The Reading List Council has announced the 2018 selections of the Reading List, an annual best-of list comprising eight different fiction genres for adult readers. A shortlist of honor titles was also announced. The list was announced during the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting held in Denver.

Each category consists of a winning title, read alikes for those who enjoyed the winning title, and the shortlist of honor titles. Check for these books in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com/

The 2018 selections are:

Adrenaline

Winner
“Fierce Kingdom” by Gin Phillips. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

Joan and her four-year-old son, Lincoln, are enjoying an afternoon outing at the zoo when the unthinkable happens”“a mass shooting. Trapped and in tremendous danger, Joan must rely on her bravery and survival instincts to make it out alive. This terrifyingly plausible thriller unfolds in real time.

Read alikes
“Lockdown” by Laurie R. King.
“The Quality of Silence” by Rosamund Lupton.
“This Is Where it Ends” by Marieke Nijkamp.

Short List
“The Marsh King’s Daughter: A Novel” by Karen Dionne. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“She Rides Shotgun: A Novel” by Jordan Harper. Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Lola: A Novel” by Melissa Scrivner Love. Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House.
“The Force: A Novel” by Don Winslow. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Fantasy

Winner
“Down Among the Sticks and Bones” by Seanan McGuire. A Tor.com Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill discover a portal that leads them to the Moors, a dark and unsettling world that reveals their true selves. But will their conflicting desires tear them apart?

Read alikes
“The Book of Lost Things” by John Connolly
“The Magicians” by Lev Grossman
“Birthright” by Joshua Williamson (graphic novels)

Short List
“Winter Tide” by Ruthanna Emrys. A Tor.com Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates.
“Passing Strange” by Ellen Klages. A Tor.com Book, published by Tom Doherty Associates.
“The Witches of New York: A Novel” by Ami McKay. Harper Perennial.
“A Gathering of Ravens: A Novel” by Scott Oden. Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

Historical Fiction

Winner
“The Half-Drowned King: A Novel” by Linnea Hartsuyker. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Betrayed and left for dead, Viking raider Rangvald seeks revenge and his inheritance, while his sister Svanhild’s path to freedom lies with Rangvald’s mortal enemy. This epic tale of uneasy alliances, set in 9th century Scandinavia, offers action, intrigue and historical detail.

Read alikes
“The Sagas of Icelanders” by Robert Kellogg
“Saxon Tales” (series) by Bernard Cornwell
“Vikings” (TV series)

Short List
“The Confessions of Young Nero: A Novel” by Margaret George. Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee. Grand Central Publishing, Hachette Book Group.
“Golden Hill: A Novel of Old New York” by Francis Spufford. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
“Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions: A Kopp Sisters Novel” by Amy Stewart. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Horror

Winner
“Kill Creek” by Scott Thomas. Inkshares.

An homage to horror and the authors who write it, “Kill Creek” features four prominent authors who are lured into spending the night in a famous haunted house as a publicity stunt. The aftermath is both unexpected and terrifying.

Read alikes
“Hex” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
“The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson
“The Family Plot” by Cherie Priest

Short List
“Little Heaven” by Nick Cutter. Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“In the Valley of the Sun: A Novel” by Andy Davidson. Skyhorse Publishing.
“A God in the Shed” by J-F Dubeau. Inkshares.
“Ararat: A Novel” by Christopher Golden. St. Martin’s Press.

Mystery

Winner
“The Dime” by Kathleen Kent. Mulholland Books/Little, Brown.

Dallas detective Betty Rhyzyk comes from a family of cops. She’s nearly six feet tall, has flaming red hair, a New Yorker’s sharp tongue, and a girlfriend. When her investigation into a Mexican drug lord goes sideways, she must salvage the operation while dealing with a highly disturbed stalker.

Read alikes
Mallory Novels (series) by Carol O’Connell.
“Cop Town” by Karin Slaughter.
“Revolver” by Duane Swierczynski.

Short List
“The Dry: A Novel” by Jane Harper. Flatiron Books.
“Magpie Murders: A Novel” by Anthony Horowitz. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore: A Novel” by Matthew Sullivan. Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“Casualty of War: A Bess Crawford Mystery” by Charles Todd. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Romance

Winner
“An Extraordinary Union: A Novel of the Civil War” by Alyssa Cole. Kensington Books.

Elle Burns, a free black woman, voluntarily leaves the North to work in the Confederacy as a slave and a spy. When she uncovers a possible plot she also encounters Malcolm, a white Union spy. Their intense attraction places their lives in danger in this tale of forbidden love.

Read alikes
“The Spymaster’s Lady” by Joanna Bourne.
“Indigo” by Beverly Jenkins.
“His at Night” by Sherry Thomas.

Short List
“The Sumage Solution: San Andreas Shifters #1″ by G.L. Carriger. Gail Carriger LLC.
“Wild at Whiskey Creek: A Hellcat Canyon Novel” by Julie Anne Long. Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“Hate to Want You” by Alisha Rai. Avon Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
“The Lawrence Browne Affair” by Cat Sebastian. Avon Impulse, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Science Fiction

Winner
“The Collapsing Empire” by John Scalzi. Tor, a Tom Doherty Associates Book.

