October is Ghost Month on Fantasy Reads. This year I’ve chosen to celebrate the ghostly fiction of one of my heroines – author, suffragist and Egyptologist Amelia B. Edwards (1831-1892). Edwards has become so famous as an intrepid traveller and the Godmother of British Egyptology (see her bestselling A Thousand Miles Up the Nile 1877)… Continue reading
Depending on where you live, your summer has probably been either too hot or too wet so let me take you somewhere wintery instead. Canadian author Heather Fawcett’s recent novel Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (2023) is set in Ljosland, an invented northern country not unlike Norway. This book is available in most of the… Continue reading
Did you know that there is now a whole sub-genre of Cosy Fantasy? Or Cozy Fantasy, if you are American, which somehow sounds better. This month I’m recommending a charming example of Cozy Fantasy by American author and audiobook narrator, Travis Baldree. Legends & Lattes was published in 2022 and is available in print with… Continue reading
This month I’m recommending a Hugo Award-winning series of novellas – The Singing Hills Cycle by American author Nghi Vo. The first to be published was The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020), followed in the same year by When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain. Don’t those titles immediately make you want to read… Continue reading
For this coronation month I’m recommending Miss Sharp’s Monsters, a trilogy by Australian author Suzannah Rowntree which has an unusual take on Europe’s royal families. The series begins with The Werewolf of Whitechapel, continues with Anarchist on the Orient Express and comes to a dramatic conclusion in A Vampire in Bavaria. All three volumes were… Continue reading
This month I’m returning to the work of Anglo-Irish author Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett (1878-1957) better known as Lord Dunsany. I wrote about his wonderful short stories in an early Fantasy Reads post (June 2012) but I’m now recommending one of his novels – The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924). During the last few… Continue reading
This month I’m recommending you to set sail with The Bone Ships (2019). British author R.J.Barker’s acclaimed novel was the first volume in his Tide Child Trilogy. It was followed in 2020 by Call of the Bone Ships and in 2021 by The Bone Ship’s Wake. All three books are available in paperback or as… Continue reading
February is often a dismal month but this year I’ve decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day by recommending something romantic.This has brought me back to the work of Australian author W.R. Gingell (see my Fantasy Reads post on Spindle, July 2016) because her Lady of Dreams is probably the most unusual love story I have ever… Continue reading
My January recommendation has to be The Ten Thousand Doors of January by American author, Alix E.Harrow. This novel about a girl called January who discovers doors leading to other worlds was first published in 2019. It is easily available in paperback or as an ebook and, because it consists of two first- person narratives,… Continue reading
This month’s recommended read is a book by Canadian author, Victoria Goddard, who has written numerous interlinked novels and novellas set in her Nine Worlds Fantasy universe. Dr Goddard is an author who delights and infuriates me in equal measure so it has been quite hard to pick an example of her work that I… Continue reading