I've been reading science fiction since the age of seven, when I first read Madaleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Then it was Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein,A Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin, Dune by Frank Herbert, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, etc. My list is in honour of Women’s History Month and to recognize the gifted female writers of the past who faced discrimination in the publishing world and yet still triumphed. When I started writing fiction, with my medical background, it had to be about medicine. Thus The Grace Lord series was born. My protagonist, Dr. Grace Lord, is a fearless and compassionate combat surgeon.
Murasaki Shikibu was a lady of the Heian Court of Japan in the eleventh century and has been credited with creating the first novel ever written.
The Tale of Genji has stood the test of centuries. It reveals a world of political machinations, danger, passionate intrigue, and forbidden love in an exotic setting of a time long forgotten. Genji is the son of an emperor and, once you read him, you will understand why his tale is still so popular today.
In the early eleventh century Murasaki Shikibu, a lady in the Heian court of Japan, wrote what many consider to be the world’s first novel, more than three centuries before Chaucer. The Heian era (794—1185) is recognized as one of the very greatest periods in Japanese literature, and The Tale of Genji is not only the unquestioned prose masterpiece of that period but also the most lively and absorbing account we have of the intricate, exquisite, highly ordered court culture that made such a masterpiece possible.
Genji is the favorite son of the emperor but also a man of dangerously…
At the age of eighteen, Mary Shelley was the wife of Percy Shelley.
Rumour has it Lord Byron, Percy, and Mary decided to all create a work. Mary’s creation was Frankenstein which was published anonymously when Mary was age twenty in 1818.
It became a sensation and was later published in France under her true name in 1823. Her thrilling novel is credited as the first science fiction book ever written.
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'
'That rare story to pass from literature into myth' The New York Times
Mary Shelley's chilling Gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley on Lake Geneva. The story of Victor Frankenstein who, obsessed with creating life itself, plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, but whose botched creature sets out to destroy his maker, would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity. Based on the third…
In The Left Hand of Darkness, LeGuin tackles gender issues creating a people who are at times sexually neutral but can change to either feminine or masculine during mating season. Humans are seen as freaks because they are trapped to one gender.
It was a mind-blowing book back in 1976, when it came out, winning the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness is worthy reading for its story and for its audacity, being penned almost fifty years ago. A great read!
50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION-WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY DAVID MITCHELL AND A NEW AFTERWORD BY CHARLIE JANE ANDERS
Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction-winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.
A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants' gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an…
Published in 1967, Anne McCaffrey’s novels, Dragonflight and later Dragonquest, about telepathic dragons who bond with humans to fight a lethal danger from the sky, read as a fantasy novel, yet McCaffrey insisted the novels were in fact science fiction.
Her world-building was extensive involving colonization, guided evolution, and interplanetary dynamics. Winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best SF novel, the books were also captivating reads.
Volume I of The Dragonriders of Pern®, the groundbreaking series by master storyteller Anne McCaffrey
On a beautiful world called Pern, an ancient way of life is about to come under attack from a myth that is all too real. Lessa is an outcast survivor—her parents murdered, her birthright stolen—a strong young woman who has never stopped dreaming of revenge. But when an ancient threat to Pern reemerges, Lessa will rise—upon the back of a great dragon with whom she shares a telepathic bond more intimate than any human connection. Together, dragon and rider will fly . . . and…
Choosing this book was tough, because there were so many great science fiction novels written by women in the twentieth century and I want to tell you about all of them! Brightness Falls From the Air is brilliant and will leave you in awe, written by an author who was not revealed to be a woman until many years after the publication of her books.
Alice B. Sheldon, who was winner of both the prestigious Hugo and Nebula Awards, wrote under the pen name, James Tiptree Jr., until her death.
The arrival of an odd assortment of suspicious tourists on the planet Damiem parallels the final moves in a twenty-year-old interplanetary war that ends in the destruction of a star
A mysterious spaceship docks at the Conglomerate's Premier Medical Space Station, the Nelson Mandela, where injured, animal-adapted space marines are brought for surgical repair and recuperation. The vessel is devoid of life. Only oily puddles, clothing, and jewellery are found where crew should have been. Alarms start blaring and lockdown doors start slamming, as the station AI tries to isolate the unexposed from those already exposed.
Smart and spunky Lieutenant Dr. Grace Lord, combat surgeon, new to the Nelson Mandela, must race to discover a cure for whatever is dissolving the medical staff, patients, and her friends, before the Conglomerate decides to blow the Nelson Mandela to space dust.
I’m a thrill seeker when it comes to reading, and I want to be so immersed in a story that I have to read it in one sitting and then can be completely taken by surprise by a plot twist. It was extremely hard to pick only five titles, so to narrow it down, I 1) made an attempt to pick from a few different sub-genres and, 2) stipulated that Agatha Christie could populate the entire list. All of these titles blend wonderful writing with great twists, and I hope you enjoy them. I did my best to avoid spoilers in the descriptions, although by being on this list, it’s a little bit of a spoiler…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job. Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morozov, offers not only her Louie's job but…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job.
Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morzov, not only offers her Louie's job, but also…
