Here are 100 books that The Marvellous Equations of the Dread fans have personally recommended if you like
The Marvellous Equations of the Dread.
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As a quiet and very shy child, I found myself sitting alone reading books rather than playing with other kids. My love for reading at the time was restricted to children’s books like The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe or Roald Dhal stories until I upgraded to Enid Blyton Books and Mills & Boon romances as a teen. It wasn’t until I reached my twenties when I actually found the genre I loved. It was through my love of these stories I came to realise I didn’t have to hide anymore, and my love for these stories planted a small seed in my mind that I would have the courage to write my own.
Carty-Williams tells a very clever and witty story of Queenie’s struggles navigating life as a young black woman in South East London, right where I grew up. I can relate to her work life, friendships, and love life so much it’s unreal. Whilst reading this book I could really feel myself within the plot as I’ve walked on some of the streets she talks about, been to places she talks about and of course, we all have a past and a story about our childhoods that make us who we are today, especially when they have been challenging.
ONE OF TIME’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF NPR’S BEST BOOKS OF 2019
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2019 BY WOMAN’S DAY, NEWSDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BUSTLE, AND BOOK RIOT!
“[B]rilliant, timely, funny, heartbreaking.” —Jojo Moyes, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Me Before You
For fans ofLusterandI May Destroy You,a disarmingly honest,unapologetically black, and undeniably witty debut novel that will speak to those who have gone looking for love and found something very different in its place.
Queenie Jenkins is a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting…
I grew up in a culture that both fears and embraces spirits or outrightly rejects the idea that spirits live on beyond death. I grew up on stories of rolling calves and duppies that caused havoc among the living. Since then, I’ve been fascinated by what haunts us—whether it be our familial spirits that float among the living and continue to play a role in our lives, our memories, or our past actions. I’ve written three books that play with this idea of past actions lingering long into the characters’ lives and returning in unexpected ways.
There’s no escaping past actions in this book—from a dying man confessing he assumed the identity of a dead friend and began a new life to the exploits of the Paisley family during colonial-era Jamaica.
I love the way the family stories intertwine, how the book traces the movement of Jamaican people from the Caribbean island to England and America, and the way the ghosts in the family are not just people but also broader things: slavery, colonization, migration, and abandoned families.
Longlisted for the 2020 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
A "rich, ambitious debut novel" (The New York Times Book Review) that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.
*An Entertainment Weekly, Millions, and LitHub Most Anticipated Book of 2020 Pick and Buzz Magazine's Top New Book of the New Decade*
Stanford Solomon's shocking, thirty-year-old secret is about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford has done something no one could ever imagine. He is a man who faked his own death and stole…
Besides having come of age while Black, I’ve published two coming-of-age novels about Black adolescents. Even before I became a writer, or an adult, I had had a particular interest in coming-of-age narratives. From Walter Dean Myers’ Harlem-located Young Adult novels to Toni Morrison’s Sula and James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, I’ve always been attracted to such stories. However, what the book list offered here does is map a reading series for what I see as an exciting intellectual formation for a Black reader.
I simply love these bracingly contemporary stories of Black Jamaican women who span the gamut from self-absorbed teenagers to Rihanna-inspired celebrities and overtaxed elders. These narratives take place both in JA and the USA and weave together elements of our twenty-first-century Black diaspora. Each of Arthurs’ stories sings in its own way, with exquisitely rendered details and moments of moral clarity. I love that these stories chronicle such a wide variety of Black women’s lives in such depth and detail.
'In this thrilling debut collection Alexia Arthurs is all too easy to love.' - Zadie Smith
Tenderness and cruelty, loyalty and betrayal, ambition and regret - these are the tensions at the heart of Alexia Arthurs' debut book about Jamaican immigrants and their families back home. Some stories ask big questions about the things that define a person, others explode small moments of deep significance and lasting effect. Sweeping from close-knit island communities to the streets of New York City, How to Love a Jamaican offers a portrait of a nation, a people, and a way of life.
As a Jamaican migrant, I often read Jamaican fiction to feel recognized, but I struggle with the word “best,” so consider this an exceedingly tentative ranking. I read each of these texts to learn about what it means to be a part of the Jamaican diaspora and to write a Jamaican novel, and each one elicited in me something that I often did not know about myself. Their attention to gender, to migration, to family, and more are as enlightening as they are captivating. And if that is not enough, then come for the plots, all of which are gripping, and the prose, all of which delights.
