What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store? As a coffee addict, I’ll definitely stop by any coffee bar first. Then I like to sip and wander the new releases and sale tables. I’ll wind up seeing books written by my friends and internally (hopefully) I’ll say hello. I’ll always check graphic novels for my kids. But no trip is complete without shopping the journals section.
Tell us about your favorite library from when you were a child. My father managed the Brooklyn Public Library, so the central branch is my perennial favorite. However, I also loved the Staten Island Public Library and I still remember that old book smell.
While researching your books, has there ever been a librarian or bookseller who was especially helpful, or a surprising discovery among the stacks? Most of my research has shifted to quick Google questions due to time constraints, but booksellers have been instrumental in getting the word out about Five Broken Blades, and librarians have championed my career from the start.
Do you have a favorite bookstore or library from literature? A favorite fictional bookseller or librarian? My favorite library from literature is easily the one in The Starless Sea. If you’ve read it, you know why. I designed an amazing bookstore for The Jasmine Project. It was one of those times I spent weeks researching and thinking about it for approximately three sentences to land in the finished book, but I don’t regret it.
“There isn’t a bookstore or library I don’t want to see, honestly.”
Do you have a bucket list of bookstores and libraries you’d love to visit but haven’t yet? What’s on it? There isn’t a bookstore or library I don’t want to see, honestly. There are libraries and bookstores in France, China and Budapest, Hungary that look amazing. I just saw a bookstore in California with bookstore collies. I am nothing if not easily influenced by the cuteness of bookstore pets or read-to-me dogs in libraries.
What is the most memorable bookstore or library event you’ve participated in? Saratoga Springs Public Library in New York puts on a book festival each fall with panels all over town, and it’s one of my favorite events of the year. With every bookstore event I’ve done or even stock signings, I’m blown away by how the staff is always helpful, enthusiastic and kind, regardless of whether I’m signing three books or over 500.
What’s the last thing you checked out from your library or bought at your local bookstore? My last books from my library were graphic novels for my kids. They are voracious and tear through them in a day. For me, my last purchase was Heartless Hunter. I am lucky and was sent arcs of Rebel Witch, The Bane Witch and Meet Me at Blue Hour, and I can’t wait to read all of them.
How is your own personal library organized? Ugh, it is not. I’ve had rainbow shelves and alphabetical, but my collection is currently in stacks spread in various places around my house. I keep talking about built-in bookcases. This might’ve shamed me into getting that project underway.
Is the book always better than the movie? Why or why not? Actually, I don’t think it is. I can think of two off the top of my head where the creators of the series took the concept to better places. However, generally, yes, I think the book is better, solely because it’s so difficult to get all the internal thoughts and motivations of a character across in film.
Bookstore cats or bookstore dogs? Both! Bookstore raccoons and I’ll live there.
What is your ideal post-bookstore-browsing snack? Hmm. It would have to be something that didn’t dirty my fingers because I’d want to read. Maybe rice cakes (tteokbokki).
Photo of Mai Corland by Leila Evans.
The author of the Broken Blades fantasy series shares her favorite literary libraries and gets real about bookshelf organization—or a lack thereof.
I set pen to white paper and brainstormed around the circled word “MOTHER.” What were my word associations and allusions? The Queen of Coins. Marmee March and Cersei Lannister. Josephine Rabbit. The Capitoline wolf.
A she-wolf nursing infant twins is an unforgettable image. Strange, certainly. Unnatural, perhaps. It is the emblem of Rome itself, found on coins and football club jerseys, and has traversed the world as its empire once did—to Parisian parks and U.S. city squares. The mother wolf has become an established part of our communal iconography.
“Retelling is a trendy word, but these stories are more than a reimagining, they are also a resurrection.”
This trope persists in other mythologies, too. Atalanta raised by bear cubs. Enkidu. Mowgli and Tarzan. These feral children prevail as symbols of hope and survival. Of life, against all odds, finding a way. And yet, while our oral tradition and literature may love the babies, we think and talk and write much less about their mothers.
Most people with a grasp of European history know Romulus and Remus, but before there was a wolf, there was a woman, breaking herself in birth. Who was she? Why was she separated from her children? The answer is Rhea Silvia, princess turned pregnant priestess, who lost her babies because she lived in a time when nefarious powers governed what she could and couldn’t do with her body.
I scoured the primary sources for Rhea, finding the clearest narrative in book one of the Roman Antiquities by Dionysius of Halicarnassus. I thought I knew Rome because I was raised on sword and sandal epics, Ben-Hur and Spartacus. But Latium is something else entirely. It’s a confederation, a league of small cities under the loose rule of Alba Longa—a site that no longer exists. It may have been where the pope’s summer residence, Castel del Gandolfo, is located, but there are no remaining pillars or foundations to visit. Rhea and her sons are one of the old myths, occurring outside the cultural assumptions of Roman Empire, the stock images of Coliseum and Caesar.
