Why am I passionate about this?

Increasingly, the fiction Iā€™m most drawn to occupies the space between literary and speculative. This space fascinates me both as a reader and a writer. I love stories set in worlds shifted ever-so-slightly from the familiar, where characters are forced to navigate new ways of existing or find ways to escape. Perhaps thatā€™s why so many of my favorite storiesā€”and my first two novels!ā€”tend to feature women in cults or other cloistered communities, caught between their desire for belonging and the potential annihilation of the self. Where do you excavate for happiness in a hostile world? My characters spend their lives trying to answer this question. 


I wrote

Disaster's Children

By Emma Sloley,

Book cover of Disaster's Children

What is my book about?

Disasterā€™s Children tells the story of Marlo, raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregonā€¦

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Girls

Emma Sloley Why did I love this book?

The world might obsess over the charismatic men behind horrific famous killings like those of the Manson family, but Emma Cline is far more interested in the girls lurking in the shadows of those sinister figures. Their longings, the way they move through the world, their own capacity for depravity. Clineā€™s lonely protagonist Evie is drawn into the orbit of a group of beautiful, careless girls in thrall to a cult leader whose violent vision will drive them all toward a night of unspeakable violence. Through Evieā€™s intense adolescent gaze, weā€™re inexorably driven along too. This book was one of those lightning-bolt reading experiences for me: it changed the way I thought about language and creating a vivid, indelible sense of placeā€”in this case, the frantic, dreamy savagery of 1960s California. 

By Emma Cline,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A gripping and dark fictionalised account of life inside the Manson family from one of the most exciting young voices in fiction.

If you're lost, they'll find you...

Evie Boyd is fourteen and desperate to be noticed.

It's the summer of 1969 and restless, empty days stretch ahead of her. Until she sees them. The girls. Hair long and uncombed, jewelry catching the sun. And at their centre, Suzanne, black-haired and beautiful.

If not for Suzanne, she might not have gone. But, intoxicated by her and the life she promises, Evie follows the girls back to the decaying ranch whereā€¦


Book cover of Women Talking

Emma Sloley Why did I love this book?

There is subtle genius in the way Miriam Toews pays such close attention to the humanity of her often heartbreaking characters while also being dryly funny. Set in a closed, conservative Mennonite community, the story unfolds as ā€œminutesā€ taken by a young man as he listens to a group of women from the community who have discovered they were drugged and assaulted while sleeping, by men they know. (Their fathers, sons, husbands, and friends.) The story is based on a real case, and while the details are chillingly horrific, Toews finds a way for the characters to talk about these things that are warm, humorous, and compassionate, as the women become alive for the first time to their own unexamined power. 

By Miriam Toews,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Women Talking as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Now a major motion picture from writer/director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

ā€œThis amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.ā€ -Margaret Atwood, on Twitter

"Scorching . . . a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. Forā€¦


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Book cover of Forsaking Home

Forsaking Home by I. Graham Smith,

Forsaking Home is a story about the life of a man who wants a better future for his children. He and his wife decide to join Earth's first off-world colony. This story is about risk takers and courageous settlers and what they would do for more freedom. 

Book cover of The Incendiaries

Emma Sloley Why did I love this book?

Told with lyrical, freewheeling assurance, this campus novel-meets-love story-meets meditation on fanaticism is a short, sharp read that tells the story of Phoebe and Will, whose lives collide and then break apart when Phoebe joins a secretive cult bent on enacting faith-based violence. We spend most of the time in Willā€™s head, as he carefully recreates the tragic timeline to try to understand Phoebeā€™s heart and grapple with the long legacy of loss. 

By R.O. Kwon,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'R. O. Kwon is the real deal' LAUREN GROFF

'Absolutely electric . . . Everyone should read this book' GARTH GREENWELL

'Every explosive requires a fuse. That's R. O. Kwon's novel, a straight, slow-burning fuse' VIET THANH NGUYEN

'In dazzlingly acrobatic prose, R. O. Kwon explores the lines between faith and fanaticism, passion and violence, the rational and the unknowable' CELESTE NG

'A sharp, little novel as hard to ignore as a splinter in your eye' WASHINGTON POST

'Raw and finely wrought' NEW YORK TIMES

'The Incendiaries packs a disruptive charge, and introduces R. O. Kwon as a major talent'ā€¦


Book cover of State of Wonder

Emma Sloley Why did I love this book?

A kind of woman-driven answer to Heart of Darkness cast in modern-day Brazil, this dark and thought-provoking story had me enthralled from the first page. A pharmaceutical researcher, Dr. Marina Singh, journeys into the Amazon on a quest to find her vanished colleague, and on reaching a remote jungle village whose residents harbor a potentially world-transforming secret, sheā€™s forced to reckon with questions of morality, fertility, and her own complicated past. I loved the dreamy, almost hallucinogenic setting and the imaginative premise, all contained within Patchettā€™s trademark lyrical yet straightforward prose style. 

By Ann Patchett,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked State of Wonder as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION There were people on the banks of the river. Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson's work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investors, whose patience is fast running out. Anders Eckman, a mild-mannered lab researcher, is sent to investigate. A curt letter reporting his untimely death is all that returns. Now Marina Singh, Anders' colleague and once a student ofā€¦


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Book cover of Forsaking Home

Forsaking Home by I. Graham Smith,

Forsaking Home is a story about the life of a man who wants a better future for his children. He and his wife decide to join Earth's first off-world colony. This story is about what risk takers and courageous settlers and what they would do for more freedom.

Edin isā€¦

Book cover of The Year of the Flood

Emma Sloley Why did I love this book?

The second installment in Atwoodā€™s MaddAddam trilogy, following the dystopian blockbuster Oryx and Crake, proved to be my favorite. Perhaps thatā€™s because the story largely follows the travails of Toby, a fascinating, multi-faceted woman whoā€™s holed up in an erstwhile luxury spa at the end of the world, musing on her recent past as a member of the hippie religious cult Godā€™s Gardeners. Toby is a brilliant and wry guide through this thoroughly immersive ruined world, and Atwood keeps readers on the edge of their seats as we wait to find out whatā€™s left to salvage for the survivors of the waterless flood. 

By Margaret Atwood,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Year of the Flood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ā€¢ From the bestselling author of The Handmaid's Tale and The Testamentsā€”the second book of the internationally celebrated MaddAddam trilogy, set in the visionary world of Oryx and Crake, is at once a moving tale of lasting friendship and a landmark work of speculative fiction.

The long-feared waterless flood has occurred, altering Earth as we know it and obliterating most human life. Among the survivors are Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Amid shadowy, corrupt ruling powers and new, gene-spliced lifeā€¦


Explore my book šŸ˜€

Disaster's Children

By Emma Sloley,

Book cover of Disaster's Children

What is my book about?

Disasterā€™s Children tells the story of Marlo, raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregon ranch. The outside world, which the ranchers call "the Disaster," is a casualty of ravaging climate change, a troubled landscape on the brink of catastrophe. For as long as Marlo can remember, the unknown that lies beyond the borders of her utopia has been a curious obsession. But just as she plans her escape into the chaos of the real world, a charismatic new resident gives her a compelling reason to stay. And, soon enough, a reason to doubt--and to fear--his intentions. Now, feeling more and more trapped in a paradise that's become a prison, Marlo has a choice: stay in the only home she's ever knownā€”or break away.

Book cover of The Girls
Book cover of Women Talking
Book cover of The Incendiaries

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Interested in cults, Mennonites, and medicine?

Cults 62 books
Mennonites 13 books
Medicine 104 books