Books like Sabrina & Corina — picked by fans

Generations of students like me learned of this classic from a classic in her own right, English teacher Betsy Tapia of St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The book is set in eastern New Mexico, outside the more studied Santa Fe and Taos, in a fictionalized version of Pastura, Anaya’s hometown. The story resonated with those of us who knew atole as a favorite dish when ill or who had seen our grandmothers or neighbors’ grandmothers sprinkle dust devils with holy water on dry, windy, spring days.

Written with insight from those like Tapia, the novel captures a place and a time that feels real to me, even if it’s fiction.

The Gen X memoir that I didn’t know I needed.

Most memoirs of Native life describe Native-White relationships. Taffa dives into relationships among Native communities and between Native and Chicanx neighbors and family members in both the Fort Yuma Quechan Reservation and Farmington, New Mexico.

Threaded throughout are the TV shows and diner dinners and dusty hikes and radio soundtracks that almost any New Mexican who came of age in the 1980s and 1990s will remember.

Many books about New Mexico describe the region as if it were a place unto itself, distinct from the rest of the nation and the world.

Martínez’s novel follows Central American refugees during the 1970s and 1980s who made their way to the state as a part of the sanctuary movement in which Martínez herself participated. I love the depictions of Albuquerque apartments, which capture the sparse, yearning beauty of relationships formed across barriers of language, culture, and violence. 

A controversial classic – controversial because the book shares sacred Laguna clan stories, classic because the book shares the trauma and the ongoing recovery of indigenous lands and people victimized by World War II and the creation and testing of the atomic bomb.

For me, the book answers the question: how to continue when all appears lost? I turn to it when I need that insight.

I’m a school librarian, so I couldn’t pass up a book about a librarian who works in an island school! This is set on Galveston Island, and the Texas culture there definitely brings its own flavor to the story.

The friendly community feel of the school and town really appealed to me and gave this book a cozy dimension despite its darker themes. A new principal arrives and immediately begins ruining the happy librarian’s life with new rules that she fights at every step—so naturally, the two begin to fall in love. I loved the animals in this book. I couldn’t stop smiling when I finished this one.

I love this humorous coming-of-age story narrated by a naïve yet academically smart girl who is juggling the various conflicting truths of her life—what she is taught in school, what she learns at home, what she learns from her friends and her siblings, what she is told about how life is and what she observes for herself. How is a person to reconcile all these truths?

By becoming the Queen of England, which is what Monei, the narrator, says she wants to become when she grows up since the Queen is the only woman, as far as Monei can tell, who can make decisions. This is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Dow brilliantly captures the perplexed voice of a growing girl and the idiom of Botswana life around Independence.

This book is like nothing I’ve ever read.

Fraimow combines a con-job storyline, a space diaspora setting, a 1920s aesthetic, and an unexpected sapphic romance, and somehow, it all works. I found myself totally immersed in the fragile glitz of New Monte, a kind of Monaco-in-space clinging to a satellite, where debutantes wear breathers as fashion accessories and extravagance masks the threat of scarcity.

And I fell in love with the characters: Ruthi, the cool, competent protagonist with a gift for wisecracks and a tender underside, and Sol, the chivalrous, sharp-suited, hoverbike-riding love interest, who develops from an intriguing antagonist into a fully-rounded human being who is Ruthi’s perfect match.

I am not a plotter. I have always wished I was. But nope, sorry, Gwen. That said, this is still an amazing book. Even if you are a discovery writer (sometimes called pantster for writing by the seat of your pants), thinking about your plot in terms of pacing, story elements, backstory, characterization, and setting…and thinking about them in a logical way is beneficial.

Kudos if you can write it down in a notebook before you start drafting. That’s not in my wheelhouse.

I was immediately taken with author/filmmaker Nicholas Meyer's brilliant pairing of a flailing, cocaine-addicted Sherlock Holmes with a winningly rendered Sigmund Freud, whom a desperate Doctor Watson has recruited to save the self-destructive detective.

Freud’s efforts eventually teased out the darkest of secrets driving Holmes’ notorious substance abuse in a manner I found enthralling. I believe the best historical novels confidently ground you in a time and a place that captivates but also conjures a reality all their own in their blending of fact and fiction, which this novel does in spades.

I’ve revisited it many times over the years. A wonderful film adaptation by Meyer was also released many years ago, starring Nichol Williamson as Holmes and Alan Arkin as Freud.

Set in a beguinage in 1310 Paris, which is churning with palace intrigue and the pyres of the Inquisition. I felt drawn into the lives of these beguines as they strive to hold their place in society with strong political forces set against their independent lifestyle.

I felt the smells, sights, and sounds of medieval Paris. An innocent Maheut arrives, unintentionally stirring up life among the beguines as they and the girl try to outwit the Inquisitors. Maheut is hunted, but the beguines are not sure by whom, and she won’t talk. A great resolution.