I read of the kings that descended from Aeneas, a lineage almost Shakespearean in nature, so reminiscent of the Bard’s best tragedies, so rife with rivalry and revenge. King Numitor’s daughter, a Vestal Virgin, is impregnated by the god of war, and delivers Romulus and Remus in an almost biblical narrative: babes sent down the river to escape death, fulfilling a prophecy. Afterward, however, Rhea Silvia fades from the record like the brightest colors in an ancient fresco. She’s not even in the background; she’s gone.
In SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, Mary Beard raises the question: What does Rome’s founding myth reveal about its values and character?
A redundant brother. A divine birth. Patriarchal values. Male protagonists.
Retelling is a trendy word, but these stories are more than a reimagining, they are also a resurrection. In Mother of Rome, Rhea gets restored to the scene—rising out from under the classical author’s omission or neglect and into the game of thrones. In the novel, I write: “’This is the first lesson, Rhea. Men think they create the empires, but both are born of women.”
Mother of Rome is my ode to Rhea Silvia, to a mother’s life-giving love, but it is also a reminder: There is always a before. Before the city. Before the kings. This is that origin story, and it’s hers.
Photo of Lauren J.A. Bear by Heidi Leonard.
Lauren J.A. Bear’s Mother of Rome reorients the empire’s founding myth around the rebellious, passionate princess Rhea Silvia.
In Old Crimes and Other Stories, Jill McCorkle’s characters face moments of reckoning and work to make sense of the past. A father has trouble connecting with his daughter and adjusting to the digital era in “The Lineman.” In “Confessional,” a husband and wife buy an antique confessional for their house—a purchase that leads to surprising discoveries. “Commandments” features a trio of women dumped by the same man who meet to share stories about him. Wistful and wise, McCorkle’s fifth collection is the work of a writer at the top of her game.
Louise Kennedy explores the lives of contemporary Irish women in her bleakly beautiful collection, The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac. Kennedy’s protagonists—rendered with authenticity and compassion—contend with fraught or dangerous relationships, motherhood issues and economic woes. Sarah, the main character of the title story, pays an ugly price for her husband’s poor business decisions, while the main character in “In Silhouette” is tormented by her brother’s participation in IRA activity. Kennedy’s moving stories offer numerous discussion topics for book clubs, including female fulfillment and the human need for connection.
Salt Slow finds Julia Armfield leaning in to science fiction and the supernatural in stories that examine urban life and women’s experiences. “Mantis” focuses on the turmoil of adolescence, as a young girl’s body mutates in startling fashion. In “Formerly Feral,” two stepsisters form an extraordinary bond with a wolf. Whether she’s writing about giant bugs or a zombie ex-girlfriend, Armfield is clearly at home with the odd and the uncanny, and the end result is a captivating group of stories. Themes of sexuality, spirituality and loss will get book clubs talking.
GennaRose Nethercott’s Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart and Other Stories is sure to delight—and disquiet—readers. Ominous, imaginative and intriguing, Nethercott’s stories probe the tension between the wild and the tame as they exist in our daily lives. In “Homebody,” a young woman undergoes a strange physical transformation after moving into a new house with her partner. “Sundown at the Eternal Staircase” chronicles the goings-on at an eerie tourist attraction. Thanks to Nethercott’s remarkable narrative skills, the impossible becomes plausible. Inspired by folklore and fairy tales, she reinvigorates the short story form.
Round up your reading group and ring in 2025 with one of these fabulous short story collections.
For every reader, there are things that will make them politely but firmly close a book and never open it again. For me, it’s always been what I deem perverse ambiguity. “Who’s to say what really happened! People are unknowable!” a book will proclaim, and I will grip it by its metaphorical lapels and demand to speak to its author. However, for some books, the ambiguity is the point, and there is no better example of this than Henry James’ eerie novella, The Turn of the Screw. The tale of a governess in Victorian England who becomes convinced that the children she cares for are being haunted by the spirit of her predecessor, The Turn of the Screw is horrifying because of its inscrutability. It could be a traditional ghost story, but tilt it just a few degrees, and it’s a tale of a woman trying so hard to suppress her sexuality that it becomes a paranoid obsession. Is her quest to protect the children a noble one, or does something heinous lurk within her need to safeguard their “purity”? A novel might not have been able to sustain such ill-defined anxiety, but as a novella, it’s an undiluted sliver of dread.
