted to read. My Fate of the Gods trilogy is a mythic mash-up of Biblical, Norse, Greek, and Egyptian myth, and writing as Amalia Carosella, my book Daughter of a Thousand Yearsis Viking age historical fiction about Freydis, the daughter of Erik the Red. Additionally, as a Norse Pagan polytheist myself, finding books that do justice to the Gods in our modern world is that much more important to me than your average reader - I’m always looking to celebrate the books that bring them to life!
S.T. Bende built her brand on the Elsker Saga, a series following the Norse God Ull, Thor’s step-son, but don’t sleep on her take on Tyr, the Norse God of War, either! Perfekt Order, the first book in the Ære Saga is a delightful, sweet romance take on what happens when Norse Gods come to earth and start mingling with mortals, upending our carefully ordered worlds.
For seventeen-year-old Mia Ahlström, a world ruled by order is the only world she allows. A lifetime of chore charts, to-do lists and study schedules have helped earn her a spot at Redwood State University's engineering program. And while her five year plan includes finding her very own happily-evah-aftah, years at an all-girls boarding school left her feeling woefully unprepared for keg parties and co-ed extracurricular activities.
So nothing surprises her more than catching the eye of Tyr Fredriksen at her first college party. The imposing Swede is arrogantly charming, stubbornly overprotective,…
I’m an avid reader and writer of children’s literature, though I find it difficult to read anything that isn’t diverse these days. Being able to experience the world from the perspectives of other cultures is a true delight, and I learn something every time. After having read dozens of these diverse books, especially diverse fantasies, I find that nothing inspires my creative soul more. That’s why I’m able to speak on this topic for large conferences and schools, spreading this inspiration to others. And, as a published author of diverse children’s literature, I’ve done the same in my writing with praise from Kirkus, Booklist, Publisher’s Weekly, and many others.
Nestor Lopez can’t catch a break, which feels all too real for many of us who grew up moving around.
In Nestor’s case, it’s because of his father being in the military, but as we get to experience him adapting to yet another new school, we discover he has the neatest of abilities—talking to animals.
Nestor’s journey to save his town under the noises of the adults reminds me of when I was a kid keeping secrets from the adults in my life. And with lots of twists and turns, Nestor’s story only gets better and better.
All twelve-year-old Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad, an Army sergeant deployed in Afghanistan. When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother, Nestor plans to lay low, and he certainly has no intention of letting anyone find out his deepest secret-that he can talk to animals. But when the animals in town start disappearing, and Nestor's grandmother is spotted in the woods where they were last seen, suspicion mounts against her. Nestor learns that they are being taken…
I love the author's
beautiful, hypnotic writing. The prologue was so alluring I just had to read
on.
Then I fell in love with the book when I read this line in one of the
earlier chapters: In his bitter mind's eye, he saw the little hill town for
what it was, a shabbily self-satisfied knot of shops and houses, peering over
its surrounding wall like a gossip over a fence. I swooned, and when I
recovered, I was hungry for more of her intoxicating words and devoured the
book.
I am in awe of the
author for creating such an enchanting story with layers and underlying themes.
The consequences of our life choices and mental health like PTSD are very
cleverly weaved into this plot. An amazing read!
In a world where anyone can create life-destroying curses, only one person has the power to unravel them. Kellen does not fully understand his talent, but uses it to help those who have been cursed, including his ally and closest friend, Nettle. But Kellen himself is cursed, and unless he and Nettle can release him, he is in danger of unravelling everything - and everyone - around him.
For fans of Leigh Bardugo and Neil Gaiman comes Frances Hardinge's spectacular novel Unraveller. Called her 'best yet' by the Guardian, Hardinge expertly…
In 1662, a man is wrongly executed for signing the death warrant of Charles I. Awaiting execution, he asks to speak with a priest, to whom he declares a curse on the village that betrayed him. The priest responds with a counter-curse, leaving just one option to nullify it.
Over four centuries later, Faith and James move to the country to start a new life and a family. They discover their village lives under the curse uttered by the hanged man. Could their arrival be connected? They fear their choice of new home is no coincidence. Unexplained events hint at threats or warnings to leave. They become convinced the village remains cursed despite their friends’ denials. Who can they trust, and who are potential enemies?
In 1660, a man is wrongly executed for signing the death warrant of Charles I. While awaiting execution, he asks to speak with a priest, to whom he declares a curse on the village that betrayed him. The priest responds with a counter-curse, leaving just one option to nullify it. Over four centuries later, Faith and James move to the country to start a new life and a family. They learn that their village lives under the curse uttered by the hanged man. Could their arrival be connected? Faith and James fear that their choice of a new home is…
From when I first learned to read, books opened a whole new world, which has given me vast pleasure ever since. I think it’s made me wiser, too. But it wasn’t until the sudden death of my younger son in 2020 that I began to read about the edges of the known world, and to discover that by opening my mind I could re-learn what I instinctively knew as a young child: that we come from somewhere else. Even before encountering tragedy, I’d been fascinated by the dividing line between what science can prove, and what still remains conjecture: it’s a theme I have returned to again and again in my fiction.
