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The End

I have some news that is both exciting and a little sad: I am going to stop posting new content to Tungsten Hippo. The website will remain up, with the archives intact.

Daughter of Necessity

This is a short and inventive retelling of the story of Penelope (from the Odyssey). It is beautifully told, and well worth the short time it will take to read.

Cover of Daughter of Necessity
Author: 

Marie Brennan

The Burning

This is a novella about family and resilience, set in the Pennsylvania coal country. George Ferris has worked hard to build a good life for himself and his family, but there's a coal fire burning underground, and it threatens all that he has built. The story follows him as he tries to figure out how to respond and struggles to protect his family from the slow-moving disaster. It was inspired by actual events in Centralia, Pennsylvania, and provides a gripping dramatization of how an external catastrophe can shake the foundations of your life.

Book cover for The Burning, a house with smoke effects
Author: 

J.P. Seewald

The Dispatcher

This is a detective story set in a strange near future in which anyone who is intentionally killed almost always returns to life, naked, at home. It seems like a ridiculous premise, but Scalzi makes it believable, and provides a great, fast-paced detective story, too.

The Dispatcher book cover. A man crouching by a dead body, with a woman standing in the background.
Author: 

John Scalzi

The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model

This is a really fun story, told from the perspective of aliens. To tell you too much about the plot would ruin some of the fun of reading the story, so I'll just say that the aliens are among the most interesting and believable I've ever come across in my reading, and the story leaves you thinking.

The Fermi Paradox is Our Business Model book cover: a picture of an alien
Author: 

Charlie Jane Anders

Wildcat

I've always enjoyed Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski detective novels, so I come to Wildcat as someone who already knows and loves the adult V.I. This short ebook is not about the adult V.I., though. It is about Warshawski when she is still Victoria, a 10 year old girl worried about her police officer father during a turbulent and ugly time in Chicago's history. Although the backstory it provides for fans of V.I.

Wildcat book cover: a view of downtown Chicago.
Author: 

Sara Paretsky

Book Introduction: Family Matters

Time for a Book Introduction guest post! Today, Sonya Watson introduces her collection of short stories, Family Matters.

Family Matters book cover

 

Family Matters

by Sonya Watson

The Promise of the Sky

This is the story of a boy in rural India who tries to break the boundaries imposed by his caste and attend school. The cost of this decision is beyond what he or anyone else in is family expects. This story has a clear message, but it is an important message and the storytelling is good enough to support it.

The Promise of the Sky book cover: a young Indian boy, looking through barbed wire.
Author: 

Jyoti Guptara

Oh, Never Mind

This is a set of linked essays ostensibly about loving New York City and then leaving it, but really about growing into adulthood and learning to be comfortable in your own skin. Choi's writing is funny and insightful, and the book is a lot of fun to read.

Oh Never Mind book cover
Author: 

Mary H.K. Choi

Water into Wine

This is the story of Xin, who inherits a vineyard on a distant planet and moves there to build a new life, only to have an interstellar war intervene. It is very much a sci fi novella, but the focus of the story is on how everyday people survive and build a life in the midst of war, and on the meaning of family and identity. This novella is published by my company, Annorlunda Books, and it is a great example of the type of fiction I like to publish: entertaining to read, but thought-provoking, too.

Water into Wine book cover: Main character standing in front of a vineyard
Author: 

Joyce Chng

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