Pg. 69: Claire O’Dell's "A Study in Honor"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: A Study in Honor: A Novel by by Claire O’Dell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Set in a near future Washington, D.C., a clever, incisive, and fresh feminist twist on a classic literary icon—Sherlock Holmes—in which Dr. Janet Watson and covert agent Sara Holmes will use espionage, advanced technology, and the power of deduction to unmask a murderer targeting Civil War veterans.

Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay.

Watson’s readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one—and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery—and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.

Visit Claire O’Dell's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Study in Honor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top gothic novels

Laura Purcell is the author of The Silent Companions and The Corset. One of her five favorite works of gothic fiction, as shared at the Waterstones blog:

The Shining by Stephen King

Veering hard on the horror side of the gothic genre, The Shining takes a modern setting (well, it was modern in 1977) and makes it far more terrifying than an antiquated castle could ever be.

A town cut off by snow and the faded glory of the Overlook Hotel build the atmosphere in Stephen King’s masterpiece, but for me the real meat of the story is in the family drama. How many of the strange goings-on in The Overlook spring from the imagination of a troubled child? Is the father and caretaker Jack Torrance possessed by something dark, or are we just witnesses to his tragic descent into alcoholism? This is horror with a beating human heart.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Shining is among Jeff Somers's five books totally unlike their adaptations, Sam Riedel's six eeriest SFF stories inspired by true events, Joel Cunningham's top seven books featuring long winters, Ashley Brooke Roberts's seven best haunted house books, Jake Kerridge's top ten Stephen King books, Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's top ten horror novels that are scarier than most movies, Charlie Higson's top ten horror books, and Monica Ali's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Clare Mulley's "The Women Who Flew For Hitler"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Women Who Flew For Hitler by Clare Mulley.

About the book, from the publisher:

Biographers' Club Prize-winner Clare Mulley’s The Women Who Flew for Hitler—a dual biography of Nazi Germany's most highly decorated women pilots.

Hanna Reitsch and Melitta von Stauffenberg were talented, courageous, and strikingly attractive women who fought convention to make their names in the male-dominated field of flight in 1930s Germany. With the war, both became pioneering test pilots and were awarded the Iron Cross for service to the Third Reich. But they could not have been more different and neither woman had a good word to say for the other.

Hanna was middle-class, vivacious, and distinctly Aryan, while the darker, more self-effacing Melitta came from an aristocratic Prussian family. Both were driven by deeply held convictions about honor and patriotism; but ultimately, while Hanna tried to save Hitler’s life, begging him to let her fly him to safety in April 1945, Melitta covertly supported the most famous attempt to assassinate the Führer. Their interwoven lives provide vivid insight into Nazi Germany and its attitudes toward women, class, and race.

Acclaimed biographer Clare Mulley gets under the skin of these two distinctive and unconventional women, giving a full—and as yet largely unknown—account of their contrasting yet strangely parallel lives, against a changing backdrop of the 1936 Olympics, the Eastern Front, the Berlin Air Club, and Hitler’s bunker. Told with brio and great narrative flair, The Women Who Flew for Hitler is an extraordinary true story, with all the excitement and color of the best fiction.

Visit Clare Mulley's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Women Who Flew For Hitler.

The Page 99 Test: The Women Who Flew For Hitler.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Inman Majors reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Inman Majors, author of Penelope Lemon: Game On!.

His entry begins:

My daughter was reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for school and I realized I was the only American not to have read it. It’s a great book, and in my opinion the best of the dystopian novels. I found the concept of government control via pleasant distraction (guilt-free sex and feel good drugs known as feelies) to be much more in touch with our current milieu than the forced coercion of Orwell’s 1984 and more realistically ominous. A strange, excellent book and one that influenced...[read on]

About Penelope Lemon: Game On!, from the publisher:

Penelope Lemon is a recent divorcée, closet Metallica fan, and accidental subversive to all the expectations of suburban motherhood. After ending her marriage with James, a woodsy intellectual who favors silky kimonos too short for his knobby knees, Penelope finds herself, at forty, living with her randy mother in her childhood home. Broke and desperate for work, she waitresses at Coonskins, a frontier-themed restaurant where the decor is heavy on stuffed mammals and discarded peanut shells.

