My name is Tyeshia Sturgis, aka T. L. Sturgis. I’m an American author of horror, thriller, and fantasy. In the fantasy genre, I wanted to write something that I enjoyed reading about, and who doesn't like vampires right? My passion came from both newer and older authors and I wanted to write my vampire series but with a new world. Through hard work and dedication, I believe that I've accomplished just that. I knew it would be a challenge… but it helped me become a better writer. I write/read 6-8 hours a day and love what I do and also help mentor other authors and try to motivate people to read and write more.
Yes, I'm recommending the same author and another book in the series but I had to. I have a thing for badass female vampires. This book gave me just that. Anne Rice is by far my greatest writer when it comes to vampires. The way she describes things puts you inside the character's minds and the way they feel. It’s seductive and spicy. Another book part of a series that will have you wanting more. Love, horror, and suspense. Again this is another book that had me feeling emotional. I even caught myself yelling at the characters (as if they could hear me). Outstanding book and series altogether and I highly recommend it. Rest in peace Anne Rice, you are truly missed.
***The Vampire Chronicles is soon to be a major TV show***
After 6,000 years of horrifying stillness, Akasha, mother of all vampires and Queen of the Damned, has risen from her sleep to let loose the powers of the night.
But her monstrous plan for ruling the worlds of the living and the undead must be stopped before she destroys mankind, and it falls to the vampire Lestat to fight her all-encompassing evil - for it is he who challenged her power by waking her from sleep.
Also in the Vampire Chronicles: Interview with the Vampire The Vampire Lestat The…
Picking up a fantasy novel and getting away from real-world problems is an escape for me. Even though many of these issues don’t exist in our lives, we can still learn from the way the characters deal with their struggles. We can find compassion and empathy and maybe see that there are two sides to every story. Along the way, we also get to see stunning vistas and amazing, mythical creatures.
Hunt gives us a different type of werewolf. One who is just trying to find his place in the world. His journey gave me all the feels. I loved being a part of Josh’s journey and seeing him find a life instead of just going through the motions of day-to-day life.
Discover an exciting YA supernatural romance series about vengeful werewolves, a desperate love, and the darkness in everyone’s heart. Perfect for fans of "Twilight" and the "Shiver" series!
Blue eyes, raven hair—and a terrible secret.
Life in Shatterlake is pretty laid back. I go to high school, live on a farm, and lead a normal, quite life. When I meet Josh, however, there is something intriguing about this young man. He’s gentle and kind, but always cautious and distant. As my feelings for him grow, I make a horrifying discovery.
As an organizational psychologist, I am driven to study and work to improve work activities that are causing great frustration and not working effectively—meetings are the perfect fit. And, for 20 years I have been actively publishing in this space and have spoken to well over 100,000 leaders through my keynotes/events/videos. What excites me is that meeting science can truly help leaders, teams, and organizations. The books I recommend are well-aligned with the science, and can be difference makers. I hope you enjoy them and find them helpful.
There are many reasons to really like this book. It is certainly thoughtful, intriguing, and well-grounded. The advice and guidance around meetings are plentiful and meaningful. I particularly appreciated that it addresses meeting practices that high-performing organizations use to drive results and build an excellent meeting culture. Overall, I appreciate the systems-based approach to addressing meeting issues.
How well you meet determines what your group can achieve
When you ask leaders in a high performing organization about the key to their success, the answers are all over the place: failing fast, radical transparency, operational excellence, strong core values... so many different North Stars to follow.
Then, if you ask them for an example–to tell you what that looks like in practice–they will all describe a meeting. Leaders at these organizations have learned to design a sequence of tailored meetings that create a healthy organizational culture and drive forward momentum. They know that meetings are where the action…
Like most people, I started to think about the end of the world during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of learning how to bake sourdough bread, I read stories and made art about the apocalypse. The true and catastrophic experiences of people throughout history interested me so much that the project turned into a book. My background in printmaking and illustration has formed my approach to visualizing narrative scenes using crisp black and white linocut prints. My current position as a studio art professor has given me practice in providing information concisely. I try to entertain as much as inform.
