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Samantha Shannon was born in West London in 1991. She started writing at the age of 15 and studied English language and literature at St. Anne's College, Oxford. The Bone Season, the first in a seven-book YA dystopian fantasy series, was the inaugural Today Book Club selection. Film rights were acquired by the Imaginarium Studios and 20th Century Fox. The Mime Order was the second in the series; the third book, The Song Rising, was published by Bloomsbury on March 7, 2017.
On your nightstand now:
I've just finished the moving and courageous The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Next I'm planning to read Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo, Written in the Stars by Aisha Saeed and Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Tough question. I'll have to give you a few: Sabriel by Garth Nix, Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman, Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Hobbit. I was also a huge fan of Jacqueline Wilson.
Your top five authors:
Margaret Atwood for her prescience and razor-sharp wit. Anthony Burgess for Nadsat. J.K. Rowling for her warm sense of humour. Laini Taylor for her lyrical and beautiful style. Tolkien for worldbuilding that leaves no stone unturned.
Book you've faked reading:
Fairly sure I haven't done this. Although I did once write an essay based on a poem I had only skimmed, if that counts.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Circle by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg is the one I recommend most often. It's a gritty Swedish urban fantasy about six girls who discover they're witches. It has the most wonderful, haunting atmosphere, and the character development over the course of the trilogy is superb. I'm also evangelical about Way Down Dark by J.P. Smythe and The Sin Eater's Daughter by Melinda Salisbury, the first books in two standout YA trilogies.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi. The cover and the title both grabbed me immediately.
Book you hid from your parents:
I don't think I've ever hidden a book from my parents, actually. My mum in particular has always encouraged my love of literature and never tried to dictate what I read.
Book that changed your life:
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which introduced me to both the dystopian genre and feminism. And Harry Potter, of course.
Favorite line from a book:
"And now there was only one voice, one demand; her own voice into which those millions had entered. A voice like the awful, deep rolling of thunder; a demand like the gathering together of great waters." --The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Five books you'll never part with:
The hardback of Oryx and Crake that I got signed when I met Margaret Atwood in Edinburgh; my battered old Handmaid's Tale; my stunning copy of Villette by Charlotte Brontë, which was a gift from a friend; the gold-sprayed hardback of Les Misérables that my parents gave me this Christmas, and The Poems of Emily Dickinson.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I'd love to be able to discover Hogwarts all over again.
Most anticipated books of 2017:
Flame in the Mist by Renée Ahdieh, A Crown of Wishes by Roshani Chokshi, The City Bleeds Gold by Lucy Saxon, History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera, Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor and the as-yet-untitled final book in the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas are all high on my to-read list. There are also some fantastic books out this year that I'm fortunate enough to have read already, which I recommend you grab as soon as they hit the shelves: Hold Back the Stars by Katie Khan, A Shiver of Snow and Sky by Lisa Lueddecke, The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury and The Heartbeats of Wing Jones by Katherine Webber.