Despite the pitfalls of balancing parental duties, jobs, and the vagaries of middle-age life, Penelope pushes through one obstacle after another, trying to regain her independence. Whether fumbling through the world of online dating; coping with a bullying situation involving her son, Theo, something of a gastric wonder on the school bus; or wrestling with the discovery of nude photos from her carefree college days that are not quite as “artistic” as she remembers, Penelope gradually emerges as a modern-day heroine who navigates the assorted inanities of life with verve and humor.

Audacious and laugh-out-loud funny, Inman Majors’s new novel holds up a fun-house mirror to the relatable challenges of being a single parent in the digital age. All those who live by the beat of their own drum gain a coconspirator, an accomplice, and a champion in the unstoppable Penelope Lemon.

Visit Inman Majors's website.

The Page 69 Test: Penelope Lemon: Game On!.

Writers Read: Inman Majors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paula Munier's "A Borrowing of Bones," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones: Mercy and Elvis Mysteries (Volume 1) by Paula Munier.

The entry begins:

Someone once said that it takes six real people to create one well-rounded character. Mine are true composites in that way. But when I think of casting them in the movies, I can usually come up with an actress or an actor I think could inhabit my characters with grace and dignity and power.

Mercy Carr, the heroine of my Mercy and Elvis series, is a former Army MP who was wounded in Afghanistan. She’s attractive, but she's also tough physically, mentally, and emotionally. I think an actor like Jessica Chastain or Mireille Enos could play Mercy, as they are both beautiful redheads who manage to play tough characters credibly. They play strong women well, and that's what Mercy is: a strong woman.

Vermont game warden Troy Warner is character who's good looking in that sort of boy-next-door way. He has an open face and a guarded soul. Someone like Scott...[read on]

Visit Paula Munier's website.

My Book, The Movie: A Borrowing of Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight suspense novels that use social media to ratchet up the tension

At CrimeReads T.M. Logan tagged eight thrillers that use social media to ratchet up the tension, including:

Close to Home by Cara Hunter

Every major police investigation now seems to attract an army of armchair detectives and instant experts, opining on social media about the guilt of suspects and the perceived failures of the police. Close to Home ingeniously incorporates that noisy buzz of opinion into the narrative, the story of a kidnapping investigation interspersed with tweets as (mostly ill-informed) members of the public alternately vent at the police and hurl accusations at everyone involved. Cara Hunter expertly builds up the pressure as her troubled protagonist DI Adam Fawley strives to bring eight-year-old Daisy Mason back to her family.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: A.J. Banner's "After Nightfall"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: After Nightfall by A.J. Banner.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Good Neighbor comes a gripping thriller about an engagement party gone fatally awry.

Imagine your closest friend utterly betraying you. Years later, when she seeks forgiveness, you invite her to your engagement party as a gesture of reconciliation. But seething hostilities rise to the surface, ruining everyone’s evening. After an awful night, your friend’s battered, lifeless body is found at the bottom of a rocky cliff.

Newly engaged Marissa Parlette is living this nightmare. She should be celebrating her upcoming wedding, but she can’t shake the image of her friend lying dead on the beach. Did she fall? Was she pushed? Or did she take a purposeful step into darkness? Desperate for answers, Marissa digs deep into the events of the party. But what she remembers happening after nightfall now carries sinister implications: the ugly sniping, the clandestine meetings, the drunken flirtations. The more she investigates, the more she questions everything she thought she knew about her friends, the man she once trusted, and even herself.

Bestselling author A. J. Banner keeps readers on a razor-sharp edge in this intricately plotted novel of psychological suspense…in which nothing is as it seems.

Visit A.J. Banner's website.

The Page 69 Test: After Nightfall.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top real-life monsters in fiction

Glenn Skwerer is a psychiatrist who lives and practices in the Boston area. He was inspired by reading August Kubizek’s memoir, The Young Hitler I Knew, to look more closely at the psychology of the friendship between Kubizek and Hitler, and to recast it entirely as fiction. The Tristan Chord is his first book.

