Book recs for Elphaba and Glinda
Our staff are very much still recovering from watching Wicked: For Good. As a coping mechanism, we wanted to put together some specialised book recommendations for Elphaba and Glinda as well as some buddy reads we think they would love to read together!
For Elphaba:
Now She is Witch by Kirsty Logan
From the snowy winter woods to the bright midnight sun; from lost and powerless to finding your path, Now She is Witch conjures a world of violence and beauty - a world where women grasp at power through witchcraft, sexuality and performance, and most of all through throwing each other to the wolves.
Lux has lost everything when Else finds her, alone in the woods. Her family, her lover, her home - all burned. The world is suspicious of women like her. But Lux is cunning; she knows how to exploit people's expectations, how to blend into the background.
And she knows a lot about poisons. Else has not found Lux by accident. She needs her help to seek revenge against the man who wronged her, and together they pursue him north. But on their hunt they will uncover dark secrets that entangle them with dangerous adversaries. This is a witch story unlike any other.
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki
In a single eye-opening year two women, worlds apart, experience parallel awakenings.
In New York, Jane Takagi-Little lands a job producing a Japanese television show sponsored by an American meat-exporting business, exposing some unsavoury truths - about the meat industry and herself. In Tokyo, housewife Akiko Ueno diligently prepares the recipes from Jane's programme.
Struggling to please her husband, she increasingly doubts her commitment to the life she has fallen into. As Jane and Akiko both battle to assert their individuality on opposite sides of the globe, they are drawn together in a startling story of strength, courage and love.
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants to escape. A residential programme for bright high-schoolers seems like the perfect opportunity - until she witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so-called 'Legendborn' that hunt the creatures down. A mysterious mage who calls himself a 'Merlin' and who attempts - and fails - to wipe Bree's memory of everything she saw.
The mage's failure unlocks Bree's own unique magic and a buried memory about her mother. Now Bree will do whatever it takes to discover the truth, even infiltrate the Legendborn. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur's knights and foretell a magical war, Bree must decide how far she'll go for the truth.
We Have Always Live in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Eighteen-year-old Merricat may, or may not be, a mass murderer.
Six years ago everyone in the Blackwood family was poisoned by sugar laced with arsenic – everyone, that is, apart from Merricat and her elder sister Constance. They live in peaceful, ordered isolation, away from prying eyes in the nearby village, until one day boorish cousin Charles arrives with designs on their father’s fortune.
Whether by practical or magical means, Merricat will do whatever is necessary to protect their home.
For Glinda
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship.
Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a city and a country undergoing momentous change.
Honey by Isabel Banta
It is 1997, and Amber Young has received a life-changing call.
It's a chance thousands of girls would die for: the opportunity to join a girl group and escape her small town. She quickly finds herself in the orbits of fellow rising stars Gwen Morris, a driven singer-dancer, and Wes Kingston, a member of the biggest boy band in the world. As Amber embarks on her solo career and her fame intensifies, she increasingly finds herself reduced to a body, a voice, an object.
Surrounded by the wrong kind of people and driven by a desire for recognition and success, for love and sex, for agency and connection, Amber comes of age at a time when the kaleidoscope of public opinion can distort everything, and one mistake can shatter a career.
We Need to Talk about Money by Otegha Uwagba
Ladies in Hating by Alexandra Vasti
Celebrated authoress Lady Georgiana Cleeve has achieved fame and fortune. Unfortunately, she's also acquired an enemy: the enigmatic Lady Darling, whose spine-tingling plots appear to be pulled straight from Georgiana's own manuscripts.
What's a stubborn, steely writer to do? Unmask her rival, of course. But the unmasking doesn't go according to plan - because Lady Darling is actually Cat Lacey, the butler's daughter and object of Georgiana's very secret, very embarrassing teenage infatuation. Cat Lacey has spent a decade clawing her family out of poverty.
The last thing she needs is to be distracted by the stunning(ly pretentious) Lady Georgiana Cleeve. But Cat can't seem to escape her infuriatingly beautiful rival-including at the eerie manor where they both plan to set their next books. The plot unexpectedly thickens, however, when the novelists find themselves trapped in the manor together.
Buddy reads for elphaba and glinda
A dark and drowning tide by Allison Saft
A sharp-tongued folklorist and her academic rival must solve their mentor's murder in this lush sapphic fantasy romance.
Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a mythical spring of untold power. The king wants to harness the fabled water source from which magic flows to secure his reign, and Lorelei is determined to prove herself.
It’s a small cost to make her dream come true: to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to faraway lands. The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader-Lorelei’s beloved mentor-is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates.
The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth-and resist their growing feelings for each other-they discover that their leader had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether
Two's a Charm by Heather Spellman
Sisters by chance; rivals by choice. A bookish cosy fantasy about two witches uncovering dark magic in a small town, for fans of Emily Grimoire and Erin Sterling.
Sisters Effie and Bonnie might both be witches, but they’re worlds apart.
Reserved and bookish, Effie finds solace in library corners, while Bonnie knows all about being popular. They strive to stay away from one another - a challenging task in the confines of their small hometown, Yellowbrick Grove. When their estranged Uncle Oswald draws Bonnie into a magical scheme under the guise of helping the locals, Bonnie readily agrees.
But it turns out no good deed goes unpunished – Oswald’s real motives are truly wicked. Within a day, Bonnie’s spells start misfiring and Effie notices something sinister taking root. Can they unite to reverse this magical mishap? Or is life as they knew it over for good?
BFFs by Anahit Behrooz
Friendships can be the foundation of our earliest memories and most formative moments. But why are they often seen as secondary to romantic, or familial connection, something to age out of and take a back seat to other relationships?
BFFs is an examination of the power of female friendship, not as something lesser, but as a site of radical intimacy, as told through the cultural touchstones around us. From coming-of-age tales through physical intimacy and discovering personhood to break ups and parting of ways, Behrooz considers the vast significance of our friendships through the work of Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante, Booksmart and Grey's Anatomy, Insecure, The Virgin Suicides and beyond.
To have a life rich in love is often viewed through a specific lens; BFFs shows us that friendship can offer a more expansive and emancipatory understanding of female intimacy, and can be the most important, loving relationships in our lives.