Challenge: Authors I Wish More People Knew About

Right, so, the usual bit of context: Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. Hit their homepage to see the current week's responses, and add a link to your own if you're so inclined.

This week's challenge is Authors I Wish More People Knew About, and yes, I have thoughts.

First: the absolute top of my list until a few months ago used to be Martha Wells and Lilith Saintcrow. But Martha Wells has finally gained some real attention for her Murderbot Diaries (and deservedly so - seriously, if you haven't read them, go check them out -- but check out her backlist, too). Lilith Saintcrow (unfairly, in my ever-so-humble opinion) remains seriously underrated, or at least under-recognized. (If you want more specific suggestions for where to start in on their work, ask me in the comments; both are authors that, well, if they've published it and I know about it, I've probably read it.)

I'd also add Walter Jon Williams, who's best known for the cyberpunk novel Hardwired (which is excellent) but not so much for the rest of his work (which is also excellent). Again, specific recommendations based on your preferences are available in the comments.

But let me also throw out a couple that... I think they're fairly well recognized, but I don't care: more people should know about them anyway.

Charlie Jane Anders uses The City In The Middle Of The Night to tell the story of a human generation ship that was forced to establish its colony on a tidally-locked world: one side always faces the sun, the other side is dark and frozen, and the thin ribbon around the middle is only barely capable of supporting human life, and it's really well done; but she also has a lot of excellent short fiction, and earlier novel (which I haven't yet read) called All The Birds In The Sky.

Hafsah Faizal charmed me with an excellent first novel, We Hunt The Flame. It's technically YA, but I'm a forty-mumble-mumble year old man and I adored it anyway, so I suspect you will too. And I'll be reading the sequel absolutely the moment it becomes available.

Emily Duncan tells a story of Wicked Saints in another YA debut, and where We Hunt The Flame has a very Arabian Nights Feel, Wicked Saints is firmly rooted in Russian folklore with a few other elements thrown in for good measure. The sequel will be out on April 7, and I've already pre-ordered it.

My last one is actually a double-author recommendation, because it was co-written: This Is How You Lose The Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This is definitely not YA; it's a time-travel story, of course, but it's also a war story and a romance and the whole thing is just bloody and funny and sweet and gorgeous. Does that sound like a good reason to check out literally everything else either of them has ever written? It does to me.

I have a couple of other recommendations, but they kind of fit together thematically and I think I'll address them in a separate post. So... what authors do you wish more people knew about?