#mead unmaking | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

el-tur-el · 2 months

Text

like a heathen clung to the homily.

Pairing: Harper Geraldus x F!Tav

Warnings: Explicit Sexual Content. 18+, Minors DNI.

Word Count: 1,102. Read it on AO3.

Little bit of a schedule swap - Rolan piece should be up on Sunday. Have this in the meantime, the brain bees said 'must write sad wet cat man'. (This is not the fic I have planned that involves edging, that will be coming later.)

Warmth. Patchouli and some kind of flower that she doesn’t know the name of, essential oils pooling in little slicks on the surface of the water. She sees herself in them, iridescent and raw, constantly changing shape. Home can be whatever you make it; she learned that during her time fighting the Illithid threat, when it came in the form of purple robes, of quietly murmured prayers. Of the flash of a silver sword, the peek of fangs from between pouty lips. The most elegant horns she had ever seen. The smell of peat moss and petrichor. Brimstone and something sweet.

It looks a little different now. A solid torso, a wiry frame; his back pressed against her stomach, his head tilted against her shoulder. His eyes are closed, and she can’t help but think that it was all worth it. For this. Just this. To be able to hold him, to be able to contort herself into the shape of his home.

She loves him, she loves him, she loves him.

She presses her lips to the crown of his head, and he smiles, slow and lazy. Sweet in that sort of way that makes her heart seize up behind her sternum. He deserves the world - she only wishes a human being could be capable of offering up something of that magnitude. She would move mountains. She would write sonnets. She’d kiss every freckle, trace the constellations mapped out on his skin, document them all to memory.

What a beautiful, fragile thing a heart is. What a privilege to be able to cradle one in your hands.

“I love you.” She murmurs against the soft black of his hair, slick with sweat and water and oils that were far, far too expensive. Indulgence breeds complacency, but he’s worth it. “Can I take care of you, sweetheart?”

“Yes.” He rasps, all wet-eyed wonder, thick and tempting, pools of honey.

Her palm splays out flat between his pectorals, soapy and damp, and she drags it down the dip and curve of his stomach, his flanks. Past his navel and southward, to somewhere warmer. Yielding. Her fingers loosely wrap around his cock, and she swears she will take him apart piece by piece with the reverence he deserves.

He lets out a shuddering breath, tilting his head to press his lips against the soft column of her throat. Such a pretty thing, soft and pliable against her. Malleable like clay, something to shape with her hands, make and unmake. She moves, slow, and he whines against her skin. She could bottle that sound. Drink it down every night. Headier than wine. Sweeter than mead.

“So good for me.” She breathes out, praise and prayer all in one. “Just like that, sweetheart. Look at you.”

His hips shift against her grip, the water in the tub sloshing with the movement. She’ll have to wipe up the floors later, but she cares little; another act of tenderness, another reminder of a love that she never once thought she’d be blessed with.

“Tav.”

“I’ve got you, lovely.” She moves at an achingly slow pace. There’s no rush anymore. Not now, not here, in this space she’s made for him. In the yawning canyon of tenderness that she’s so carefully crafted. A house of worship. A church, an altar, a prayer. Communion.

He’s always been a restless thing, and this time is no different; squirming against her, pushing up into her hand. Needy. Wanton. Debauched. She studies his face, the furrow of his brow, the bow of his lips. Memorizes it, pockets it for later. Savors every little detail, every whine, every moan.

“Does that feel good, Geraldus?” Something about this man, this bright and beautiful and brilliant man, has put her in a state of perpetual motion. The movement of her lips wrapping around every syllable, the innate need to be touching him at all times. Frenetic and frenzied in her need to prove devotion.

“Y-Yes, Tav, Gods.” His voice cracks, trembles. A low heat pools in her stomach. “I want - I -”

“Anything.” She whispers, and she means it.

“I want you, please.”

And really, truly, who is she to say no to that.

She’s silently grateful that she splurged on the ornate tub for their home, nearly the size of a pool; one of the few things she’d allowed herself to be selfish about. He gently disentangles himself from her grasp, turning over so he’s facing her, his cheeks flushed a delicate shade of pink. He presses his lips to hers like it’s the first time. Does this every time. Still so soft and unsure of himself, even now.

