Sfdebris.net

What book or books would you recommend to someone on the forum?

Now me I would recommend the Valdemar series by Mercedes Lackey in general.
To Fuzzy I would recommend Magic's Pawn. You will believe in a stuck up rich boy by the end.
To Yuka I would recommend Arrows of the Queen. I think there are some parallels there you would feel better reading in print.

But what are suggestions you all have and for whom?

A series I'm sure most of you have never heard of: The Peculiar Crimes Unit Mysteries by Christopher Fowler.

The series centers on two increasingly ancient detective inspectors, working for a stupidly obscure taskforce of Scotland Yard, dealing with strange, bizarre, cases, from the London Blitz to... Well, now (they're usually set around their publication dates and Fowler has one lined up for December). Never anything outright supernatural, but still inexplicable.

A Phantom of the Opera type terrorizing a wartime production of 'Orpheus and the Underworld'?

A family of guild craftsmen being slowly assassinated in stupidly outlandish ways?

A elderly woman found dead in her basement, who seemingly died peacefully... If not for the Thames river water in her lungs?

And those are just books 1-3 of Eighteen! Don't get me started on that whole Punch & Judy business.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1QNI/

Sadly, a series that's problematic for adaptations due to your mains being well over a hundred by now. Finding good actors and keeping them around would be a tall order. Maybe audio dramas?

There are two series that I like and have been recommending to people regularly.

The Bobiverse
https://www.audible.com/series/Bobivers ... B01M1RDL6W
Which is perhaps my favorite science fiction series (the first 3 which form a complete arc, the 4th book appears to be the start of something new, and I will evaluate it when it reaches a conclusion).

Undying Mercenaries
https://www.audible.com/series/Undying- ... 5GHBQ80ZRG
This one feels like a good melding of newer age science fiction (the technologies in use, the socioeconomic criticisms it offers) and classic science fiction (as it is about a military unit in a series of planet hopping adventures, the main character comes off a lot like a rookie Kirk). It is a lot of fun.

Nealithi, I might consider that in my queue, though these days I'm looking for horror recs more than fantasy.

I'm recommending just about everyone who likes superheroes to read Dreadnought by April Daniels. It's great from a world building perspective, addressing the Reed Richards is Useless trope and just covering a lot of angles of how superheroes would function without going full Edgy Deconstruction. It's got what I consider at least a very sympathetic, very compelling heroine, although some people have found her whiny and unlikeable, so it seems like she's either a love-it or hate-it character. If you don't find her a compelling narrator, just drop the book and save time, but if you do, you're in for a ride.

As far as my own area of current focus, The Twisted Ones is possibly the best Cosmic Horror I've ever read. "I twisted myself like the twisted ones and lay down like the dead ones". The only thing that could make it better is if it had LGBTQ content. Also, at the risk of spoiling something minor, I can tell you that there's a dog in it and the dog survives, a pattern I would like to see more horror emulate. The author is great at building up a sense of a much larger world, just outside your awareness, hinting at more than shows up in the plot without getting lost in the details or over-expositing.

I really like April Daniel's Dreadnought.