Here are 100 books that Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe fans have personally recommended if you like
Afro Puffs Are the Antennae of the Universe.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Science Fiction was just something that we did as a family growing up. We’d always gather to watch various iterations of Star Trek as family. Family movie nights usually consisted of whatever science fiction titles the local movie rental place would have on hand, which usually meant watching a lot of B-movie junk, but it was fun. It might sound silly, but I think growing up with all those science fiction movies and books really informed my career choice, electrical engineer. You see, in these movies and books the women just got the job done. I thought, why can’t I do it too??
This is somewhat science fiction, but more of an alternate historical fiction novel. This is the first in the Lady Astronaut series. It starts off with a bang, literally, when a meteorite hits Earth in 1952. This meteorite destroys much of the east coast and sets off a ticking time bomb where Earth will no longer be habitable in a matter of decades. Now there is a full effort to colonize space so humans can find another home. Women who were once thought not able to become astronauts are now able to vie for spots in the Astronaut Corps along with their male counterparts. I love science history and reading about the women “calculators” of this area (Katherine Johnson, Rear Adm Grace Hopper, etc.). So if there’s a space adventure set in this era, count me in!
A meteor decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth's efforts to colonize space, as well as an unprecedented opportunity for a much larger share of humanity to take part.
One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York, whose experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots…
I’ve lived in Detroit for nearly 15 years, where I built my house with my own two hands out of the shell of one I purchased for $500. A longtime journalist, I grew up in a small town in the countryside of Michigan. When I moved to Detroit after college people told me I was throwing my life away, but I looked at it as a moral decision, as “staying home” when it seemed like most other people were leaving. I’m glad I did—it offered me a look into a world more strange and beautiful than I could have imagined, potentially even a vision into a brave new future. I hope this world comes across in A $500 House in Detroit, and I hope we can make it last.
Love him or hate him, it’s undeniable that LeDuff is a tremendously charismatic writer. A Pulitzer Prize winner, a breathtaking reporter, and a denizen of Detroit for decades, this is one of the most compellingly written books on Detroit ever.
This book has a Mustang eight-cylinder engine on it, and I hoovered this up over just a couple of hours. If you want a barn-burning page-turner of a tale, showcasing Detroit as its most broken and beautiful, this is the one for you.
An explosive expose of America's lost prosperity by Pulitzer Prize -winning journalist Charlie LeDuff
"One cannot read Mr. LeDuff's amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he casts on hard truths . . . A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some good-Samaritan-it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff's." -The Wall Street Journal
"Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist LeDuff . . . writes with honesty and compassion about a city that's destroying itself-and breaking his heart." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A book full of both literary grace and hard-won world-weariness." -Kirkus
I’ve always loved science fiction. My father was an Asimov junkie, and our house was packed with science fiction novels and stories from Azimov to Heinlein to Wyndham and Wilhelm. I began writing science fiction in high school, yet only recently published my first 4 novels (one of which won a Bookfest award). I hold a bachelor’s degree in computer science (bioinformatics), and I stay on top of science to inform my writing. It’s through this background that I select novels, seeking out new tropes and ideas in technological advancement. Each of these novels I mention exceeded my expectations and then some. Pick one up today—you won’t be disappointed!
When I received Ninefox Gambit for Christmas, I have to say that I was blown away. What I loved the most about it wasn’t just that Yoon Ha Lee dropped me in the middle of a war and hit the ground running (from lazer blasts!) The tactician Shuos Jedao leads Cheris into an inner battle that turns out to be even more consequential than the war itself. And when finally the question arises of “who is right” in the conflict, something that the good soldier Cheris has never asked herself before, the answer depends on who’s answering. Cheris, like all of us, must decide for herself whether the secrets of Jedao’s past are true, or whether she’s having her strings pulled.
New York Times Best-Selling Author - Nominated for the 2019 Hugo Award for Best Series - Winner of the 2016 Locus Award - Nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke Awards
When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris's career isn't the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next.
Cheris's best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that…
I’m a sociologist who studies American family life. About 20 years ago, I began to see signs of the weakening of family life (such as more single-parent families) among high-school educated Americans. These are the people we often call the “working class.” It seemed likely that this weakening reflected the decline of factory jobs as globalization and automation have proceeded. So I decided to learn as much as I could about the rise and decline of working-class families. The books I am recommending help us to understand what happened in the past and what’s happening now.
