Author: Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

OK, no one yell at me: I’ve been off romance novels for the past year or so. 

I don’t know if it’s the state of the world or just a personal thing, but most times I read about people falling in love I start to roll my eyes. And they don’t deserve that! It’s frustrating. 

So I have (mostly) put them down for the time being. But there are certain authors that have yet to disappoint me. I’m still picking up their books, and thankfully they’ve all still worked for me.

 If you’re a certified romance hater, try one of these authors. You can thank me later.

Emily Henry 

My favorite is probably Happy Place because the writing really transports you to a Maine getaway state of mind, plus the cast of characters is unbeatable.

Alisha Rai 

I love her entire modern romance series, but Girl Gone Viral uses the bodyguard trope so well, and I loved watching the shy heroine come out of her shell.

Helen Hoang 

Her latest release, The Heart Principle, had me curled up weeping in several places, and I mean that as a compliment. An emotional, beautiful journey.

Alyssa Cole

My first by her is still my favorite: A Princess In Theory mixes emails from an African prince (no, really) with the prince and the pauper for amazing results.

Beth O’Leary

The combination of quirky characters, humor, and an all-around  imaginative setup makes The Flatshare my favorite romance book ever!

Sarah MacLean 

It has the classic stepback cover, and Wicked and the Wallflower also has fiercely passionate characters, a terrible plan and a fabulous setting in historical London.

Talia Hibbert

Grumpy + sarcastic is apparently a great combo, and if you don’t believe me, try Take A Hint, Dani Brown, and feel free to email me when you find out I was right.

Erica Ridley 

I’m obsessed with books about big families, especially big found families, and The Perks of Loving a Wallflower checks all those boxes, plus has a heist and a really thoughtful exploration of gender. 

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers. 

Interested in what’s possible for your book sales and building readership? Check out our services, tell us your goals, and get a customized publicity campaign tailored just for you.

booksforward.com/about-us/ellen-whitfield/

Severance is back! We’re so excited, and so … nervous. If you’re the kind of person who can’t get enough of that mysterious, unsettled feeling that you’re left with after each episode ends, try one of these books.

Severance by Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies cease operations. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. 

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her floorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. 

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the labyrinth itself. There is one other person in the house-a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel.

Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin

Across the world, thousands of people are shocked by a notification that they once chose to have a memory removed. Now they are being given an opportunity to get that memory back. Four individuals are filled with new doubts, grappling with the unexpected question of whether to remember unknown events, or to leave them buried forever. Noor, a psychologist working at the Nepenthe memory removal clinic in London, is shaken as she begins the process of reinstating patients’ memories. As she delves deeper into how the program works, she will have to risk everything to uncover the cost of this miraculous technology. 

Lakewood by Megan Giddings

When Lena’s beloved grandmother dies, the full extent of the family debt is revealed, so the Black millennial drops out of college to support her family. On paper, her new job is too good to be true. High paying. No out of pocket medical expenses. A free place to live. All Lena has to do is participate in a secret program — and lie to her friends and family about the research being done. An eye drop that makes brown eyes blue, a medication that could be a cure for dementia, golden pills promised to make all bad thoughts go away. The discoveries made in Lakewood, Lena is told, will change the world — but the consequences for the subjects involved could be devastating. 

The Circle by Dave Eggers

When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency. Mae is thrilled with the company’s modernity and activity and can’t believe her luck to work for the most influential company in the world — even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, and role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

“Are you happy with your life?” Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the kidnapper knocks him unconscious. Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college professor but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Is it this life or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how will Jason make it back to the family he loves?

Finna by Nino Cipri

When an elderly customer at a furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension, it’s up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company’s bottom line. To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules (who broke up a week ago) will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. 

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

Gerald’s consciousness has been uploaded into his company’s internal Slack channels. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from-home policy. But

faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. And the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. 

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

Ellice Littlejohn has a well-paying job as a corporate attorney in midtown Atlanta and a “for fun” relationship with a rich, charming executive, who just happens to be her white boss. And then Ellice finds him dead with a gunshot to his head and walks away like nothing has happened. Why? Ellice has been keeping a cache of dark secrets, including a small-town past and a kid brother who’s spent time on the other side of the law. But when she uncovers shady dealings inside the company, Ellice is trapped in an impossible ethical and moral dilemma. 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at an exclusive boarding school in the English countryside, where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Years later, Ruth and Tommy have reentered Kathy’s life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special — and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

No one knows us in quite the same way as the men and women who sit beside us in department meetings and crowd the office refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. This Chicago ad agency is coping with a business downturn in the time-honored way: through gossip, elaborate pranks, and increasingly frequent coffee breaks.

Featured Image by Apple TV

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers. 

Interested in what’s possible for your book sales and building readership? Check out our services, tell us your goals, and get a customized publicity campaign tailored just for you.

booksforward.com/about-us/ellen-whitfield/

Welcome to the best season, awards! We’re celebrating by picking some of our favorite Golden Globes nominees to match with book recommendations!