Big plans for the afterlife? Go prepared. Martin Olson’sEncyclopaedia of Hell and its sequel Encyclopaedia of Heaven can answer all your questions about God, the Devil, and whatever mess we’re currently stuck in. Every page is uniquely designed, entertaining, and beautifully illustrated. To remind you not to take the End so seriously, it satirizes the hell out of our world. Like my favorite things in life, it manages to be both dark and funny.
A tour de force of darkness, Encyclopaedia of Hell is a manual of Earth written by Lord Satan for his invading hordes of demons, complete with hundreds of unpleasant illustrations, diagrams, and a comprehensive and utterly repulsive dictionary of Earth terms.
Since the customs and mores of humanity are alien and inconceivable to demons, Satan wrote this strangely poetic military handbook for the enlightenment and edification of his demon armies. A masterpiece expressing Satan's hatred for humanity and himself, the Encyclopaedia includes "Techniques of Stalking and Eating Humans," "Methods of Canning Human Pus," and "Dicing and Slicing Orphaned Children."
I’ve loved, I’ve lost, and everything in between! Just like my protagonist, Jenna, in Just Call Me Confidence, life imitated art and I took a page from her “book,” having to begin anew. I’ve been the friend who has entertained all sorts of stories—sex, love, and rock n’ roll (wink, wink)—all without judgment. That role in my life continues, and what I’ve discovered in my “research” is this: Sex is wonderful, but there’s no greater joy than loving someone, even if it’s only for a little while. Read more about my take on sex, love, and rock n’ roll on my blog “Bone Up.”
Gemma James hooked me at the title—Swallow Me Whole—and delivered on the naughty bits, dirty lies, and BDSM/dark vibe.
This friends-to-lovers trope made me want to high-five Sadie for having the guts to go for it with Ashton, and to kick the men in her life to the curb who won’t support her independence.
What I really like is that the initial “arrangement” between Sadie and Ashton hits on the perfect note of hot and intriguing as hell. Clever quips between characters offer a comic relief that shows they’re into each other way beyond sex.
There’s actually a great plot that unfolds where the reader will root for Ashton’s evolution into the man who allows Sadie the freedom to find who she’s meant to be: a confident, sexy woman.
Maurice Sendak said, "Children do live in fantasy and reality, they move back and forth very easily in a way we no longer remember how to do." In other words, children do the impossible. Growing up, stories where the real and imagined collided were like fresh air when I felt like I couldn't breathe. They've always been important to me, and for many reasons, hold a special place in our literature. Now, as a full-time teacher, writer, and daddy, I get to be on the other side of that joy equation, guiding new readers and writers as they become travelers of the fantastic.
This book is brain candy. Rick’s writing style immediately pulled me into the story. First-person is hard to do right without going overboard, but Rick set the perfect balance of action and internal voice. It also helps that the relationship between Percy’s stepfather and mine was as close to identical as a fantasy novel can get.
And while I know it’s not the first to do it, this was the first middle-grade book I read where the main character was neurodivergent and dealing with a lot of the same issues that I did and that many of my students do as well.
The Lightning Thief: the First book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series.
The first bestselling book in Rick Riordan's phenomenally successful Percy Jackson series.
Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood. I never asked to be the son of a Greek God. I was just a normal kid, going to school, playing basketball, skateboarding. The usual. Until I accidentally vaporized my maths teacher. That's when things started really going wrong. Now I spend my time fighting with swords, battling monsters with my friends, and generally trying to stay alive.
I have written seven novels to date that have at their heart the idea that there is a wider, unseen game afoot that is being played out in realms about which normal humans are unaware. Six of them form the Allie St Clair ‘Black’ series, and the seventh is a stand-alone novel called The Unforgiver. Why do I write about these things? Very probably my teenage reading of Stephen King’s early work, HP Lovecraft’s collection, and my personal connection to Satan. Just kidding. I’ve never read any Lovecraft. To be serious, how can you not gaze into the infinite cosmos above and not wonder if there’s a lot more going on than we comprehend?
