Welcome back!
We have a mix of non-fiction and fiction today with a lot of variety in content: cooking, dark academia, a thriller, and some history. Something for everyone!
Any recommendations you want to pass along? Leave them in the comments!
An Arcane Inheritance
Diverse dark academia for fans of R.F. Kuang and Olivie Blake. I’m also grateful it’s a standalone because I’m find a series is way too demanding of my attention right now.
A modern-day dark academia fantasy with a twist, praised by the The New York Times and perfect for fans of Babel and A Deadly Education.
Warren University has stood amongst the ivy elite for centuries, built on the bones—and forbidden magic—of its most prized BIPOC students…hiding the rot of a secret society that will do anything to keep their own powers burning bright. No matter who they must sacrifice along the way.
Ellory Morgan is determined to prove that she belongs at Warren University, an ivy league school whose history is deeply linked to occult rumors and dark secrets. But as she settles into her Freshman year, something about the ornate buildings and shadowy paths feels strangely…familiar. And, with every passing day, that sense of déjà vu grows increasingly sinister.
Despite all logic, despite all reason, despite all the rules of reality, Ellory knows one thing to be true: she has been here before. And if she can’t convince brooding legacy student Hudson Graves to help her remember a past that seems determined to slip through her fingers as if by some insidious magic…this time, she may lose herself for good.
“Draws readers into its spell before asking readers to consider who pays the true price of power—and what it means to refuse to let the powerful win.” — Laura R. Samotin, author of The Sins on Their Bones
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Cooking the Borderlands
Mexican is my favorite, so this cookbook is high on my to-buy list. There are fusion recipes, a whole chapter on salsas, and Zepeda’s family staples. Also, the family and historical photos the author includes are just a lovely addition.
A culinary journey along the Mexican American border, telling the story of its intertwined cultures and communities with more than 100 vibrant, flavor-packed recipes from Top Chef star, Iron Chef Mexico finalist, and Tijuana-San Diego border kid Claudette Zepeda.
The Mexican American border has been an inflamed political focal point within the US; at the same time, Mexican food has long been the most popular “ethnic” cuisine in America. A child of the border herself, Claudette Zepeda grew up in both California and Mexico and sees the border as a vibrant, vital, and unique cultural and culinary place. A gifted storyteller and chef, Claudette’s recipes and ruminations humanize border culture through 100 accessible and beloved dishes such
• Coahuila’s Esquites (Street Corn)
• Las Calandrias Caballitos (Chicken Sopes)
• Arroz Poblano (Poblano Pepper Creamy Rice)
• Camarones al Ajillo (Baja Style Garlic Shrimp)
• Capirotada (Bread Pudding)This is a story of a personal and culinary identity that formed betwixt two cultures, told through recipes, anecdotes, and an irreverent sense of humor. Borderlands details the Mexican dishes Claudette grew up eating and loves, their American counterparts, and how the fluidity and flexibility between the two nations shows us a way of being in the world. With her sophisticated, first-hand perspective of the Mexican American border, immigration, and the feet-in-many-worlds attitude of Border Kid culture, Claudette shines a human light on the imaginary line stretching from California through Texas and shows how vital this place is in American culture.
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Decoding the Devil
There’s so much fiction and non-fiction about the codebreakers at Bletchley Park. If you want more history with similar themes, this new release might be up your alley.
As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin’s atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War.
Facing the global threat of a rising Communist world power in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. employed hundreds of Black Americans to speed read Russian communications and gather essential information on the US’s most dangerous nuclear rival.
The result was the creation of a segregated civilian codebreaking unit known as the Traffic Processing Division—The Plantation. Despite wage discrimination, grueling hours, strict quotas, and harsh conditions, the Plantation’s 100 college-educated Black women made invaluable breakthroughs in United States’ Soviet intelligence even as the Red Scare and the backlash against civil rights eroded their democratic freedoms at home. Their underappreciated top-secret work led directly to victory over the USSR and the end of the Cold War thirty years later.
In this thrilling history, Sarah Valentine tells their remarkable story in full for the first time. Decoding the Devil pays long overdue tribute to these little-known Black cryptologists’ critical contributions to national security during the civil rights era, and offers a fresh perspective on the Cold War and American heroes of color.
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As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
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Five
Five complicated people wait on a train platform. When the train arrives, one of them will be dead. A pretty tense setup. Another great recommendation from my friend Jamie and her newsletter Multitudes Contained. It’s a great resource for book and media recs, and I read it every time it hits my inbox.
Welcome to Five—once this train has left, there’s no stopping it.
“Razor-sharp, wickedly funny, and darkly thrilling, Five asks difficult questions about judgement, forgiveness, and the notion of cause and effect.”—Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of All the Colors of the Dark
Someone will die here this morning, at this suburban train station. It will happen in the next five minutes when the 7:06 to London Victoria arrives.
On a train platform, five strangers unknowingly face a chilling countdown. As the clock ticks away, we fall in love with a beautiful young man who is on the verge of gambling his life away. We pity the cantankerous old woman who has fallen to the ground yet is refusing help. We look away from the child throwing a tantrum. We judge his mother, who must surely be to blame? And we are curiously compelled by the successful and damaged businessman, orbiting around them all.
These are the candidates for this morning’s misfortune but they don’t know it. Only you know. And you, our complicit reader, will not be able to resist judging who deserves to walk away, and who deserves only five more minutes to live. Minute by minute, the train gets closer, as we delve into each of their stories to learn what brought them right here, to this moment, to this station, to the very edge of life and death.
A child, a mother, a businessman, an old woman, and a gambler—who would you choose to save? Or die?
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We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!Five by Ilona Bannister