If you have not yet read Patsy, just read it. I won’t regale you with tales of its critical and commercial success, as you may already have heard about it. What I will say is that this is a book that will stick with you. Its portrait of longing, of love, of motherhood, and of childhood is so attentive to the thought of its central two characters—a mother and child—that they will feel so real to you that you will think of them when you encounter their facsimiles in your own life.
Heralded for writing "deeply memorable . . . women" (Jennifer Senior, New York Times), Nicole Dennis-Benn introduces readers to an unforgettable heroine for our times: the eponymous Patsy, who leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica to follow Cicely, her oldest friend, to New York. Beating with the pulse of a long-withheld confession and peppered with lilting patois, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to love whomever she chooses, bravely putting herself first. But to survive as an undocumented immigrant, Patsy is forced to work as a nanny, while back in Jamaica her…
I am an intrepid traveler and appreciate the perspective that traveling affords and the humanity it can engender. I have had the good fortune of traveling to over 60 countries, and for all my books, I have not only traveled to the country or place where they have been set but spent time learning and living the culture. I am a book and world lover, and if I can’t physically go there, I can be transported there through books.
I just could not put this book down. Apart from learning new things a mile a minute, my vocabulary increased. Sinclair takes a deep dive into the life and culture of Rastafarians, and since I love Bob Marley, this was especially intriguing. Most of all, she can write—I mean really write.
With echoes of Educated and Born a Crime, How to Say Babylon is the stunning story of the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid Rastafarian upbringing, ruled by her father’s strict patriarchal views and repressive control of her childhood, to find her own voice as a woman and poet.
Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, became obsessed with her purity, in particular, with the threat of what Rastas call Babylon, the immoral and corrupting influences of the Western world outside their home. He worried that…
Where does that dark passage really lead?
Could that crazy drainage area really be a secret base for small aliens?
Just walking down the streets as a child these were the kinds of thoughts that would swirl through my mind. I would see passages to parallel worlds, or the signs of a hidden world everywhere I looked. They really were all around us, kept out of our perception by some spell or grand camouflage device.
Part of being a writer I really enjoy is creating secret, hidden worlds, alternate realities, exploring the possibilities, and looking at all the dark passageways to see if there is a portal there.
An absent-minded, modern-day scientist is pulled out of time, finding himself in a medieval England of a parallel universe. He is mistaken for a sorcerer and starts using his knowledge to make a name for himself.
I know all of that may sound cliche, the story is anything but.
I was especially drawn to the big bad of the story, who is so powerful that he can hear that narrator and start to argue with him in some great fourth-wall-breaking moments that turn out to be more than just humorous exchanges.
I found this to be a fun series that really plays around with some common fantasy concepts and has fun with it all, not taking itself too seriously.
Magic Is Alive, Science Is Afoot….Trying to discover time travel, absent-minded genius Dr. Marvin Brewster accidentally transports himself to a parallel universe where magic really works … a land that resembles medieval England, but is populated by leprechauns, virgin-hating unicorns, coffee drinking beatnik vampire elves, rapping Rastafarian grunge dwarves, philosophically musing dragons, ambulatory vegetation, bumbling outlaws, gorgeous brigand queens, cursed were-princes and evil wizards. In a world where science is unknown, Brewster’s knowledge results in his being mistaken for a sorcerer … but the real sorcerers have a powerful, exclusive guild, and Brewster’s not a member. As he searches for…
I’ve experienced vivid dreams ever since I was a child, which led me to begin reading about the metaphysical universe at an early age, obsessed with anything and everything “unknown.” It is truly fascinating how various themes like paranormal activity, magic, the afterlife, reincarnation, and spiritual beliefs can all tie into one another. Yet, there aren’t many books that intertwine all the subjects into one. I truly believe that although every topic is vastly unique in certain aspects, they share similarities and can all be connected. I am a multi-genre author, however writing in this area is my passion.
The information in this book is in a whole new realm, literally! I have never read anything quite like this, and it was fascinating to delve into the human brain under the trance that Dolores Cannon was able to induce. The level of detail in each subject was described in the afterlife, soul contracts, and heaven was mind-blowing.