I was deeply moved by Poor Your Soul, Mira Ptacin’s beautifully-wrought memoir about the grief of losing first her brother, and then her unborn child. So I knew I was in good hands when I opened her engaging, compassionate portrait of the denizens of Camp Etna, the once-famous epicenter of the American Spiritualist movement. Shifting seamlessly between the settlement’s grand history in the late 1800s and its more modest 21st-century existence, Ptacin profiles psychics and mediums of all stripes, and reports on her own experiences of the paranormal with humor, intelligence, and grace.
They believed they would live forever. So begins Mira Ptacin's haunting account of the women of Camp Etna-an otherworldly community in the woods of Maine that has, since 1876, played host to generations of Spiritualists and mediums dedicated to preserving the links between the mortal realm and the afterlife. Beginning her narrative in 1848 with two sisters who claimed they could speak to the dead, Ptacin reveals how Spiritualism first blossomed into a national practice during the Civil War, yet continues-even thrives-to this very day. Immersing herself in this community and its practices-from ghost hunting to releasing trapped spirits to…
I first turned to the ‘dark side’ of travel when a student of mine introduced me to ‘dark tourism’. Sadly the world is littered with places of tragedy where our misfortunes are exposed by dark tourism. As a social scientist, I have been writing about visiting our significant dead for over 20 years. I am fascinated as to why particular deaths are remembered, by whom, and how our dead are (re)presented within visitor economies. I have lectured and published extensively within academia, as well as being a media consultant. I continue to tell tales of our dead and how we attach cultural importance to certain kinds of death.
During a personal pilgrimage visiting Ireland’s dissonant heritage sites, Gillian O’Brien takes us on a dark tourism odyssey. This book should inspire all to embrace dark tourism and shine light on the recesses of troubled histories. What I love about this book is that O’Brien invites us to explore notions of nationhood by visiting sites of war, revolution, famine, death, emigration, and even diasporic ghosts. It is this strange allure of Ireland’s difficult past that creates a unique and unmistakable sense of ‘Irishness’. The book is not a scholarly monologue but an authoritative account of a dark quest. Witty and well-written, the book connected me to Irish landscapes, its places, and people, and most of all, to the strange enhancement I found in the island’s dark past.
From war to revolution, famine to emigration, The Darkness Echoing travels around Ireland bringing its dark past to life
Ireland is a nation obsessed with death. We find a thrill in the moribund, a strange enchantment in the drama of our dark past. It's everywhere we look and in all of our beloved myths, songs and stories that have helped to form our cultural identity. Our wakes and ballads, our plays and famine sites, all of them and more come together to tell ourselves and the world who we are and what we have…
I was an avid reader as a child. Then I became a teenager and started hating it! Why? Because the teachers at school started pushing classical literature on me. I didn’t read for years until a friend introduced me to fantasy. I fell in love and haven’t looked back. I love commercial fantasy fiction that has lots of action, where the writer focuses less on elegant prose and more on plot and characters. I aim to write the kind of books that readers get addicted to, where they can disappear into another world and forget they are reading – the kind of books I love to read!
CN Crawford is one of my favourite authors. I know the pen-name includes 2 authors – a man and wife team who co-author the books but to make it easy, here I’ll refer to ‘them’ as ‘her’.
Her books are really fast-paced. This series was steeped in Scandinavian mythology and folklore which I loved. But it also contained lots of references to cultural tropes in our own modern world which I also loved. The dialogue is always really clever and funny.
There is a badass female lead who can do magic and kick butt. And there’s also an enemies-to-lovers romance at the centre of the plot. It’s highly addictive and I loved all three books. I couldn’t put them down.
I’ve been fascinated with high fantasy since the moment my grandmother first presented me with Eragon by Christopher Paolini. Then, add in a Nora Roberts book when I turned sixteen, and voila, my love for all things fantasy romance was born. I crave tension, romance, sizzle, and some epic fight-to-love scenes that make my blood run hot. When I started writing, I knew the exact genre I wanted to focus on–romance. All. Things. Romance. Fantasy, paranormal, contemporary–I enjoy writing them all but in every single one of my stories there lies a thread of fight–of sizzle–because what’s a happily ever after if you don’t have to work for it?
