Kindred by Octavia Butler

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Octavia E. Butler
If science fiction thrillers are your thing, you need to read the award-winning Octavia E. Butler. Perhaps best known for her three series—Patternist, Lilith's Brood (Xenogenesis) and Parable—her standalone novels were about vampires and time travel long before they were hip. She described herself as "comfortably asocial—a hermit in the middle of Seattle—a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist, a black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty and drive."

"Butler's ability to take real life and combine it with science fiction is phenomenal! One can relate to the popular issues and not predict the outcome, and in some cases, the ending is the beginning."
— Angela, La Mesa, California