As Sirens veterans know, each year, Sirens selects a variety of popular, controversial, and just plain brilliant books related to our theme—and invites attendees to bring their breakfast during the conference and have an informal conversation about those books. Over the years, this program has highlighted the depth and breadth of each year’s theme and given early risers both company and book talk!

For 2016, we’ve kicked Books and Breakfast off early—so all of you have time to choose a couple books and read! This year, we’ve also launched a giveaway program to get these books into your hands prior to Sirens.

AUGUST GIVEAWAY

For August, we’ll be giving away, to one lucky winner, two Books and Breakfast selections: Joplin’s Ghost and There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories. You can read more about the books below, but here are the rules:

To enter, you must tell us a fantasy book, written by a woman or genderqueer author, that you think everyone should read. All entries must be submitted by August 31, 2016, either by Tweeting them to @sirens_con or by emailing them to (help at sirensconference.org). Each individual may enter only once and you must currently reside in the United States in order to win. By entering, you grant Sirens the right to use your entry and to name you (by name or Twitter alias) in connection with that entry. The winner must provide their address to Sirens in order to receive the prize. This offer void where prohibited.

Joplin’s Ghost by Tananarive Due

Joplin’s Ghost is, more than anything, a genre-busting, ambitious work of tremendous scope. It’s part historical re-creation, part contemporary bildungsroman, part complex ghost story, and part heated erotica. And in a year when Sirens is going to talk about lovers, an affirmation that, yes, sexual encounters with the ghost of Scott Joplin definitely fit the bill.

When she was ten, Phoenix Smalls was nearly killed in a freak encounter with a haunted piano. Shortly thereafter, her father found her in the middle of the night, playing ragtime melodies on the piano with a skill years beyond her training. Now in her early twenties, Phoenix is an up-and-coming R&B singer, one who incorporates ragtime syncopation into her work in a way heretofore unknown in the world. As Phoenix’s story weaves around Joplin’s—both his early 1900s history and his contemporary, erotic ghostly return—Joplin’s Ghost turns into a coming-of-age tale featuring Phoenix, her dreams, and her desires.

There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Several years ago, when Sirens focused on Tales Retold, much of the Sirens community read another work of Petrushevskaya’s: There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales. In that work, Petrushevskaya uses fairy tale motifs, often in combination with ghostly happenings, to tell stories that should be, and yet too often aren’t, important to Mother Russia: stories of kitchens, of bedrooms, of gravesites. Stories important to women and featuring women.

The next translated collection of her work, There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister’s Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories, features similarly important women’s stories. This time, however, Petrushevskaya approaches her stories not through fairy tale themes, but through contemporary romance tropes. There’s little fantasy to be found in this collection, but Petrushevskaya has much to say about romance, love, sex, and regret.

As Sirens veterans know, each year, Sirens selects a variety of popular, controversial, and just plain brilliant books related to our theme—and invites attendees to bring their breakfast during the conference and have an informal conversation about those books. Over the years, this program has highlighted the depth and breadth of each year’s theme and given early risers both company and book talk!

For 2016, we’ve kicked Books and Breakfast off early–so all of you have time to choose a couple books and read! This year, we’ve also launched a giveaway program to get these books into your hands prior to Sirens.

JULY GIVEAWAY

For July, we’ll be giving away, to one lucky winner, two Books and Breakfast selections: Sorcerer to the Crown and Project Unicorn, Volume 1. You can read more about the books below, but here are the rules:

To enter, you must tell us your favorite fantasy book written by a woman. All entries must be submitted by June 31, 2016, either by Tweeting them to @sirens_con or by emailing them to (help at sirensconference.org). Each individual may enter only once and you must currently reside in the United States in order to win. By entering, you grant Sirens the right to use your entry and to name you (by name or Twitter alias) in connection with that entry. The winner must provide their address to Sirens in order to receive the prize. This offer void where prohibited.

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho

Set in England during the Napoleonic Wars, Sorcerer to the Crown is an alternate-history delight. Magic abounds, and England’s Sorcerer Royal (an important but stubbornly apolitical post) has just died under mysterious circumstances. The staff of office has chosen his successor: Zacharias, his adopted black son—a promising magician, but controversial choice. Meanwhile, in a school created to teach girls to suppress their magic (unless, of course, used in small ways around the house; think cooking and cleaning), Prunella longs for adventure. When Zacharias’s and Prunella’s paths cross unexpectedly, Prunella makes a series of audacious decisions that change her life, Zacharias’s life, and England forever.

Sorcerer to the Crown, when read with the right appreciation of its dry wit, is seriously subversive: Cho’s craft lends the reader a strong lens of our modern sensibilities through which to root for Zacharias and Prunella: both to revise England’s hopelessly sexist and racist policies with respect to magicians, and to finally, will they please finally, kiss already?

