Empress by Shan Sa
A ravishing historical novel of one of China’s most controversial historical figures: its first and only female emperor, Empress Wu, who emerged in the Tang Dynasty and ushered in a golden age.
In seventh–century China, during the great Tang dynasty, a young girl from the humble Wu clan entered the imperial gynaecium, which housed ten thousand concubines. Inside the Forbidden City, she witnessed seductions, plots, murders, and brazen acts of treason. Propelled by a shrewd intelligence, an extraordinary persistence, and a friendship with the imperial heir, she rose through the ranks to become the first Empress of China. On the one hand, she was a political mastermind who quelled insurrections, eased famine, and opened wide the routes of international trade. On the other, she was a passionate patron of the arts who brought Chinese civilization to unsurpassed heights of knowledge, beauty, and sophistication.
And yet, from the moment of her death to the present day, her name has been sullied, her story distorted, and her memoirs obliterated by men taking vengeance on a women who dared become Emperor. For the first time in thirteen centuries, Empress Wu flings open the gates of her Forbidden City and tells her own astonishing tale–revealing a fascinating, complex figure who in many ways remains modern to this day.
Personal note: Empress is a book that I come back to often enough for it to fall open onto my favourite parts of the story. It’s also the very first book I will recommend to anyone who asks me for one. I read this when I want to be reminded that to be a woman is to be powerful.
The Demonologist by Andrew Pyper
A stolen child.
An ancient evil.
A father’s descent.
And the literary masterpiece that holds the key to his daughter’s salvation.
Professor David Ullman is among the world’s leading authorities on demonic literature, with special expertise in Milton’s Paradise Lost. Not that David is a believer—he sees what he teaches as a branch of the imagination and nothing more. So when the mysterious Thin Woman arrives at his office and invites him to travel to Venice and witness a “phenomenon,” he turns her down. She leaves plane tickets and an address on his desk, advising David that her employer is not often disappointed.
That evening, David’s wife announces she is leaving him. With his life suddenly in shambles, he impulsively whisks his beloved twelve-year-old daughter, Tess, off to Venice after all. The girl has recently been stricken by the same melancholy moods David knows so well, and he hopes to cheer her up and distract them both from the troubles at home.
But what happens in Venice will change everything.
First, in a tiny attic room at the address provided by the Thin Woman, David sees a man restrained in a chair, muttering, clearly insane . . . but could he truly be possessed? Then the man speaks clearly, in the voice of David’s dead father, repeating the last words he ever spoke to his son. Words that have left scars—and a mystery—behind.
When David rushes back to the hotel, he discovers Tess perched on the roof’s edge, high above the waters of the Grand Canal. Before she falls, she manages to utter a final plea: Find me.
What follows is an unimaginable journey for David Ullman from skeptic to true believer. In a terrifying quest guided by symbols and riddles from the pages of Paradise Lost, David must track the demon that has captured his daughter and discover its name. If he fails, he will lose Tess forever.
Personal note: Stories that have religious contexts, imagery, and studies, have long fascinated me, and this book scratches all the itches. Coupled with a beautiful father-daughter bond, ancient riddles, and a poignant theme, I recommend a strong drink and a cozy spot for this one.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation’s past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country.
Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.
Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrel. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.
Personal note: There is something both foggy and elegant about the way this book was written and how it reads. The clash between Strange and Norrell conjures the feeling that the reader has been a part of this cycle for a long time.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra by Margaret George
Bestselling novelist Margaret George brings to life the glittering kingdom of Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, in this lush, sweeping, and richly detailed saga. Told in Cleopatra’s own voice, this is a mesmerizing tale of ambition, passion, and betrayal, which begins when the twenty-year-old queen seeks out the most powerful man in the world, Julius Caesar, and does not end until, having survived the assassination of Caesar and the defeat of the second man she loves, Marc Antony, she plots her own death rather than be paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome.
Personal note: Like many kids, my infatuation with Egypt and its history started in elementary school, and has only grown into adulthood. This is written from the POV of Cleopatra, as is George’s way, and is a beautifully tragic retelling of Cleopatra’s life with some speculation that fits the narrative that history offers to us well. I wish I could reread this book again for the first time.
Odd Spirits by S.T. Gibson
It takes a lot of commitment to make a marriage between a modern ceremonial magician and a chaos witch work, but when a malevolent entity takes up residence in Rhys and Moira’s home, their love will be pushed to the limits.
Brewing up a solution is easier said than done when your magical styles are polar opposites; throw a psychic ex and a secret society in the mix, and things are bound to get messy.
Fans of ‘The Raven Cycle’ and ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ will devour this diverse paranormal romance novella from the author of “Hosanna Americana”!
Content Warning: This book addresses biphobia.
