Interesting Readings

Interesting Readings: a book club for the best in sci-fi, from quirky classics to fresh indie!

Our first April selection will be Joe Abercrombie's THE DEVILS.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-devils-joe-abercrombie/be943596eb5862af

A brand-new epic fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Joe Abercrombie, featuring a notorious band of anti-heroes on a delightfully bloody and raucous journey

Holy work sometimes requires unholy deeds.

Brother Diaz has been summoned to the Sacred City, where he is certain a commendation and grand holy assignment awaits him. But his new flock is made up of unrepentant murderers, practitioners of ghastly magic, and outright monsters. The mission he is tasked with will require bloody measures from them all in order to achieve its righteous ends.

Elves lurk at our borders and hunger for our flesh, while greedy princes care for nothing but their own ambitions and comfort. With a hellish journey before him, it's a good thing Brother Diaz has the devils on his side.

Interesting Readings: a book club for the best in sci-fi, from quirky classics to fresh indie!

Our second April selection will be Steve Alten's MEG.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/meg-a-novel-of-deep-terror-steve-alten/300797b8e143aca3

MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror is the book that launched New York Times bestselling author Steve Alten's franchise and inspired an international blockbuster starring Jason Statham.

Seven years ago and seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, Dr. Jonas Taylor encountered something that changed the course of his life. Once a Navy deep-sea submersible pilot, now a marine paleontologist, Taylor is convinced that a remnant population of Carcharodon megalodon—prehistoric sharks growing up to 70 feet long, that subsisted on whales—lurks at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Offered the opportunity to return to those crushing depths in search of the Megs, Taylor leaps at the chance...but his quest for scientific knowledge (and personal vindication) becomes a desperate fight for survival, when the most vicious predator the earth has ever known is freed to once again hunt the surface.

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Interesting Readings: a book club for the best in sci-fi, from quirky classics to fresh indie!

Our first May selection will be Stephen Graham Jones' THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-buffalo-hunter-hunter-stephen-graham-jones/d1b4a8cac4757e4e

The New York Times bestseller and “horror masterpiece” (NPR) from Stephen Graham Jones—the master of modern horror—is a chilling historical horror novel tracing the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice.

“Jones has written his Interview with the Indigenous Vampire. A landmark of horror and historical fiction alike, perhaps the closest thing we have to horror’s Moby-Dick.” —Vulture

“Inventive and spine-tingling…a master class in voice. Queasy, uneasy, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter plays with the interplay between religion and historical guilt, identity and appetite.” —The Washington Post

A diary, written in 1912 by a Lutheran pastor is discovered within a wall. What it unveils is a slow massacre, a chain of events that go back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow. Told in transcribed interviews by a Blackfeet named Good Stab, who shares the narrative of his peculiar life over a series of confessional visits. This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror, Stephen Graham Jones.

Interesting Readings: a book club for the best in sci-fi, from quirky classics to fresh indie!

Our second May selection will be Oliver Darkshire's ISABELLA NAGG AND THE POT OF BASIL.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/isabella-nagg-and-the-pot-of-basil-oliver-darkshire/8f9c60f3a6c17daf

In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm's strange animals, cooking up "scrunge," and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can't help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: what harm could a little magic do?

This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines a heroine of Boccaccio's Decameron in a delightfully deranged world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers. As Isabella and her grouchy, cat-like companion set off to save the village from an entrepreneurial villain running a goblin-fruit Ponzi scheme, Darkshire's tale revels in the ancient books and arcane folklore of a new and original kind of enchantment.

A delightful and entertaining story of self-discovery--as well as fungus, capitalism, and sorcery--Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil is a story for those who can't help but find magic even in the oddest and most baffling circumstances.

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Note: your $1 contribution helps offset Meetup.com group fees. Thank you for your understanding!