Project Unicorn, Volume 1 by Jennifer and S. E. Diemer

The subtitle of the first volume of Project Unicorn is 30 Young Adult Short Stories Featuring Lesbian Heroines. A couple years ago, wife-and-wife team, Jennifer and S. E. Diemer, began publishing two short stories a week: always young-adult, always speculative, always featuring lesbian heroines. As you might guess, the goal is to address the regrettable lack of lesbian heroines in young-adult speculative literature. While the project stalled—but has since been restarted—the authors did publish the first two volumes, a full six months of short stories, with some bonus stories that are included in only the published collections.

If you’ve read S. E. Diemer’s The Dark Wife, a re-telling of the Persephone myth with a genderbent Hades, you’ll have some idea what you might find in Project Unicorn: smart, defiant lesbian heroines who challenge expectations and make bold decisions. Additionally, a great lot of Project Unicorn is about kissing, so much kissing, so many awesome girls kissing each other.

As Sirens veterans know, each year, Sirens selects a variety of popular, controversial, and just plain brilliant books related to our theme—and invites attendees to bring their breakfast during the conference and have an informal conversation about those books. Over the years, this program has highlighted the depth and breadth of each year’s theme and given early risers both company and book talk!

For 2016, we’re kicking Books and Breakfast off early! So often, attendees haven’t had a chance to read the selected books in time for Sirens—but not this year. Today, we’re not only announcing all eight books for 2016, we’re also launching a giveaway program to get these books into your hands prior to Sirens.

2016 BOOKS AND BREAKFAST SELECTIONS

Friday, October 21

Saturday, October 22

JUNE GIVEAWAY

For June, we’ll be giving away, to one lucky winner, two Books and Breakfast selections: About a Girl and Song of Blood and Stone. You can read more about the books below, but here are the rules:

To enter, you must tell us your favorite fantasy book written by a woman. All entries must be submitted by June 30, 2016, either by Tweeting them to @sirens_con or by emailing them to (help at sirensconference.org). Each individual may enter only once and you must currently reside in the United States in order to win. By entering, you grant Sirens the right to use your entry and to name you (by name or Twitter alias) in connection with that entry. The winner must provide their address to Sirens in order to receive the prize. This offer void where prohibited.

About a Girl by Sarah McCarry

Tally is quite certain of her life—and its trajectory—thank you very much. Despite abandonment by her mother, and never knowing her father, she’s got it all figured out: her substitute family, her rock-solid best friend, and her unwavering commitment to a PhD in astronomy. Until her friend throws her for a loop, a friendly acquaintance pulls the right string, and the tidy boxes into which she’s stored her life start to collapse. She sets off—as all the best adventurers do—in search of one thing, but finds another something entirely: a mesmerizing girl who steals her heart.

About a Girl is for anyone who likes a strong authorial voice, a bit of a mystery, or a book that seems to be entirely grounded in reality until the magical realism smacks you upside the head. It’s bold, unpredictable, inclusive, and surprisingly dreamy.

Song of Blood and Stone by L. Penelope

An outcast orphan girl. An injured spy. Enemy soldiers—and mages. What would lovers year be without a bit of fantasy romance?

Jasminda is an outcast in her country, a child of a bicultural marriage that visibly marks her both as different and as a magic-worker. She keeps to herself, living in the remote mountains and only traveling to town when necessary. As the book opens, she travels back from town to her home, only to encounter an injured spy held by enemy soldiers—enemy soldiers who should have been blocked from entering her country by a magical shield. Jasminda is forced to shelter both the soldiers and the spy in her home. [Trigger warning for rape.] She and Jack, hopeless smitten, escape together, and Jack is forced to reveal his true identity. (If you’re a regular romance reader, you’ve already guessed that identity.)

In a world of armies, politics, and magic, Penelope makes her characters and their evolution intimate and personal. The racism against Jasminda is never handled lightly; nor is her lesser status than Jack’s. But love (and sex) conquer all, even prejudiced politicians and evil mages.

In so many fundamental ways, Sirens wouldn’t exist without amazing, popular, controversial fantasy works by women. And yet, between the programming, the author readings, the dance party, and the always-amazing keynote addresses, sometimes we don’t find time to talk about books. Let us help you!

Each year, Sirens selects a variety of books on our theme—and invites attendees to bring their breakfast and have an informal conversation about those books. To be fair, you don’t have to have read the books to come…but we hope you’ll read one or two!

Here are the Books and Breakfast books for Saturday, October 10. Read on, Sirens.

	Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson Alif the Unseen reads like a tech thriller—at least until it becomes about myth, faith, and politics. Set in the City, an unnamed city in the Middle East, hacker Alif shields his clients (rebels, pornographers, anyone else who can pay) from the prying electronic eye of the state. After being dumped by his lover, Alif designs a program that can identify anyone online, a terrific thing until Alif’s computer—and his program—are seized by the state, endangering the City’s entire underground populace of hackers and dissidents. There it begins, but where it ends is a place where myth, faith, and technology live, logically, magically, hand in hand.
	The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison If political intrigue—lies, machinations, manipulations, threats unspoken, and alliance murky—is your type of rebellion, look no further. Following a purported accident, Maia, the estranged, half-breed son of the goblin emperor, is thrust onto the throne. Maia finds himself at the center of a court willing to control him at best, kill him at worst. The Goblin Emperor is a chess board of a book, played on a board of intrigue and malice, where Maia wants to be the revolution, but needs to protect himself from rebels in the meantime.
	The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, Ambelin Kwaymullina Revolutions sometimes turn on the smallest of things: in the case of The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf, the ability of the dissidents’ leader to withstand torture. Betrayed by a friend, captured by the government, at the mercy of a mysteriously compelling machine, can Ashala withstand the onslaught and save her people—or are things not entirely what they seem?
	The Mirror Empire, Kameron Hurley Sometimes an author writes a book that is, in and of itself, revolutionary. On the eve of a periodic, catastrophic event known to destroy continents, individuals across a variety of cultures jockey for position. Some of these are rebels, some are political opportunists, some are existing leaders, but all of them live in a world where the unknown is about to become known—which might be a very bad thing. Most striking—and most revolutionary—Hurley reconfigures the binary notion of gender in The Mirror Empire, sometimes allowing for gender that changes over time, sometimes allowing for more options along the spectrum.
	The Young Elites, Marie Lu Magically talented rebels, secret plots, some romance, and a catastrophic conclusion mark the first in Lu’s The Young Elites series. Adelina is a survivor of the blood fever, a disease that left her with white hair and only one eye. When she discovers her father is going to sell her not as a wife, but a mistress, she flees—only to discover that the fever left her with illegal powers she can’t control. Seized by the government, saved by a shadow society, danger at every turn, Adelina has to decide what she wants—and decide if that includes revolution.

For Friday selections, please visit this post.

In so many fundamental ways, Sirens wouldn’t exist without amazing, popular, controversial fantasy works by women. And yet, between the programming, the author readings, the dance party, and the always-amazing keynote addresses, sometimes we don’t find time to talk about books. Let us help you!

Each year, Sirens selects a variety of books on our theme—and invites attendees to bring their breakfast and have an informal conversation about those books. To be fair, you don’t have to have read the books to come…but we hope you’ll read one or two!

Here are the Books and Breakfast books for Friday, October 9. Read on, Sirens.

	Bitterblue, Kristin Cashore You can’t talk about revolution without considering a queen who agitates from the throne. Bitterblue, the third of Cashore’s Graceling books (which can be read as a standalone), contemplates just that: a young queen, beginning to rule her damaged kingdom in her own name. Bitterblue must learn, and quickly, whom to trust and what changes she needs to make for the good of her people.
	The Book of Phoenix, Nnedi Okorafor If full-scale revolution complete with infiltrating government facilities is your thing, this is your book. The Book of Phoenix (the later-published prequel to Who Fears Death; it can be read as a standalone) tells the story of Phoenix, a two-year-old experiment in a forty-year-old woman’s body, who starts a revolution. In a world where magic and science have merged, and are continuing to merge, and not in always in ways that anyone can control, The Book of Phoenix examines fear, doubt, freedom, and love.
	An Ember in the Ashes, Sabaa Tahir Spies? Check. Assassins? Check. Tahir’s debut novel has subterfuge, intrigue, and political power galore. Laia, the spy, is one of the oppressed, someone who has enlisted the help of her nation’s rebels to assist her brother, in exchange for her subversion. Elias, the assassin, is one of his nation’s finest soldiers, upholding the brutality of the empire even while he plots his escape. Threaded, always, with a line of hope, An Ember in the Ashes begins a new series about power, deceit, and rebellion.
	Fire Logic, Laurie J. Marks The women in this book will kill you—quite literally, but also metaphorically. Marks has written a trio of complex, capable, fascinating women (and a couple fascinating men as well). Set in a country overrun for fifteen years with invaders, Fire Logic shows us the high cost of resistance. The book, the first in a yet-unfinished series, centers around Zanja, a trained diplomat, as she ends up entangled first in a slaughter and second in a rebellion led by a people not her own. And on the way, she falls in love.
	The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson Don’t let the sci-fi stuff fool you: this book is magic. In a post-apocalyptic world where people can turn themselves into data streams, Palmeres Tres is a lush, buzzing, tech-heavy city in Brazil. Ruled by women, a Summer King is selected—and killed—every ten years, his death validating the continued matriarchal rule. In this world, June, like everyone, falls in love with the Summer King—but June and the Summer King use their connection to create explosive, revolutionary art.

For Saturday selections, please visit this post.