Sponsored by National Geographic Books
Packed with innovative travel ideas and inspiring photographs, this gift-worthy bucket list reference features 1,000 dream escapes from beach retreats to mountain resorts, exotic cities and wild adventures around the world. Whether you’re looking for a way to unplug from the busy work week, take the family on a quick getaway, or add a weekend to a vacation itinerary, this practical and inspiring book provides the perfect way to plan your next escape.
Sponsored by Astra House, dedicated to publishing authors across genres and from around the world.
Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s Dreaming of You is an absurd yet heartfelt examination of celebrity worship. A young Latinx poet grappling with loneliness and heartache decides one day to bring Tejano pop star Selena Quintanilla back to life. The séance kicks off an uncanny trip narrated by a Greek chorus of gossiping spirits as she journeys through a dead celebrity prom, encounters her shadow self, and performs karaoke in hell. Playfully morbid and profoundly candid, an interrogation of Latinidad, womanhood, obsession, and disillusionment, Dreaming of You grapples with the cost of being seen for your truest self.
Welcome to In The Club, a newsletter of resources to keep your book group well-met, well-read, and well-fed.
Book club friends! Before we get to the books, I wanted to remind you that it’s the last week to get your hands on some Book Riot anniversary merch that I must say is perfect for fall. The gold sweatshirt is hella cute, by the way.
As for the latest in my bookish life, I just recorded a great Hey YA episode with my cohost Kelly Jensen that includes some YA retellings and airs today *ahem*. Thinking about retellings in general made my mind wander to ones based on Greek mythology, as there are so many. I feel like there are a few that come out each year, and, although I love them, I sometimes wonder why it’s such a popular category. Is it because they’re such good representations of the human condition? Or are people simply reliving familiar tales from their childhood and making them new?
What do you think? As you mull the question over, let’s get to the club!
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It’s about that time! Time for me to bust out the pie pans and try to recreate that buttery magic my grandmother made all through my childhood. I was prompted to include a great recipe for pecan pie by an article featuring another foodie showdown. This time, the best recipe for punkin pie was at stake (or steak?… heh). For Thanksgiving and/or Christmas gatherings I attend, I like to make both a pecan pie and a pumpkin one. If you’re thinking, Erica, that’s a bit much. Yes, yes it is, and to that I say “and what about it?” I have no shame in my game.
Revel in this delicious tradition (laced with whiskey), courtesy of Toni Tipton-Martin at Texas Monthly. Here’s another one by Jocelyn over at Grandbaby Cakes that doesn’t have a paywall.
Book Club Bonus: Years ago, I watched a documentary on mythologies that said that the harshness in mythology is supposed to represent the harshness of life. The stories where the hero is facing some beast or god were meant as analogies of Man vs. The Elements. I think that same struggle is kept central to the plot in the books I mention below, as they are told from the perspective of people that have been marginalized— whether it be because of race, class, or gender— who are up against their own version of The Elements. Discuss how accurate you think these analogies are. Also, what did these adaptions grant the original story? What did they take away?
Isma has been recently freed from the shackles of older-sister-itis— a moment of silence for her, because I honestly feel you, girl. Her role of caretaker to her younger siblings was brought on by the death of her mother years prior. She’s since accepted a mentor’s invitation to finally go after a dream she’s been delaying. She leaves her home in London to start earning her PhD in America, but can’t stop thinking about her younger siblings: the fiery and gorgeous Aneeka and Parvaiz, who wishes to realize his absentee father’s jihadist dreams. In America, Isma crosses paths with Eamonn Lone, whose powerful father wins favor back home with Islamophobic propaganda. As the two families become intertwined, romance, intolerance, and familial loyalty are explored in this retelling of Antigone.
I hesitated to add this one as it is already pretty popular. I decided to, anyway, as I really enjoyed it and I can’t resist mentioning a good witch protagonist.
“When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.”