How and when did all this start? Historian Thomas Sugrue shows that the peak of industrial employment in cities such as Detroit, the focus of this book, occurred in the 1940s. Then as hundreds of thousands of industrial jobs were lost in Detroit (and millions elsewhere in the US), the position of the urban working class deteriorated. This decline was an important source of the “urban crisis” that started in the 1960s.
Once America's "arsenal of democracy," Detroit is now the symbol of the American urban crisis. In this reappraisal of America's racial and economic inequalities, Thomas Sugrue asks why Detroit and other industrial cities have become the sites of persistent racialized poverty. He challenges the conventional wisdom that urban decline is the product of the social programs and racial fissures of the 1960s. Weaving together the history of workplaces, unions, civil rights groups, political organizations, and real estate agencies, Sugrue finds the roots of today's urban poverty in a hidden history of racial violence, discrimination, and deindustrialization that reshaped the American…
I’ve lived in Detroit for nearly 15 years, where I built my house with my own two hands out of the shell of one I purchased for $500. A longtime journalist, I grew up in a small town in the countryside of Michigan. When I moved to Detroit after college people told me I was throwing my life away, but I looked at it as a moral decision, as “staying home” when it seemed like most other people were leaving. I’m glad I did—it offered me a look into a world more strange and beautiful than I could have imagined, potentially even a vision into a brave new future. I hope this world comes across in A $500 House in Detroit, and I hope we can make it last.
This book looks toward the future. A friend, leader, and hero to many in Detroit including myself, Grace Lee Boggs is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. However, this book is far from the stuffy philosophy you might remember from PHYL 101. Rather, it’s a road map to a better, brighter future, and a new way to live.
A resident of Detroit for almost 80 years, Boggs once wrote, “The most radical thing I ever did was to stay put.” Her thinking and activism underlie almost anything truly transformational happening in Detroit today, and this book will leave you with more hope than a dog looking at the thanksgiving dinner table.
A world dominated by America and driven by cheap oil, easy credit, and conspicuous consumption is unraveling before our eyes. In this powerful, deeply humanistic book, Grace Lee Boggs, a legendary figure in the struggle for justice in America, shrewdly assesses the current crisis - political, economical, and environmental - and shows how to create the radical social change we need to confront new realities. A vibrant, inspirational force, Boggs has participated in all of the twentieth century's major social movements - for civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights, and more. She draws from seven decades of activist experience, and…
I’ve lived in Detroit for nearly 15 years, where I built my house with my own two hands out of the shell of one I purchased for $500. A longtime journalist, I grew up in a small town in the countryside of Michigan. When I moved to Detroit after college people told me I was throwing my life away, but I looked at it as a moral decision, as “staying home” when it seemed like most other people were leaving. I’m glad I did—it offered me a look into a world more strange and beautiful than I could have imagined, potentially even a vision into a brave new future. I hope this world comes across in A $500 House in Detroit, and I hope we can make it last.
Perhaps from the outside Detroit might look like a humorless place. A native of the city, Foley shows us just how untrue that is. Boys follows three Black gay millennial men looking for love, friendship, and professional success in the Motor City, with a narrative both hilarious and touching.
Published by Belt Publishing, a relatively new publisher focusing on the Rust Belt, Boys gives readers an inside view of the city and Black culture that can be radically different from the ones often portrayed in the media. This book can take you to a world much more beautiful and strange.
This hilarious, touching debut novel by Aaron Foley, author of How to Live in Detroit Without Being a Jackass, follows three Black gay millennial men looking for love, friendship, and professional success in the Motor City.
Suddenly jobless and single after a devastating layoff and a breakup with his cheating ex, advertising copywriter Dominick Gibson flees his life in Hell's Kitchen to try and get back on track in his hometown of Detroit. He’s got one objective — exit the shallow dating pool ASAP and get married by thirty-five — and the deadline’s approaching fast.
I’ve always loved science fiction. My father was an Asimov junkie, and our house was packed with science fiction novels and stories from Azimov to Heinlein to Wyndham and Wilhelm. I began writing science fiction in high school, yet only recently published my first 4 novels (one of which won a Bookfest award). I hold a bachelor’s degree in computer science (bioinformatics), and I stay on top of science to inform my writing. It’s through this background that I select novels, seeking out new tropes and ideas in technological advancement. Each of these novels I mention exceeded my expectations and then some. Pick one up today—you won’t be disappointed!