If you loved Dune 2, read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine: 

Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor has died. No one will admit that his death wasn’t an accident–or that Mahit might be next to die during a time of political instability. Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan’s unceasing expansion–all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret.

If you loved A Complete Unknown, read Just Kids by Patti Smith:

It was the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous, the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. 

If you loved Challengers, read Intercepted by Alexa Martin:

When Marlee Harper discovers her NFL-star boyfriend has been tackling other women on the sly, she vows to never date an athlete again. But Gavin Pope, the new hotshot quarterback and a fling from the past, has Marlee in his sights. Gavin fights to show Marlee he’s nothing like her ex. But the team’s wives are not happy with Marlee’s return. They have only one thing on their minds: taking her down. 

If you loved True Detective: Night Country, read The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones: 

Four American Indian men and their families are all haunted by a disturbing, deadly event that took place in their youth. Years later, they find themselves tracked by an entity bent on revenge, totally helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent, vengeful way.

If you loved Slow Horses, read Case Histories by Kate Atkinson: 

Case one: A little girl goes missing in the night.

Case two: A beautiful young office worker falls victim to a maniac’s apparently random attack.

Case three: A new mother finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making – with a very needy baby and a very demanding husband – until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape.

Thirty years after the first incident, as private investigator Jackson Brodie begins investigating all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge . . .

If you loved I’m Still Here, read Sparks Like Stars by Nadia Hasimi: 

Ten-year-old Sitara’s world is shattered when communists in Kabul stage a coup, assassinating her entire family. Sitara finds her way to the home of a female American diplomat, who adopts her and raises her in America, where she takes on a new name–Aryana Shepherd–and throws herself into her studies, eventually becoming a renowned surgeon. Thirty years later, an elderly patient appears in her examination room–the soldier who saved her. Seeing him awakens Aryana’s fury and desire for answers–and, perhaps, revenge. 

If you loved The Substance, read Rouge by Mona Awad:

Belle is obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When a strange woman in red appears at her mother’s funeral, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror–and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

If you loved Conclave, read The Confessor by Daniel Silva:

In Munich, a Jewish scholar is assassinated. In Venice, Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon receives the news, puts down his brushes, and leaves immediately. And at the Vatican, the new pope vows to uncover the truth about the church’s response to the Holocaust–while a powerful cardinal plots his next move. 

If you loved Nickel Boys, read James by Percival Everett:

When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide nearby until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father. Thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River. And here, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers. 

Interested in what’s possible for your book sales and building readership? Check out our services, tell us your goals, and get a customized publicity campaign tailored just for you.

booksforward.com/about-us/ellen-whitfield/

January 2 is national science fiction day, and I want to use it as an excuse to get people into one of my favorite genres! Whether you’ve never read a sci-fi book before, you’ve dabbled but not really explored the genre, or you’re an expert who is looking for your next favorite read, I have a recommendation for you.

Beginner: All of these are fairly short (two are just novellas!) and there’s nothing too mind-bending in them.

• The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi: Jamie Gray, a food delivery driver, signs on for a gig at a mysterious “animal rights organization,” but is surprised to learn that they are massive dinosaur-like creatures in an alternate dimension. 

• To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers: A team of astronaut explorers are hard at work to ecologically survey four habitable worlds fifteen light years from Earth. 

• Binti by Nnedi Okorafor: Binti is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Intermediate: If you feel like you’ve gotten your feet under you, try one of these books that are a bit more complicated.

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson: Multiverse travel is finally possible, but no one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying–from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret.

• Dawn by Octavia E. Butler: When Lilith lyapo wakes from a centuries-long sleep, she finds herself aboard the vast spaceship of the Oankal, a seemingly benevolent alien race that intervened in the fate of humanity. After learning all they could about Earth and its beings, the Oankali healed the planet, cured cancer, increased human strength, and they now want Lilith to lead her people back to Earth–but salvation comes at a price.
• The Martian by Andy Weir: After a dust storm on Mars nearly kills astronaut Mark Watney and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive–and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.But Mark isn’t ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills–and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit–he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. 

Expert: Ready for a challenge? Try one of these books, where things get more advanced.

• The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu: Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion. 

• Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee: When Captain Kel Cheris of the hexarchate is disgraced for her unconventional tactics, Kel Command gives her a chance to redeem herself, by retaking the Fortress of Scattered Needles from the heretics. Cheris’s career isn’t the only thing at stake: if the fortress falls, the hexarchate itself might be next. Cheris’s best hope is to ally with the undead tactician Shuos Jedao. The good news is that Jedao has never lost a battle, and he may be the only one who can figure out how to successfully besiege the fortress. The bad news is that Jedao went mad in his first life and massacred two armies, one of them his own.

• Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi: Ella has a Thing. She sees a classmate grow up to become a caring nurse. A neighbor’s son murdered in a drive-by shooting. Things that haven’t happened yet. Kev, born while Los Angeles burned around them, wants to protect his sister from a power that could destroy her. But when Kev is incarcerated, Ella must decide what it means to watch her brother suffer while holding the ability to wreck cities in her hands.

