Top 5 Tuesday #31: K – L – M – N – O

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic:

K – L – M – N – O

(authors whose name begins with the featured letters)

K is for…

M.P. Kozlowsky

Kozlowsky wrote the middle-grade novel Juniper Berry: A Tale of Terror and Temptation, which is about a lonely but brave girl name Juniper who befriends a boy name Giles and finds out why their parents are acting weird. I enjoyed the story and consider it horror (it’s not scary) and fantasy.

L is for…

Victor LaValle

LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom is a horror novella that retells H.P. Lovecraft’s short story, “The Horror at Red Hook,” from the perspective of a Black man. The story is set in Harlem in the early 1920s and is a really good read even if you’re not familiar with Lovecraft and his work (like me).

M is for…

Gregory Manchess

I loved the breathtaking paintings that helped tell the story in Manchess’s Above the Timberline, a “painted novel” that contains 122 oil paintings. It’s a sci-fi story about a young man searching for his father, a famous polar explorer who went missing. The story is set in an alternate future in which the poles have shifted. The story was okay and was a decent read, but it’s the paintings that really stood out and captivated me as I read.

N is for…

James Nicol

The Apprentice Witch is Nicol’s debut novel. It’s a middle-grade fantasy story about a girl who failed her witch’s exam and is sent to a small town to serve as an apprentice witch. It’s a sweet story that I enjoyed reading although it suffered from some pacing issues.

O is for…

Nnedi Okorafor

I really enjoyed Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch, a YA fantasy novel set in Nigeria about an albino girl who learns that she is part of the secret, magical world of the Leopard people. It was a fun read that I sped through and I hope to get to the second book soon.

That’s it for me.

Let me know if you’ve read any of these.