U.K. author Stephen Leather has written so many books and in a variety of genres. His supernatural Detective Jack Nightingale series is of interest to me here. In Nightfall and subsequent Jack Nightingale novels, our hero is struggling against demonic forces brought into his orbit courtesy of his now-dead father. Unusual, certainly. Many readers, I suspect, enjoy the injection of a new element into the now-crowded police procedural genre.
'You're going to hell, Jack Nightingale': They are words that ended his career as a police negotiator. Now Jack's a struggling private detective -- and the chilling words come back to haunt him. Nightingale's life is turned upside down the day that he inherits a mansion with a priceless library; it comes from a man who claims to be his father, and it comes with a warning. That Nightingale's soul was sold at birth and a devil will come to claim it on his thirty-third birthday -- just three weeks away. Jack doesn't believe in Hell, probably doesn't believe in…
I was one of those kids who wanted to understand everything. Early on, I worked at a research laboratory and majored in biology. When studies in religion and philosophy offered an even deeper level of inquiry, I turned to archeology, anthropology, psychology, and linguistic analysis. Over the years, I was a counselor for people at the end of life, taught college philosophy, and a cultural approach to religion. I have traveled throughout western Kenya, Guyana, New Zealand, Alaska, and Labrador. I also listened for the stories of the people. Additionally, I have sailed for more than forty years. I write about what I know, and about what still puzzles me.
C.S. Lewis is widely known for his children’s book series, The Chronicles of Narnia. His list of publications is, however, much longer. This little volume of essays gives a reader (or a writer) insight into how the form of a story shapes its meaning. For instance, he writes about stories for children and how some authors mistakenly think that children are only interested in childish things. He compares that to people who have the gift of being able to access the child that is still in them and speak with them in a shared experience.
Of science fiction, he shares the difference between an author who is a creator of worlds, and one who rearranges alien props to make a pedestrian story appear clever. The key is a story that makes contact with the reader.
The theme of this collection is the excellence of the Story, especially the kind of story dear to Lewis-fantasy and science fiction, which he fostered in an age dominated by realistic fiction. On Stories is a companion volume to Lewis’s collected shorter fiction, The Dark Tower and Other Stories. Edited and with a Preface by Walter Hooper.
My fields at the University of Notre Dame, where I teach and do research, are philosophy and literature, and I have often been attracted to broader questions. I found ugliness to be a topic of considerable fascination, also for students, and yet it has almost never been addressed. I wrote the book to discover for myself what ugliness is and what it has to do with beauty.
When I was interviewing for a position at Notre Dame, the campus museum had an exhibit of illustrations for Dante’sInferno, which reinforced to me the fascination of Dante.
When I began teaching the work a few years later, my students were engrossed by its riveting portrayals of moral ugliness. They were also amazed that Dante places even popes in hell. The work has so inspired my students that one of them submitted her final paper in terza rima, the form Dante uses, and another reflected on where precisely in hell she might belong.
This beautifully translated bilingual edition contains extensive, helpful commentary.
“Probably the most finely accomplished and ... most enduring" translation (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of this essential work of world literature—from a renowned scholar and master teacher of Dante and an accomplished poet.
“The Hollanders … act as latter-day Virgils, guiding us through the Italian text that is printed on the facing page.” —The Economist
The epic grandeur of Dante’s masterpiece has inspired readers for 700 years, andhas entered the human imagination. But the further we move from the late medieval world of Dante, the more a rich understanding and enjoyment of the poem depends on knowledgeable guidance. Robert…
I've been writing spooky stories for the better half of my life. Reading
and writing horror has always been a strangely therapeutic endeavor.
It's a way to process the things that keep me up at night and force them
into a somewhat manageable form. After all, tangible words on the page
are less worrisome than swirling thoughts in the mind. And a surprising
number of people seem to agree. As absurd as that may sound, many of us
troubled souls find comfort in the horror genre.
"There is a despair that goes deeper than existence; it runs to the
marrow of consciousness, to the seat of the soul."
In this brief but brilliant masterpiece, the afterlife is a
(nearly) infinite library. That doesn't sound so bad, right? Just wait.
With each page turn, I found myself sinking deeper and deeper into a
state of existential dread. Immersive, heartbreaking, and profound, I
would've been happy to stay in this hell a good while longer.
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.
