Inglenook Blog

Bright ideas, inspiring stories, and thought-provoking articles to spark your creativity and stoke your inner fire.

The Best Speculative Nonfiction Books

October 16, 2025

Within the umbrella of “creative nonfiction” there exists a subgenre known as “speculative nonfiction.” It’s not a widely-used term. You’re not likely to find it on Publisher’s Marketplace or the shelf labels of bookstores. But as the art of writing about life has become more popular, it’s an undeniable trend that memoirs are becoming less […]

The Best Snow White Retellings

October 2, 2025

Book Recommendations | Books About Magic

Disney's recent release of the live-action Snow White has us reflecting on the age-old tale of beauty, moral goodness, and purity. As Maria Tatar points out in The Classic Fairy Tales (Norton, 2nd edition, 2017), nearly every critical interpretation of the tale "identifies a stable core that turns on some kind of rivalry between mother […]

The Best Magical Historical Fiction Books

September 29, 2025

Book Recommendations | Featured Reads

In magical realism, otherworldly elements often highlight political tensions, injustice, and oppression. Protagonists (and authors, for that matter) lean on magic as a coping mechanism to escape or re-contextualize the brutalities and all-too-familiar discrimination of the past, doing away with romanticized notions of bygone eras. When authors dive into magical historical fiction, the real or […]

5 Books Like “In the Dream House” by Carmen Maria Machado

September 26, 2025

Book Recommendations | Featured Reads

When In the Dream House was published by Carmen Maria Machado in 2019, it rocketed into the limelight. Lauded for its literary experimentation and brave exploration of the taboos and complexities of queer identity, the book won the 2019 Bisexual Book Award, 2020 Judy Grahn Award, 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction, and 2021 Rathbones […]

The Best Books About Magical Forests

September 17, 2025

Book Recommendations | Featured Reads | Magic in Nature

Does the forest comfort or scare you? In literature, the woods are often portrayed as oases of freedom and clarity, where humans can shake off conformity and follow their natural instincts. But the woods can also be cautionary, a place to be wary of and avoid. Darker stories show the forest as a place of […]

The Best Literary Journals for Magical Realism and Speculative Genres

September 12, 2025

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