I couldn’t put Velocity Weapon down for days and it very much interfered with my life (in a good way). This novel makes artificial intelligence a central theme but avoids the simplistic pitfall attraction of “what if AI goes evil”. Megan O’Keefe highlights what we see in real life: AI reflects the community in which it was created. The twists and turns in this novel are worthy of the world’s best roller coasters, and it’s impossible not to root for Sanda and Biran Greeves, siblings separated during an interplanetary conflict. Megan also drops little easter eggs into her novel (I particularly love the reference to Ada Lovelace in the planet named Ada Prime). If you want a novel that keeps you guessing, this is the one for you!
NOMINATED FOR THE PHILIP K. DICK AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL * Dazzling space battles, intergalactic politics, and rogue AI collide in Velocity Weapon, the first book in this epic space opera trilogy by award-winning author Megan O'Keefe. Sanda and Biran Greeve were siblings destined for greatness. A high-flying sergeant, Sanda has the skills to take down any enemy combatant. Biran is a savvy politician who aims to use his new political position to prevent conflict from escalating to total destruction. However, on a routine maneuver, Sanda loses consciousness when her gunship is blown out of the sky. Instead of finding…
I chose these stories because as a Black woman, seeing characters like me in stories as the main character instead of the sidekick or friend is always so refreshing. Like the main characters of my own novels, Black women taking charge is something to be celebrated.
The first time I read this book I was just a teenager. The story of a Black woman escaping domestic abuse and raising children on her own was something I had watched play out in my own family. I could see my grandmother in those pages, my mother in the struggles described, my aunts' resentments, and my uncles' poor choices clearly in the story. It felt like someone had peeked into my own family history and put it to paper.
Although McMillan is often overlooked as a writer, Mama is not a story to be missed.
A “funny [and] touching” novel of an African American woman determined to triumph, by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Waiting to Exhale (Detroit Free Press).
Mildred Peacock is fed up with poverty—and with the jealous rampages of her husband, Crook. When Crook runs over her foot with his ’59 Mercury, she finally kicks him out to raise her five kids on her own.
Resourceful and sly, sassy and sexy, she’s willing to do just about anything to pay the bills. But she loses job after job, and one man after another, until alcohol and pills are her only…
I had the passion to write Necessary Deeds because: 1) as someone who'd spent 20+ years writing novels, dealing with untrustworthy literary agents, and book-doctoring other writers’ novels in order to pay rent, I'd come to know betrayal (“best friend” writers who stole drafts of mine and called them their own, novelists who backstabbed me after I helped them land agents and book contracts, and so on); 2) like many people who lived through the drug-and-alcohol-laced Eighties, I had a long relationship with someone that ended because they cheated on me. So I never doubted that, as I wrote Necessary Deeds, my heart knew well what motivated its characters.
How can I not include an Elmore Leonard title in a list of favorite novels about murder and matters of the heart?
Of course, no compliment by me of Mr. Leonard will be anywhere in the vicinity of new, but I will add to the heap of praise of the man that in this particular novel of his, the snappiness of the dialogue, the overall wit, and the surprising nature of the twists and turns will always strike me as ideals to strive for as I write my own noir.
I write cozy mysteries about a house flipper turned sleuth in fictional Crocus Heights, Minnesota. My father was a carpenter, and I was his helper. My childhood was spent on a farm, with the biggest event of the week being a trip to the local library, where I checked out seven books. I would prop my library book in front of my school book and read in class whenever I could. My favorites were mysteries, and later romances, and now cozy mysteries, which combine a bit of both. I am always fascinated by people and their motivations, and that is what I enjoy in all the authors I recommend.
I love that Laurie’s main character in her Psychic Eye series is a modern-day psychic and solves a mystery. I love a good psychic theme where Abby Cooper has an office where she books readings, solves mysteries, and has a serious love interest. Laurie has a website with links to a podcast where she and her sister discuss current murder cases. I might even book a reading with her.
Abby Cooper is a P.I., psychic intuitive. But her insight failed her when she didn't foresee the death of one of her clients-or that the lead investigator for the case is the gorgeous blind date she just met. Now, with the police suspicious of her abilities and a killer on the loose, Abby's future looks more uncertain than ever.