One of Skwerer's top ten "interesting and complex fictional portraits of monstrous characters from real life," as shared at the Guardian:

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

The character of Lester Ballard in this novel was inspired by an actual killer, whom McCarthy refused to name, in the Appalachian hill country of Tennessee. At 27, Ballard is living alone in an abandoned house, scavenging and stealing. When he finds a young woman dead in her car, he takes her corpse home, has sex with it, and begins building a stolen wardrobe for it. He then shoots and kills another woman, adopts her corpse – and so on. He is so isolated, so ill at ease in the world, so impulse-ridden, he can only find intimacy with a corpse. Ballard is monstrous, and pitiful. As one might expect, this is not an easy book to read.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marcia Bjornerud's "Timefulness"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World by Marcia Bjornerud.

About the book, from the publisher:

Why an awareness of Earth’s temporal rhythms is critical to our planetary survival

Few of us have any conception of the enormous timescales in our planet’s long history, and this narrow perspective underlies many of the environmental problems we are creating for ourselves. The passage of nine days, which is how long a drop of water typically stays in Earth’s atmosphere, is something we can easily grasp. But spans of hundreds of years—the time a molecule of carbon dioxide resides in the atmosphere—approach the limits of our comprehension. Our everyday lives are shaped by processes that vastly predate us, and our habits will in turn have consequences that will outlast us by generations. Timefulness reveals how knowing the rhythms of Earth’s deep past and conceiving of time as a geologist does can give us the perspective we need for a more sustainable future.

Marcia Bjornerud shows how geologists chart the planet’s past, explaining how we can determine the pace of solid Earth processes such as mountain building and erosion and comparing them with the more unstable rhythms of the oceans and atmosphere. These overlapping rates of change in the Earth system—some fast, some slow—demand a poly-temporal worldview, one that Bjornerud calls “timefulness.” She explains why timefulness is vital in the Anthropocene, this human epoch of accelerating planetary change, and proposes sensible solutions for building a more time-literate society.

This compelling book presents a new way of thinking about our place in time, enabling us to make decisions on multigenerational timescales. The lifespan of Earth may seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but this view of time denies our deep roots in Earth’s history—and the magnitude of our effects on the planet.

Learn more about Timefulness at the Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Timefulness.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Tim Pratt reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Tim Pratt, author of The Dreaming Stars.

His entry begins:

I just read City of Miracles, the last book in the Divine Cities trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett, and it prompted me to go back and re-read the first two, City of Stairs and City of Blades. They're a wonderful strange blend of spy thriller and epic fantasy, set in a world where a civilization ruled by several literal gods subjugated and oppressed the world... until one of the enslaved people devised a weapon that could kill the gods. The ensuing war destroyed the dominant culture, because almost everything in their world, from weather to architecture to food, was created by miracles... and when the gods died, most of...[read on]

About The Dreaming Stars, from the publisher:

Ancient aliens, the Axiom, will kill us all – when they wake up. In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium – including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. The treacherous Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm – from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, beleaguered Captain Callie Machedo must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in a whole lot of trouble.

Visit Tim Pratt's website.

Writers Read: Tim Pratt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top stories that find the drama in utopian settings

At Tor.com James Davis Nicoll tagged six stories that find the drama in utopian settings, including:

Pacific Edge is that rara avis, a Kim Stanley Robinson book about which I will make favourable comments. Set in a utopian world in which the excesses of capitalism and environmental degradation have been brought to heel, it’s a setting in which most people can expect to enjoy perfectly acceptable middle-class lives of placid ambitions and ecological moderation. Aside from people with burning desires to build strip malls or dark satanic mills, Pacific Edge’s world seems one where it would be easy to be happy.

Except, of course, if one is an essentially unlovable prig like the novel’s lead, Kevin Claiborne, whose steadfast adherence to the ethic that makes his world the quasi-utopia that it is does not make him one iota more desirable to Ramona, the woman with whom he is smitten. Convinced that he is in a romantic triangle, Kevin contends mightily against the man he sees as his rival. It’s a romance with a happy ending, although not for Kevin.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ashley Weaver's "An Act of Villainy"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: An Act of Villainy: An Amory Ames Mystery (Volume 5) by Ashley Weaver.

About the book, from the publisher:

"So you've gotten yourself involved with another murder, have you?"

Walking through London’s West End after a night at the theater, Amory Ames and her husband Milo run into wealthy investor and former actor Gerard Holloway. Holloway and his wife Georgina are old friends of theirs, and when Holloway invites them to the dress rehearsal of a new play he is directing, Amory readily accepts.

