Panel: Perilous Schemes, Dangerous Skies

Ismery Pavon is a book blogger, book reviewer, and a former bookseller. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University in Mass Communications and Journalism, with a minor in English. When she’s not reading and drafting up a book review, you can find her working at Miami Book Fair.

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of the New York Times – bestselling Southern Reach trilogy. The first novel, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award, and was made into a movie in 2018. Recent works include Dead Astronauts, Borne, and The Strange Bird. In A Peculiar Peril (The Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead #1) (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) our hero inherits his late grandfather’s overstuffed mansion —a cabinet of curiosities—once he and two schoolmates catalog its contents. But they soon discover that the house is filled with more than just oddities: It holds clues linking to an alt-Earth called Aurora, where English occultist Aleister Crowley has come back to life on a magic-fueled rampage across a surreal, through-the-looking-glass version of Europe replete with talking animals — and vegetables. Jonathan finds his destiny as a member of a secret society devoted to keeping our world separate from Aurora. He and his friends go deeper into a deadly pursuit of the profound evil that is also chasing after them. The New York Times Book Review praised it as “A heck of a lot of fun. . . New readers young and old will find VanderMeer’s foray into fresh territory a welcome port of entry to a wildly imaginative universe.”

Alex London, at one time a journalist reporting from conflict zones and refugee camps, has written books for adults (One Day The Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War), children (Dog Tags series; An Accidental Adventure series) and teens (Proxy).  The first book in the Skybound Saga, Black Wings Beating was an NBC Today Show Book Club Pick. In Gold Wings Rising (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) the final installment of Alex London’s Skybound Saga, Kylee and Brysen must fight for their lives and their humanity. After Red Skies Falling, the war on the ground has ended, but the war with the sky has just begun. Now, the tug-of-war between love and power begins to fray, threatening bonds of siblinghood and humanity alike. Kirkus Reviews praised how “this final entry effectively ties up many of the loose threads while maintaining a constant wingbeat of danger and intrigue.”