Janet Holden, Member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Community

Spring is upon us, the daffodils and crocus are blooming. Here are our reading suggestions for the month of April.

Ace Antonio-Hall recommends

Michael Forsythe grew up in Harlem, the son of a preacher. He is a graduate of Yale College with a degree in English Literature. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novel, Hour of the Beast, and the children’s book, Brothers. He has written under multiple pseudonyms, including Mike Foster. http://freedomshammer.com/

Suggested reading – The Adventure of the Spook House. The year is 1922. A respected judge inexplicably vanishes in a decrepit mansion, and two of the world’s most remarkable men are summoned to investigate: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Houdini, the world’s greatest escape artist. Aided by a beautiful young psychic, the unlikely partners probe a mystery that becomes murkier and more perilous at every turn and brings them face to face with evil incarnate. To solve the riddle of The Spook House—and to survive its dangers—they must call upon all of their extraordinary mental and physical powers. The story draws upon the real-life friendship of Conan Doyle and Houdini, two vastly different men brought together by their fascination with the paranormal.

Lauren Salerno recommends

Melissa Albert is the founding editor of the Barnes & Noble Teen Blog and the managing editor of BN.com. She has written for McSweeney’s, Time Out Chicago, MTV, and more. Melissa is from Illinois and lives in Brooklyn. The Hazel Wood is her first novel. https://twitter.com/mimi_albert

Suggested reading – The Hazel Wood. Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: Her mother is stolen away—by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother’s stories are set. Alice’s only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother’s tales began—and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong.

Kate Jones recommends

Alma Katsu is the author of The Taker, The Reckoning, and The Descent. She has been a signature reviewer for Publishers Weekly and a contributor to The Huffington Post. She is a graduate of the Master’s writing program at Johns Hopkins University and received her Bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University. Prior to the publication of her first novel, Katsu had a long career as a senior intelligence analyst for several U.S. agencies and is currently a senior analyst for a think tank. She lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband. https://www.almakatsubooks.com/

Suggested reading – The Hunger. Evil is invisible, and it is everywhere. That is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the wagon train known as the Donner Party. Depleted rations, bitter quarrels, and the mysterious death of a little boy have driven the isolated travelers to the brink of madness. Though the travelers dream of what awaits them in the West, long-buried secrets begin to emerge, and dissent among them escalates to the point of murder and chaos. They cannot seem to escape tragedy … or the feelings that someone—or something—is stalking them. Whether it’s a curse from the beautiful Tamsen Donner (who some think might be a witch), their ill-advised choice of route through uncharted terrain, or just plain bad luck, the ninety men, women, and children of the Donner Party are heading into one of one of the deadliest and most disastrous Western adventures in American history.

As members of the group begin to disappear, the survivors start to wonder if there really is something disturbing, and hungry, waiting for them in the mountains … and whether the evil that has unfolded around them may have in fact been growing within them all along.

Effortlessly combining the supernatural and the historical, The Hunger is an eerie, thrilling look at the volatility of human nature, pushed to its breaking point.

Kate Maruyama recommends

Malka Older is a writer, aid worker, and Ph.D. candidate. Named Senior Fellow for Technology and Risk at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs for 2015, she has more than a decade of experience in humanitarian aid and development, ranging from field level experience as a Head of Office in Darfur to supporting global programs and agency-wide strategy as a disaster risk reduction technical specialist. She has responded to complex emergencies and natural disasters in Sri Lanka, Uganda, Darfur, Indonesia, Japan, and Mali, in the last three as Team Leader.

Her doctoral work on the sociology of organizations at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) explores the dynamics of multi-level governance and disaster response using the cases of Hurricane Katrina and the Japan tsunami of 2011. She has an undergraduate degree in literature from Harvard and a Masters in international relations and economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) Johns Hopkins University.

She is a Campbell Award Finalist and a Locus Award Finalist. https://malkaolder.wordpress.com/

Suggested reading – Null States. After the last controversial global election, the global infomocracy that has ensured thirty years of world peace is fraying at the edges. As the new Supermajority government struggles to establish its legitimacy, agents of Information across the globe strive to keep the peace and maintain the flows of data that feed the new world order.

In the newly-incorporated DarFur, a governor dies in a fiery explosion. In Geneva, a superpower hatches plans to bring microdemocracy to its knees. In Central Asia, a sprawling war among archaic states threatens to explode into a global crisis. And across the world, a shadowy plot is growing, threatening to strangle Information with the reins of power.

Linda Addison recommends

Leza Cantoral was born in Mexico and moved to the Chicago suburbs when she was 12. She runs CLASH Books and is the editor of Print Projects for Luna Luna Magazine. She lives in New Hampshire with the love of her life and their two cats. Cartoons in the Suicide Forest is her first short story collection. She is also the editor of a new anthology, Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey & Sylvia Plath (CLASH Books, 2018). She is currently working on a YA Bizarro novella called The Ice Cream Girl Gospels. You can find more about Leza on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter @lezacantoral.

Suggested reading – Cartoons in the Suicide Forest (Bizarro Pulp Press – JournalStone Publishing, 2016); the anthology, Tragedy Queens. Cartoons in the Suicide Forest is a unique, sensory, dangerous fiction collection. I loved her versions of fairy tales re-imagined as poetic, edgy hallucinations.

From Beast: “My brain is frozen in this nightmare and my body only comes alive when I dream of my handsome sad prince who will never kiss me. A tear escapes my eye and it freezes on my cheek as I lean up against the windowpane.

“If I jumped out this window I would feel alive for a minute of free falling, free from fear, free from sadness, free from desire. I punch a hole through the window and marvel at my fist covered in blood with shards sticking out of it.”

Tragedy Queens, edited by Leza Cantoral, includes work by Lorraine Schein, Gabino Iglesias, Larissa Glasser, Stephanie Wytovich, and others, who use Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath as their muses to create fictions with strange waking nightmares, illusionary love, and unpredictable fantasies.

See what CLASH Books has to offer at: https://www.clashbooks.com/.