—Savanna Walker, Managing Editor
Foster
In rural Ireland sometime in the past, a shy observant child has left home for the first time. Her long-suffering mother will soon have another child, so the girl will be looked after by the Kinsellas, a kind couple from her mother’s side of the family who own a small dairy farm. Though we don’t learn the girl’s name or specific details of her life at her home, it’s clear within two pages that her family is very poor, and her father is a layabout who would happily see her left on the side of a road, as long as another man didn’t put him to shame by helping her. And because the girl is telling the story, we know that she knows all this too. In the Kinsellas’ house, the missus tells her, there are no secrets and no shame, and the days the girl spends with the couple are filled with order and delight, as well as a mounting understanding that the Kinsellas are not entirely happy. Foster is filled with moments of ease, heartbreak and joy. Despite author Claire Keegan’s bucolic setting, the story never pretends that life is easy. Keegan’s writing is spare but never austere, and the hour spent in Foster’s quiet world will change you.
—Erica Ciccarone, Associate Editor
A Small Place
OK, this isn’t a novella. But if you’re looking for powerful literature that you can read the whole of in a single dedicated burst, this 80-page essay by the great novelist Jamaica Kincaid fits the bill perfectly. Kincaid grew up on Antigua, an island in the Caribbean that was colonized by the British in the 1600s and became the independent country Antigua and Barbuda in 1981. In A Small Place, written just seven years after independence, Kincaid addresses the North American and European tourists who vacation on the 9-by-12-mile island, picking apart a tourist’s mentality to reveal its willful ignorance, and drawing connections between centuries of slavery under British colonialism and the corruption of Antigua and Barbuda’s government. There’s so much here—careful tracing of how history becomes cultural narrative, evocative descriptions of the island’s “unreal” beauty, anecdotes about Kincaid’s love of her childhood library. Everyone living in our so-called “post” colonial world, especially anyone who’s ever been a tourist, should read A Small Place.
—Phoebe Farrell-Sherman, Associate Editor
Train Dreams
Inside the worlds of Denis Johnson’s fiction, the mundane evokes great sadness, terror or joy. Simple acts are magnified in subtle yet staggering ways. Along with his straightforward, limpid prose, this aspect of his writing makes the National Book Award-winner (Tree of Smoke) exceptionally suited for the novella format, as proven by Train Dreams, which tells the story of Robert Grainier, an itinerant laborer in the American West during the turn of the 20th century. Johnson gracefully doles out disjointed portions of Grainier’s life as it unfolds in an era suffused with ordinary tragedy. All around Grainier, people die from dangers both natural and human-made. But just as a ravaged forest returns after a massive fire, “green against the dark of the burn,” so does the humanity that stubbornly persists in this rapidly changing landscape. Despite—or as a result of—its short length, Train Dreams showcases Johnson’s impressive capacity for creating memorable characters, whether it’s a dying vagrant, or a man shot by his own dog. It’s truly a wonder that a book can fit so much engrossing vibrancy within so few pages.
—Yi Jiang, Associate Editor
Our favorite quick reads pack an enormous punch in a slim package.
Artificial intelligence holds only so much power in the year 2024. Sure, it could help improve your cover letter or maybe suggest a better pumpkin pie recipe. But it doesn’t nurture human life. The future may be quite different, with a million harmonious systems calibrating and updating and sustaining whatever remains of our species. But what happens when the systems that serve us begin to erode? Erika Swyler ponders such a future in her thoughtful speculative novel We Lived on the Horizon.
The walled city of Bulwark protects one of the final pockets of humanity from an unlivable Earth. Controlled by a citywide AI system, the city is a near-conscious network of interconnected systems and data. Bulwark’s citizens survive in comfort or squalor based on how much their ancestors gave to the greater good, with the city’s elite, known as the Sainted, living lavishly. But when one of the Sainted is murdered in his home and all the data records are erased, Enita Malovis and her house AI system, Nix, sense something terrible is happening to Bulwark. Systems are quietly shutting down or failing to respond. Can they find out who, or what, is suppressing the truth?
AI systems take center stage in We Lived on the Horizon, and Swyler gives spectacular voice to these nonliving entities. Lines of code hint at emotion with small color changes; long database query times with no responses suggest recalcitrance or confusion. These passages are some of the most interesting and innovative in the novel, and Swyler deliberately paces her story to stretch them to their fullest potential. Moral reflections on the relationship between humanity and machines drive Enita and Nix’s ever-evolving relationship as she tries—literally—to make him human.