Her hands come to his shoulder blades, and she sighs into the tentative press of his mouth as he pushes into her. She feels weightless, here, underneath him, the heat of the water around them. He traces a fingertip between the valley of her breasts, down to her hip bone. Exploratory. Cartography. Venturing landscapes made of flesh and breath. Two fingers slowly press against her clit as he ruts into her - shallow, languid.

It is not heat and fire and fury. It is home.

“I love you.” He sighs, his forehead pressing against hers.

Even now, with him settled against her, she is sick with yearning. It’s cloying and syrupy and saccharine, the way she loves him. Her friends regularly rib her about it. But she doesn’t care.

Happy. For the first time in a very, very long time.

His breathing grows ragged, his noises a little breathier, a little higher. Her muscles tense, anticipation thrumming under the surface of paper-thin skin, bursting at the seams. To watch him unspool like embroidery thread, to hold the weight of him against her as he falls apart.

“I’ve got you.” She breathes out again. “Let go for me, sweet thing.”

He shakes against her, a thin, high whimper spilling past his lips. His fingers press against her clit a little more firmly, still so eager to please even as he dissolves into little more than broken sounds before her. She keens, heat rushing through her veins, spilling forth. Her head tilts back and her eyes flutter shut, caught between the here and not, weightless.

They settle against one another, arms wrapping around skin spattered with rivulets of water, his face tucked into the crook of her neck.

Would that she were a church, so that she may bless and keep him always.

The silk swallows her up that evening. The thought haunts her, rattles about her mind.

Milk and honey. A crown of thistle and thorn. Royalty. Deity. Lover.

#geraldus x tav #bg3 geraldus #geraldus bg3 #harper geraldus #harper geraldus x tav #bg3 smut #bg3 x reader #bg3 fanfiction #bg3

74 notes · View notes

deviline · 5 years

Text

Lord Umber dismounted. One of the grooms took the reins from him, though he refused to give up the spear—even if he had not had chance to use it, the shaft felt good in his hand. Several of the huntsmen had already begun unmaking the boar’s carcass, occasionally tossing some bit of flesh or gristle to the dogs as reward. Lord Umber moved toward them, clapping several of the others on the back as he went, offering his congratulations. The mood of the group was jovial, a skin of wine being passed from man to man—they had lost not one dog to the boar’s tusks, and even Harald ( the youngest of the pack) had escaped falling from his horse with only minor bruises.

Lord Umber studied the boar’s carcass, until he finally found the killing blow. He smiled. “Your brother’s is the blade buried in its eye,” he finally said, looking over at Lisette, and then, the oldest of his sons, Arvin. “That blue fletching is yours.”

Lisette, still astride her grey pony, smiled demurely, shaking her delicate head in disapproval. She held her own bow loosely in her lap, as though it were some decorative thing idly handed to her, and not a weapon capable of bringing down a creature thrice her size. “What splendid an accomplishment...and here I thought, men ought to hunt with bows and arrows, not swords and blades...” she trilled, her aristocratic, haughty little nose wrinkling in distaste at the slice of meat offered to her by Arvin. Poor thing! she thought fiercely-- would it have been too great an effort to grant it a swiftest death? Sometimes, Lisette knew not why she let them drag her along on their hunts; adventures, Harald and Arvin called them, and she would cave,-- thinking of all the herbs and plants she might find chance to gather-- but always-- always regretting it the moment the real hunt began. It was not so much the blood that dismayed her as it was a sense of the unfairness of it all. The animal tangled in the nets and traps did not have a chance against the men and the spears. The little Lady Umber favored a fight that was more even.

“I think you are mocking me, sister.”

“Of course not, brother. You look very valiant, standing there with your pike. Admittedly, it would look better still if there were some blood on the steel, but alas—not all of us can be so lucky.”

Father laughed. “Now you are mocking him.” and then, Arvin chimed in, all breathless with pride, “You know that in the North, we consider it a greater thing, to deliver the killing blow with a sword or spear!”

“Of course we do,” Lisette sighed. “Because to shoot an arrow through an opening the size of a persimmon and pierce the brain—that is inconsequential.”

“I did not say that.”

"Oh, didn’t you?”

“Certainly not.”

Lisette lifted a perfectly dark brow at him, and he strode toward her in retaliation, lifted that slice of meat toward her face and made to touch it to her cheek, all slick and wet with oils.

“--Would you stop it, Arvin! -- stop!” she screeched, a high-pitched, girlish sound, batting his hand away from her face, “Father, tell him!”

And Father, only laughed, already half-drunk with ale, said, “come now, Lisette. Don’t be so hard on your poor brother! It was, after all, his first kill!” his voice all deep and gruff with joy.

“oh, yes! He is a proper man now!” she tossed back, smiling a little mockingly, and Arvin made to pull at the end of her dark braid, childishly, half amused, half annoyed, but then;

“—Lord Arvin?” one of the hunters interrupted. He had the wineskin in a stranglehold, and the look of a man about to run the gauntlet. “You would honor us, little Lord, if you would share a drink. With us. As the one who brought down the great boar of Last River, it would…be…”

He trailed off.

Lisette could not always parse what Arvin was feeling, but she had very rarely seen him-- in all his fourteen years of age-- look so touched. He dismounted (with, she suspected, more grace than he truly had) and generously took the skin from the hunter. He raised it up, and said gravely, “To all of you, and your work this day. The honor is entirely mine.”

He tipped the wineskin to his lips and drank, swallowing with only the slightest wince-- which made her laugh, not maliciously, but with affection (for she knew well the thick meads and bitter wines that men brought hunting—she was a little surprised she was able to stomach it at all. Mother very rarely let him touch the stuff; and even now, she stood on the balcony above, all sweet and tall and slender, clicking her tongue in tender disapproval.) But Arvin smiled and passed the skin back to the hunter, thanking him for his kindness. His smile deepened as the rough man bowed deeply before him-- and Lisette thought, in amusement-- dear, Gods. Already he fancies himself Lord of the Last Hearth-- and he is only but four and ten moons old.

“They shall call you Lord Umber, now. Lord Steward.” she murmured to her little brother, as the hunters took up their work again, and conversation flowed away from them. “--As they do, Father. They shall forget of Lord Braddock the Great Umber who brought down the great boar of Breakstone Hill.”

There was a pleased gleam to his eye as he surveyed the gathered hunters and grooms and kennelsmen-- as Father roared with proud laughter, seizing mother about the waist and bringing her down from the balcony so that she might witness herself their first son’s grand accomplishment-- and even though Lisette loathed the fact an innocent forest creature had lost its life in such unfair a way, she could not help but smile with real warmth. “Yes, it seems I am. Lord Umber, who brought down the great boar of Last River!”

“But it wasn’t with a bow, was it?”

Arvin glanced sidelong at her, the corner of his mouth quirking upward slightly. “No, big sister. Your little bow is still the most impressive I’ve known.”

And Lisette laughed.

#drabbles;;#house umber ; never chained;;#MY FAMILY.#just northerners being northerners.#cw: animal death

2 notes · View notes

axekerose54 · 3 years

Text

Read A History of Western Architecture PDF

(PDF Kindle) [Download] A History of Western Architecture EBOOK FREE DOWNLOAD [PDF] [Download] A History of Western Architecture [Full Book]

[EPUB & PDF] Ebook A History of Western Architecture | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD

by by {"isAjaxInProgress_B001HCW9WW":"0","isAjaxComplete_B001HCW9WW":"0"} David Watkin (Author) › Visit Amazon's David Watkin Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central David Watkin (Author).

Ebook PDF A History of Western Architecture | EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD Hello Book lovers, If you want to download free Ebook, you are in the right place to download Ebook. Ebook A History of Western Architecture EBOOK ONLINE DOWNLOAD in English is available for free here, Click on the download LINK below to download Ebook A History of Western Architecture 2020 PDF Download in English by by {"isAjaxInProgress_B001HCW9WW":"0","isAjaxComplete_B001HCW9WW":"0"} David Watkin (Author) › Visit Amazon's David Watkin Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central David Watkin (Author) (Author).

Download Link : Download A History of Western Architecture

Read More : Read A History of Western Architecture

Description

In this highly acclaimed reference work David Watkin traces the history of western architecture from the earliest times in Mesopotamia and Egypt to the eclectic styles of the twenty-first century. The author emphasizes the ongoing vitality of the Classical language of architecture, underlining the continuity between, say, the work of Ictinus in fifth-century BC Athens and that of McKim, Mead and White in twentieth-century New York. Authoritative, comprehensive and highly illustrated, this sixth edition has been expanded to bring the story of western architecture right up to date and includes a separate final chapter on twenty-first century developments, including the role of computers in architecture, sustainability, humanitarian architecture, and very tall buildings.

Tag the PDF

A History of Western Architecture by by {"isAjaxInProgress_B001HCW9WW":"0","isAjaxComplete_B001HCW9WW":"0"} David Watkin (Author) › Visit Amazon's David Watkin Page Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author Are you an author? Learn about Author Central David Watkin (Author) Ebook PDF

Let's be real: 2020 has been a nightmare. Between the political unrest and novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it's difficult to look back on the year and find something, anything, that was a potential bright spot in an otherwise turbulent trip around the sun. Luckily, there were a few bright spots: namely, some of the excellent works of military history and analysis, fiction and non-fiction, novels and graphic novels that we've absorbed over the last year.

Here's a brief list of some of the best books we read here at Task & Purpose in the last year. Have a recommendation of your own? Send an email to [email protected] and we'll include it in a future story.

Missionaries by Phil Klay

I loved Phil Klay’s first book, Redeployment (which won the National Book Award), so Missionaries was high on my list of must-reads when it came out in October. It took Klay six years to research and write the book, which follows four characters in Colombia who come together in the shadow of our post-9/11 wars. As Klay’s prophetic novel shows, the machinery of technology, drones, and targeted killings that was built on the Middle East battlefield will continue to grow in far-flung lands that rarely garner headlines. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Battle Born: Lapis Lazuli by Max Uriarte

Written by 'Terminal Lance' creator Maximilian Uriarte, this full-length graphic novel follows a Marine infantry squad on a bloody odyssey through the mountain reaches of northern Afghanistan. The full-color comic is basically 'Conan the Barbarian' in MARPAT. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

Now a gritty and grim animated World War II miniseries from Netflix, The Liberator follows the 157th Infantry Battalion of the 45th Division from the beaches of Sicily to the mountains of Italy and the Battle of Anzio, then on to France and later still to Bavaria for some of the bloodiest urban battles of the conflict before culminating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. It's a harrowing tale, but one worth reading before enjoying the acclaimed Netflix series. [Buy]

- Jared Keller, deputy editor

The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett Graff

If you haven’t gotten this must-read account of the September 11th attacks, you need to put The Only Plane In the Sky at the top of your Christmas list. Graff expertly explains the timeline of that day through the re-telling of those who lived it, including the loved ones of those who were lost, the persistently brave first responders who were on the ground in New York, and the service members working in the Pentagon. My only suggestion is to not read it in public — if you’re anything like me, you’ll be consistently left in tears. [Buy]

- Haley Britzky, Army reporter

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry

Why do we even fight wars? Wouldn’t a massive tennis tournament be a nicer way for nations to settle their differences? This is one of the many questions Harvard professor Elaine Scarry attempts to answer, along with why nuclear war is akin to torture, why the language surrounding war is sterilized in public discourse, and why both war and torture unmake human worlds by destroying access to language. It’s a big lift of a read, but even if you just read chapter two (like I did), you’ll come away thinking about war in new and refreshing ways. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 by Antony Beevor

Stalingrad takes readers all the way from the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union to the collapse of the 6th Army at Stalingrad in February 1943. It gives you the perspective of German and Soviet soldiers during the most apocalyptic battle of the 20th century. [Buy]

- Jeff Schogol, Pentagon correspondent

America's War for the Greater Middle East by Andrew J. Bacevich

I picked up America's War for the Greater Middle East earlier this year and couldn’t put it down. Published in 2016 by Andrew Bacevich, a historian and retired Army officer who served in Vietnam, the book unravels the long and winding history of how America got so entangled in the Middle East and shows that we’ve been fighting one long war since the 1980s — with errors in judgment from political leaders on both sides of the aisle to blame. “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in the Greater Middle East. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed in action anywhere else. What caused this shift?” the book jacket asks. As Bacevich details in this definitive history, the mission creep of our Vietnam experience has been played out again and again over the past 30 years, with disastrous results. [Buy]

- Paul Szoldra, editor-in-chief

Burn In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer and August Cole

In Burn In, Singer and Cole take readers on a journey at an unknown date in the future, in which an FBI agent searches for a high-tech terrorist in Washington, D.C. Set after what the authors called the "real robotic revolution," Agent Lara Keegan is teamed up with a robot that is less Terminator and far more of a useful, and highly intelligent, law enforcement tool. Perhaps the most interesting part: Just about everything that happens in the story can be traced back to technologies that are being researched today. You can read Task & Purpose's interview with the authors here. [Buy]

- James Clark, senior reporter

SAS: Rogue Heroes by Ben MacIntyre

Like WWII? Like a band of eccentric daredevils wreaking havoc on fascists? Then you'll love SAS: Rogue Heroes, which re-tells some truly insane heists performed by one of the first modern special forces units. Best of all, Ben MacIntyre grounds his history in a compassionate, balanced tone that displays both the best and worst of the SAS men, who are, like anyone else, only human after all. [Buy]

- David Roza, Air Force reporter

The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

The Alice Network is a gripping novel which follows two courageous women through different time periods — one living in the aftermath of World War II, determined to find out what has happened to someone she loves, and the other working in a secret network of spies behind enemy lines during World War I. This gripping historical fiction is based on the true story of a network that infiltrated German lines in France during The Great War and weaves a tale so packed full of drama, suspense, and tragedy that you won’t be able to put it down. [Buy]

Katherine Rondina, Anchor Books

“Because I published a new book this year, I've been answering questions about my inspirations. This means I've been thinking about and so thankful for The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender. I can't credit it with making me want to be a writer — that desire was already there — but it inspired me to write stories where the fantastical complicates the ordinary, and the impossible becomes possible. A girl in a nice dress with no one to appreciate it. An unremarkable boy with a remarkable knack for finding things. The stories in this book taught me that the everydayness of my world could become magical and strange, and in that strangeness I could find a new kind of truth.”

Diane Cook is the author of the novel The New Wilderness, which was long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize, and the story collection Man V. Nature, which was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, the Believer Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. Read an excerpt from The New Wilderness.

Bill Johnston, University of California Press

“I’ve revisited a lot of old favorites in this grim year of fear and isolation, and have been most thankful of all for The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara. Witty, reflexive, intimate, queer, disarmingly occasional and monumentally serious all at once, they’ve been a constant balm and inspiration. ‘The only thing to do is simply continue,’ he wrote, in 'Adieu to Norman, Bon Jour to Joan and Jean-Paul'; ‘is that simple/yes, it is simple because it is the only thing to do/can you do it/yes, you can because it is the only thing to do.’”

Helen Macdonald is a nature essayist with a semiregular column in the New York Times Magazine. Her latest novel, Vesper Flights, is a collection of her best-loved essays, and her debut book, H Is for Hawk, won the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction and the Costa Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction.

Andrea Scher, Scholastic Press

“This year, I’m so grateful for You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson. Reading — like everything else — has been a struggle for me in 2020. It’s been tough to let go of all of my anxieties about the state of the world and our country and get swept away by a story. But You Should See Me in a Crown pulled me in right away; for the blissful time that I was reading it, it made me think about a world outside of 2020 and it made me smile from ear to ear. Joy has been hard to come by this year, and I’m so thankful for this book for the joy it brought me.”

Jasmine Guillory is the New York Times bestselling author of five romance novels, including this year’s Party of Two. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, and Time.

Nelson Fitch, Random House

“Last year, stuck in a prolonged reading rut that left me wondering if I even liked books anymore, I stumbled across Tenth of December by George Saunders, a collection of stories Saunders wrote between 1995 and 2012 that are at turns funny, moving, startling, weird, profound, and often all of those things at the same time. As a writer, what I crave most from books is to find one so excellent it makes me feel like I'd be better off quitting — and so wonderful that it reminds me what it is to be purely a reader again, encountering new worlds and revelations every time I turn a page. Tenth of December is that, and I'm so grateful that it fell off a high shelf and into my life.”

