#CurrentlyReading December 2020

 

Hello Fellow Readers,

It's December! The last month before the start of a new year. 2020 have been a bit crazy so I honestly I can't wait for it to end. However, before we move on to a new year we have to get through this month and we do it with reading. 

 

 

In the fourth collaboration with We Need Diverse Books, fifteen award-winning and celebrated diverse authors deliver stories about a princess without need of a prince, a monster long misunderstood, memories that vanish with a spell, and voices that refuse to stay silent in the face of injustice. This powerful and inclusive collection contains a universe of wishes for a braver and more beautiful world.

 

 

 

 

 

Earning an MFA in writing at the New School, working at Rolling Stone magazine, and being courted by an editor at a prestigious publishing house—Afarin Majidi should be thrilled with the direction her life is taking as she turns thirty. Instead, she is spiraling into the depths of madness as she seeks love and acceptance in an Islamophobic society.

After colleagues at the magazine drug and rape her, she’s left with an unfinished novel. She turns to a former professor, James Lasdun, with whom she develops a toxic obsession. Majidi is the woman he calls “Nasreen” in his memoir, Give Me Everything You Have.

Raw and honest, Writing and Madness in a Time of Terror is a haunting meditation on identity, misogyny, violence, and mental illness. 

 

 

Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.

Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.

Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:

"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"

 

Billy Jakobek has always been different. Born with strange and powerful psychic abilities, he has grown up in the laboratories of Thorne Century, a ruthless megacorporation that economically, socially, and politically dominates American society. Every day, Billy absorbs the emotional energies, dreams, and traumas of everyone he meets—from his grandmother’s memories of the Holocaust, to the terror his sheer existence inflicts upon his captors—and he yearns to break free, so he can use his powers to help others.

Natalia Gonzalez, a rebellious artist and daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, lives in Heaven’s Hole, an industrial town built inside a meteor crater, where the poverty-stricken population struggles to survive the nightmarish working conditions of the local Thorne Century factory. Natalia takes care of her ailing mother, her grandmother, and her two younger brothers, and while she dreams of escape, she knows she cannot leave her family behind.

When Billy is transferred to Heaven’s Hole, his chance encounter with Natalia sends shockwaves rippling across the blighted landscape. The two outsiders are pitted against the all-powerful monopoly, while Billy experiences visions of an otherworldly figure known as the Shape, which prophesizes an apocalyptic future that could decimate the world they know. 

 

★ Some promises are meant to be broken... ★

Alex is leading the life most people dream of: he occupies an important position, he owns a shiny luxury car and he is dating the perfect woman that he is about to marry.

But the loss of a loved one makes him aware of the flip side: he works like a maniac to pay off his mortgage, he neglects his family and he lost sight of his three best friends, with whom he had taken the oath to meet again ten years later. Finally, he realizes that he has not forgotten Aurora, his young love that disappeared without explanation.

Alex's sister, a rebellious teenager who he has to take care of for a while, complicates the situation further. She tries to push him towards his new secretary, who does not attract him at all. Unless . . .

Will Alex be able to reconnect with his past, his family and his friends? Will he find his soul mate, provided she exists?

 

Every fifty years, a cult claims twelve men to murder in a small Texas town. Can one girl end the cycle of violence - and save the boy who broke her heart?

San Solano, Texas is a quaint town known for its charm, hospitality, and history of murder. Twice now, twelve men have been brutally killed, and no one knows who did it. A shadowy witch? A copy-cat killer? Or a man-hating murderess? Eighteen-year-old Natalie Colter is sure that the rumors about her great-great-grandmother's cult of wronged women are just gossip, but that doesn't stop the true crime writers and dark tourism bloggers from capitalizing on the town's reputation. It's an urban legend that's hard to ignore, and it gets harder when Nat learns that the sisterhood is real, and magical. And they want her to join.

The more Nat learns of the Wardens' supernatural history, the more she wonders about the real culprits behind the town's ritualistic murders. Are the Wardens protecting San Solano from even darker forces? As the anniversary of the murders draws near, the town grows restless. Residents start getting "claimed" as this year's planned victims, including Levi Langford, the boy whose kiss haunted Nat for a year.

Nat knows that no one is safe. Can she and the sisterhood stop the true evil from claiming their town?