Lovers of Octavia Butler or Mary Shelley will easily see We Lived on the Horizon’s direct descent from such literary giants. The novel’s core, however, feels timely and urgent, wondrous and inventive. It’s a marvel and a triumph. At its conclusion, I felt a twinge of dread as I contemplated what our own creations may do to try to sustain us.
Timely and urgent, wondrous and inventive, We Lived on the Horizon is a fascinating mystery set in a city run by AI.
In an odd corner of Tokyo is a ramen restaurant that, for the right clientele, is actually a pawnshop. Walk inside and the shop owner will greet you warmly. You’ll apologize and say you are in the wrong place, that you were looking for a hot meal, you need to go, but the shop owner will stop you. And he’ll offer you the opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to pawn a regret, or to shed a choice that has been a burden.
All her life, Hana Ishikawa has anticipated and dreaded the day she will inherit her father’s magical pawnshop, a nook that rests between two worlds: bustling, modern Tokyo and Isekai, or the Other World. She understands it is necessary to collect human choices and to turn them over—in the form of glowing birds—to the Shiikuin, the mysterious, terrifying figures in “pale white Noh masks . . . [stinking of] rusting metal and decaying flesh” who guard Isekai. But on the morning of Hana’s first day as shop proprietor, she finds the place ransacked, her father missing and a choice stolen, presumably by him. To complicate matters, Keishin, a brilliant human physicist, stumbles into the shop on the morning of the disaster and insists on helping Hana find her father.
So unfurls a story that is equal parts adventure and romance, lighthearted and devastating, philosophical and emotionally resonant. Hana and Kei embark on a journey through Isekai, jumping into puddles and coming out in other realms, folding into paper, climbing ladders through clouds and witnessing the release of the stars. They run from the Shiikuin and chase after Hana’s father, who presumably holds answers to questions about Hana’s past; simultaneously, they circle each other, tentative but magnetic. It’s a Romeo and Juliet love story, after all. They’re from two different worlds: “She was the moon in the water,” Kei observes, “Close enough to touch, yet beyond reach.”
Author Samantha Sotto Yambao’s world building in Water Moon is marvelous and digestible, utilizing short chapters and precise, direct descriptions. And our protagonists, Hana and Kei, are refreshingly communicative and mature. Yambao has created a work of art that is atmospheric and, above all else, wondrous. Although there are stakes, Water Moon is a heartwarming, low-suspense read that reminds us to take hold of our lives and our choices.
Water Moon, Samantha Sotto Yambao’s atmospheric and wondrous fantasy, centers on a Tokyo pawnshop where people can sell their regrets.
Princess Rhea Silvia has had everything wrenched from her grasp. She has borne the loss of her mother and brothers, and seen her father stripped of his throne. Now forced into the life of a Vestal Virgin by her power-hungry uncle, Rhea has been divested of whatever power she once possessed. But she has a secret that will change the world forever—if she can live long enough for it to bear fruit. The night before she is to be commended to the virgins, Rhea takes Mars, the god of war, to her bed, violating her vows and consummating an affair that will birth one of the most powerful empires the world has ever known. Rhea’s story is one of gods and blood, of sacrifice and vengeance. Hers is the story of the birth of Rome.
In Mother of Rome, author Lauren J.A. Bear reinterprets the strange and tragic backstory of the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, into a story of intrigue, determination and the raw ferocity of a mother’s love. Like most myths, Rhea’s intrigues even when stripped down to its most basic parts. But Mother of Rome gathers strength from emotional specificity: namely, Bear’s refusal to shy away from the uglier parts of a mythological retelling and her devotion to showing the emotional truth of the women she portrays. Rhea seeks vengeance in a world where men acknowledge her only when exerting control over her destiny and body, and her rage and frustration spring from the page—but so too does her unbridled joy at seeing her children for the first time. Similarly, her cousin Antho’s sense of helplessness at being tied to men who disgust and terrify her may loom large, but so too does her hope for her forbidden love. Because in Bear’s hands, women’s stories—and women’s rages, hopes and fears—matter. Cathartic and moving, Mother of Rome reimagines the founding myth of Rome in a way that transcends gods and empires, instead focusing on the humanity at the story’s core.
Cathartic and moving, Mother of Rome reimagines the myth of Romulus and Remus by placing their mother, Princess Rhea Silvia, center stage.
Set in the remote Kepler system, far from Earth, Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto follows a thief named Edie as they try to make a life for themself after an eight-year stint in prison. Edie is released early thanks to their old friend and former partner in crime, Angel, who gives them the opportunity of a lifetime: a heist targeting Joyce Atlas, the CEO of their space station home. There’s one huge problem—Angel once betrayed Edie, which was what sent them to prison in the first place.