Veronica Roth is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent series and the Carve the Mark duology. Her latest novel, Chosen Ones, is her first novel for adults. Read an excerpt from Chosen Ones.

Ian Byers-Gamber, Blazevox Books

“Waking up today to the prospect of some hours spent reading away part of another day of this disastrous, delirious pandemic year, I’m most grateful for the book in my hands, one itself full of gratitude for a life spent reading: Gloria Frym’s How Proust Ruined My Life. Frym’s essays — on Marcel Proust, yes, and Walt Whitman, and Lucia Berlin, but also peppermint-stick candy and Allen Ginsburg’s knees, among other Proustian memory-prompts — restore me to my sense of my eerie luck at a life spent rushing to the next book, the next page, the next word.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of a number of critically acclaimed novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Motherless Brooklyn. His latest novel, The Arrest, is a postapocalyptic tale about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Riverhead

“I’m incredibly grateful for the magnificent The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer. This book — a mélange of history, memoir, and reportage — is the reconceptualization of Native life that’s been urgently needed since the last great indigenous history, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. It’s at once a counternarrative and a replacement for Brown’s book, and it rejects the standard tale of Native victimization, conquest, and defeat. Even though I teach Native American studies to college students, I found new insights and revelations in almost every chapter. Not only a great read, the book is a tremendous contribution to Native American — and American — intellectual and cultural history.”

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is author of the novel Winter Counts, which is BuzzFeed Book Club’s November pick. He is also the author of the children’s book Spotted Tail, which won the 2020 Spur Award from the Western Writers of America. Read an excerpt from Winter Counts.

Valerie Mosley, Tordotcom

“In 2020, I've been lucky to finish a single book within 30 days, but I burned through this 507-page brick in the span of a weekend. Harrow the Ninth reminded me that even when absolutely everything is terrible, it's still possible to feel deep, gratifying, brain-buzzing admiration for brilliant art. Thank you, Harrow, for being one of the brightest spots in a dark year and for keeping the home fires burning.”

Casey McQuiston is the New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, and her next book, One Last Stop, comes out in 2021.

"I'm grateful for V.S. Naipaul's troubling masterpiece, A Bend in the River — which not only made me see the world anew, but made me see what literature could do. It's a book that's lucid enough to reveal the brutality of the forces shaping our world and its politics; yet soulful enough to penetrate the most recondite secrets of human interiority. A book of great beauty without a moment of mercy. A marriage of opposites that continues to shape my own deeper sense of just how much a writer can actually accomplish."

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, and his latest novel, Homeland Elegies, is about an American son and his immigrant father searching for belonging in a post-9/11 country. He is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Vanessa German, Feminist Press

“I'm most thankful for Daddy Was a Number Runner by Louise Meriwether. It's a YA book set in 1930s Harlem, and it was the first Black-girl-coming-of-age book I ever read, the first time I ever saw myself in a book. I appreciate how it expanded my world and my understanding that books can speak to you right where you are and take you on a journey, at the same time.”

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. She is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, and elsewhere. Read a story from The Secret Lives of Church Ladies.

Philippa Gedge, W. W. Norton & Company

“As both a writer and a reader I am hugely grateful for Patricia Highsmith’s plotting and writing suspense fiction. As a writer I’m thankful for Highsmith’s generosity with her wisdom and experience: She talks us through how to tease out the narrative strands and develop character, how to know when things are going awry, even how to decide to give things up as a bad job. She’s unabashed about sharing her own ‘failures,’ and in my experience, there’s nothing more encouraging for a writer than learning that our literary gods are mortal! As a reader, it provides a fascinating insight into the genesis of one of my favorite novels of all time — The Talented Mr. Ripley, as well as the rest of her brilliant oeuvre. And because it’s Highsmith, it’s so much more than just a how-to guide: It’s hugely engaging and, while accessible, also provides a glimpse into the mind of a genius. I’ve read it twice — while working on each of my thrillers, The Hunting Party and The Guest List — and I know I’ll be returning to the well-thumbed copy on my shelf again soon!”

Lucy Foley is the New York Times bestselling author of the thrillers The Guest List and The Hunting Party. She has also written two historical fiction novels and previously worked in the publishing industry as a fiction editor.

