53 books like Sweetland

I first read H.P. Lovecraft when I was in college. His Cthulhu Mythos instantly grabbed my imagination. Lovecraft was a large part of the reason I started writing horror. Even back then, his disdain for foreigners and Black people and anyone else whose ancestors didn’t come over on the Mayflower, the way his did, was apparent. In recent years, Lovecraft’s racism has become a hot topic. That’s why I like this book: because it urns the usual Lovecraft trope of evil monsters from another dimension on its head by bringing the monsters closer to home, in the form of the horrors of the Jim Crow era. 

Although this is my fun pick, it is also a serious book that I use in the classroom. There have been countless attempts by modern authors to retell biblical stories. Horn’s book creatively transfers the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers to the modern period, with a feminist twist. This book is engaging and coherent enough that it can be read and enjoyed without any knowledge of the Bible or Jewish history, although such knowledge makes it all the better!

The Cellar will have you holding your breath at each turn! I felt like my skin was crawling while I was reading this book and I was thinking of ways to escape the nightmare. Natasha Preston did a fantastic job of making you feel like you’re living in Summer’s shoes. It’s a gripping story of a horrific kidnapping and the new life Summer finds herself living in. This book makes you glance twice over your shoulder when you’re walking alone at night and it is a reminder of how quickly something like this can happen. The Cellar opens your mind to both the kidnapper and the captives. Highly recommend this book!   

The spiritual worldview so beautifully rendered in Black Elk Speaks reflects the landscape of the North American Great Plains.

The Four Winds emanate from the cardinal points of the compass, and above is Father Sky and below is Mother Earth all united in one Great Spirit. The spiritual worldview of the Ojibwa reflects the landscape of the woodlands surrounding the Great Lakes. It’s an animate, shape-shifting world of the Trickster/Culture Hero Nanabushu and Wendigo, the cannibal spirit of the hard and lean winter months.

In this magical-realist novel, Louise Erdrich, a writer of Ojibwa ancestry, weaves together the star-crossed lives of her fictional characters with the fluid human and animal (and animal-human) characters of the traditional Ojibwa worldview. Erdrich thus breathes new life into the Old World of the North Woods and brings that Old World to bear on the New. 

After much soul-searching, Charlotte Emory resolves to leave the motley cast of characters that make up her family in Clarion, Maryland. Her plans are foiled, however, by happenstance. When she goes to cash her getaway cheque, she becomes entangled with robber Jake Simms, who takes her hostage and spirits her south to Florida. Forks in the road abound in this novel, figurative and literal. In the end, however, and through sheer force of character, Charlotte bids farewell to Jake in particular and happenstance in general. She returns to her family, having made up her mind to take only those paths in life which reflect her true character and ensure that she is the wife and mother she should really be.

Laura McHugh writes about parts of the U.S. that are often either villainized or over-simplified. Instead of leaning into the cliches, she brings these landscapes and their people alive with compassion but without pity. From the first paragraph, I could feel the oppressiveness of the protagonist’s world but I could also see its wild beauty. This is a place where the air is “heavy as a sodden sponge” and insects buzz like an “unholy plague.” The darkness implied in the title has a layered meaning here: there’s the darkness of ignorance, the darkness of the human mind that is capable of justifying cruelty as salvation, and the darkness of hidden and ignored places. 

I was working as a nanny in New York City when I discovered this wild novel, and I consumed it in short order. Marie, fresh from prison, is hired out of pity to watch a high school friend’s daughter. “The situation would’ve been humiliating had Marie any ambition in life. Fortunately, Marie was not in any way ambitious.” Marie is instead selfish, culpable, hungry, and smitten—first with her friend’s life, then her friend’s husband, and most dangerously, her friend’s daughter. Dermansky’s novel could easily slip into thriller territory, and while it is as fast-paced and compulsively readable, instead we discover unpredictably that Bad Marie is really a love story.

In the Dark Spaces is a stunning YA novel breathed into life by its main character, Tamara, a heroine who grabbed my heart from the first lines and didn’t let go. 

Tamara loves her family above everything else. And when she’s separated from them in a universe torn apart by war, she must draw on all her strength and smarts to survive. Her gift for languages and ability to adapt gives her an advantage when she’s captured by the enemy. But she’s also forced to do things that terrify her and break her heart. I love Tamara’s unique voice, and the way it expresses the deep bonds that tie us to friends and family made my heart sing. She’s truly a heroine that embodies the fighting spirit.

Superbly written, heart-stopping, action-filled. It’s the story of highborn 18-year-old Cassie Brougham, who on the day before her marriage to a viscount she has loved for years, is abducted by 34-year-old Anthony Wells, the Earl of Clare, who has been watching her since she was a child all the while believing she is his perfect mate. 

Though Anthony’s intention is marriage, that doesn’t stop him from rape to claim her, nor imprisonment, first on his yacht and then in his Italian villa, as he tries to persuade her to marry him. The plot is intricate and intriguing with lots of action and lots of mystery. The characters are richly drawn, including the hero who has a noble side notwithstanding his selfish and brutal act of taking another man’s bride.

This was a fun and thrilling read about an intricate kidnapping plot. A seemingly perfect crime with the picture-perfect family; ‘Picture Perfect’, is only ever for the picture.

It taught me that even if the odds are stacked against you, you are not captive to your circumstance. This was a psychological and active fight for survival, not only for one’s own survival but for those whom you love.

Courage is contagious.