Trusting Angel is a difficult prospect, but Edie doesn’t have many options. They’ve been blacklisted by the mega-corp that controls the space station, so they can’t get any respectable work. Andie, Edie’s sister, works two jobs to keep her two kids fed, and has a third on the way. Edie reluctantly joins Angel’s crew, despite having built up eight years of resentment and hurt. However, even when the pair’s emotions explode, Yamamoto makes it clear that they still care for each other: Angel will surprise Edie with a joke or concern for their safety, while Edie burns with sympathy for Angel’s struggles.
Angel’s small team is composed of lovable miscreants, like 17-year-old hacker Malia, who jabbers incessantly, and naive dancer Sara, who is just as excited to take her first steps into a life of crime as she is to buy Malia a present. While the different crew members do not always get along perfectly, there is never really a sense they would betray each other. Yamamoto focuses on their supportive natures: When Sara runs her first grift and has to dodge a mark’s attempt to drug her drink, the crew burns to defend her even while they stay on task. As soon as she escapes the harrowing situation, each member comforts and supports Sara while her adrenaline cools off.
Each step in the crew’s methodical scheme is practical, contributing to the verisimilitude of Yamamoto’s world building as ID cards are cloned, fingerprints taken and escape routes secured. This is not the master plan of a super-genius, perfectly executed the night before the heist. It is more akin to the work of a skilled craftsperson: Watching Angel’s plan slowly come together feels like watching an experienced painter, with the precision on display inspiring muted awe.
The novel’s final act builds on all the momentum of two-act rising action, wrapping things up with an ultimately satisfying, if somewhat predictable, ending. Like an Ocean’s movie set in space, Hammajang Luck will charm readers looking for a smooth ride with a lovable cast.
Like an Ocean’s movie set in space, Hammajang Luck will charm readers looking for a smooth ride with a lovable cast.
I’ll be honest—it took me a moment to understand this book. We are immediately thrown into an opulent “year-turning” party: buffets of food, swirling gowns, a mysterious grandfather clock slowly ticking down the hours until the new year. Our protagonist, Kembral Thorne, is at the party while on maternity leave from her job as a Hound, a police officer-esque position that specializes in retrieving people or objects from other dimensions known as Echoes. In rapid succession, author Melissa Caruso introduces Kembral and the rest of the guests at the year-turning party (including Kembral’s nemesis and obsession, professional thief Rika Nonesuch), the framework of Echoes and a series of specialized terms for the world and its sociopolitical system. If reading this paragraph was overwhelming, you can expect a similar reaction when you begin The Last Hour Between Worlds.
But—but! If you’re a fantasy romance fan who’s been craving originality from the genre, this book is truly a breath of fresh air. Once you’ve gotten the gist of Echoes and more or less familiarized yourself with the characters, the storyline is a heady, bizarre rush of murder mystery meets Alice in Wonderland. Kembral discovers quite quickly that the year-turning party is being used as a chessboard of sorts, that a game is being played out between powerful interdimensional beings. Every hour, the party falls into a weirder, deadlier Echo, and it is up to Kembral and Rika to figure out how to stop the game before they’re trapped in an Echo they can’t escape from—if they don’t, everyone will die.
Caruso has created a compelling heroine in Kembral, who is equal parts tough, resourceful and vulnerable. A full-blown adult and mother, there’s an element of maturity and caution to her perspective that is refreshing in a genre that is often full of young protagonists who dive headlong into peril. The heart of the novel is Kembral’s relationship with Rika: their history and their secrets, how they’ve leaned on each other and how they’ve hurt each other. Caruso’s writing is stunning as well, with lines like “trying to figure her out was like trying to hold the shape of fire in your mind.” Although I was skeptical when I started, by the middle, I was completely on board with Kembral and Rika as they tried to save their sinking ship—or, in this case, their dimension-bending party. The Last Hour Between Worlds isn’t a breezy read, but it will stretch your imagination and leave you thinking.
A heady, bizarre rush of murder mystery meets Alice’s in Wonderland, The Last Hour Between Worlds is an interdimensional fantasy adventure.
Just before K.B. Wagers’ latest military sci-fi novel, And the Mighty Will Fall, takes off at warp speed, we’re met with a short but important epigraph. “It is the mission of the Near-Earth Orbital Guard to ensure the safety and security of the Sol system and the space around any additional planets that human beings call home.” And with that, we’re launched into a tense struggle that’s about to play out at an electric pace above a colonized Mars. Hang on tight—we’re in for some chop.