This book was one of the first romantic fantasy books I picked up and it completely captivated me from the very first page. You are immediately thrown into an incredible world, right at the same time the two main characters meet. It’s fast-paced, steamy, and perfect for anyone who loves that enemies-to-lovers vibe (me, I’m anyone). Kat and Griffin are amazing together and it’s so much fun to watch them figure that out.
Cat Fisa's destiny has finally caught up with her. But fully accepting her fate means taking a final, terrifying step―reuniting all three realms and embracing her place as Queen with warlord-turned-king Griffin at her side. But forging their kingdom can only mean going to war with Fisa and its violent Alpha―Cat's own mother, Andromeda.
Although Cat used to be Andromeda's sole weakness, that's no longer true. And while Andromeda seems to know every trick and spell, Cat's own magic refuses to work like it should. When tragedy strikes, Cat unleashes the…
Jennifer Bean Bower is an award-winning writer and native Tar Heel. A passionate student of North Carolina history, Bower seeks to document the lesser-known people, places, and events of her state's past. She is the author of four books: North Carolina Aviatrix Viola Gentry: The Flying Cashier; Animal Adventures in North Carolina; Winston & Salem: Tales of Murder, Mystery, and Mayhem; andMoravians in North Carolina.
Nancy Roberts, also known as the “First Lady of American Folklore,” inspired many children—including me—to read. North Carolina Ghosts & Legends recounts stories of “true” ghostly encounters and has sent many readers on ghost hunts of their own. I became fascinated with Roberts’ story of the Little Red Man—a ghost who is said to haunt a historic site in Winston-Salem—and while visiting the site (on a second-grade field trip), I interrupted a tour guide to inquire about his whereabouts. My classmates erupted in giggles and I was reprimanded for the disruption. Nevertheless, many years later, I had the pleasure of working at that historic site; but, I never had the pleasure of meeting the infamous ghost.
Nancy Roberts's Southern Ghost Lore Revival--Exhumed and Improved for Fearless Reader.
Nancy Roberts has often been described to as the "First Lady of American Folklore" and the Title is well deserved. Throughout her decades-long career, Roberts documented supernatural experiences and interviewed hundreds of people about their recollections of encounters with the supernatural.
This nationally renowned writer began her undertaking in this ghostly realm as a freelance writer for the Charlotte Observer. Encouraged by Carl Sandburg, who enjoyed her stories and articles, Roberts wrote her first book in 1958. Aptly called a "custodian of the twilight zone" by Southern Living magazine,…
As a longtime Angeleno, I’ve read a lot about the dark underbelly of our dysfunctional metropolis, both in the news and in fiction. I try to incorporate the City of Angels as a strong presence in my writing, and when I read other writers who have put Los Angeles at the center, it gives me a sense of things the way they really are, a glimpse at a deeper reality. I see the detectives in LA noir and crime fiction as inextricably intertwined with the city, their weaknesses, and their emotional quandaries emerging from this place.
I don’t think Connelly’s intention was to write horror, but his visceral description of the corpses and the minutia of murder in this novel made my stomach churn. An unpleasant experience, yes, but it’s vivid and effective writing. Harry Bosch is a detective with weakness for a specific type of woman, and of course he gets mixed up with Julia, a hot tomato who’s new to the force, and of course she messes up his investigation into the bones. You might want to kick Bosch in the caboose for not thinking more lucidly, but eventually he manages to outsmart his villains.
The outstanding eighth Harry Bosch thriller from the award-winning No. 1 bestselling author of The Lincoln Lawyer. City of Bones is featured in Amazon Prime's BOSCH TV series.
When the bones of a boy are found scattered in the Hollywood Hills, Harry Bosch is drawn into a case that brings up dark memories from his past.
Unearthing hidden stories, he finds the child's identity and reconstructs his fractured life, determined that he won't be forgotten. At the same time, a new love affair with a female cop begins to blossom - until a stunningly blown mission leaves him in more…
I was pleasantly surprised to have stumbled across this book, because it became not only my favourite book of this year, but easily one of my favourite books of all time!
The writing was captivating and absolutely beautiful, truly brought to life by the author’s finesse. I adored the main character and was completely drawn into her story and rooting for her the entire time. There were tough moral questions addressed that left me thinking and agonizing (in a good way!) long after finishing the book.
The ancient Chinese fantasy style was compelling and reminded me of Chinese historical dramas that I also love to watch.
The bestselling debut fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess.
A young woman's quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm, setting her on a dangerous path where those she loves are not the only ones at risk...
*THE INSTANT TOP 5 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*
THERE ARE MANY LEGENDS ABOUT MY MOTHER...
Raised far away on the moon, Xingyin was unaware she was being hidden from the Celestial Emperor - who exiled her mother for stealing the elixir of immortality. But when her magic flares and reveals her, Xingyin is…