Personal note: This book is how I found S.T. Gibson for the first time. It is a beautifully written tale on the maze that is sometimes love, I’ve reread it a number of times.
Himself by Jess Kidd
Having been abandoned at an orphanage as a baby, Mahony assumed all his life that his mother wanted nothing to do with him. That is, until one night in 1976 while drinking a pint at a Dublin pub, he receives an anonymous note implying that she may have been forced to give him up. Determined to find out what really happened, Mahony embarks on a pilgrimage back to his hometown, the rural village of Mulderrig. Neither he nor Mulderrig can possibly prepare for what’s in store…
From the moment he arrives, Mahony’s presence completely changes the village. Women fall all over themselves. The real and the fantastic are blurred. Chatty ghosts rise from their graves with secrets to tell, and local preacher Father Quinn will do anything to get rid of the slippery young man who is threatening the moral purity of his parish.
Personal note: This story dragged me by the edge of my seat from beginning to end. the twists and turns are sharp and poignant, and the characters are masterfully written. The search for truth is always a compelling tale to read.
Dracula, My Love: The Secret Journals of Mina Harker by Syrie James
Who is this magnetic, fascinating man? And how could one woman fall so completely under his spell?
Mina Harker is torn between two men. Struggling to hang on to the deep, pure love she’s found within her marriage to her husband, Jonathan, she is inexorably drawn into a secret, passionate affair with a charismatic but dangerous lover. This haunted and haunting creature has awakened feelings and desires within her that she has never before known, which remake her as a woman.
Although everyone she knows fears him and is pledged to destroy him, Mina sees a side to him that the others cannot: a tender, romantic side; a man who is deeply in love, and who may not be evil after all. Yet to surrender is surely madness, for to be with him could end her life. It may cost Mina all she holds dear, but to make her choice she must learn everything she can about the remarkable origins and sensuous powers of this man, this exquisite monster, this … Dracula!
Personal note: I’m sure all of us have read at least one version of Dracula’s story in our lives, but I really love how the dynamics of this love triangle are portrayed, it’s very sweet and thorough.
The Various Flavours of Coffee by Anthony Capella
1895. Robert Wallis, would-be poet, bohemian & dandy, accepts a commission from coffee merchant Samuel Pinker to categorise the different tastes of coffee & encounters Pinker’s free-thinking daughters, Philomenia, Ada & Emily. As romance blossoms with Emily, Robert realises that the muse & marriage may not be incompatible after all.
Personal Note: it’s hard to describe this book without using some type of purple prose: you can smell the coffee, the jungles, the humidity that held romance’s sparks. I learned a great deal about coffee as well!
The Dark Chorus by Ashley Meggitt
Oblivio salvationem Angelis opperitur
Oblivion awaits the Angel’s salvation
The Boy can see lost souls.
He has never questioned the fact that he can see them. He thinks of them as the Dark Chorus. When he sets out to restore the soul of his dead mother it becomes clear that his ability comes from within him. It is a force that he cannot ignore – the last shard of the shattered soul of an angel.
To be restored to the kingdom of light, the shard must be cleansed of the evil that infects it – but this requires the corrupt souls of the living!
With the help from Makka, a psychotically violent young man full of hate, and Vee, an abused young woman full of pain, the Boy begins to kill.
Psychiatrist Dr Eve Rhodes is seconded to assist the police investigation into the Boy’s apparently random ritualistic killings. As the investigation gathers pace, a pattern emerges. When Eve pulls at the thread from an article in an old psychology journal, what might otherwise have seemed to her a terrible psychotic delusion now feels all too real…
Will the Boy succeed in restoring the angel’s soul to the light? Can Eve stop him, or will she be lost to realm of the Dark Chorus?
Personal note: I found this book on a bus bench on my way to work. I’ve never been hooked so fast on a book in my life. It’s dark, deals with a number of sensitive subjects, and is very gritty, but the story is phenomenal.
The Music of Razors by Cameron Rogers
In nineteenth-century Boston, a young doctor on the run from the law falls in with a British confidence artist. Together–and with dire consequences–they bring back to the light something meant to be forgotten.
A world away in London, an absent father, haunted by the voice of a banished angel, presents his daughter with an impossible friend–a clockwork ballerina.
For two centuries, a bullet-removal specialist has wielded instruments of angel bone in service to a forgotten power . . . and now he vows to find someone else to shoulder the burden, someone with a conscience of their own, a strong mind, and a broken will. For a hundred years he has searched for the perfect contender, and now he has found two: a brother and a sister. Walter and Hope. Either will do.
Last night something stepped from little Walter’s closet and he never woke up. Now he travels the dark road between worlds, no longer entirely boy nor wholly beast, but with one goal in mind: to prevent his sister from suffering the same fate as he. Only the creature he has become can save Hope. But is it too late to save himself?
