Is it that time already? Lovely to have all of you back. We’re onto volume seven of Get Rec’d!
This is the space where I chat about some other books I’ve been recommending lately. They usually fall outside of romance and this time, a lot of these skew more toward horror elements. With the holidays coming up, my brain is constantly stuck on finding comparative titles for shoppers who need books for fickle readers.
Get any good recommendations lately? Let me know in the comments!
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Moon of Crusted Snow
I went on an Indigenous horror kick earlier this year and this is one I recommend to readers for books where both the environment and human involvement are nightmarish.
A daring post-apocalyptic novel from a powerful rising literary voice
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow.
The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
Blending action and allegory, Moon of the Crusted Snow upends our expectations. Out of catastrophe comes resilience. And as one society collapses, another is reborn.
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This book is available from:
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Moon of Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
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None Shall Sleep
What a sleeper hit this was! It’s a young adult retelling of Silence of the Lambs. Though it’s labeled as YA, it’s still pretty unsettling and it’s one I recommend for younger readers who like horror (and whose parents are unsure about starting them on adult stuff).
The Silence of the Lambs meets Sadie in this riveting psychological thriller about two teenagers teaming up with the FBI to track down juvenile serial killers.
In 1982, two teenagers—serial killer survivor Emma Lewis and US Marshal candidate Travis Bell—are recruited by the FBI to interview convicted juvenile killers and provide insight and advice on cold cases. From the start, Emma and Travis develop a quick friendship, gaining information from juvenile murderers that even the FBI can’t crack. But when the team is called in to give advice on an active case—a serial killer who exclusively hunts teenagers—things begin to unravel. Working against the clock, they must turn to one of the country’s most notorious incarcerated murderers for help: teenage sociopath Simon Gutmunsson.
Despite Travis’s objections, Emma becomes the conduit between Simon and the FBI team. But while Simon seems to be giving them the information they need to save lives, he’s an expert manipulator playing a very long game…and he has his sights set on Emma.
Captivating, harrowing, and chilling, None Shall Sleep is an all-too-timely exploration of not only the monsters that live among us, but also the monsters that live inside us.
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This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!None Shall Sleep by Ellie Marney
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The Rib King
I will admit that I hated Where the Crawdads Sing, but if you have anyone who is looking for a historical, though recentish time period with socioeconomic class struggles and Parasite vibes, this one is a good title to suggest.
The acclaimed author of The Talented Ribkins deconstructs painful African American stereotypes and offers a fresh and searing critique on race, class, privilege, ambition, exploitation, and the seeds of rage in America in this intricately woven and masterfully executed historical novel, set in early the twentieth century that centers around the black servants of a down-on-its heels upper-class white family.
For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household’s all-black staff, along with “Miss Mamie,” the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices—the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to “civilize” boys like August.
But the Barclays fortunes have fallen, and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie’s delicious rib sauce to local markets under the brand name “The Rib King”—using a caricature of a wildly grinning August on the label—Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash, agrees. Yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.
Elegantly written and exhaustively researched, The Rib King is an unsparing examination of America’s fascination with black iconography and exploitation that redefines African American stereotypes in literature. In this powerful, disturbing, and timely novel, Ladee Hubbard reveals who people actually are, and most importantly, who and what they are not.
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This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!The Rib King by Ladee Hubbard
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We Have Always Been Here
A sci-fi thriller with horror elements! I always try to recommend BIPOC authors when possible and I’m so happy to see more in the sci-fi, thriller, and horror space…especially a writer that combines all three. This one reminded me of Ridley Scott’s recent Alien-adjacent movies like Prometheus and Covenant.
This psychological sci-fi thriller from a debut author follows one doctor who must discover the source of her crew’s madness… or risk succumbing to it herself.
Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.
Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.
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This book is available from:
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen
Ooh, I hadn’t heard about WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE. Thanks, Amanda!
The Gift Guide for Crafters links aren’t working.
I thought it was just because I’d updated my phone software but have now tried on my laptop and I get the same error. No link and no space to comment either.
If Indigenous horror is your jam, I highly *highly* recommend pretty much any book by Stephen Graham Jones. THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS, MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW & its sequel DON’T FEAR THE REAPER are his most recent titles.
@Amanda- I too strongly disliked (not quite hated) Where the Crawdads Sing. I consider it one of the most overrated books of the current celebrity book club moment- along with Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (which I did hate). But understanding why I hated a book is usually a better guide to which books I’ll enjoy than an understanding of the ones I loved. So thank you for the recommendation of The Rib King and why.
@TamB – YIKES. Wonder what I did. BRB.
Well, I figured it out – I am, as usual, bad at numbers. You got a special sneak peek of Wednesday’s gift guide. OOOPS.