Richard Russo, author of Elsewhere: A Memoir

After eight commanding works of fiction, Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escape.

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Ian McEwan, author of Sweet Tooth

Set in 1972 during the Cold War, England's legendary intelligence agency MI5 embarks on an operation code-named "Sweet Tooth" to fund writers whose politics align with those of the government. Cambridge student Serena Frome is hired to infiltrate the literary circle of a promising young writer named Tom Haley. But when she begins to fall in love with him, she wonders how long she can conceal her undercover life.

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Dead Asleep by Jamie Freveletti

Biochemist Emma Caldridge comes to a remote tropical island in the Caribbean in search of minerals believed to reverse the aging process. What she finds instead are the bloody remnants of a bizarre religious ritual. And here, where the local people speak in whispers about sea monsters, ancient voodoo curses, and rampaging evil, she discovers something far more real...and more terrifying. One by one the island's innocent inhabitants are descending into a paralyzing sleep of the dead --- victims of a long-dormant, terrifying and incurable pandemic that could once again wreak unimaginable havoc if it escapes from the island to spread like wildfire across the globe.

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The Sword Of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett

Female Fantasy Authors, November 2012

Often missed by readers is Leigh Brackett, but finding her takes a walk back into the '40s and '50s...and even to the theater screen. Brackett would take breaks in her science fiction output to pen screenplays, such as Rio Bravo, The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back. Her novella Lorelei of the Red Mist was co-written with Ray Bradbury, but on her own she displayed an incredible imagination, exploring the devastating effects of colonialism within a martian landscape and the collision of various alien civilizations. It is a travesty that many of the early pioneers of the genre are forgotten, particularly those women who helped blaze the trail. Leigh Brackett is certainly one such woman and her work is worth hunting down.

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