Personal note: Very little can compare with a sibling bond, and this tale is no different. Vivid imagery, always dancing between the light and the dark.
Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake
Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.
So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.
Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.
Yet she spares Cas’s life.
Personal note: I used to wonder what the roots of my love for dark fantasy and romance looked like, but I think this is one of them.
Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
It’s been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can’t move on.
His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they’re right, but in Cas’s eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.
Now he’s seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he’s asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong…these aren’t just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.
Cas doesn’t know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn’t deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it’s time for him to return the favor.
Personal note: I was ecstatic when I found out there was a sequel to Anna Dressed In Blood, and I fully admit to crying over this book. bloody brilliant.
Over a God’s Dead Body by Joel Spriggs
Three gods walk onto a college campus looking for a dead body. A bad joke, a bad day, or both? Esmy Hansen is about to find out.
Esmy is stuck in a rut and frustrated by a lack of pockets on women’s pants. Meeting Loki ignites her life like a powder-keg. This simple, seemingly innocuous encounter leads her and Jake to discover the college campus’s mysterious depths, involving sasquatches, vampires, and much more. In a crudely comedic high-stakes game of maneuvering, Loki’s freedom and Esmy’s survival come down to a fight over a God’s dead body.
Over a God’s Dead Body is the first book in a humorous supernatural series! If you like insane action, hilarious dialogue, and gods behaving badly, then you’ll love the first installment in Joel Spriggs’s magical comedy.
Personal note: An excellent mixture of comedy, mythology, murder, and mystery.
Bloodlaced by Courtney Maguire
Kanjin hardly view their servants as human. Even less so when they are different.
Asagi is different. Both a man and a woman.
In the wake of his failure to protect a boy he saw as a son from their abusive master, Asagi is sold into the house of a young nobleman, Mahiro, who is the opposite of everything Asagi has ever known—gentle, kind, and generous.
Mahiro bonds with Asagi and their friendship blooms into a deep and profound love. But when Asagi is poisoned out of jealousy, Mahiro reveals himself to be youkai, a demon who feeds on blood, and he has no choice but to turn Asagi to save their life.
Asagi awakes reborn, strong, and eternally youthful. But the price for Asagi’s new life is high.
The blood of the innocent. Just as Asagi’s trust in Mahiro falters, the boy he failed to protect, now a man, reappears.
New master, same threat.
With both a literal and proverbial monster at the door, Asagi must decide what it means to be human to protect what they love most.
Content Warnings: physical abuse, sexual abuse (off-page), self-harm, blood, graphic violence
Personal note: Paranormal romance in historical Japan? Say less. The bond between Mahiro and Asagi is palpable on page, and is all the sweeter at their turning point. There’s a sequel too!
The Stars Within Us by Ime Atakpa
Andi Winters has always been beautiful. At least that’s what she’s been told by the countless boys who have tried and failed to win her affection.
She’s young when she learns that she can’t be friends with boys who only want her around for a chance to kiss her, and she carries the weight of that revelation into middle school where she’s tormented by a boy from her past: Will Mason. He’s pined after her since elementary school and will stop at nothing to win her over, even if it means making her miserable in the process. And she is miserable, until she meets Cassie Burroughs, a girl with a pure heart who puts Andi on the path towards navigating love, friendship, and discovering the self-confidence she needs to become content with her place in the world.
Personal note: A magnificent look at adolescence to young adulthood, with incredible characters and meaningful moments.
The Fire in My Blood by Chapel Orahamm
A few millennia into the future, on a different planet, in aging biodomes, the human race grapples with a new threat, or maybe a new gift – humans with fire in their blood. Nigrae Lunam, ex-soldier and current co-leader for the Caeruleum gang, finds himself ensnared in a fire fight when he rescues a pair of children, Sam and Abby from the Aurantiaco gang, and a man with cognac-colored eyes, Sanctus, from the Rubrum gang. This would be any average day, save for the fact Sanctus is a rare Providentia, a person who can boost a fire-user’s powers ten fold. A priceless, coveted treasure in the city of Urbs Aquarum.
As Lunam shows the man and children what it means to be safe, he develops a fondness for Sanctus that he swears he will never reveal. When Sam and Abby are threatened and Sanctus is kidnapped, Lunam must face the responsibility of taking over another gang’s territory, his true feelings for Sanctus, and the chance it all blows apart in a fiery inferno.
Personal note: Chapel is stellar at creating beautiful worlds. The plot twists that have been woven into a blossoming romance and the mechanics between territorial control is riveting. I feel as if I’m in the Caeruleum Gang myself.
Seren J.H. Wolfe 