This was a book I could not put down. I turned the pages to hear what the next person had to say. It was one of the most interesting books I have ever read.
A well-written book that is a curious reminder that our in-between life with all its information lies within our subconscious.
Dolores has accumulated information about the Death experience and what lies beyond through 16 years of hypnotic research and past-life therapy. While retrieving past-life experiences, hundreds of subjects reported the same memories when experiencing their death, the spirit realm, and their rebirth.
This book also explores: * Guides and guardian angels * Ghosts and poltergeists * Planning your present lifetime and karmic relationships before your birth * The significance of bad lifetimes * Perceptions of God and the Devil *…
I’m a clairaudient medium and I’ve been a professional tarot card reader for 23 years. Delving into past lives is not only something I’m fascinated with but something I do for my spiritual business, as well. The most important part for my clients is not only knowing about their past lives but understanding how the struggles and lessons learned in those lives are applicable to their present life on this planet. History repeats itself is not just a cliche; I’ve always known how important it is to process and release these karmic teachings.
This is the very first book that I ever picked up regarding past lives back when I was 18 years old and wandering through a bookshop. It presents compelling evidence on the continuation of our souls through the accounts of children who vividly recall their past lives.
Reading their stories, I was filled with awe and a sense of wonder about the vastness of our existence beyond this lifetime. The book challenged my worldview, inviting me to question and explore the concept of reincarnation from a scientific perspective, and how this awareness could bring about healing and transformation in my present life.
For nearly seven decades psychiatrist Dr. Ian Stevenson has been travelling the world, tracking reports of children who claim to have lived before. Spontaneously they will recall vivid details about complete strangers who died before they were born, people they say they once were. And when the memories are checked against the facts of real lives, they match to an astonishing degree. It took journalist Tom Shroder years to persuade Dr. Stevenson to allow him to accompany him on his field research, the first ever to have that privilege. From the hills of Beirut, Lebanon to the slums of northern…
I’m a historian of modern China in the department of Chinese at the University of Oxford. I started off working on the twentieth century but have been drawn back into the Qing dynasty. It’s such an interesting and important period and one that British students often don’t know much about!
I loved this book because I learned so much new about the Qianlong emperor and his relations with Tibet, how the eighteenth-century Qing state went about actually influencing the appointment of the incarnate lamas (like the Dalai Lama) who ruled Tibet.
Of course, all this has huge implications for Tibet now, but unlike the other books on this list, which I’ve recommended because I found them useful or a pleasure to read, this one is here because it is an exciting new scholarship.
In 1995, the People's Republic of China resurrected a Qing-era law mandating that the reincarnations of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monks be identified by drawing lots from a golden urn. The Chinese Communist Party hoped to limit the ability of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile to independently identify reincarnations. In so doing, they elevated a long-forgotten ceremony into a controversial symbol of Chinese sovereignty in Tibet.
In Forging the Golden Urn, Max Oidtmann ventures into the polyglot world of the Qing empire in search of the origins of the golden urn tradition. He seeks to understand the relationship between…
I’m a writer, journalist, satirist, and novelist. I’ve written humor and satire for McSweeney’s, The New Yorker’s Daily Shouts, The Belladonna, and other publications, often about subjects that make me angry, sad, or both. Sometimes I write as a way to process, to vent, and to make fun of myself. I wrote a humor piece called "Turn Your Princess Toddler Into a Feminist in 8 Easy Steps." The New York Times published it, and it went viral. There was so much interest in the piece it prompted me to start researching the topic of princess obsessed girls. That research became my nonfiction book – The Feminist’s Guide to Raising a Little Princess.
No living writer rivals Hillary Mantel in terms of sheer accomplishment and talent, so it might be annoying for us mortals to learn that on top of it all, she is also very, very funny. Fludd was a wonderful surprise for me after reading her previous works. A mysterious curate joins the parish of a small, bleak British and Catholic town whose priest has lost his faith and whose parishioners are wallowing in superstition. What could possibly go wrong? Mantel elegantly satirizes the eccentricities and harsh judgments of the religious townsfolk, while giving us a thoroughly pleasurable read about faith and love.
A novel featuring Fludd who investigates what happened to Lazarus, after he was raised from the dead. To follow up his search he impersonates a Roman Catholic priest. It is not immediately apparent that he is an impostor and he receives a curiously hostile reception.
