Authors: Kazuo Ishiguro

In Gothic, Science fiction, Speculative fiction

By Ashley Massey

A strange, futuristic time that is now. A world too much like ours and too easy to comprehend. Characters who are us but not us. Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, published in 2005, is difficult to review without spoiling what ought to be a slow reveal for the reader. I have no intention of spoiling anything here. The novel was praised by critics, who called it “graceful and grim,” “an elegant nightmare of a novel,” and “Gothic.” It has been referred to as “science-fiction,” though in most ways it is nothing like science fiction.

Authors: Margaret Mitchell

In Historical

By Danya Kukafka

GONE WITH THE WIND was popular with American readers from the outset and was the top American fiction bestseller in 1936 and 1937. As of 2014, a Harris poll found it to be the second favorite book of American readers, just behind the Bible. More than 30 million copies have been printed worldwide

Authors: Linda Wagner-Martin

In Biography and Memoir

By Danya Kukafka

Prolific literary biographer Wagner-Martin (Sylvia Plath, etc.) utilizes newly available files at Princeton for this fresh reassessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's flamboyant, creative, troubled wife, stressing that Zelda's personality and character were shaped by her Southern upbringing and her relationship with her parents. Using documents pertaining to Zelda's psychiatric history and the works of contemporary psychologists to interpret the behavior that institutionalized Zelda (1900–1948) for the last half of her short life, Wagner-Martin conclusions makes for a fascinating read.

Authors: Walter Isaacson

In Biography and Memoir

By Regina Dent

The book highlights several of his multifold leadership traits, forcing you to overlook his negative qualities. If you appreciate and admire Steve Jobs and his accomplishments, this is a book that is especially worth reading.

Authors: Dan Brown

In Arts & Musics, Historical, Suspense Thriller

By Regina Dent

"Harvard professor Robert Langdon receives an urgent late-night phone call while on business in Paris: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been brutally murdered inside the museum. Alongside the body, police have found a series of baffling codes. As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu, begin to sort through the bizarre riddles, they are stunned to find a trail that leads to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci - and suggests the answer to a mystery that stretches deep into the vaults of history. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine."

Authors: Sidney Sheldon

In Suspense Thriller

By Willie Earl

"There dozens of Sheldon novels to choose from, but this one reminds me of my sister and the family. I'll leave it at that." —Willie Earl Scott, entrepreneur and creative genius

Authors: Sidney Sheldon

In Suspense Thriller

By Willie Earl

"Though it's changed a couple times over the decades, Sidney Sheldon is probably my all-time favorite author in the storytelling department. And this book I like for a whole host of reasons, many of them pretty obvious." —Willie Earl Scott, entrepreneur and creative genius

Authors: Sister Souljah

In Literary, Urban Fiction

By Willie Earl

In 1999, when she made her debut as a novelist with THE COLDEST WINTER EVER, Souljah said that she was the pioneer for starting "a renaissance, or what Chuck D of Public Enemy would call a revolution, of reading. "As of March 2016, Souljah was on the New York Times Bestseller List three times. THE COLDEST WINTER EVER was widely acclaimed for making the second wave of the genre known as street literature more popular (the first wave having been lead by Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines in the 1960s and '70s).

Authors: Jean Genet

In Biography and Memoir, Literary, Avant-garde

By Willie Earl

The original title is "Miracle de la rose," and it's the first work by Genet I'd ever read at the time. It was in his native language and I was stuck in a cell with nowhere to go. Actually taught myself to read French with this book. Can't speak it to save Baby Jesus. But being from Alabama where we practice our own form of English, I make do.