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers. 

Interested in what’s possible for your book sales and building readership? Check out our services, tell us your goals, and get a customized publicity campaign tailored just for you.

booksforward.com/about-us/ellen-whitfield/

I love a long book — so many characters to get to know, and so much time to relax and enjoy where the story is going to take me — but it can seem hard to get into a behemoth when I’m short on time. Which is most of the year. Luckily, I have a bit more downtime at the end of December, so I’m looking forward to trying a long tome or two this season, wish me luck! Here are some of my recommendations for epic stories to lose yourself in during the holidays, or next time you find yourself itching for something 600+ pages:

The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Ailey Pearl Garfield is reared in the north in the City but spends summers in the small Georgia town of Chicasetta, where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived from Africa in bondage. From an early age, Ailey fights a battle for belonging that’s made all the more difficult by a hovering trauma, as well as the whispers of women — her mother, Belle, her sister, Lydia, and a maternal line reaching back two centuries — that urge Ailey to succeed in their stead.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Journey to the dusty little Texas town of Lonesome Dove as four former, aging Texas Rangers undergo a cattle drive from southern Texas to unsettled Montana in the latter half of the 1800s.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo, and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

On Dec. 3, 1976, just before the Jamaican general election and two days before Bob Marley was to play to ease political tensions in Kingston, seven gunmen stormed the singer’s house. The attack wounded Marley, his wife, and his manager, and injured several others. James deftly chronicles the lives of a host of unforgettable characters — gunmen, drug dealers, one-night stands, CIA agents, even ghosts — over the course of 30 years as they roam the streets of 1970s Kingston, dominate the crack houses of 1980s New York, and ultimately reemerge into the radically altered Jamaica of the 1990s. 

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Jean Valjean, a former convict, is released from prison in 19th-century France after serving a long sentence for stealing a loaf of bread. In his subsequent struggle to create a new life, he is relentlessly pursued by the morally rigid police inspector Javert. Valjean encounters Fantine, a struggling single mother, and Marius, a young revolutionary, while trying to protect his adopted daughter, Cosette, from the clutches of the exploitative Thenardiers.

Shōgun by James Clavell

After Englishman John Blackthorne is lost at sea, he awakens in a place few Europeans know of and even fewer have seen: Nippon. Thrust into the closed society that is 17th-century Japan, a land where the line between life and death is razor-thin, Blackthorne must negotiate not only a foreign people, with unknown customs and language, but also his own definitions of morality, truth, and freedom. 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

A portrait of a beautiful and intelligent woman whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties — to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. The love affair of Anna and Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance of Kitty and Levin, and in the character of Levin, the search for happiness takes on a deeper philosophical significance.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars in 1806, most people believe magic to have long since disappeared from England, until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals his powers and becomes an overnight celebrity. Another practicing magician then emerges: the young and daring Jonathan Strange. He becomes Norrell’s pupil, and the two join forces in the war against France. But Strange is increasingly drawn to the wild, most perilous forms of magic, and he soon risks sacrificing his partnership with Norrell and everything else he holds dear.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction — but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic. Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel. Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

Jake Epping, a 35-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away: a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life — like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963 — turning on a dime. Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: His storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession — to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading eventually, of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful, and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Philip, prior of Kingsbridge, is a devout and resourceful monk driven to build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has known. Tom is the mason who becomes his architect — a man divided in his soul. The beautiful, elusive Lady Aliena is haunted by a secret shame. The story of a struggle between good and evil that will turn church against state and brother against brother.

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

The year is 1984 and the city is Tokyo. A young woman named Aomame follows a taxi driver’s enigmatic suggestion and begins to notice puzzling discrepancies in the world around her. She has entered, she realizes, a parallel existence, which she calls 1Q84. Meanwhile, an aspiring writer named Tengo becomes so wrapped up with a ghostwriting project and its unusual author that, soon, his previously placid life begins to come unraveled. As their narratives converge over the course of this single year, we learn of the profound and tangled connections that bind them ever closer: a beautiful, dyslexic teenage girl with a unique vision; a mysterious religious cult that instigated a shoot-out with the metropolitan police; a reclusive, wealthy dowager who runs a shelter for abused women; a hideously ugly private investigator; a mild-mannered yet ruthlessly efficient bodyguard; and a peculiarly insistent television-fee collector.

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain. Five thousand years later, their progeny — seven distinct races now three billion strong — embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

In a 19th-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change, the proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives plays out — until the arrival of two outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium. 

Ellen Zielinski Whitfield

Ellen Whitfield is senior publicist at Books Forward, an author publicity and book marketing firm committed to promoting voices from a diverse variety of communities. From book reviews and author events, to social media and digital marketing, we help authors find success and connect with readers. 

Interested in what’s possible for your book sales and building readership? Check out our services, tell us your goals, and get a customized publicity campaign tailored just for you.

booksforward.com/about-us/ellen-whitfield/