Seven top novels about maps with hidden secrets

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, where she rode horses and trained in classical ballet. She earned her M.F.A. in creative writing from New York University, and has lived in Beijing, London, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York. The Book of M is her first novel.

[Writers Read: Peng Shepherd (June 2018)]

Shepherd's new novel is The Cartographers.

At Electric Lit she tagged seven favorite books about mysterious maps, including:

The City We Became by NK Jemisin

The City We Became may be set in New York City, but it’s just as fantastical, if not more so, than all of the other novels on this list. The map that accompanies this book at first looks like a simple tourist map of New York, with some doodles and notes in the margins. What are little monsters doing in Queens? Why is there a list of other similarly gigantic cities scribbled at the bottom? As one reads further, these doodles and notes turn out to mark key points in the book, and, true to form, map a path to follow through the story.

In Jemisin’s creation, cities start out as just cities, but if they survive long enough (on the order of centuries or millennia), they eventually come alive. And not in the metaphorical sense. Cities turn into living, breathing entities—embodied in a person. In New York’s case, each of the five boroughs creates their own human manifestation. But there’s another dark force out there, a power that destroys living cities in order to steal their energy—and it knows that New York is awake now. These five newly-born souls must find each other and figure out how to work together before their young lives, and fierce city, are extinguished.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue