Books like Lions Roaring Far From Home — picked by fans

Before becoming a published writer, I was a lawyer litigating primarily large, multi-district environmental insurance coverage cases. I became familiar with the many ways by which we damage our precious natural resources, be it groundwater or soil or the air we breathe. Beginning with Rachel Carson, we have rich literature that speaks to the degradation of the planet, including the devastating changes wrought by global warming. The stories in this anthology speak to the physical and emotional topography of our current climate crisis, from a Sami woman who studies fish populations to a Wisconsin man contemplating the animals who make his trailer a portal to a world unsullied by humans. Fish & Water is a smart collection on a topic we ignore at our peril.

When the authors in Distant Flickers formed Telltale, a writers’ collective, we brainstormed ways to reach out to readers and give them insight as to how our life experiences are transformed into art. We decided to put together an anthology as part of our endeavor. In doing so, we researched how other writer collectives reached out to their readership. A number of us are historical fiction writers and/or members of the Womens Fiction Writers Association (WFWA), which is how we came to be acquainted with Paper Lanterns, the collective of historical fiction writers behind this anthology. The stories in Unlocked are works of historical fiction that revolve around the common element of an old wooden chest. The settings are varied and span seven centuries, from 1225 Ireland to 1679 Amsterdam to the American Civil War to Regency London to World War II to the Nineteen Seventies.

Sheila Kohler, a mentor of mine whose work is featured in this thrilling collection, is fond of saying that suspense arises from putting a vulnerable character in a dangerous situation. A literary writer of the highest caliber, Sheila knows how to generate the suspense that keeps the page turning. Crime fiction has a long history going back to Dostoevsky and beyond, to the great tragedians—the commission of a crime entails motive, means, and is inherently dramatic. This eclectic selection of mystery and female noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, features superstar writers like Edwidge Danticat, Margaret Atwood, Sheila Kohler, Elizabeth McCracken, and Joyce Carol Oates herself. The writing is luminous, the themes are varied—from domestic horror to the erotic to dark fairy tales—and the tales keep the reader turning the page.

As a writer, I am always pondering the question of how our lives inform our work. As one of my fellow writers, Melissa Ostrom, put it, our experience is the rich compost from which we form our fictional narratives. To use a Freudian dream analogy, I like to think that our lives are the “day residue” of the work—elements from daily life show up in different contexts or transformed in some other way. The twentieth-first century has witnessed an explosion of so-called auto-fiction, fiction that more consciously underscores this process of transforming life into art—think of the work of Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, and Karl Ove Knausgard. This recently-released anthology, edited by Caitlin Forst, features work by established writers as well as new voices that interrogates the relationship between writer and text, between art and life.

I’ve been a fan of Elizabeth Wein’s since I read her bestselling YA thriller Code Name Verity, and I was thrilled to discover she herself is a TCK. In this novel, two adopted siblings (one white, one Black), move from the US to Ethiopia in the 1930s, just before Ethiopia’s war with Italy. TCKs will relate to Teo and Em’s struggle with not feeling fully at home in any one place. Like all of Elizabeth Wein’s books, there is plenty of airplane-flying adventure to keep readers on the edge of their seats!

Marcus is a world-renowned chef and I have the pleasure of working with him at The Medici Group. This is an incredibly honest take of his life and how he got here. He shares his story of what it means to be a Black chef in a non-black chef world. After finding a lack of acceptance in Europe’s kitchens he made his way to New York. There, he built the restaurant and team that reflected his dream of a diverse and multi-ethnic dining room. This is a "boots on the ground" story of the diverse world we live in and the power of embracing that. I also found his thoughts on what it means to be F.O.D. to be powerful (First Only Different).

The author walks from Lalibela to Axum, the two main pilgrimage destinations of Christian Ethiopia. It’s a journey of 250 miles through the heartland of Christian Ethiopia. It’s a spectacular mountain landscape, along an old road which passes by many churches and monasteries. As he walks, he describes the people he meets, explains the history of the region, tells the stories and legends, and shares his adventures. For the visitor, Ethiopia is a strange and unfamiliar place and so encountering Ethiopia is always a journey of exploration. We need a guide and Philip is an engaging and well-informed travel companion.

David Phillipson is an archeologist who has excavated – and shown me round – sites at Axum and other places. Here he guides us through the early history of the church from the 4th to 15th centuries by showing the wonderful photos, descriptions, and plans of the main church sites, supplemented by historical and geographical essays. A tour of the buildings is a clear and perceptive introduction to this tradition – as well as being a breath-taking journey through some of the more important historic centres of this ancient civilisation.

I first encountered Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Scoop in a backpacker guesthouse in Kowloon in 1987. Some traveler had left it behind, and I read it insatiably, cover to cover, and then started again from the beginning. It was even more hilarious and bitingly satirical on the second read and is the one book I’d take along were I banished to a desert island where luggage allowance was severely restricted.

First published in 1938, Scoop delivers a timeless and elegant roasting of the profession of journalism and self-important foreign correspondents. I have to admit–up to a point–that the bumbling exploits of William Boot, the book’s reluctant protagonist, played more than a small role in my own decision to both pick up a camera and put pen to paper!

Ethiopia is a country with the second largest population in Africa. There are over 80 ethnic groups and languages, living in a region that includes the largest area of mountains in Africa and also the lowest point on the earth’s land surface. While this book tells the history of the Christian north, including the national epic which tells how Ethiopian kings are descended from Solomon of Israel, it also describes the culture and traditions of other societies which make up this fascinating country, and shows both the tensions and the creativity within Ethiopian society.