“The books I'm most thankful for this year are a three-book series titled Tales from the Gas Station by Jack Townsend. Walking a fine line between comedy and horror (which is much harder than people think), the books follow Jack, an employee at a gas station in a nameless town where all manner of horrifyingly fantastical things happen. And while the monsters are scary and more than a little ridiculous, it's Jack's bone-dry narration, along with his best friend/emotional support human, Jerry, that elevates the books into something that are as lovely as they are absurd.”

T.J. Klune is a Lambda Literary Award–winning author and an ex-claims examiner for an insurance company. His novels include The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Extraordinaries.

Sylvernus Darku (Team Black Image Studio), Ayebia Clarke Publishing

"Nervous Conditions is a book that I have read several times over the years, including this year. The novel covers the themes of gender and race and has at its heart Tambu, a young girl in 1960s Rhodesia determined to get an education and to create a better life for herself. Dangarembga’s prose is evocative and witty, and the story is thought-provoking. I’ve been inspired anew by Tambu each time I’ve read this book."

Peace Adzo Medie is Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Global Norms and Local Action: The Campaigns to End Violence against Women in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2020). His Only Wife is her debut novel.

Jenna Maurice, HarperCollins

“The book I'm most thankful for? Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. My mother and father would read me poems from it before bed — I'm convinced it infused me not only with a sense of poetic cadence, but also a wry sense of humor.”

Victoria “V.E.” Schwab is the bestselling author of more than a dozen books, including Vicious, the Shades of Magic series, and This Savage Song. Her latest novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, is BuzzFeed Book Club’s December pick. Read an excerpt from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

Meg Vázquez, Square Fish

“My childhood best friend gave me Troubling a Star by Madeleine L'Engle for Hanukkah when I was 11 years old, and it's still my favorite book of all time. I love the way it defies genre (it's a political thriller/YA romance that includes a lot of scientific research and also poetry??), and the way it values smartness, gutsiness, vulnerability, kindness, and a sense of adventure. The book follows 16-year-old Vicky Austin's life-altering trip to Antarctica; her trip changed my life, too. In a year when safe travel is almost impossible, I'm so grateful to be able to return to her story again and again.”

Kate Stayman-London's debut novel, One to Watch, is about a plus-size blogger who’s been asked to star on a Bachelorette-like reality show. Stayman-London served as lead digital writer for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and has written for notable figures, from former president Obama and Malala Yousafzai to Anna Wintour and Cher.

Katharine McGee is grateful for the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. Chris Bailey Photography, Firebird

“I’m thankful for the Redwall books by Brian Jacques. I discovered the series in elementary school, and it sparked a love of big, epic stories that has never left me. (If you read my books, you know I can’t resist a broad cast of characters!) I used to read the books aloud to my younger sister, using funny voices for all the narrators. Now that I have a little boy of my own, I can’t wait to someday share Redwall with him.”

Katharine McGee is the New York Times bestselling author of American Royals and its sequel, Majesty. She is also the author of the Thousandth Floor trilogy.

Beth Gwinn, Time-Life Books

"I am thankful most for books that carry me out of the world and back again, and while I find it painful to choose among them, here's one early and one late: Zen Cho's Black Water Sister, which comes out in 2021 but I devoured just two days ago, and the long out-of-print Wizards and Witches volume of the Time-Life Enchanted World series, which is where I first read about the legend of the Scholomance."

Naomi Novik is the New York Times bestselling author of the Nebula Award–winning novel Uprooted, Spinning Silver, and the nine-volume Temeraire series. Her latest novel, A Deadly Education, is the first of the Scholomance trilogy.

Christina Lauren are grateful for the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Christina Lauren, Little, Brown and Company

"We are thankful for the Twilight series for about a million reasons, not the least of which it's what brought the two of us together. Writing fanfic in a space where we could be silly and messy together taught us that we don't have to be perfect, but there's no harm in trying to get better with every attempt. It also cemented for us that the best relationships are the ones in which you can be your real, authentic self, even when you're struggling to do things you never thought you'd be brave enough to attempt. Twilight brought millions of readers back into the fold and inspired hundreds of romance authors. We really do thank Stephenie Meyer every day for the gift of Twilight and the fandom it created."

0 notes