The Necessary Beggar
10 best books like The Necessary Beggar (Susan Palwick): An American Insurrection: James Meredith and the Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962, Here Today, Mission Child, The Margarets, The Land of Spices, Eagle Blue: A Team, a Tribe, and a High School Basketball Season in Arctic Alaska, The Innamorati, Aria of the Sea, The Dubious Hills, Donorboy
| Author | William Doyle |
| ISBN | 0385499701 |
In 1961, a black veteran named James Meredith applied for admission to the University of Mississippi — and launched a legal revolt against white supremacy in the most segregated state in America. Meredith’s challenge ultimately triggered what Time magazine called “the gravest conflict between...
| Author | Ann M. Martin |
| ISBN | 0439856256 |
In 1963, Ellie's mother, Doris Day Dingman, was crowned the Bosetti Beauty at Mr. Bosetti's supermarket, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the Dingmans began to fall apart." So begins 11-yr-old Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman's story. Ellie, who is about to start 6th grade in the small town...
| Author | Maureen F. McHugh |
| ISBN | 0380791226 |
Mission Child is an expansion of Maureen McHugh's "The Cost to Be Wise," a fascinating novella from the original anthology Starlight 1.
Janna's world was colonized long ago by Earth and then left on its own for centuries. When "offworlders" return, their superior technology upsets the balance...
| Author | Sheri S. Tepper |
| ISBN | 0061170658 |
The myriad alien civilizations populating far, distant worlds have many good reasons to detest the blight called "humankind" . . . The only human child living in a work colony on the Martian satellite Phobos, little Margaret Bain has invented six imaginary companions to keep boredom and loneliness...
| Author | Kate O'Brien |
| ISBN | 1844083160 |
Mere Marie-Helene once turned her back on life, sealing up her heart in order to devote herself to God. Now the formidable Mother Superior of an Irish convent, she has, for some time, been experiencing grave doubts about her vocation. But when she meets Anna Murphy, the youngest-ever boarder, the little...
| Author | Michael D'Orso |
| ISBN | 1582346232 |
n the tradition of Friday Night Lights, an extraordinary journey into the basketball-crazed culture of remote Arctic Alaska.
The village of Fort Yukon sits eight miles above the Arctic Circle, deep in Alaska's "bush" country. The six hundred men, women and children who live there—almost...
| Author | Midori Snyder |
| ISBN | 0312861974 |
A brilliant fantasy novel set in an alternate Renaissance VeniceDo you know the city Labirinto?
The blind know it, and the frustrated in love know it; the barren women, the silenced poets, the drunken priests, the stuttering actors -- all the unfortunates who suffer from cursed lives. They...
| Author | Dia Calhoun |
| ISBN | 0374404542 |
On the island of Normost, in the kingdom of Windward, 13-year-old Cerinthe Gale is a folk healer who dreams of being a dancer. When her mother falls ill, Cerinthe fights to save her -- but fails. She blames herself for her mother's death, gives up healing, and decides to pursue dance. Cerinthe travels...
| Author | Pamela Dean |
| ISBN | 0812523628 |
This is a very peculiar book. The Dubious Hills are a place deliberately set aside from the rest of the fantasy world they are part of by a great spell performed by wizards long ago. There is no traffic to speak of in and out and weird rules govern the workings of the inhabitants' lives. For one, each area of...
| Author | Brendan Halpin |
| ISBN | 1400062772 |
Rosalind had two mommies. Now, thanks to a tragic accident involving foodstuffs, she has none. And Sean, the sperm donor responsible for half her DNA (and nothing else), is taking custody. Rosalind finds herself adjusting to a new life that seems both hateful and surreal–she’s an orphan with a...
"Baby, the first thing I need to know from you is do you believe I killed my father?"
So begins Upstate, a powerful story told through letters between seventeen-year-old Antonio and his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, Natasha, set in the 1990's in New York. Antonio and Natasha's world is turned...
| Author | Todd Tucker |
| ISBN | 0312379900 |
In the summer of 1979, Andy and Tom are two fourteen-year-old boys---best friends, expert cave explorers, and crack shots with their Springfield M-6 Scout rifles. In rural southern Indiana they are blissfully unaware of the local labor strife surrounding the Borden Casket Company. The fact that...
| Author | Peter Feldstein |
| ISBN | 1599620480 |
In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all...
| Author | Pamela Carter Joern |
| ISBN | 0803276311 |
In the Nebraska Sandhills, nothing is more sacred than the bond of family and land—and nothing is more capable of causing deep wounds. In Pamela Carter Joern's riveting novel The Floor of the Sky, Toby Jenkins, an aging widow, is on the verge of losing her family's ranch when her granddaughter Lila—a...
| Author | Andrea Hairston |
| ISBN | 1933500034 |
MINDSCAPE takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered...
| Author | John Barnes |
| ISBN | 0812551605 |
The Tale began when young Prince Amatus secretly sipped the forbidden Wine of the Gods, leaving him half the lad he'd once been--literally--for his left side suddenly vanished without a trace!
But, as is often the case in Tales of this sort, the young Prince's misfortune was also a sort of blessing...
| Author | Patrick O'Leary |
| ISBN | 0312864035 |
A story within a story, The Gift is a story of innocence betrayed and magic rejected. Tim is robbed of his childhood, and Simon is tormented by hearing made too acute. Both are victims of The Usher of the Night, once a boy like them, now pathetically twisted by his own ambition and by Tomen, a malevolent creature...
| Author | Steve Cash |
| ISBN | 0345470931 |
Steve Cash created “an absorbing [and] intriguing saga” (The San Diego Union-Tribune) in his debut novel, The Meq. Outwardly indistinguishable from human beings, but with abilities no human can claim, the Meq search for their lost history and face a mysterious prophesied reckoning. . . .
It...
Now that it’s all over, everybody is saying it was the picture–that stupid picture was behind every disaster. . . .
They may be the granddaughters of a famous literary critic, but what really starts it all is Daria, Polly, and Amelia Heller’s stunning red hair. Out of the blue one day, The...
To help her granddaughter accept the risks of loving, Sadie Watson mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie’s Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck Finn....
| Author | Thomas Maltman |
| ISBN | 1569474621 |
The intertwining story of three generations of German immigrants to the Midwest—their clashes with slaveholders, the Dakota uprising and its aftermath—is seen through the eyes of young Asa Senger, named for an uncle killed by an Indian friend. It is the unexpected appearance of Asa’s aunt...
| Author | Jane Yolen |
| ISBN | 0441091660 |
Jane Yolen’s award-winning story about an alien civilization forever changed by the incursion of human social scientists and a mysterious ancient prophecy
The year is 2132 when members of the Anthropologist’s Guild set down on the planet Henderson’s IV, or L’Lal’lor as it is...
Winner of six Nebula and two Hugo awards for her fiction, Connie Willis is acclaimed for her gifted imagination and bold invention. Here are eleven of her finest stories, surprising tales in which the impossible becomes real, the real becomes impossible, and strangeness lurks at every turn.
The...
| Author | Nancy Kress |
| ISBN | 0765346036 |
Nancy Kress made her reputation in the early 90s with her multiple award-winning novella, "Beggars in Spain," which became the basis for her extremely successful Beggars Trilogy (comprising Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers, and Beggars Ride). Since then she has written over a dozen novels,...
| Author | Michael Swanwick |
| ISBN | 0765319500 |
Michael Swanwick has been nominated for the Hugo Award for his writing fourteen times in the last ten years and has won five of them. He is one of the most important and respected living writers of fantasy and science fiction. Until now, his most famous fantasy has been the groundbreaking novel The Iron...
