Do You Know This Book?

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Snake-Eater is a 2025 novel by T. Kingfisher. From the book’s official summary: “With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt's house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind. Because in Quartz Creek, there's a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena's ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena's house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn't ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can't begin to imagine. And when Selena's search for answers leads her to journal entries that her aunt left behind, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: It's the haunting grounds of an ancient god known simply as "Snake-Eater," who her late aunt made a promise to that remains unfulfilled. Snake-Eater has taken a liking to Selena, an obsession of sorts that turns sinister. And now that Selena is the new owner of his home, he's hell-bent on collecting everything he's owed.”

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The Dark Lord of Derkholm (Dark Lord of Derkholm in the United States) is a 1998 fantasy novel by British author Diana Wynne Jones. From Wikipedia: “The novel is a parody, for its setting is a mock high fantasy world, similar to that Jones covered in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland, a humorous travel guide on the Rough Guides model.

The narrative is set in a fantasy world whose economy and society are controlled by an interdimensional tourism industry. An organization called "Mr. Chesney's Pilgrim Parties" coordinates annual tours for visitors from the real world to participate in various fantasy tropes, including interactions with wizard guides, attacks by winged predators, and confrontations with designated "Dark Lords". These events cause widespread environmental damage and casualties among the local population. In a meeting about the Pilgrim Parties, High Chancellor Querida takes a wizard, a high priest and a thief to see the Oracles, who determine that the next person the group sees will play the role of the Dark Lord, and the second person will be the Wizard Guide that they need. They meet Wizard Derk. Derk undertakes to "evil-fy" his home, Derkholm, for its role as the Dark Lord's capital. He summons a demon to bind there, but it escapes. An ancient dragon mistakes him for a ruling Dark Lord, then takes offense when it learns the commercial truth.

Lovecraft Country is a 2016 dark fantasy black horror novel by American writer Matt Ruff. From Wikipedia: “Lovecraft Country explores the conjunction between the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and racism in the United States during the era of Jim Crow laws, as experienced by the novel’s Black science fiction fan Atticus Turner and his family. The novel is separated into eight interconnected stories, with each story following a different character.

Publishers Weekly commended Ruff for his "impressive grasp of classic horror themes", and noted that the book's "most unsettling" aspect is the constant bigotry experienced by the characters, while Kirkus Reviews considered it a "series of bizarre chimerical adventures" and a "merrily macabre pastiche", comparing it favorably to Ruff's previous works. At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow described the characters as "active protagonists [with] lives, ... dignity, and ... indomitable spirit", and observed that because of their constant experiences with "harassment, violence, expropriation, and the legacy of slavery", they "don't need Elder Gods to experience horror", while at Tor.com, Alex Brown judged that the book "thoroughly and effectively marries race and horror" and called it "a tense thriller, a terrifying nightmare, a heartbreaking tragedy, and a tale of holding onto aspiration and optimism even while being chased through the woods by a hellbeast from another dimension".

In 2020, HBO released an adaptation of the novel by showrunner, writer and executive producer Misha Green. Jordan Peele and J. J. Abrams also served as executive producers. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the series holds an approval rating of 88% based on 367 reviews, with an average rating of 8.05/10. The series won multiple awards, including the American Film Institute Award for Top 10 TV Programs of the Year.”

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The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes is a 1991 novel by Scott Frost. From Wikipedia: “The book is the second spin-off novel based on Twin Peaks. It was written by Scott Frost (brother of series co-creator Mark Frost) and consists of a collection of transcripts from Agent Dale Cooper's audio tapes. The book begins with Cooper's childhood, including his upbringing in Philadelphia, family, and eventually education at Quaker institutions Germantown Friends School and Haverford College. It also explains his first stumbles with love, obsession with the FBI, and the relationship between him, Windom Earle, and Earle's wife, Caroline. The book ultimately concludes with the day he is assigned to Laura Palmer's murder. Many of these tape transcripts are dictated to "Diane", though a later tape states that Cooper enjoys the thought of Diane listening to his tapes so much that he will address all tapes to her whether she'll hear them all or not.”

