therightfangirl | Suggestions for conservative reading? (Reply)

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine emailed me asking if I knew of, or if indeed there exists such as thing as, contemporary conservative fiction. She'd searched a lot and couldn't find any; the only books she could find that fit were classics, which is all very well but sometimes she wants to read modern works. For context, this friend is more of a cultural/social conservative than a political one.

I immediately wrote back with some suggestions and also bought a copy of S.M. Stirling's Conquistador for her Kindle. (I highly recommend it. It's a parallel universe story. In the 40's a WWII veteran figures out how to get into a parallel universe where Europeans never discovered the Americas, and he and some of his friends create their own society/empire there, one which is in many ways a 1950's time capsule, with a few touches from even further back.)

It just occurred to me that you guys could probably come up with more recs for her, and I would like to have more as well. So if anyone can make some good suggestions of conservative leaning contemporary fiction, she and I would like to hear them!

Here are my recs to her, for anyone who needs more reading material:

First, a few years ago I made a brief excursion into chick lit and discovered quite a few conservative authors in the genre. MaryJanice Davidson is a conservative, and her "Undead and ____" series features a conservative heroine. Julie Kenner wrote a few as well, good books that seem to have had the chick-lit elements kind of tacked on to ensure publication. In The Diva's Guide to Selling Your Soul by Kathleen O'Reilly, the heroine works for the devil and thus has certain magic powers - of course, she reforms over the course of the book. At one point, for reasons I forget, she induces a miscarriage on a woman, and later feels guilty for having killed a baby. Not for having basically performed an unwanted abortion; she feels guilty for killing a baby.

Here's an obvious one: Russell Kirk. Yes, he wrote fiction.

Jeffrey Archer is a bestselling British author (I really liked his first novel, Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less) and a Tory.

The mysteries by Emma Lathen. OK, they're a few decades old, but still.

As for scifi, that's easy: Baen Books. I suppose not all of what they publish is conservative, but most of it is. Military SF in general is conservative. A few SF authors to look for: John C. Wright, John Ringo, Larry Niven, Orson Scott Card, L. Jagi Lamplighter, John Scalzi.

I haven't read the historical novels of Catherine Delors, but I used to read her blog and I think she's conservative.