What Nalini Singh Reads and Recommends
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I’m excited to share an exclusive interview with Nalini Singh, New York Times Bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling and Guild Hunter series. She also writes New Zealand-set thrillers. Published in over twenty languages, she loves writing, loves books, and is addicted to chocolate and tea
In this interview, we discuss Nalini’s reading life and the books she loves to read and recommends.
If you’re a Nalini Singh fan or looking for new books to add to your TBR, you won’t miss this interview.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself.
I make miniatures – tiny rooms, tiny books, tiny lamps… I did a miniature bookstagram spread last year, featuring a few of my favorites. 🙂
Archangel’s Lineage by Nalini Singh
Raphael and Elena are experiencing their first ever year of true peace. No war. No horrors of archangelic power. No nightmares given flesh. Until…the earth beneath the Refuge begins to tremble, endangering not only angelkind’s precious and fragile young, but the very place that has held their most innocent safe for eons.
Amid the chaos, Elena’s father suffers a violent heart attack that threatens to extinguish their last chance to heal the bonds between them and make sense of the ruins of their agonizing shared history.
Even as Elena battles grief, Raphael is torn from her side by the sudden disappearance of an archangel. But worse yet is to come. An Ancestor, an angel unlike any other, stirs from his Sleep to warn the Cadre of a darkness so terrible that it causes empires to fall and civilizations to vanish.
This time, even the Cadre itself may not be able to stop a ticking clock that is counting down at frightening speed…
What You Should Know about Archangel’s Lineage and the Guild Hunter Series.
Archangel’s Lineage is book 16 of the Guild Hunter series. The first book is Angels’ Blood, for those unfamiliar with this series. Archangel’s Lineage features Elena and Raphael, whose romance begins in Angels’ Blood and continues throughout the series.
Nalini describes Archangel Lineage as “Passion, grief, and dangerous shifts in the fabric of the world combine in a book about immortals, mortals, and the rebirth of a being from beyond time.”
Where to Start Reading the Guild Hunter Series?
Angel’s Blood by Nalini Singh
Nalini Singh introduces readers to a world of beauty and bloodlust, where angels hold sway over vampires.
Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux is hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael. But this time, it’s not a wayward vamp she has to track. It’s an archangel gone bad.
The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other—and pull her to the razor’s edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn’t destroy her, succumbing to Raphael’s seductive touch just may. For when archangels play, mortals break.
About Nalini Singh’s Reading Life
What types of books do you read? Do they influence your writing, and if so, in what way?
I read widely, from romance to thrillers to non-fiction to random books that catch my eye online or in a bookshop. (I was the kid that read the cereal box!)
However, I never read anything in the genre in which I was writing a book at the time—both because I didn’t want to be inadvertently influenced and because I was so deep into my own worlds at the time that to truly have a reading break, I needed to read something utterly different.
My earlier influences have come from fantasy and science fiction- writers like the late Anne McCaffrey, who built worlds so flawless that I felt I was living in them. At the time, I didn’t consciously realize it, but looking back, I think I learned how to world build by seeing it done so well
Who is your most trusted source of book recommendations? Where do you find new books to add to your TBR?
I am always open to adding things to my TBR! I follow a lot of reviewers who feature a diverse array of books, I chat about books often with my friends who are also writers, and as a former library assistant, I always read the library newsletter with their recs.
I also make an effort to go looking for new-to-me authors because not everyone gets featured online or put into displays at the shops, and I’ve found some gems just by doing a little fun research about what’s been released that I might’ve missed.
About your reading life, what was your first book memory?
I’ve been reading since I can remember. One of my most memorable birthday gifts when I was a child was a brand-new book. Where I lived at the time, in Fiji, books were very expensive, so having this stunning hardcover of fairytales filled me with incandescent joy. (I still have that book.)
Do you re-read books? If yes, what was the last book you re-read?
Definitely! I’ve read the JD Robb books for years and years, but I recently decided to start listening to them in audio from book 1, Naked in Death, and it’s been fun to see how different the characters were at the start of the series compared to who they are now.
Naked in Death by JD Robb
Favorite place to read:
Snuggled up on the couch with a blanket over my legs and a cup of tea nearby
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Book Recommendations Time
One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole
Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity.
Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect.
Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.
What Nalini Singh says about this book: I just finished this thriller and it’s WILD! The protagonist has DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) so not only is there a thriller going on in the outside world, there’s one going on in her inner world. I’d highly recommend this if you love thrillers that subvert the expected genre norms.
After Dark by Jayne Castle
Life is tough these days for Lydia Smith, licensed para-archaeologist. Seriously stressed-out from a nasty incident in an alien tomb, she is obliged to work part-time in Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors, a very low-budget museum. She has a plan to get her career back on track, but it isn’t going well. Stuff keeps happening.
Take the dead body that she discovered in one of the sarcophagus exhibits. Who needed that? Finding out that her new client, Emmett London, is one of the most dangerous men in the city isn’t helping matters either. And that’s just today’s list of setbacks. Here in the shadows of the Dead City of Old Cadence, things don’t really heat up until After Dark.
What Nalini Singh says about this book: This is an older title, but the entire series is fantastic. It’s set on a planet that was cut off from Earth generations back. Now its residents have psychic abilities, the alien ruins glow, their pets are fuzzy “dust bunnies” who have a lot of teeth when riled, and the romances are delightful. This one is between a para-archaeologist and a ghost hunter. I will be reading Jayne Castle’s futuristic romances as long as she wants to write them! I love the lightness of her voice, the way her characters are often forced to work together, and how she builds such unique worlds.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
What Nalini Singh says about this book: This is the sweeping story of a family inextricably tied to water. It’s beautiful and sad and breathtaking in scope and so hard to describe in a single sentence. I’d rec this book for a time when you want to laugh, cry, and just become obsessed with the entwining story of multiple lives through decades of time.
Consort of Fire by Kit Rocha
This book is available on Kindle Unlimited
For three thousand years, an ancient dragon god has protected the borders of the Sheltered Lands. In return, he makes only one demand: every one hundred years, the mortal ruler must send their heir to serve as his consort…for as long as they can survive.
Sachielle of House Roquebarre is the thirty-first consort to be sacrificed to the monster who guards the mountain passes. She is young, beautiful—and she has three secrets.
First: she’s a disposable orphan trained in seduction.
Second: her handmaid, Zanya, is an assassin and the only person she has ever loved.
Third—and most dangerous: she’s cursed. Sachi and Zanya have five weeks to murder the Dragon in his bed. If they fail, the mortal king’s curse will steal not just Sachi’s life, but her very soul.
The Dragon has only one secret: he is nothing like what they have been told. And he will do whatever it takes to possess them both.
What Nalini Singh says about this book: There are dragons and gods, a consort with secrets, a shadow assassin, and it’s so hot that steam comes off the pages! I loved the worldbuilding and the characters. Definitely a must if you enjoy romantasy.
.What was the last book you read?
One of Us Knows by Alyssa Cole
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Now I want to hear from you. Have you read Nalini Singh’s Author’s books? If so, what was your favorite book?