In the Interdependency, each planet relies on its far-flung neighbors for survival. Now a galactic change is transforming the universal order, a new empress has been crowned, a rival is plotting a revolution, and a foul-mouthed captain is caught in the middle.

Read alikes

Foundation series by Isaac Asimov
“The Cold Between” by Elizabeth Bonesteel
“The Wrong Stars” by Tim Pratt

Short List
“The Power” by Naomi Alderman. Little, Brown and Company.

“A Closed and Common Orbit” by Becky Chambers. Harper Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

“Paradox Bound” by Peter Clines. Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House.

“An Oath of Dogs” by Wendy N. Wagner. Angry Robot, an imprint of Watkins Media, Ltd.

Women’s Fiction

Winner
“The Almost Sisters” by Joshilyn Jackson. William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Geeky Leia is pregnant after an encounter with a sexy, anonymous Batman. Pondering when to tell her Southern family she is expecting a biracial child, her life is upended by the implosion of her half-sister’s marriage, her grandmother’s dementia, and a skeleton in the attic in this humorous tale.

Read alikes

“June” by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
“Six of One” by Rita Mae Brown
“Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” by Fannie Flagg

Short List
“Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman. Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“The Woman Next Door: A Novel” by Yewande Omotoso. Picador.
“Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk: A Novel” by Kathleen Rooney. St. Martin’s Press.
“The Garden of Small Beginnings: A Novel” by Abbi Waxman. Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

The winners were selected by the Reading List Council whose members include eleven expert readers’ advisory and collection development librarians. The eight genres currently included in the Council’s deliberations are adrenaline, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, romance, science fiction, and women’s fiction. However, the Council is adaptable to new genres and changes in contemporary reading interest.

The Council consists of Nanette Donohue, Champaign Public Library, chair; Meagan Day, High Plains Library District; Michele Drovdahl, King County Library System; Matthew Galloway, Douglas County Libraries; Edward Kownslar, Mary and Jeff Bell Library, Texas A&M University ““ Corpus Christi; Daryl A. Maxwell, Los Angeles Public Library; Tammy Ryan, Phoenix Public Library; Lisa Schimmer, NoveList; Estella Terrazas, Altadena Library District; Barry Trott, Williamsburg Regional Library; and Joy Walk, Milan-Berlin Library District.

As Ian Hamilton starts his term as Writer in Residence at the Poisoned Pen, it’s only appropriate to look back with him. But, first, here’s Hamilton and his latest book The Iman of Tawi-Tawi. Signed copies are available through the Web Store.  https://store.poisonedpen.com

Here’s the description of the 11th Ava Lee novel.

Ava has spent two nights luxuriating in a hotel in Yunnan Province with the actress Pang Fai, with whom she has begun a secret relationship. She receives an urgent phone call from Chang Wang, the right hand to the billionaire Tommy Ordonez and one of Uncle’s oldest friends. Years ago, Ava and Uncle helped Tommy recover $50 million in a land swindle.

Chang asks Ava to fly to Manila to meet with his friend, Senator Miguel Ramirez. Ramirez asks Ava to investigate a college in Tawi-Tawi, an island province in the Philippines, which he suspects is training terrorists. Ava’s investigation leads to a partnership with a CIA agent, and together they attempt to stop an international plot, horrific in size and scope, only to have it turn on them. Ava’s judgement and morals — which Uncle helped her forge — are tested like never before.

Last May, Hamilton wrote an article for Lithub.com. It was on researching the Ava Lee series. The article was called “Capturing the True Criminality of Chinese State Corruption.” It’s just the background a reader might want for this series. Here’s the link. https://bit.ly/2G4eLLC

The Poisoned Pen’s Hot Book of the Week is a science fiction thriller. There are signed copies of Tom Sweterlitsch’s The Gone World available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2BQqZcC

Here’s the description of The Gone World.

“I promise you have never read a story like this.”–Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter

Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind…

Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL’s family–and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can’t share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra–a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL’s experience with the future has triggered this violence.

Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it’s not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time’s horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.

Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.

Dana Stabenow entitled her recent post for Femmes Fatales blog as “C is for Cabin”. She could have made that courage. That’s the courage women writers need to forge their own future. Or, she could have swiped the Femmes Fatales tagline and said “F” is for “Ferociously Talented Women”. Stabenow, the author of Silk and Song, once took some advice from Sue Grafton. Now, she’s sharing the help and support she’s received over the years with other women through Storyknife, a retreat for women writers. https://storyknife.org/

Here’s Dana Stabenow’s piece about her own experiences, Sue Grafton, and the future. It’s at Femmes Fatales. https://bit.ly/2BNQRpH

*****

Thanks to Dana Stabenow for sharing the background and information about Storyknife. Now, I’ll share the link to her latest book, Silk and Song.  Signed copies are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2Egm9mH

The ever-popular Charles Todd returns to The Poisoned Pen on Monday, March 12 at 7 PM.