Commander Maxine Carmichael, a highly decorated NeoG officer, lands aboard the Mars Orbital Station (MOS). Today, her commanding officer, Admiral Ford, will transfer the MOS from NeoG control to Mars Civilian Command. The people of Mars deserve to maintain the highly strategic station, which controls all traffic to and from the cities of the planet. But just as Max makes her way to the observation deck, everything goes to hell. Klaxons blare, lights flash and there’s gunfire coming from the docking bay. Someone is seizing control of the station in its most vulnerable moment. But who? And why?
In the fourth entry to their NeoG series, Wagers absolutely hits the gas. The pace is fast and sharp, perspectives whipping from Max and her attempt to evade capture on the MOS to various NeoG commanders and other groups coordinating a response in real time. It’s a hostage situation in space, with various muddled motivations slowly uncovered as the crisis continues. Like Bruce Willis sneaking through the air ducts in Nakatomi Plaza, Max serves as a stalwart heroine, focused and capable. But fear not: Jenks, Sapphi, D’Arcy, Nika and more names familiar to series regulars all play a part in the rescue operation.
For those like me who have not read a NeoG novel before, the book includes a helpful list of characters, which was a necessary reference early on. But even while I was still getting up to speed with the world and its players, the sheer force of the story drove me to ignore any momentary confusion. This is a razor’s-edge action caper, satisfying throughout. Get ready for a heck of a ride.
K.B. Wager’s fourth NeoG novel is a razor’s-edge action caper set on a station orbiting Mars—Die Hard, but in space.
An acolyte of the sun god, Mische saw her life destroyed when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire. After murdering the vampire who turned her, Mische is spared from execution when she agrees to journey into the afterlife with Asar, a vampire prince, and resurrect the god of death. Tasked by the sun god with betraying Asar and sabotaging their mission, Mische finds herself questioning everything she’s ever believed in when she begins to fall for Asar.
The Songbird & the Heart of Stone takes us straight into an afterlife that’s as intriguing as it is terrifying. How did you conceive of your version of the road to the underworld? Much of my process adhered to the improv philosophy of “yes, and . . .” I know that many readers love my books for the hot vampires—and make no mistake, I do also love hot vampires!—but I have a streak that just really, really loves weird, gross, dark magic. I always enjoy creating structures to my magical fantasy journeys that have a strong sense of progression, and better yet if they give me the opportunity to try all kinds of different gimmicks. So, I loosely ran with the general idea of “circles of hell” and thought about what those “levels” might look like in the context of the Nyaxia world. Then I mapped each of these levels to the character arcs for Mische and Asar, and tied them into the lore of the gods’ story. This piece was the most fun for me!
So far in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, we’ve been inside the heads of three characters: Raihn, Oraya and Mische. Mische has a very different internal monologue than any of the others. How did you get into her head to really capture that change in narrative voice? Going from Oraya’s cynical, hard-edged voice to Mische’s optimistic and thoughtful one was a little jarring in the beginning. But, I had a baby in between writing The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, the previous book in the series, and Songbird, so I had a lot of time to think about the inner workings of Mische’s brain during my maternity leave. I got to know her a lot in borderline-hallucinatory brainstorming sessions at 3 a.m.!
“There’s a lot more to power than physical strength . . .”
Luce, Asar’s beloved necromantic dog, is undoubtedly going to steal some readers’ hearts (just as she stole mine). How did she come into the picture? It’s only now that I realize I cannot remember when I first conceived of Luce! She came into the picture very early in my brainstorming for Asar’s character. He’s introverted, rigid and definitely a bit scary, but boy does he love his dog! (Rightfully so—she is a very good girl.) I believe that platonic relationships are just as important as romantic ones. It’s important that we see the characters reflected against someone else who is meaningful to them. In this case, Luce really helped me define Asar, and took on an (after)life of her own from there.
Architecture—whether it’s the impressive structures of the underworld or the details of the Citadel—gives a distinct sense of character to the human, vampire and godly locations within The Songbird & the Heart of Stone. Did you have any particular inspirations for the look of each major location? I’m very flattered by this question, because it’s so important to me that each of the houses feels distinct! My favorite thing about the Nyaxia world is that it’s just so huge, and with every book that ventures into a new corner of the world, I try to make sure that place feels different from everywhere we’ve been before it. Typically, I’ll start with a very general “vibe” for a place, and then I’ll mash together many different influences until I like what I’ve arrived at. I will be the first to admit that the entire creative process on this front is chaotic!
You once mentioned that you ended up with the three courts because you couldn’t choose one type of vampire. What were some of your influences in creating the vampire houses, and if you had to join one of the houses, which would it be? There wasn’t one specific influence for each house so much as each had a general “vibe” I was trying to capture. The Nightborn are the winged, deadly vampires; the Shadowborn are the seductive, scheming vampires; the Bloodborn are the monstrous, bloodthirsty vampires. Of course, these simplistic ideas bloomed into many others as I fleshed everything out!
