Clearly, I went down a reading rabbit hole this week and came out with more books. I found yesterday’s book, The Murder of Mr. Ma, every bit as good as that initial review in First Clue led me to believe. I was teased by the inclusion of Judge Dee, decided not to go diving into the Van Gulik translation/interpretation, at least not yet, found the vampiric version by Tidhar, was delighted to discover that they are all really short (also really cheap if you’re interested) and was off to the races. Races which included the first book in one of the author’s signature series as well.

I picked up the audio of Lovers at the Museum strictly for the narrator, as he voiced one of my favorite characters in Mass Effect Andromeda, and got Fourth Wing because I expect that one of these days I’ll want to see what all the fuss is about – although that day is not yet.

The prettiest cover in this week’s stack, hands down, is The Sins on Their Bones. The Best Life Book Club is plenty cute, but Sins is simply gorgeous – as they so often are.

For Review:
All For You by Dena Reub Romero
And Then? And Then? What Else? by Daniel Handler
The Best Life Book Club by Sheila Roberts
Mother Doll by Katya Apekina
The Mummy of Mayfair (Irregular Detective #2) by Jeri Westerson
See: Loss. See Also: Love by Yukiko Tominaga (May)
The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin (May)
This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher
The Threshold of Dissent by Marjorie N. Feld
To & Fro by Leah Hager Cohen (May)

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi (audio)
China Trade (Lydia Chin and Bill Smith #1) by SJ Rozan
Judge Dee and the Executioner of Epinal (Judge Dee #7) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Limits of the Law (Judge Dee #1) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Mystery of the Missing Manuscript (Judge Dee #5) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Poisoner of Montmartre (Judge Dee #3) by Lavie Tidhar
Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels (Judge Dee #2) by Lavie Tidhar
The Locked Coffin (Judge Dee #6) by Lavie Tidhar
Lovers at the Museum by Isabel Allende (ebook and audio)
Marked by Magic (Tracking Trouble #1) by Lindsay Buroker
Seven Vampires (Judge Dee #4) by Lavie Tidhar

Borrowed from the Library:
Fourth Wing (Empyrean #1) by Rebecca Yarros

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

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What a wild and crazy stack this is!

There are several pretty covers, although as usual the pretty ones aren’t pretty in the same ways. My personal favorite is Sorcery and Small Magics, but Buried Deep and Other Stories, The Crescent Moon Tearoom and Wheel of the Infinite are definitely contenders.

The books I’m MOST looking forward to are Darkside and Where is Anybody? – and both for their cynical, snarkastic protagonists. The book I’m definitely the most curious about is The Full Moon Coffee Shop, because it’s about a magical coffee shop run by talking cats – although Sargassa is also making my curiosity bump itch even though there are no cats, at least as far as I know, in that one.

What about you?

For Review:
Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
California Dreaming by Noa Silver
Cast in Atonement (Chronicles of Elantra #19) by Michelle Sagara
The Crescent Moon Tearoom by Stacy Sivinski
Darkside (Planetside #4) by Michael Mammay
The Fan Who Knew Too Much (Kit Pelham #1) by Nev Fountain
The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
Goyhood by Reuven Fenton
Guide Me Home (Highway 59 #3) by Attica Locke
Home and Alone by Daniel Stern
Housemates by Emma Copley Eisenberg
An Instruction in Shadow (Inheritance of Magic #2) by Benedict Jacka
Love Live Evil (Time of Iron #1) by Sarah Rees Brennan
My Kaddish by Thérèse Masson
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Sargassa (Ex Romana #1) by Sophie Burnham
Saying No to Hate by Norman H. Finkelstein
The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by H.G. Parry
Sorcery and Small Magics (Wildersongs Trilogy #1) by Maiga Doocy
Wheel of the Infinite by Martha Wells
Where is Anybody? (Gideon Sable #5) by Simon R. Green

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

Please link your STS post in the linky below:

It’s a lot. I know it’s a lot. It’s so many that they won’t all fit into the Instagram post because no one would be able to read it without a TON of magnification. That being said, the book I’ve been looking forward to the most and the longest is one of the shortest books in the stack – Chaotic Aperitifs. I ADORED the first Hidden Dishes book, The Nameless Restaurant and have been itching for this second book for MONTHS.

The book I’m really, really curious about is The Author’s Guide to Murder by Team W (that’s Williams, Willig and White). The authors are three great tastes that really go great together, and the blurb sounds like it might be a bit of Magpie Murders and I’m certainly here for THAT!