The mother-son team will be here to discuss their latest Ian Rutledge novel, The Gate Keeper, with their host that evening, Stephanie Barron. You can pre-order a signed copy through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2EsADDf

**Exclusive for Poisoned Pen Customers with the purchase of a signed, The Gate Keeper you will receive a specially designed “wedding invite”…..while supplies last**  ““ Miles M. @ The Poisoned Pen (Jan30-18)

Did you see Marilyn Stasio’s review of The Gate Keeper in The New York Times Book Review? It was the lead book in her recent column. https://nyti.ms/2FDV4KD

 

Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, just hosted authors Lisa Gardner and Meg Gardiner in a double thriller event. It was release day for Lisa Gardner’s latest D.D. Warren novel, Look for Me. Meg Gardiner’s new UNSUB novel, Into the Black Nowhere, came out a week earlier. Signed copies of both books are available in the Web Store. https://store.poisonedpen.com

How often do you get to watch an event with these authors? You can watch this one on Livestream. https://livestream.com/poisonedpen/events/8046878

Maybe you missed bestselling author Alafair Burke when she was here at The Poisoned Pen in January. She was on tour for her new book, The Wife. Signed copies are still available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2ElJhDA

If you missed that program, you might want to check out Hilli Levin’s interview with Burke in BookPage. https://bit.ly/2GV0xhx

After reading that, here’s the summary of Alafair Burke’s The Wife.

His Scandal
Her Secret

From New York Times bestselling author Alafair Burke, a stunning domestic thriller in the vein of Behind Closed Doors and The Woman in Cabin 10—in which a woman must make the impossible choice between defending her husband and saving herself.

When Angela met Jason Powell while catering a dinner party in East Hampton, she assumed their romance would be a short-lived fling, like so many relationships between locals and summer visitors. To her surprise, Jason, a brilliant economics professor at NYU, had other plans, and they married the following summer. For Angela, the marriage turned out to be a chance to reboot her life. She and her son were finally able to move out of her mother’s home to Manhattan, where no one knew about her tragic past.

Six years later, thanks to a bestselling book and a growing media career, Jason has become a cultural lightning rod, placing Angela near the spotlight she worked so carefully to avoid. When a college intern makes an accusation against Jason, and another woman, Kerry Lynch, comes forward with an even more troubling allegation, their perfect life begins to unravel. Jason insists he is innocent, and Angela believes him. But when Kerry disappears, Angela is forced to take a closer look—at both the man she married and the women she chose not to believe.

This much-anticipated follow-up to Burke’s Edgar-nominated The Ex asks how far a wife will go to protect the man she loves: Will she stand by his side, even if he drags her down with him?

Today is release date for Kristin Hannah’s novel of Alaska, The Great Alone. You can order signed copies through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2FMA3NA

Here’s the summary.

“A TOUR DE FORCE.” —Kirkus (starred review)

Alaska, 1974.
Unpredictable. Unforgiving. Untamed.
For a family in crisis, the ultimate test of survival.

Ernt Allbright, a former POW, comes home from the Vietnam war a changed and volatile man. When he loses yet another job, he makes an impulsive decision: he will move his family north, to Alaska, where they will live off the grid in America’s last true frontier.

Thirteen-year-old Leni, a girl coming of age in a tumultuous time, caught in the riptide of her parents’ passionate, stormy relationship, dares to hope that a new land will lead to a better future for her family. She is desperate for a place to belong. Her mother, Cora, will do anything and go anywhere for the man she loves, even if means following him into the unknown.

At first, Alaska seems to be the answer to their prayers. In a wild, remote corner of the state, they find a fiercely independent community of strong men and even stronger women. The long, sunlit days and the generosity of the locals make up for the Allbrights’ lack of preparation and dwindling resources.

But as winter approaches and darkness descends on Alaska, Ernt’s fragile mental state deteriorates and the family begins to fracture. Soon the perils outside pale in comparison to threats from within. In their small cabin, covered in snow, blanketed in eighteen hours of night, Leni and her mother learn the terrible truth: they are on their own. In the wild, there is no one to save them but themselves.

In this unforgettable portrait of human frailty and resilience, Kristin Hannah reveals the indomitable character of the modern American pioneer and the spirit of a vanishing Alaska—a place of incomparable beauty and danger.The Great Alone is a daring, beautiful, stay-up-all-night story about love and loss, the fight for survival, and the wildness that lives in both man and nature.

*****

Here’s Kristin Hannah discussing The Great Alone.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHvhfLp3wmA?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

And, here’s the book trailer for The Great Alone.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT_NehX9Jzc?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

We’ve had a few lessons about writing on the blog lately. Diana Gabaldon showed how she composes a sentence. Dana Stabenow wrote about the importance of setting. Now, Stabenow, the author of Silk and Song, talks about the research she does for her books. It was essential to do that for Silk and Song, her novel about Marco Polo’s granddaughter and the Silk Road. Copies of the book are available through the Web Store. https://bit.ly/2E1Ifci

Dana Stabenow’s post about research was originally written for M.K. Tod’s “A Writer of History”. Here’s the link to that article. https://bit.ly/2EG5MB1