I would be in the House of Shadow, because I’m definitely not coordinated enough to be in the House of Night nor intimidating enough to be in the House of Blood. I’d likely immediately get myself killed in the House of Shadow, too—but at least I could hide out in the libraries for a while first.
Despite following the same god, Mische and Chandra have little in common when it comes to both their outlook and their goals. If their roles had been reversed, how would Mische have taken to life as a midwife for vampires? What about Chandra as a vampire? Chandra and Mische both have been indoctrinated by their god most of their lives, and both of them have very real, very legitimate reasons to justify hatred of vampires. Chandra is so similar to Mische in so many ways, and yet has followed all of those commonalities to a completely different end. Even at the height of her status in her previous human life in her cult, Mische couldn’t fully accept the harsh boundaries of her world. Chandra was likely exactly the kind of acolyte Mische wished she could be in those years: pious, devoted and unquestioningly loyal. But Mische was never going to be that person, for better or for worse. Even if her positions were swapped with Chandra, they would always end up in radically different places.
Just as Chandra and Mische are foils, so too are Mische and Asar. We get Mische’s perspective the first time she sees Asar, but what does Asar think of Mische at first sight? I can’t answer this question in too much detail because it might be something we cover in the next book! In a super general sense: Asar knows right away that Mische is unusual, and he’s intrigued by her right off the bat. Some of that is just because he’s a guy who likes to know things, and Mische is objectively unusual because of her background. But even from the start, when he’s underestimating her, he gets the sense that there’s more to her.
Imbalanced power dynamics and the abuse of power are themes that have cropped up several times in Crowns of Nyaxia so far, from Vincent in The Serpent & the Wings of Night to this novel. This is obviously an issue in our own world as well, but do you think that there’s something about vampire society that makes it particularly interesting to explore? The exploration of power runs through the entire series. In the world of Nyaxia, there are just so many different layers to those power dynamics: humans versus vampires, gods versus mortals and, of course, the plethora of interpersonal power dynamics that are specific to each character. What makes this particularly interesting to me is that some groups or characters stand in very different places on the power spectrum depending on the lens you’re looking through. Vampires, for instance, are much more powerful than humans physically, but they’re also often brutally hunted if they venture beyond Obitraes. Vincent, Oraya’s father, was obsessed with maintaining power, but the things he had to do to keep it ended up isolating him—and unforgivably harming those he loved most. There’s a lot more to power than physical strength and having so many different layers in this world has made it particularly fun to explore.
Even with her own discomfort surrounding her vampirism, Mische holds views on vampires that seem more nuanced than what we see from Oraya in the Nightborn Duet. How much of that is from their backgrounds, and how much is due to the individuals—and the courts—that they’re dealing with? I love this question! Mische and Oraya are so, so different. They came from opposite backgrounds. Oraya was surrounded by vampires but constantly told how dangerous the world around her was. Meanwhile, as a missionary, Mische learned to help people become better versions of themselves by looking beyond her initial impressions of them. They embody opposite extremes, and we would have seen that even if their positions and Houses had been swapped—but of course, both still isolate themselves in different ways.
We get a deeper view of the pantheon in The Songbird & the Heart of Stone, including the very intimate interactions between the gods and their followers. What inspired you to have the gods be so very present (and fallible)? I love the sheer amount of possibility that the pantheon introduces into this world, and from the beginning, I wanted the gods to be highly present, creating very tangible impacts on the story. It introduces a whole other layer to the hierarchy of the world and another level of power dynamics. It throws open doors that would otherwise be impossible to explore!
Are there any gods who we haven’t interacted with yet who you’re excited to explore further? I am fascinated by the gods, and they play a much bigger role from Songbird onwards. So, the short answer is “yes, so many!”—but I think I’ll leave it at that rather than risk saying too much.
Photo of Carissa Broadbent by Victoria Costello.
The Songbird & the Heart of Stone starts a new arc in the author’s bestselling Crowns of Nyaxia series.
The question of how best to set up a personal library has confounded many a book collector. When it comes time to arrange them, all those wonderful volumes can seem like the pieces of an unsolvable puzzle. The literature lover who’s searching for solutions will welcome Book Nooks: Inspired Ideas for Cozy Reading Corners and Stylish Book Displays by Vanessa Dina and Claire Gilhuly.