However, Amory is shocked to learn that Holloway has cast his mistress, actress Flora Bell, in the lead role. Furthermore, the casual invitation is not what it seems—he admits to Amory and Milo that Flora has been receiving threatening letters, and he needs their help in finding the mysterious sender. Despite Amory’s conflicting feelings—not only does she feel loyalty to Georgina, but the disintegration of the Holloways’ perfect marriage seems to bode ill for her own sometimes delicate relationship—her curiosity gets the better of her, and she begins to make inquiries.

It quickly becomes clear that each member of the cast has reason to resent Flora—and with a group so skilled in the art of deception, it isn’t easy to separate truth from illusion. When vague threats escalate, the scene is set for murder, and Amory and Milo must find the killer before the final curtain falls.

Visit Ashley Weaver's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Most Novel Revenge.

The Page 69 Test: An Act of Villainy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top comic works written by women

Emma Thompson is a British actress, screenwriter, activist, author and comedienne. She stars in The Children Act, a film based on the novel by Ian McEwan. One of her six favorite comic works written by women, as shared at The Week magazine:

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Gentle, probing, sharp, bitter, and sweet all at once, the first novel Jane Austen finished also includes one of the finest comic characters ever created — Isabella Thorpe — who's silly and self-serving in equal measure. Henry Tilney was my first literary love. I've lost count of the number of times I stole him from Catherine Morland by sweeping into Bath's famous Pump Rooms in a tube top and slingbacks.

Read about another entry on the list.

Northanger Abbey is among Nicole Hill's top five novels written as genre parodies that stand on their own, Helen Maslin's ten most evocative fictional castles and manors, and Johanna Lane's five best imaginary castles in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Catharine Riggs's "What She Gave Away," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: What She Gave Away: A Thriller by Catharine Riggs.

The entry begins:

The movie question is fun…film rights anyone? I am a seat-of-the-pants writer so the characters morph as I go along. I create a storyboard once I commence the second draft and the characters are fixed in my head. Picturing an actress to play Kathi, the weight-obsessed, middle-aged, inebriated housewife with a penchant for denial was not difficult. Early on I settled on Nicole Kidman, a talented actress who has the ability to morph into a variety of roles.

Casting Crystal was not so easy. She’s a plus-size millennial who...[read on]

Visit Catharine Riggs's website.

My Book, The Movie: What She Gave Away.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katie Sise reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katie Sise, author of We Were Mothers: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

I’m reading two terrific books right now, both nonfiction, both very different. One author I know personally, and the other I feel like I do. My friend Fran Hauser’s new book is called The Myth of The Nice Girl. It empowers women to step into their kindness and lead effectively. Fran embodies this! It’s so refreshing to read a book that values innate kindness and generosity in the workplace, instead of teaching women to squash their kindness in order to succeed. The other book on my nightstand is The Tenth Island, a memoir by Diana Marcum. It’s a...[read on]

About We Were Mothers, from the publisher:

A brilliant, twisty novel about a missing woman, an unfaithful husband, and the dark secrets that will destroy two perfect families.

A scandalous revelation is about to devastate a picturesque town where the houses are immaculate and the neighborhoods are tightly knit. Devoted mother Cora O’Connell has found the journal of her friend Laurel’s daughter—a beautiful college student who lives next door—revealing an illicit encounter. Hours later, Laurel makes a shattering discovery of her own: her daughter has vanished without a trace. Over the course of one weekend, the crises of two close families are about to trigger a chain reaction that will expose a far more disturbing web of secrets. Now everything is at stake as they’re forced to confront the lies they have told in order to survive.

Visit Katie Sise's website.

Writers Read: Katie Sise.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Sofka Zinovieff's "Putney"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Putney: A Novel by Sofka Zinovieff.

About the book, from the publisher:

A provocative and absorbing novel about a teenage girl’s intoxicating romance with a powerful older man and her discovery, decades later, that her happy memories are hiding a painful truth.

A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his young daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse.

Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion for many years. When Ralph accompanies Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows the truth about their relationship: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence.

Decades later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her youth and her growing anxiety over her own young daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years spent together.

Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.

Visit Sofka Zinovieff's website.