So starts the novel, which follows the titular character who is neither powerful like her father Helios, nor breathtakingly beautiful like her mother Perse. Instead, she’s largely seen as unremarkable as she searches for acceptance and love in the world of the gods. When she is banished to the island of Aeaea, Circe realizes her innate magic and takes to learning about herbs and potions as she surrounds herself with lions. I love how Circe’s magic is treated here. It’s a natural, comfortable thing that works as if she were merely having a thought at times. As she continues to step into her own, she takes on several, powerful mythical figures, lovers, and motherhood. Her journey sees her gradually rising above the scorn directed at her by other immortals.
“I did not go easy to motherhood. I faced it as soldiers face their enemies, girded and braced, sword up against the coming blows. Yet all my preparations were not enough.”
As ancient as the character is, many of her concerns are modern.
Young poultry farmer Chinonso intervenes when he sees Ndali preparing to jump off a bridge. In a bid to demonstrate the finality of what she’s contemplating, he throws his two prized chickens off the bridge. The young woman is moved by his demonstration and goes on to have a relationship with him. Issues arise, however, in the form of Ndali’s educated family disapproving of Chinonso’s lowly farmer status. As a result, he decides to go to college, a decision that puts him on a life changing journey that will show how far he’s willing to go to change his lot in life. A lot of traditional Igbo spirituality is incorporated in this reimagining of the The Odyssey. Case in point, it’s narrated by Chinonso’s Chi— or life force— which has been summoned in front of the almighty creator to represent Chinonso in a hearing that will determine his guilt in a serious crime.
Ariadne and her sister Phaedra are princesses of Crete that grow up knowing the shame of their Minotaur brother’s existence. The product of their mother Pasiphaë’s obsession with a snow-white bull, the Minotaur stalks the labyrinth built beneath the palace, demanding human blood. When Ariadne falls in love with the prince of Athens, who came to Crete as a sacrifice to her half brother, she has to decide whether to help him or stay loyal to her family and country. This story follows Ariadne through her life, showing her position in a world of powerful gods and cruel men. It’s another great addition to the list of well-known myths being retold from their often silent female characters’ perspectives.
I hope this newsletter found you well, and as always, thanks for hanging out! If you have any comments or just want to connect, send an email to erica@riotnewmedia.com or holla at me on Twitter @erica_eze_ . You can also catch me talking more mess in the new In Reading Color newsletter as well as choppin’ it up with Kelly Jensen on the Hey YA podcast.
Until next week.
-E
A new campaign ad for Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin features a woman who wanted to ban Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved from her son’s school curriculum because it gave him nightmares. The Fairfax County mother Laura Murphy said the Pulitzer Prizer-winning novel was “some of the most explicit material you can imagine. I met with lawmakers. They couldn’t believe what I was showing them. Their faces turned bright red with embarrassment.” Murphy’s son, who was a high school senior at the time of being assigned the novel, said, “It was disgusting and gross…It was hard for me to handle. I gave up on it.” At the time of Murphy’s challenge in 2013, the Fairfax County School Board declined to take up Murphy’s challenge, and it has remained part of the school’s curriculum. Now, Youngkin has tweeted a video of Murphy’s story with the message, “What’s it like to have Terry McAuliffe block you from having a say in your child’s education?”
Brendan Fraser has been cast to play play the villainous Firefly in the upcoming Batgirl movie. Fraser will be playing opposite Leslie Grace, who will play Barbara Gordon/Batgirl. Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Bad Boys for Life) will direct the Warner Bros. film, and Christina Hodson (Bumblebee,The Flash) is writing the screenplay. The project is set to release on HBO Max at some point in 2022. It will be the first DC film to skip theaters and head straight to streaming.
Actress Selma Blair, best known for her roles in Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde, is set to release a memoir in April 2022. The memoir is from Knopf press and is entitled Mean Baby, which is a reference to Blair’s earliest memory of herself. Apparently, the actress “was a disagreeable child with a terrible disposition” and got into the bad habit of biting her three sisters. According to the book’s news release, the memoir will explore “a childhood spent in worship of her mother, an adolescence of love and pain, her destructive ways of coping with an illness she did not know she had, her life as a model and muse, her struggles and successes in Hollywood, and her battle with depression as a young mother.”
Audiobooks are more popular than ever, and yet somehow people are still questioning whether listening to audiobooks counts as reading. It’s time to stop asking this question and embrace the audiobooks!
Sponsored by Tordotcom Publishing
Comfort Me With Apples is a new thriller from bestseller Catherynne M. Valente for fans of Gone Girl and Spinning Silver. Sophia was made for him. Her perfect husband. She can feel it in her bones. Everything is perfect. It’s just that he’s away so much. She misses him. And he misses her. He says he does, so it must be true. But sometimes Sophia wonders about things. Strange things. Dark things. The look on her husband’s face when he returns from a business trip. The locked basement she is never allowed to enter. But everything is perfect. Isn’t it?
Hello mystery fans! Got a bunch of new releases for all the reading tastes so I’m jumping right in.
If you’re looking for a deep dive into a journalist’s life that takes you through her work and personal life as she reports on what starts as a missing child case, grab this one. You get inside the life of a reporter, community activism, politics, and a case from beginning to end. (TW teen murder sexual assault not on page, recounted by medical examiner/ discussions of sexual assault cases; predators and groomers, not graphic/ brief suicide on page/ mentions past murders by domestic abuse partners)
If you want a page-turner with corporate intrigue, family drama, past and present chapters, and a lawyer MC that becomes the main suspect, this was one of my rare reads this year that kept me up past my bedtime! (Review)
If you like cozies, food, and want to start a brand new series, here’s your next delicious read, set in South Florida! Bonus: recipes! (Review)
The sequel to An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good is finally here! I would recommend reading the first because it’s fun but also this one starts at the end of that one, and even though it’s stories of her past, it still tells you how the last one ended and what she’s doing now. Spoiler: still up to no good.
I really liked Fallen Mountains and have been anticipating Kimi Cunningham Grant’s next novel. This is set in the Appalachian woods where a man and young girl live cut off from the world except for two people who know they are there. When one of them doesn’t show up for his yearly trip to bring them their food supply, things begin to unravel…
If you want a cozy mystery that feels written for fans of Practical Magic (widow, magic, witches, family) with a murder mystery, here you go. And perfect vibes for fall reading if you’re a mood reader.
A fantastic way to find great new mystery writers is through an anthology filled with short stories by awesome crime writers. Steph Cha has taken over the annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology and her first editor selected was Alafair Burke, who produced this collection. If you’re curious about the stories, Steph Cha posted a Twitter thread!
Here’s a dark and twisty school mystery that is set in 1940s Washington, DC. Two teenage girls try to solve the murder of a classmate and determine why one of their teachers has dramatically changed. This sounds like a great read if you’re looking for a nod to the femme fatale noir classics.
If you’re a fan of Nordic noir and want the dark storytelling without graphic violence on the page, here’s one with a journalist lead! It’s especially for fans of the trope “a person on the run reaches out to a journalist who gets mixed into the murder plot.” (TW: discussions of sexual assault and child abuse)
If you’re looking for a procedural series set in Chicago, here’s the sequel to Only The Holy Remain. This time around the murder mystery Detective Frank Calhoun is working on is of a rookie police officer and a social worker.
Mystery meets quirky, comedic, and paranormal: a travel agent who is psychic, and has a murdered fiancé, teams up with a Seattle PD detective to solve a cold case.
Let’s get into the whole “cozy mystery” subgenre for a second: it, like the romance genre, has rules–albeit very different ones. There is no sex, cursing, or graphic violence on page in a cozy mystery. While many readers of the subgenre are only looking for the “cozy” feeling and don’t necessarily care or realize the rules, they are still there. I say all this because I’ve seen this book labeled a cozy mystery even though it breaks the actual genre rules and I hate to see a book not find its intended audience–meaning I don’t want readers who read the genre for the very specific rules to then go tank the ratings because there is swearing and talk of sex. You do get the cozy vibes of baking and small town, without graphic violence– but toss in a lead who can be abrasive as she many times blurts out what she’s thinking before editing the thought, and has a business of making macabre desserts (yum!). Not only is she going to have to figure out who killed her ex-boyfriend’s uncle, but she may want to take care to not be on the list of next to die…
And I’ll end October with two blockbuster books. The first, on a sad note since this was posthumously published. It is of course about the spy world and ties the past to the present, but fans will also probably be thrilled to discover it’s set in an English seaside town and follows Julian Lawndsley who has just taken over a bookshop.
Hillary Clinton teamed up with Louise Penny, her IRL friend and the author of the very popular mystery series Chief Inspector Armand Gamache to write a political thriller. I’m currently listening to the audiobook and am especially curious to see how much feels overlapped to her being the main character–I may have LOLed at her having made the character a widow.
Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. See upcoming 2021 releases. Check out this Unusual Suspects Pinterest board and get Tailored Book Recommendations!
Until next time, keep investigating! In the meantime, come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canavés.
If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own, you can sign up here.
Sponsored by The Creative Gene by Hideo Kojima
Metal Gear Solid and Death Stranding creator Hideo Kojima has always been a voracious consumer of movies, music, and books, igniting his passion for stories and storytelling, resulting in his groundbreaking, iconic video games. Now the head of independent studio Kojima Productions, Kojima’s enthusiasm for entertainment media has never waned. This collection of essays explores some of the inspirations behind one of the titans of the video game industry, and offers an exclusive insight into one of the brightest minds in pop culture.
GREETINGS to this, the last week of October. How did we get here! I don’t know! All I know is I have suddenly been reading like a FIEND. A reading fiend. And now I have realized we don’t really use the word “fiend” anymore. Regardless, getting through lots of books this month, which I attribute to the coziness of cold weather and a panic at the few remaining months of the year.
This is definitely my lowest year, reading stats-wise, in QUITE some time, but it’s also the second year of an event that has turned lives worldwide upside-down, so….that’s fine. Enjoy these new releases!
A gift item for you or a loved one! Or for an enemy if you really wanna CONFUSE them. This is a coffee table book with behind-the-scenes info, chit-chat, and illustrations of David’s sweaters and Moira’s wigs I cannot emphasize this enough. So exciting. Wow.
Author Contreras is an authority on human genetics law (again I say — there’s something for everyone). Here he dives into the case where an attorney “discovered that women were being charged exorbitant fees to test for hereditary breast and ovarian cancers, tests they desperately needed—all because Myriad Genetics had patented the famous BRCA genes.” They patented genes! So this attorney (Chris Hansen), the ACLU, and a whole team took the case to the Supreme Court. I do love a book that gets real into one court case.
Okay, so we know about the weirdo Brontës and their graveyard house, but what about their mother! This is a biography of Maria Branwell (yes! Branwell! like their ne’er-do-well brother), who died at 38 (Charlotte was six at this time) and moved from Cornwall to Yorkshire, which was probably pretty tough. What do we know of her? How did she influence her children? True questions we should get into in this bio.
This cover is so spooky! This is cool because we only hear about Salem or sometimes the witch trials in England during the 1640s, but not during the Spanish Inquisition (you probably didn’t expect that) or in Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas. This features ten essay portraits of women, which “study their subjects’ social status, particularize their motivations, determine the characteristics of their prosecution, and deduce the reasons used to justify violence against them.” And again — please look at that spooky cover.
For more nonfiction reads, check out the For Real podcast which I co-host with the excellent Kim here at Book Riot. If you have any questions/comments/book suggestions, you can find me on social media @itsalicetime. Until next time, enjoy those facts, fellow nerds.
Sponsored by MIRA Books
While Europe enters a brutal conflict, Ruth and Elise Duncan long to escape the roles that society, and their controlling father, demand they play. Together, the sisters volunteer for the war effort. Stationed at a hospital in Belgium, Ruth soon confronts war’s harshest lesson: not everyone can be saved. Rising above the appalling conditions, she seizes an opportunity to realize her dream to practice medicine as a doctor. Elise, an accomplished mechanic, finds purpose and an unexpected kinship within the all-female Ambulance Corps. Through bombings, heartache and loss, Ruth and Elise cherish an independence rarely granted to women.
When I think about historical fiction and historical fantasy, I usually think of them as entirely separate genres. But really historical fantasy is a subgenre of both fantasy and historical fiction. It’s not only perfectly valid and a fun confluence of genres, it also seems very seasonally appropriate, doesn’t it?
As we get closer and closer to Halloween, I’ve been exploring historical fiction that fits in with this classic themes of witches and horror and magic because historical fiction is so much more than just books on WWII. (Not to say that some of those books aren’t great, too.) So historical fiction with a hint of magic seems like just the thing. These five examples explore different periods and settings in history, but a slight touch of magic weaved in makes them a little less plausible and all the more fantastic.
In New York’s Gilded Age, three women come together to use their magic to stand strong in a time when society was hell-bent on keeping them down. When Beatrice Dunn responds to a strange ad–“Respectable Lady Seeks Dependable Shop Girl. Those averse to magic need not apply”–she’s not sure what to expect. What she gets is Adelaide Thom and Eleanor St. Clair, proprietors of a teashop that deals in more than just tea leaves.
Found under a bridge covered in a blanket of bees, Simonopio seems to some the stuff of superstition, cursed by the devil. But Simonopio loves his adopted family, who see him as simply a boy in need of a home, dearly. And he is determined to use his gifts of premonition and his herd of protective bees to keep them safe from anything that threatens them.
In a world reminiscent of Parisian society where manners and reputation are everything, a young woman is swept up in the torrid love affair of a famed showman and her uncle’s unforgiving wife. Nina is dazzled when Hector Auvray arrives in town, hoping to learn more about the telekinetic powers he is known for, powers which she herself possesses. Hector helps Nina hone her gifts, but his affections are secretly withheld, already sworn to another: Nina’s aunt Valerie, his first love. But in spite of her strangeness, in spite of the powers society shuns in a woman, in spite of her love for beetles and the innocence she is soon to lose to an older man toying with her heart, Nina has greater potential that any of them realize.
When Hiram’s mother is sold away, he’s robbed of all his memories of her. But he’s also left with a rare power, one that, years later, saves him from drowning. He’s left with a determination to escape enslavement, traveling from the plantations of Virginia to the dangerously idealistic movements in the North. Even as he becomes involved in the underground moment to free people from slavery, he never forgets his resolve to save the family he left behind.
Though half of this beautiful magical realism novel take place in present day, the other half explores Orquídea Divina’s past as part of a traveling circus in Ecuador, slowly revealing the answers her grandchildren seek in the present. The subtle magic weaved throughout makes this book even more poignant, with the gifts and curses of a family’s past stretching out into the present.
Ta-Nehisi Coates talks race, American, and his debut novel The Water Dancer in this interview.
An interview with Zoraida Córdova about magical realism and The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina.
Why the English translation of Sofía Segovia’s The Murmur of Bees arrived right on time.
Exciting news: both The Witches of New York and The Water Dancer are slated for adaptations, the latter by Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt.
That’s it for now, folx! Stay subscribed for more stories of yesteryear.
If you want to talk books (historical or otherwise), you can find me @rachelsbrittain on Instagram, Goodreads, Litsy, and occasionally Twitter.
Right now I’m reading The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins. What about you?
Sponsored by Penguin Random House & Underlined
The start of an epic new fantasy series, Children of Blood and Bone meets The Little Mermaid in this West African inspired historical fantasy debut by Natasha Bowen that is perfect for fans of Sabaa Tahir and Roseanne A. Brown. Simi is a Mami Wata—a mermaid—bound by the laws of gods and charged with blessing the souls of slaves lost at sea. But when Simi does the unthinkable and saves the life of a boy instead, she finds herself in the deepest trouble at the bottom of the sea.
Sponsored by Rocketship Entertainment
5 minutes in the future… A virus is attacking people who abuse others on the internet. Comedic ass-kickings are occurring across the country by a sentient electronic entity that appears through the personal devices of bullies and babies alike. Who or what is Outrage? An FBI team has narrowed it down to the employees of Re:Solutions International, a global charity organization. And the youth of the world – the social outcasts, paranoids, victors and victims alike – are starting to believe that Outrage should be emulated. Written by legendary Marvel scribe Fabian Nicieza and illustrated by the artist of the 2021 best-selling Batman/Fortnite, Reilly Brown.
Sponsored by Wattpad Books, publisher of Rest Easy
When heartsore Dee Warrington and eccentric Naya Stephens both find themselves volunteering at Salvation Hill Nursing Home, the sparks are sadly earthbound. But as they slowly unravel the history of a resident at the home together, they find that some friendships can withstand the test of time. Inspired by a true story, Warona Jolomba shares a tale of love and loss, and a bond that forms in the unlikeliest of places.
Welcome back to In Reading Color, a space where we focus on literature by and about people of color.
Before we get to the books, here’s a little reminder that this is the last week to get a hold of the limited edition Book Riot anniversary gear. There’s a hoodie with the Book Riot logo that is a particularly nice shade of gold, just in case you were wondering.
I’ve mentioned before in another newsletter I write *cough* In the Club *cough* about how science fiction and fantasy (sff) have been foretelling society’s inventions and wrestling with societal ills since forever. Now, I’d like to add to that list of duties: carrier of culture. By that, I mean that some sff that is written by authors of color infuses elements from their native folklore, mythology, or religion, thereby becoming a vessel through which that culture can be shown to and experienced by the reader. The increase in authors of color publishing sff has shown just how many different perspectives and new ideas— things that are so central to sff — we’ve been missing out on.
The books mentioned below combine my adoration of sff with my other love of a good murder mystery. I realized that, although it may be a bit niche, I love a whodunit that has some magical or futuristic elements. I think you will, too.
Elatsoe, or Ellie, is a high school Lipan Apache girl that lives in an America similar to our own. The only difference is that it has been molded by the monsters, spirits, and magic of Indigenous as well as other cultures. Courtesy of her maternal ancestors, Ellie has the ability to raise the ghosts of dead animals. One day, her ghost dog Kirby warns her of danger. She finds out her cousin has been in an accident and is in critical condition. He passes away in the night. She was told he was in a car accident, but before he fully passes into the spirit world, he visits Ellie in a dream to tell her that he was murdered. He begs her to protect his family from the man that murdered him, a man that lives in the mysterious town of Willowbee. Ellie travels down to Texas to find out what really happened to her cousin.
Side note: I’m actually in the process of reading this for our quarterly group reads book club alongside members of our Insiders’ program.
After carrying sleeping passengers for ten years— a necessity for having traveled light years— colony ship Ragtime docks in the Lagos system. As its first mate Shell Campion awakens, she finds things have gone horribly wrong. For one, the A.I. that was meant to be running the ship is running ragged, secondly, and most importantly, people have been murdered. She contacts investigator Rasheed Fin and his artificial partner to figure out what’s happened. The only issue is that she’s a main suspect, and the one that’s been sabotaging the ship and causing deaths is still aboard.
Vân, a poor scholar, and Sunless Woods, a mindship that just so happens to be a master of disguise, previously only knew each other from Vân’s poetry club. When a dead body is found in the room of one of Vân’s students, the two work together to find the culprit. The journey takes them from teahouses to ascetic havens, and even uncovers secrets they’d prefer stayed hidden.
This is another novella in which De Bodard deftly guides us through the Xuya Universe, a fully imagined and unique world. It, like the others, is part space opera and part mystery, and peppered with details from Vietnamese and Chinese culture. Also, the covers for these are beautiful!
TW: self harm
The Good House was built by a pharmacist in 1907, and passed on to Marie Toussaint, a beloved Creole herbalist and Angela Toussaint’s grandmother. Despite its name, the Good House has seen many tragedies. Firstly, Angela’s mother took her own life when Angela was still a child. Years later, after divorcing his father Tariq, her son Corey also commits suicide with his father’s gun. Years later, as Angela tries to repair her legal practice, she goes back to Sacajawea, Washington where the Good House is to confront her ghosts and demons and find out why there has been so much concentrated tragedy there. Keep in mind that this definitely leans towards horror, like some of Due’s other works.
Due’s The Between was chosen for Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club pick earlier this month.
Thanks for reading; it’s been cute! If you want to reach out and connect, email me at erica@riotnewmedia.com or tweet at me @erica_eze_. You can find me on the Hey YA podcast with reigning Queen of YA, Kelly Jensen, as well as in the In The Club newsletter.
Until next time,
-E
