On My Wishlist {13}

On My Wishlist is where I share books that have recently made it on to my radar. Some recommendations and reviews made me wishing for the following books this past week:

Fen: Stories by Daisy Johnson

Daisy Johnson’s Fen, set in the fenlands of England, transmutes the flat, uncanny landscape into a rich, brooding atmosphere. From that territory grow stories that blend folklore and restless invention to turn out something entirely new. Amid the marshy paths of the fens, a teenager might starve herself into the shape of an eel. A house might fall in love with a girl and grow jealous of her friend. A boy might return from the dead in the guise of a fox. Out beyond the confines of realism, the familiar instincts of sex and hunger blend with the shifting, unpredictable wild as the line between human and animal is effaced by myth and metamorphosis. With a fresh and utterly contemporary voice, Johnson lays bare these stories of women testing the limits of their power to create a startling work of fiction.

Fen made it on to my wishlist thanks to a tweet by Andy Davidson.

I can’t put this down. I finish one and have to start the next. FEN by @djdaisyjohnson is right up there with GET IN TROUBLE by @haszombiesinit. Find this book, folks. pic.twitter.com/UWQyglKWpo

— Andy Davidson (@theandydavidson) April 13, 2018

---

Dread Nation (Dread Nation #1) by Justina Ireland

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

I've been hearing great things about Dread Nation, but Mogsy's review sealed the deal for me.

---

Have you read or are you planning to read any of these? What books have recently made it onto your wishlist?