Recommended Reads for Goodreads Lightning Round

by Donna Huber

There are 2 weeks left of the Goodreads Bookmark Challenge. If you are still trying to figure out what to read for the Lightning Round, here are our recommendations. 

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Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite

Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in this sci-fi ode to the cozy mystery, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective. (Goodreads)

Donna's Review: Murder by Memory is a delightful space mystery. There is a lot packed into this short 100+ page story. I'm always impressed by authors who can build a whole new world in a short story. 

Buy Murder by Memory at Amazon

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right? (Goodreads)

MK's Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this story and wished it was longer so I could see more of Toadling's future.

Buy Thornhedge at Amazon

The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose

Molly Gray has always loved the holidays. When Molly was a child, her gran went to great lengths to make the season merry and bright, full of cherished traditions. The first few Christmases without Gran were hard on Molly, but this year, her beloved boyfriend and fellow festive spirit, Juan Manuel, is intent on making the season Molly’s mofinst joyful yet. (Goodreads)

Donna's Review: It's a cute book. There's no murder to investigate but Juan is definitely acting mysteriously. If you are reading this series and missed the Christmas book, you will want to pick it up as it has some great character development.

Buy The Mistletoe Mystery at Amazon

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler

Gail Baines is having a bad day. To start, she loses her job—or quits, depending on whom you ask. Tomorrow her daughter, Debbie, is getting married, and she hasn’t even been invited to the spa day organized by the mother of the groom. Then, Gail’s ex-husband, Max, arrives unannounced on her doorstep, carrying a cat, without a place to stay, and without even a suit. (Goodreads)

Susan's Review: This was a fantastic new book by a Pulitzer Prize winner and you don't want to miss it.

Buy Three Days in June at Amazon

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Ada Lamarr may have gotten to the spaceship wreck first, but looter’s rights won’t get her far when she’s got a hole in the side of her ship and her spacesuit is almost out of air. Fortunately for her, help arrives in the form of a government salvage crew—and while they reluctantly rescue her from certain death, they are not pleased to have an unexpected passenger along on their classified mission. (Goodreads)

Donna's Review: If you are looking for a quick, but highly entertaining read this weekend, then this is the book you want to read.

Buy Full Speed to a Crash Landing at Amazon

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Deep underground, forty women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. (Goodreads)

Donna's Review: My post-apocalyptic book club has read some strange things and I'm curious as to how this book will be received. At times, I wondered if this had been written in the 1950s for some of the views on what it means to be female. 

Buy I Who Have Never Known Men at Amazon

A Children's Bible by Lydia Millet

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders - including Eve, who narrates the story - decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. (Goodreads)

Donna's Review: It felt like the typical YA dystopian where the children have to save the world

Buy A Children's Bible at Amazon

Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez 

It's been years since Ingrid has heard from her childhood best friend, Mayra, a fearless rebel who fled their hometown of Hialeah, a Cuban neighborhood just west of Miami, for college in the Northeast. But when Mayra calls out of the blue to invite Ingrid to a weekend getaway at a house in the Everglades, she impulsively accepts. (Goodreads)

MK Review: I'm not sure if this is meant to be a kind of horror story, or showing us that sometimes nostalgia isn't what it's cracked up to be.

Buy Mayra at Amazon

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

Adelaide Henry carries an enormous steamer trunk with her wherever she goes. It’s locked at all times. Because when the trunk opens, people around Adelaide start to disappear. (Goodreads)

MK's Review: I loved how everything came together at the end of the book, and couldn't stop reading until the last page. 

Buy Lone Women at Amazon

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. (Goodreads)

Alison's Review: If you enjoy fantasy and want a quick read that delivers much more than what lies on the surface, I highly recommend Piranesi.

Buy Piranesi at Amazon

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind. (Goodreads)

Susan's Review: The writing is beautiful and despite the depressing situations, the major feeling is one of hope for the future. 

Buy Demon Copperhead at Amazon

The Will of the Many by James Islington

I tell them my name is Vis Telimus. I tell them I was orphaned after a tragic accident three years ago, and that good fortune alone has led to my acceptance into their most prestigious school. I tell them that once I graduate, I will gladly join the rest of civilised society in allowing my strength, my drive and my focus – what they call Will – to be leeched away and added to the power of those above me, as millions already do. As all must eventually do. (Goodreads)

MK's Review: This was a very layered and incredibly detailed novel, and I can't wait for the next one!

Buy The Will of the Many at Amazon

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym. (Goodreads)

Susan's Review: Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

Buy By Any Other Name at Amazon

I'm still hoping my hold for Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green will come in in time. It's on this list, as well as a few others, for the challenge. If you got this bookmark, what did you read?

Donna Huber is an avid reader and natural encourager. She is the founder of Girl Who Reads and the author of how-to marketing book Secrets to a Successful Blog Tour.

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