There are several very pretty covers this time around. My personal faves are In the Shadow of the Ship, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, The Summer Swap and To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods. The titles that have me shaking my head, at least when seen together, are Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness and Your Presence is Mandatory because I think they’re sending utterly opposed messages.

We’ll certainly see in the months ahead.

For Review:
The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, Karen White
A Brutal Design by Zachary C. Solomon
Chaotic Aperitifs (Hidden Dishes #2) by Tao Wong
A Cold War Exodus by Shaul Kelner
Cracking the Nazi Code by Jason Bell
Crypt of the Moon Spider (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #1) by Nathan Ballingrud
Deluge edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo (audio)
Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes (eARC and audio)
Graveyard Shift by M.L. Rio
Hugging My Father’s Ghost by Zack Rogow
In the Shadow of the Ship (Xuya Universe) by Aliette de Bodard
Liberty Street by Jason K. Friedman
Love You a Latke by Amanda Elliot
My Thirty-Minute Bar Mitzvah by Denis Hirson
New Adventures in Space Opera edited by Jonathan Strahan
A Plague of Cholera and Other Stories by Jonah Rosenfeld, translated by Rachel Mines
The Rulebreaker by Susan Page
The Secret Mind of Bertha Pappenheim by Gabriel Brownstein
Shylock’s Venice by Harry Freedman
Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles #2) by TJ Klune
The Summer Swap by Sarah Morgan
Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman
Things That Cause Inappropriate Happiness by Danila Botha
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang (eARC and audio)
Victory Parade by Leela Corman
Your Presence is Mandatory by Sasha Vasilyuk

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

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In this week’s stack I have some real gems, some real curiosities, and some books I’m just plain looking forward to.

There are several pretty covers this time around. My personal faves are The Night Ends with Fire, The Price of Redemption and Rough Pages. Rough Pages is also the book I’m most looking forward to because I’ve adored the Evander “Andy” Mills series so far, especially in audio.

The books I’m seriously curious about are The Mercy of Gods, The Secret War of Julia Child and The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society.

I’ve never read (or watched) The Expanse. By the time it got to be a big thing it was already several books in, they are none of them short, and I just couldn’t make myself pick it up in the middle. The Mercy of Gods is the first book in a new series, so I’ll finally get to see what all the fuss is about and get in on the ground floor, so to speak. I picked up The Secret War of Julia Child because I loved Mastering the Art of French Murder and now I’m just so curious that I could not resist this one. I got The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society for the title. Really, truly. When I read the description of Buffy mixed with Murder, She Wrote featuring a librarian as the amateur detective, I was all in.

Yes, this stack is huge. And…they’re going to be like this for a while. Because…reasons. I’m on a book judging committee for one of  the American Library Association’s Book and Media Awards. Which committee has changed over the years, but the deluge of books is a constant. I review a minimum of five books every month for Library Journal – sometimes more if I’m lucky. This is one of the ‘lucky’ months. And then there are the books I pick up because I simply can’t resist, which generally explains the rest of any given stack. In the end, I review about half of what I get, for a ‘long tail’ definition of eventually. But upfront it always looks like a LOT – only because it is.

For Review:
The Amen Effect by Sharon Brous
Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville
Elusive (Scarlet Revolution #2) by Genevieve Cogman
The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard
This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
Investigating Babyn Yar by Martin C. Dean
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 40 edited by Jody Lynn Nye
Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid
The Mercy of Gods (Captive’s War #1) by James S.A. Corey
The Night Ends with Fire (Night Ends with Fire #1) by K.X. Song
The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love (Love’s Academic #1) by India Holton
The Price of Redemption (Tides of Magic #1) by Shawn Carpenter
A Revolution in Type by Ayelet Brinn
Rough Pages (Evander Mills #3) by Lev AC Rosen
The Secret of the Three Fates (Ruby Vaughn #2) by Jess Armstrong
The Secret War of Julia Child by Diana R. Chambers
A Sephardi Turkish Patriot by Anthony Gad Bigio
Subculture Vulture by Moshe Kasher (Jan)
This World is Not Yours by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner
We Are Only Ghosts by Jeffrey L. Richards
Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: The War Years, 1939-1945 by Isaac Bashevis Singer

If you want to find out more about Stacking The Shelves, please visit the official launch page

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