My Book, The Movie: Putney.

Writers Read: Sofka Zinovieff.

The Page 69 Test: Putney.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric Jay Dolin's "Black Flags, Blue Waters"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolin.

About the book, from the publisher:

With surprising tales of vicious mutineers, imperial riches, and high-seas intrigue, Black Flags, Blue Waters vividly reanimates the “Golden Age” of piracy in the Americas.

Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”—spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s—when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Also brilliantly detailed are the pirates’ manifold enemies, including colonial governor John Winthrop, evangelist Cotton Mather, and young Benjamin Franklin. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.

Learn more about the book and author at Eric Jay Dolin's website.

The Page 99 Test: Fur, Fortune, and Empire.

The Page 99 Test: When America First Met China.

The Page 69 Test: Brilliant Beacons.

The Page 99 Test: Brilliant Beacons.

Writers Read: Eric Jay Dolin.

The Page 99 Test: Black Flags, Blue Waters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Stephen Giles

Stephen Giles is the author behind the Ivy Pocket children's series, which has been translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in Australia. The Boy at the Keyhole is his first work for adults.

One of four books that changed the author, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:

DINNER AT THE HOMESICK RESTAURANT
Anne Tyler

This book deepened my understanding of what great fiction can do. As a young writer I suppose I thought it was all about the big moments, the crisis or the crossroads, but Anne Tyler's writing showed me the profound power of small moments, beautifully illuminated. I've read many books about fractured families, but here is a delicate portrait of ordinary people rendered with such honesty. It's a story that is unsentimental and heartbreaking all at once.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is David Sosnowski reading?

Featured at Writers Read: David Sosnowski, author of Happy Doomsday: A Novel.

His entry begins:

What is David Sosnowski reading? An even split of male and female authors of fiction and non-fiction, it seems. Specifically, and in no particular order:

The Overstory by Richard Powers: While reading this powerful novel I kept thinking of the Lorax saying, “I speak for the trees…” That’s exactly what this book does: It speaks for the trees, as well as generations of humans who have taken these slower-paced beings into their hearts. Recent research has shown that trees have the ability to communicate over long distances, can warn of threats and defend themselves – behavior previously thought reserved for fauna, not flora. Powers uses these emerging truths and treats everything from the American chestnut to banyan trees to the mighty redwoods like...[read on]

About Happy Doomsday, from the publisher:

The end of the world is the weirdest time to come of age.

Welcome to the end of the world. One minute, people are going about their lives, and the next—not. In the wake of the inexplicable purge, only a handful of young misfits remains.

When it all went down, “Wizard of Odd” Dev Brinkman was seeking shelter from the taunts of his classmates. Goth girl Lucy Abernathy had lost her best friend and had no clue where to turn. And Twinkie-loving quarterback “Marcus” Haddad was learning why you never discuss politics and religion in polite company—or online.

As if life when you’re sixteen isn’t confusing enough, throw in the challenges of postapocalyptic subsistence, a case of survivor’s guilt turned up to seven billion, and the small task of rebuilding humankind…

No one said doomsday would be a breeze. But for Dev, Lucy, and Marcus, the greatest hope—and greatest threat—will come when they find each other.

Visit David Sosnowski's website.

My Book, The Movie: Happy Doomsday.

The Page 69 Test: Happy Doomsday.

Writers Read: David Sosnowski.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five stories that dish up cannibalism

Karin Tidbeck is originally from Stockholm, Sweden. She lives and works in Malmö as a freelance writer, translator and creative writing teacher, and writes fiction in Swedish and English. She debuted in 2010 with the Swedish short story collection Vem är Arvid Pekon?. Her English debut, the 2012 collection Jagannath, was awarded the Crawford Award 2013 and shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award as well as honor listed for the Tiptree Award. Her novel debut, Amatka, was shortlisted for the Locus Award and Prix Utopiales 2018.

At Tor.com Tidbeck served up five stories that involve cannibalism, including:

Sandwich in Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite

Serial killer Andrew meets decadent playboy Jay. They click. They go off on a cannibalistic serial killer spree that is both beautifully written and at times extremely difficult reading: Brite goes into poetic, graphic and minute detail. Contains a packed lunch in the form of a sandwich with a piece of flank lightly fried in butter.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue