I grew up in northern Wisconsin, where a love of books set my imagination on fire as I waited out the long, cold winters. Southern writers were my favorites because they took me from the plains of my northern home to a landscape vined in lushness, where people had names like Scout, Calpurnia, and Battle Fairchild; where places had names like Yoknapatawpha, and where a streetcar was named Desire. I got lost in that place of different constellations with its mint julep and velvet evenings, and its readiness to accept magic. It wasn’t until my children were grown that I finally earned bachelor's and master’s degrees, and determined that I would be a writer.
Benjamin Button was a tiny mystery who was born unaccountably different (much like my own Bonaventure Arrow). I love the way Fitzgerald makes time run backward as Benjamin Button lives his life in reverse going from an infant resembling a seventy-year-old man to a young child whose mind is failing, to a small being who’s forgotten his remarkable life. This story allows readers to ponder the vast journey that takes place in every life.
As long ago as 1860 it was the proper thing to be born at home. At present, so I am told, the high gods of medicine have decreed that the first cries of the young shall be uttered upon the anesthetic air of a hospital, preferably a fashionable one. So young Mr. and Mrs. Roger Button were fifty years ahead of style when they decided, one day in the summer of 1860, that their first baby should be born in a hospital. Whether this anachronism had any bearing upon the astonishing history I am about to set down will never…
Finch Nobles is a gutsy, burn-scarred loner. She’s also a cemetery caretaker who can hear the dead talking. She listens to their stories and engages them in conversation, since they’re the only friends she has. This story is strong from the start, and so are all of its characters. I found it easy to love as I witnessed Finch finding out what she needed to know.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Sheri Reynolds delivers an emotionally moving novel of Finch Nobles, a girl severely burned as a child, who later discovers she can hear the voices of the dead.
After sustaining terrible burns from a household accident as a young girl, Finch Nobles refuses the pity of her hometown. The brave and feisty loner finds comfort in visiting her father’s cemetery, where she soon discovers that she can hear the voices of those buried underground. When she begins to speak to them, their answers echo around her in a remarkable chorus of regrets, explanations, and…
This story weaves fantasy into philosophy, and it doesn’t get better than that! Piscine Molitor (Pi) Patel, the son of a zookeeper, sets sail with his family from Pondicherry, India on a cargo ship bound for Canada. But it’s an ill-fated trip, and Pi finds himself on a lifeboat in the company of wild animals, one of whom is a talking Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. But who is Richard Parker, really? I’m in awe of Yann Martel’s imagination and this story’s revelations about what it is to be human.
After the sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen-year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a wounded zebra, an orangutan—and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger.
Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi Patel, whose fear, knowledge, and cunning allow him to coexist with the tiger, Richard Parker, for 227 days while lost at sea. When they finally reach the coast of Mexico, Richard Parker flees to the jungle, never to be seen again. The Japanese authorities who interrogate Pi refuse to believe his…
I’m a firm believer that we can learn a lot from our younger selves. This unforgettable story contains a touch of magical realism and is told by Reuben Land, a man reminiscing about a quest he once went on with his father, Jeremiah, and his younger sister, the courageous Swede, as they set out to find his brother, Davy. This one speaks of love, loss, and faith as seen through the eyes of Reuben’s eleven-year-old self. Beautifully told, it explores extraordinary truths about life, death, and miracles.
When Israel Finch and Tommy Basca, the town bullies, break into the home of school caretaker Jeremiah Land, wielding a baseball bat and looking for trouble, they find more of it than even they expected. For seventeen-year-old Davey is sitting up in bed waiting for them with a Winchester rifle. His younger brother Reuben has seen their father perform miracles, but Jeremiah now seems as powerless to prevent Davey from being arrested for manslaughter, as he has always been to ease Reuben's daily spungy struggle to breathe. Nor does brave and brilliant nine-year-old Swede, obsessed as she is with the…
This one is all about the enchantment and disenchantment that comes with love. In it, women fall for the wrong sort of man and a grieving mother grows “belladonna, thorn apple, hemlock, black nightshade...everything poisonous” in her garden. The story is told in reverse until it comes to 12-year-old Lucy Green in 1952 who blames herself for a tragic accident, then spends forty years looking for the angel she hopes will renew her faith.
This haunting, poignant and addictive story travels effortlessly across time, telling the tale of three generations of women who make the wrong choices and have to live with the consequences.
It opens in London in the present day, when an envious sibling comes to her sister's wedding. Back in the Swinging Sixties, the bridegroom's conventional English mother, Freida, behaves in a wholly unconventional way while working in a Knightsbridge hotel. Even before that, the seeds of tragedy are sown in the Fifties, when twelve-year-old Lucy first visits London and the same hotel. Precocious, impatient, wise beyond her years, Lucy becomes…
Bonaventure Arrow didn’t make a peep when he was born, and the doctor nearly took him for dead. No one knew that his silence was filled with resonance—a miraculous gift of rarefied hearing that encompasses the Universe of Every Single Sound. He can hear flowers grow, a thousand shades of blue, and the miniature tempests that rage inside raindrops. Then one day he hears the voice of his father, who’d been shot dead by a crazy man known only as the Wanderer before Bonaventure was even born. This special little boy would find the key to buried mysteries and soothe a chorus of family secrets that were clamoring to be healed.
As a child, I lived in a small valley sheltered from the night city lights. I could see the stars, and from that time, that is where my imagination dwelled. As a teenager, I read several of the books I have listed here, and from that point, I was inspired to read more and also to write myself. I sincerely believe that despite our current problems, humanity will outlive its troubled childhood and reach for the stars. We are destined for the stars, and only in the works of science fiction writers is that future explored. The books below helped me to become a successful author in my own right.
An alien starship appears in the Solar System! Humanity faces a glorious future, or total extinction, and only Joe Falcon can make the choice. Never would Joe have imagined it would fall to him to make the decision that would alter the destiny of two worlds, launching humanity towards a glorious future, or to extinction.
Falcon's Call is an action packed dive into the unknown, written in the style of the great, classic, science-fiction stories. If you like surprising plot twists, compelling characters and a hero who actually cares, you must read this new novel by Mike Waller.
Reader's Favorite Gold Medal winner 2019 B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree 2019 Chill With A Book Premier Award 2019
In a heart-pounding battle for humanity's survival, one man holds the key to a glorious future or utter extinction.
In a race against time, Earth and Mars race to claim a derelict alien ship as it enters the Solar System, both aware that whichever planet succeeds might in so doing achieve technological advantage over the other. But who should they send? Joe Falcon, an unlikely candidate, never saw himself as the "right" person. Accompanied by a crew of misfits, each fleeing their own…