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The Bell at Sealey Head is a 2008 fantasy novel by American writer Patricia A. McKillip. From the book’s official summary: “Sealey Head is a small town on the edge of the ocean, a sleepy place where everyone hears the ringing of a bell no one can see. On the outskirts of town is the one truly great house, Aislinn House, where the aged Lady Eglantyne lies dying, and where the doors sometimes open not to its own dusty rooms, but to the wild majesty of a castle full of knights and princesses…”

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The Last Dragon on Mars is a 2024 science fiction novel by Scott Reintgen. From the book’s official summary: “Keep your eyes down and your feet moving, or this planet will rust you. That’s what Lunar Jones tells the other kids at the relocation clinic. All of them were born on Mars, a planet that never wanted people in the first place. With resources scarce and hope even scarcer, it’s easy to get distracted looking up. After all, their ancestors descended from the stars. Martian history always starts with Earth. The first astronauts discovered that space was already occupied. Not by little green men or flying saucers. It was full of dragons. One for every moon, every planet, every star. When humanity discovered that Earth’s dragon had sacrificed herself to make their home planet habitable, they set their sights on Mars. If one dead dragon could breathe life into a world, why not create another one? Mankind won the war that followed, but with one catch. As the dragon died, he whispered a curse over Mars. The first settlers found their crops wouldn’t grow. Animals hunted them. Storms raged endlessly. It took three generations to figure out the truth: Mars was doomed. Lunar knows all the old stories about dragons and space, but no one up there’s planning to help him or his crew. Instead, he focuses on scrapping valuable gear that the storms uncover in the war zone. Until one day, a salvaging run goes wrong. Desperate to find shelter, Lunar goes underground in a restricted zone. What he finds there, buried in the Martian dust, might just be the only hope left for a dying planet.”

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The Forests of Silence is a 2000 fantasy novel written by Australian author Emily Rodda, and is the first book in the Deltora Quest series. From Wikipedia: “The novel follows a teenage boy named Lief as he and his companions search the deadly Forests of Silence for the magical Topaz gem, one of the seven missing gems from the belt of Deltora.

The novel was awarded the "Notable Series in Children's Book of the Year Awards 2001: Younger Readers". The Deltora Quest series, which consists of fifteen books and six bonus books, has sold over 18 million copies worldwide.

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The Amulet of Samarkand is a 2003 young adult novel of alternate history, fantasy and magic by English author Jonathan Stroud. From Wikipedia: “The book and series are about power struggles in a magical dystopia centred in London, England, and feature a mix of current and ancient, secular and mythological themes. The book is named after a magical artifact created in the ancient Asian city of Samarkand, around which the story revolves. The story follows Nathaniel, gifted 12-year-old apprentice of a middle-aged mid-level magician, Arthur Underwood. He assumes his magician name, John Mandrake, to protect him from rivals who would wish him harm. When the magician Simon Lovelace cruelly humiliates Nathaniel in public, Nathaniel decides to take revenge by stealing Lovelace's most powerful possession, the Amulet of Samarkand, which makes the wearer invulnerable to magic. Unknown to his tutor, he begins the study of advanced magic in order to summon the djinni Bartimaeus and enslave him. Bartimaeus soon overhears Nathaniel's birth-name, which greatly reduces Nathaniel's control over him, because demons can then cast counterspells. Things soon get out of hand and Bartimaeus and Nathaniel find themselves caught in the middle of magical espionage, murder, blackmail, and revolt.

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Speak is a 1999 young adult novel by Laurie Halse Anderson. From Wikipedia: "Speak tells the story of high school freshman Melinda Sordino. After Melinda is raped at an end of summer party, she calls the police, who break up the party. Melinda is then ostracized by her peers because she will not say why she called the police. Unable to verbalize what happened, Melinda nearly stops speaking altogether, expressing her voice through the art she produces for Mr. Freeman's class. This expression slowly helps Melinda acknowledge what happened, face her problems, and recreate her identity.

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