The Seers’ Table June 2017
The Seers Table
June contains the longest day of the year. Happy Summer Solstice! Why not use the extra time to read some new authors.
Janet Holden recommends:
Kate Moore is the author of more than fifteen books, including The Radium Girls, across the genres of gift, humour, biography, history, and children’s brand publishing. A multiple Sunday Times bestselling author, her work has been published in national newspapers, translated into more than twelve languages, used in national advertising campaigns and performed at the South Bank Centre, London.
The Radium Girls. The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive—until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a groundbreaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come.
Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives …
Kate Jonez recommends:
S.P. Miskowski is a nominee for a Shirley Jackson Award for the novella Muscadines (Dunhams Manor Press). Rated by Black Static reviewer Peter Tennant as “one of the most interesting and original writers to emerge in recent years,” Miskowski has a short story collection, Strange is the Night, and a novel, I Wish I Was Like You, forthcoming from JournalStone in 2017. Her debut novel Knock Knock and novella Delphine Dodd were Shirley Jackson Award finalists, and are part of the Skillute Cycle which includes novellas Astoria and In the Light. The series is published by Omnium 
Gatherum, with cover art by Russell Dickerson.
Miskowski’s short stories appear in the magazines Supernatural Tales, Black Static, Identity Theory and Strange Aeons, and in the anthologies The Madness of Dr. Caligari, Little Visible Delight, October Dreams 2, Autumn Cthulhu, Cassilda’s Song, The Hyde Hotel, and Darker Companions: Celebrating 50 Years of Ramsey Campbell. Her writing has received a Swarthout Award and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships.
Kate Maruyama recommends:
Kit Reed is an American author of both speculative fiction and literary fiction, as well as psychological thrillers, and has published upwards of thirty novels and too many short stories to count. She was a Guggenheim fellow and a recipient of a five-year grant from the Abraham Woursell Foundation.
Her latest novel, Mormama, published by Tor in May, is a riveting supernatural, southern gothic tale.
Dell Duval has been living on the street since his accident. He can’t remember who he was or where he came from. All he has is a tattered note in his pocket with an address for the Ellis house, a sprawling, ancient residence in Jacksonville. He doesn’t know why he’s been sent here. In the house, Lane and her son Theo have returned to the ancient family home—their last resort. The old house is ruled by an equally ancient trio of tyrannical aunts, who want to preserve everything. Nothing should ever leave the house, including Lane. Something about the house isn’t right. Things happen to the men and boys living there. There are forces at work, one of which visits Theo each night—Mormama, one mama too many.
Reed’s short stories have been published in places from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to the Yale Review and the Kenyon Review, and have been widely anthologized. Many of her stories are published as feminist science fiction, and she has been nominated for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award three times and the Shirley Jackson Award twice. She is the Resident Writer at Wesleyan University. She is also an excellent literary citizen, as we all should strive to be.
Lauren Candia recommends:
Madeleine Roux is a New York Times-bestselling author. She received her BA in Creative Writing and Acting from Beloit College in 2008. In the spring of 2009, Madeleine completed an Honors Term at Beloit College, proposing, writing, and presenting a full-length historical fiction novel. Shortly after, she began the experimental fiction blog Allison Hewitt Is Trapped. Allison Hewitt Is Trapped quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, bringing a unique serial fiction experience to readers.
Born in Minnesota, she now lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Recommended Reading: House of Furies. After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house’s mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.
Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests. He is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows that it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?
Featuring stunning interior illustrations from artist Iris Compiet, plus photo-collages that bring Coldthistle House to chilling life, House of Furies invites readers to a world where the line between monsters and men is ghostly thin.
Linda Addison recommends:
Rasheedah Prioleau is a southern African-American writer with an eclectic range of writing and ghostwriting credits. After a few years in the corporate world, she started over from the bottom as an unpaid intern for a literary manager and never looked back.
“I love to write because there are no limits. All it takes is a finite space of time and I can create a story from infinite possibilities.”
Writers who have influenced her include: Judy Blume, Jude Deveraux, V.C. Andrews, Octavia Butler, Stephanie Meyer, and Charlaine Harris … just to name a few.
Her work:
American Specter: The Seven Sisters, 2016. FBI Agent Audra Wheeler has been haunted for the last thirteen years by a paranormal attack that left her sister, Kendra, in a coma. Mentored by FBI Assistant Director Jonathan Cordero to investigate crimes committed by specters, Audra believes she is on the trail of a “serial killer” specter with an M.O. very similar to her sister’s attacker. The investigation takes her to the small town of Specter, Georgia; a haven for ghosts who exist among the living.
Everlasting: Da Eb’Bulastin (Sa’Fyre Island, Book 1); 2014. Knowing these incidents of sleepwalking have something to do with her long-awaited transition into queen of the island, Aiyana shrugs them off as little more than a nuisance to be expected since her lineage leads to a mysterious African goddess. Aiyana moves forward with plans to host a week-long festival that will end with her succession to the island throne, but the murder of an important guest and the passing of her grandmother bring the festivities to a screeching halt, and Aiyana learns that the transition involves an unwanted possession and the revelation of a dark family curse.
For more information, visit http://www.rasheedahprioleau.com.
