Why am I passionate about this?

I read a lot of literary fiction. At the moment, I’m finishing To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara, which I’ve enjoyed and whose novel, A Little Life, was brilliant. My interest in thriller fiction is sparked by writers who bring their considerable literary talents to their trade. John LeCarré comes to mind. Writers who sacrifice depth of character or concern for place quickly lose my interest. Thankfully, there are many thriller writers who do a superb job of keeping my wandering nature in check. (A quick note: I also write dystopian fiction under my pen name James Jaros.)


I wrote

Burn Down the Sky

By James Jaros,

Book cover of Burn Down the Sky

What is my book about?

When well-armed marauders roll in at dusk to brutally attack a fiercely defended compound of climate-crisis survivors, Jessie is unable…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Rape of the Rose

Mark Nykanen Why did I love this book?

The Rape of the Rose is an unforgettable novel that details the horrors of the Industrial Revolution in nineteenth-century Britain. Hughes, also a poet of note, portrays the enslavement of children in those “dark Satanic mills” with disturbing precision, offering his youngest characters shreds of dignity, which life has deprived them of so roundly. He also shows men and women maimed and worked to death by owners intent on extracting every last ounce of their labor. A major figure in the novel is a father who flees a mill and joins the Luddite Revolution. I read this book thirty-five years ago and remember it vividly. It presents the underbelly of the Industrial Revolution—and the ample reasons for the rebellions it triggered. 

By Glyn Hughes,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Rape of the Rose as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Set in 1812, this novel concerns Mor Greave, a self-educated man, who is caught up in an English revolution in the North. He is hunted by the authorities and becomes drawn into a underworld of duplicity, passion and sexual licence he never imagined.


Book cover of Beautiful World, Where Are You

Mark Nykanen Why did I love this book?

This is the most recent novel to make my list. As much as I relished Rooney’s earlier work, her latest is heftier, for it grapples with the genuine planetary and personal crises faced by her generation. Her characters don’t shy away from speaking openly about love, sex, and relationships—or the perverse economic system that is rapidly bringing humanity to its knees with consumer-driven smiles painted on its faces. Neither do her characters hold back from earnest discussions of Marxism. The latter note is getting wide play culturally, particularly with millennials, but mainstream media has rarely picked up on the reverberations underfoot. Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You? is not so reticent—and more rewarding for its brazen honesty about the personal and the political.

By Sally Rooney,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Beautiful World, Where Are You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Beautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up, and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get…


Book cover of Machine Dreams

Mark Nykanen Why did I love this book?

Machine Dreams is a wrenching novel that chronicles an American family through decades of reflection and turbulence, culminating in the shattering ramifications of the Vietnam War. For those of us who learned to refract the U.S. through the prism of that savagery, which left millions of Vietnamese dead and vast stretches of their country burned and poisoned, Machine Dreams was a novel that radiated the heartsickness of that era on the home front. American families were, indeed, torn apart by that war, but the weaknesses of those bonds had abiding roots. I was weeping by the time I finished this novel but hasten to add that I have no regrets about the experience, only gratitude. 

By Jayne Anne Phillips,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Machine Dreams as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In her highly acclaimed debut novel, the bestselling author of Shelter introduces the Hampsons, an ordinary, small-town American family profoundly affected by the extraordinary events of history. Here is a stunning chronicle that begins with the Depression and ends with the Vietnam War, revealed in the thoughts, dreams, and memories of each family member. Mitch struggles to earn a living as Jeans becomes the main breadwinner, working to complete college and raise the family. While the couple fight to keep their marriage intact, their daughter Danner and son Billy forge a sibling bond of uncommon strength. When Billy goes off…


Book cover of The Goldfinch

Mark Nykanen Why did I love this book?

I’ve never forgotten Theo Decker, the thoroughly engaging protagonist and narrator of Tartt’s third novel. Although I relished Tartt’s earlier work, I became wondrously lost in The Goldfinch. She won the Pulitzer for this book, deservedly so, which centers around Theo’s theft of a painting, The Goldfinch of the title, and the percolating adventures that follow Theo, his associates, and the painting itself. Tartt is superb at juggling both plotlines and timelines—and entertaining to the end. It’s one of the most engaging novels I’ve ever read. I will read it again.  

By Donna Tartt,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked The Goldfinch as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014 Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the…


Book cover of Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

Mark Nykanen Why did I love this book?

Blood Meridian is a searing account of the ruthless violence of a gang of indiscriminate killers in the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. The violence is graphic, surreal at times, as the principal characters scalp Native Americans for money. But the gang murders many others as well, brutalizing the innocent and non-innocent alike. McCarthy’s Faulknerian skills are on full display, striking poetic if nerve-rattling notes. While his characters share wantonly in the bloodshed, they rise distinctly from the page, perhaps none more memorably than The Judge, aptly named for his considerations of the violence he both engenders and willfully embraces. This is an entirely edgy novel that houses all manner of horrors, none gratuitous. McCarthy limns all this—and much more—with his rarefied skill.  

By Cormac McCarthy,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Blood Meridian as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennessean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.


Explore my book 😀

Burn Down the Sky

By James Jaros,

Book cover of Burn Down the Sky

What is my book about?

When well-armed marauders roll in at dusk to brutally attack a fiercely defended compound of climate-crisis survivors, Jessie is unable to halt the slaughter—and she can do nothing to prevent the ruthless abduction of innocents, including her youngest child. Now, along with her outraged teenage daughter, Bliss, Jessie must set out on a journey across a blasted landscape—joining up with the desperate, the broken, the half-mad, on an impossible mission to storm the fortress of a dark and twisted religion and bring the children home. Though published ten years ago, the climate emergency has only heightened the book’s relevance and resonance.

Book cover of Rape of the Rose
Book cover of Beautiful World, Where Are You
Book cover of Machine Dreams

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Book cover of Edge of the Known World

Sheri T. Joseph Author Of Edge of the Known World

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Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Sheri's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.

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By Sheri T. Joseph,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Edge of the Known World as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.

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