Packed with easy-to-execute design schemes and Antonis Achilleos’ fabulous photographs, Book Nooks offers tips on how to group books according to color and size, as well as strategies for using personal effects in an arrangement. For establishing a comfy reading area, there are options to suit every style, space and taste. The book also addresses the art of stacking (Yes, it can be a creative act!), suggests methods for bringing plants into the picture, organizing those prize cookbooks and integrating analog reading material into a teen’s room. With reading recs from noted authors and a look at Little Free Libraries, Book Nooks is a bibliophile’s best friend.
Hidden Libraries
DC Helmuth’s Hidden Libraries: The World’s Most Unusual Book Depositories is a perfectly on-point present for any reader, but especially one who loves to travel. This wide-ranging title profiles 50 remarkable libraries in locations across the globe. Staff stories, fascinating facts, spectacular imagery and a foreword from critic and librarian Nancy Pearl make it a winning tribute to the mission of libraries everywhere.
Hidden Libraries surveys a range of amazing physical spaces. The Kurkku Fields’ Underground Library in Kisarazu, Japan, is a book-lined grotto covered in grass, while the cocoon-shaped Heydar Aliyev International Airport Library near Baku, Azerbaijan, projects sheer architectural awesomeness. Examples of inspired resourcefulness regarding book circulation abound: In China, the Shenzhen library system distributes titles via vending machine. And Helmuth doesn’t dismiss even the most miniature of libraries. A handsome wooden cabinet filled with colorful books, the Little Free Library at the South Pole—startling against Antarctica’s unrelieved whiteness—seems to defy its frozen surroundings. Big or small, grand or humble, each library serves as a singular point of enrichment and connection, and Helmuth’s stirring volume honors these efforts.
The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge
With its quick-witted heroine Rory Gilmore, a voracious reader with dreams of attending Harvard, Gilmore Girls could very well be classified as a TV show for bookworms. The series, which aired from 2000 to 2007, made numerous allusions (339, to be exact) to books of all genres—titles favored by Rory and her friends. In The Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge: The Official Guide to All the Books, Erika Berlin explores the novels, plays and poetry cited on the show, providing episode information and details on who read what.
Inspired by Buzzfeed’s 2014 list of all the books mentioned in Gilmore Girls, Berlin’s breezy volume takes a nostalgic look back at Rory’s world while sharing reading recommendations (Frankenstein, The Poems of Emily Dickinson, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the list goes on) and invaluable book-related advice, including approaches for becoming a more focused reader and easy ways to impose order on a chaotic book collection. Filled with photos from the show, this book is a sunny retrospective and a buoyant tribute to the reading life.
Buried Deep and Other Stories
For the fantasy fan, there’s no better gift than Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik, bestselling author of the Scholomance trilogy, Uprooted and Spinning Silver. As this collection proves, Novik is a natural conjurer whose stories—rich with allusion and detail—feel effortlessly authentic. Each provides an escape into an alternative world that’s wholly realized.
“Dragons & Decorum”—a fantastical recasting of Pride and Prejudice, set in the Regency England of Novik’s Temeraire series—finds Elizabeth Bennet riding a winged dragon named Wollstonecraft. In “The Long Way Round,” Novik offers a taste of her next work (tentatively titled Folly) and introduces spirited protagonist Intessa Roh. “Vici,” another Temeraire tale, but this time set in ancient Rome, chronicles the unexpected camaraderie that arises between Marc Antony and a valiant dragon. Introductions from Novik accompany the anthology’s 13 stories, and readers will relish the context they give to her work. This is a transportive collection from an author who maps her narrative milieus with extraordinary precision.
The Man in Black and Other Stories
Crime fiction maven Elly Griffiths is known as a prolific writer, having penned the Ruth Galloway, Harbinder Kaur and Brighton mysteries series. But did anyone suspect she was writing short stories on the side? That’s right—Griffiths has long played around with short-form work, and her intriguing new volume, The Man in Black and Other Stories, spotlights this aspect of her artistry.
The atmospheric anthology brings together 19 pieces, in which, fans will be delighted to learn, Griffiths expands the backstories of some of her most popular characters. The volume’s eponymous story is a spooky sketch set just before Halloween that features Ruth Galloway. “Harbinger” tracks Harbinder Kaur’s all-too-eventful first day at Shoreham Criminal Investigation Department. And in “Ruth Galloway and the Ghost of Max Mephisto,” all three of Griffiths’ sleuths converge, as it were. Ingeniously plotted and leavened with humor, the pieces are brief but satisfying. From sinister tales to twisty whodunits, Griffith’s short stories deliver as much spellbinding suspense as a full-blown novel.
Got a serious bibliophile on your list? Tick that box with one of these titles.
In 2019, we’ve enjoyed a number of good comic tales—but they’re dark, a little wicked, and even when they’re a little fantastical, they’re deeply, utterly real. Here are five of our favorites.
