66 books like Apothecary

I’ll admit it. Usually, when I see an “award-winning” book, I’m turned off because I’ve seen so many of these books fail to live up to the hype. This book was an amazing exception. It deserved its 2018 Hugo Award for Best Novella and Nebula Award for Best Novella.

The entire book can be summed up with this one tongue-in-cheek sentence from the protagonist: “As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure.” This android is very capable of killing efficiently and coldly. But it’s also very “human.” Humans are exploring other planets and security androids are mandatory. Murderbot is self-aware and is most content when alone–limiting its contact with humans, but what would be the fun of that in this sci-fi adventure?

Kathryn is the best sci-fi author you haven’t read. How do I know? I was her critique buddy. We traded chapters as we wrote, each acting as advisor to the other.

I really liked Monkey Girl, a great choice for teen girls. But Project Hannibal is my favorite. Kathryn works at a zoo, so she knows a lot about animals. In Hannibal, she asks, could DNA from extinct woolly mammoths be used to impregnate a modern elephant? And if you could produce mammoth offspring, why do it?

As it turns out, mammoths might be exactly the wildlife our neglected planet needs. Join a flying doctor and her teenage assistant in a grand adventure across the wilderness of Alaska.

I normally avoid dystopian, but this story doesn’t dwell in misery like so many apocalyptic stories do.

Last Man Standing is more like Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, because it’s about one man’s survival under extreme conditions. A scientist is stranded on a space station after an attack that has killed everyone else onboard. What happened, and why? He doesn’t know, but he’ll do anything to stay alive and find a way to get back to Earth despite a thousand obstacles in his path and little knowledge of spaceflight.

This story can be intense, but the character stays positive and has a lot of heart.

Rysa Walker offers a grab bag of fiction, from time travel to murder mysteries. Her latest series is an alien artifact story set on Mars.

An eccentric and not-so-honest billionaire is terraforming the planet (sound familiar?) and multiple factions of homesteaders are in conflict with the temporary workers. Enter a principled journalist who just wants to bring the breaking alien artifact story to readers back on Earth. She quickly learns that virtually no one on Mars can be trusted. In over her head, she has no ride home.

I like this story in part because Rysa is such a good writer, but also because it feels supremely relevant to our world today.

This book examines the psychology of superstition from the perspective of cognitive science and fallibility of human reasoning. Rather than dismissing superstitious behaviour, Vyse provides a comprehensive explanation of why we continue to hold such beliefs as a function of the way our minds work. This was the book that really inspired me to examine the developmental origins of magical thinking.

The illustrations are marvelous and the story is a peek into what it’s like for a child that is different in Russian culture. As a left-handed child she is forced to write and do nearly everything with her right hand except draw. This is the author’s personal story and you can see from the art that her drawing is amazing. I added this book to my list as Russia tops the headlines these days and remembering that children in Russia are just children with their own stories to tell feels important. Also, it’s an incredible book. 

I came across this book in the research stage of writing my new novel and from the very beginning I was hooked. I love a good fairytale, in this case Rapunzel, retold as feminist historical fiction. The characters are deliciously multi-faceted, the alternating storylines deftly woven together, and I felt like I was being doled out insights into where we are now as women through the lens of where we’ve been before. Engaging and enlightening. After reading it I felt inspired to read more of her work, write more of my own, and empower as many women as possible.

I was fascinated with the depiction of the 1930s Malaysian dance halls steeped in music, fashion, and dance. As a writer who dabbles in the paranormal, the cultural spirits and supernatural elements were intriguing. The split narrative appealed to me since my Jitterbug Dress series is a dual narrative set in the 1940s and 1990s. The author also set the narrative apart by telling the story in different tenses and POVs (Ren and William’s story is in third person past, while Ji Lin’s story is first person, present). Choo did a great job of juxtaposing the beast or wild animal inside each person, where the line of who we are inside and what we present to society is drawn all while creating tension and suspense, keeping me guessing on how all these narratives intertwine. 

Eric Kurlander is a brilliant historian of modern Germany who finally treats this topic with the seriousness it deserves. Lots of charlatans and amateurs on the History Channel love to speculate about the Nazis and the occult, but Kurlander brings a historian’s rigor to the subject and reveals a complex relationship between the supernatural and the Nazi worldview. Among his findings is that key Nazi figures used the vast propaganda machinery, including film, to depict its “racial enemies” as monstrous. Kurlander also breaks down absurd beliefs like World Ice Theory and determines the truth behind Hitler’s fascination with the “Spear of Destiny.”

I love this book because it somehow manages to be a poignant grief story, a delightful friendship story, and a cute (and funny!) tale of first romance all in one book. And all in one book that’s under 250 pages, to boot!

The voice is engaging, the characters are fully realized, and the tone is as cozy and warm as the special desserts the main character learns to bake. It offers an emotional and fun take on an enemies-to-friends-to-crushes tale for the middle-grade crowd.