“Fires of the Mind” is, indeed, powerful. One of Mormon Drama’s best. I hope to give the play a revival production in the next few years. We’ll see what my plate is looking like at that point!

So I’m going to recommend non-Mormon lit instead:

Karen Russell’s Vampires in the Lemon Grove is interesting. I personally think that she errs to much on the literary side with her endings, but the way she spins genre conceits into a story idea is fascinating. Plus her stories are darkly funny.

Kij Johnson, Karen Russell and Karen Joy Fowler are my new triumvirate of “intend to read every short story they publish from here on out”.

[Supplemental Comment]

I probably didn’t really make myself clear. Part of the issue for me is that in cheerleading for independent publishing and finding new venues for Mormon voices, I’ve gotten what I wanted—and a lot of it isn’t very good. Which is why some level of jurying still has value (in my opinion) in helping direct people to the better works.

Best-of lists, recommended readings, contests, awards, and the like all fill the role of trusted filter. Which we lose a bit of with self-publishing.

So…

I’m basically trolling for people to offer recommendations of good reads in whatever genre. Ideally, with a bit of explanation as to why. I will never stop reading (or writing), but it is nice to have resources for sifting the increasingly large pot of not-very-good stories from the better ones.

Sort of like Jonathan Langford commented on with his reading for the Whitneys—lots of self-published titles, all with varying flaws that traditional publishers normally catch and repair. The need for recommendations is higher than ever before, because we’re getting exactly what I agitated for—more stories from more authors.

By “suggestions” do you mean books to read? Or techniques to discover what books to read?

Lee Allred, of course. Geez. I feel like such a dope.

I’m behind on my Monster Hunter reading, but I’d put them more as urban fantasy/secret history than alternate history.

Reading your list reminded me of one more: The Freedom Factor by Gerald Lund. It’s not quite a pure alternate history, because it involves someone from our timeline going to a timeline in which the Constitution was never ratified.

Perfect for fans of Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir, and Showtime’s The Tudors, The Boleyn King is the first book in an enthralling trilogy that dares to imagine: What if Anne Boleyn had actually given Henry VIII a son who grew up to be king?

A. Edward Cooper wrote Triumph of the Third Reich, which I believe is straight alternate history. It’s the only novel-length alternate history I know of.

Unless steampunk counts as alternate history. D. J. Butler’s City of the Saints and Matthew J. Kirby’s The Clockwork Three are excellent alternate histories.

Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter books are alternate history fantasy.

Virginia Baker, Cheri Crane, Julie Wright, Madeline Baker, Lynn Kurland, Chad Daybell, Rob Ficiur, Chris Heimerdinger, J. Scott Savage, W. Dave Free, Arvin S. Gibson, Kate Gordon, Christy Monson, Janette Rallison, Helen Hughes Vick, and Rebecca Winters have all written time travel stories. Ginny Baker’s Jack Knife and Janette Rallison (aka C. H. Hill)’s Erasing Time are the only science fiction novels, and Julie Wright’s Eyes Like Mine is the only one where someone from the past comes to the present day.

There are also some novels with ghosts that have been around hundreds of years, which could arguably be time travel, but that’s getting a bit far afield so I’ll stop now.