We definitely have some gorgeous covers this time around. YAY! Daggerbound, Exit Party, The Eye of Leviathan, Murder Unabridged and Twig’s Traveling Tomes are each pretty in their own ways. And I love both Murder Unabridged and Twig’s Traveling Tomes for the delightful depictions of books. While Daggerbound is beautiful in its own right AND fits in beautifully with the theme started in the Swordheart re-release.

Daggerbound is obviously the book I’m most looking forward to reading in this stack, because Kingfisher, because Swordheart was just so marvelous and it cried out for a sequel that I’ve been waiting for for months! I’m also really looking forward to getting into Demons and Diplomacy, First Witches Club and Love on the Shelf.

AND I’m noticing there are lot of books about bookish places in this stack, a lot of books about witches, and more than a few that manage to combine the two themes. This week’s stack looks like FUN!

What about YOUR stack this week? Which fun books are calling your name?

For Review:
The Best Little Motel in Texas by Lyla Lane
A City Dreaming (Astra Black #3) by Maurice Broaddus
Daggerbound (Swordheart #2) by T. Kingfisher
Demons and Diplomacy (Ministry of Supernatural Affairs #1) by Megan Frampton
The Devil and Mrs. Gooch by Oliver Darkshire
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
The Eye of Leviathan (Sea Beyond #1) by M.A. Carrick
Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl (Academic Affairs #1) by Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone
It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica
A Lady for All Seasons by TJ Alexander
Love on the Shelf by Sheila Roberts
Murder Unabridged (Old Juniper Bookshop #3) by P.J. Nelson
Murder Will Out by Jennifer K. Breedlove
Not Till We Are Lost (Bobiverse #5) by Dennis E. Taylor
The Oxford Guide to Scandal and Lies by Kate Westbury
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-young, translated by Sophie Bowman
Take Me with You by Steven Rowley
Twig’s Traveling Tomes by Gryffin Murphy
Where the Sky Begins by Cindy Dees and Mary Wine
A Witch in Notting Hill by Alexandra Paige

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
First Witches Club by Maisey Yates (Amazon First Reads)

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:

This isn’t exactly a “pretty” list, is it? Pretty interesting, yes. Pretty is as pretty does, perhaps. Outright pretty, not so much. Although Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel and Trouble’s Turn to Lose are both pretty cute and The Half Life is pretty in a realistic way. I guess they’ll have to do.

Very much on the other hand – or claw, as the case might be – Dragons Gone Wild is a cover that certainly does reach out and grab you, isn’t it? I’m looking forward to that one because the whole series so far has been an absolute hoot.

In fact, this list has a lot of books I’m really looking forward to, not just those Dragons but also An Artful Dodge, Fool, Life or Death, and of course the next Harmony book, Enter the Nightmare.

What are you looking forward to reading in your stack this weekend?

For Review:
An Artful Dodge by Karen Odden
Enter the Nightmare (Harmony #19) by Jayne Castle
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle
Fool by Mary Lawrence
The Half Life by Rachel Beanland
Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine
Ice Vegas by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes
Life or Death (Forensic Instincts #11) by Andrea Kane
Magic and Mischief at the Wayside Hotel by Elizabeth Everett
The Silent House of Sleep (Dr. Jack Cuthbert #1) by Allan Gaw
Sister Svangerd and the Devil You Know (Loyal Opposition #2) by K.J. Parker
The Three Coffin Problem by Lavie Tidhar
The Tinder Box by M.R. Carey
Trouble’s Turn to Lose (Carolina Tales #3) by Susan M. Boyer

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Dragons Gone Wild (Build-A-Dragon #3) by Dan Koboldt
Struck Dead (Forensic Instincts #10) by Andrea Kane

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:

This is another one of those stacks where there’s more “pretty creepy” than there is just plain “pretty”. The “pretty creepy” category includes The Way It Haunted Him and The Sleeping Sisters, while Snow Kissed is kinda creepy in that it might be predicting this weekend’s weather for everyone east of the Mississippi. We don’t normally get that much snow here in the ATL, but we might this weekend. We’ll see.

I think that the really pretty book in this stack is The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood. The books that I’m most curious about in this stack are The Last Mandarin, Talking Classics, and The Masala Chai Mystery Club, which also has a really cute cover. The ones I’m most looking forward to are The Case of the Murdered Muckraker and The Teacher. Especially the latter as I just finished the second book in The Teacher‘s DS George Cross series, The Cyclist, this week and it was TERRIFIC!

What’s in YOUR stack this snowy weekend?

For Review:
All We Hide by Robyn Gigl
The Case of the Murdered Muckraker (Harriet Morrow Investigates #2) by Rob Osler
Dead Weight by Hildur Knútsdóttir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal
Jitterbug by Gareth L. Powell
The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny, Mellissa Fung
The Masala Chai Mystery Club by MJ Soni
No Matter the Cost (Unsanctioned #2) by Anna Hackett
Perun’s Hammer by Ian Heller
The Sleeping Sisters by Jennifer Givhan
Talking Classics by Mary Beard
The Teacher (DS George Cross #6) by Tim Sullivan
Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty
The Way It Haunted Him by Laura R. Samotin
The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood by H. G. Parry

Borrowed from the Library:
Accomplice to the Villain (Assistant to the Villain #3) by Hannah Nicole Maehrer
Snow Kissed (Shelter Springs #3) by RaeAnne Thayne

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:

Unlike last week’s stack, there are some truly pretty covers this time around. Especially All the Tea in China, Daughters of the Sun and Moon, and Our Perfect Storm. There’s also some pretty creepy in Brimstone Hollow and The Museum of Unusual Occurrence.

I definitely picked up You Had me at Bigfoot, while the books I’m most looking forward to getting into are Brimstone Hollow, Junkyard Riders and The Last Contract of Isako. I’m also really glad that Junkyard Riders is publishing in ebook and audio simultaneously, which has not been the case until now. I love the audio, I enjoy the narrator’s voice, but there have been times when I’ve been desperate for a text just so I can spell all the names properly in the review. I’m happy to have one this time around.

The books I’m most curious about are Homemaker and Trailbreaker. I loved Ruthie Knox’ earlier work but I  haven’t seen her name on a book in quite a while. It looks like I’ve missed a few, so these new books are a great chance to get caught up!

What about you? What new or new to you books are calling your name from YOUR stack?

For Review:
All the Tea in China (Orchid Hunters #2) by Timothy David Mack
The Arcadian by Steven Pressfield
Blunt Instrument (Dell Chandler #1) by Amy Bloom
Brimstone Hollow (Annie Gore #2) by Archer Sullivan
Daughters of the Sun and Moon by Lisa See
Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison
The First Stop (Thousand Li #2) by Tao Wong
A Founding Mother by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
Head Cleaner by David James Keaton
Keeper & Kindred (Magical Emporium of Wares #2) by Toni Binns
The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee
The Lighthouse at the End of the World (Cities of the Drift #1) by Philip A. Suggars
The Museum of Unusual Occurrence (Psychic City #1) by Erica Wright
Our Perfect Storm by Carley Fortune
Startup Hell by Caitlin Rozakis
Summer of Love by Kerri Maher
Trailbreaker (Prairie Nightingale #2) by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
You Had me at Bigfoot (Daphne Drew #1) by Nancy Campbell Allen

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Homemaker (Prairie Nightingale #1) by Ruthie Knox and Annie Mare
Junkyard Riders (Shining Smith #5) by Faith Hunter (book + audio)
The Orchid and the Emerald (Orchid Hunters #1) by Timothy David Mack

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:

Is it just me, or does this whole stack sort of just miss ‘pretty’? If I HAD to pick, and I sorta/kinda do, I’d pick A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing and Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous. OTOH, The Black Cat Detectives are adorably cute and Bodies of Work creeps me right the hell out.

Those black cats also represent one of the books I’m most curious about this week, along with The Disaster Gay Detective Agency because I adore Rosen’s Andy Mills series although I get the feeling that Andy might think this agency is a bunch of clowns. We’ll see.

The books I’m most looking forward to are The Bookseller – when I get that far in the DS Cross series, and Mortedant’s Peril, because that’s a fantasy/gaslamp mystery and I’m always up for one of those.

What about you? What’s catching your eye in YOUR stack this week?

For Review:
The Baby Dragon Bookshop (Baby Dragon #3) by A.T. Quereshi
A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang (book + audio)
The Black Cat Detectives by Kit Gray
Bodies of Work by Clay McLeod Chapman
The Bookseller (DS George Cross #7) by Tim Sullivan
Buyer Beware by Catherine Ryan Howard
Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict
The Disaster Gay Detective Agency by Lev AC Rosen
Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England
I Hear a New World (Long London #2) by Alan Moore
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
Mortedant’s Peril (Trials of Irody Hasp #1) by RJ Barker
Murder by Design (Edison Bixby #1) by Lee Goldberg
The Name Game by Beth O’Leary
Out Law (Dresden Files #18.75) by Jim Butcher
The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays by Andrea Hairston
The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits
The Spirit Guide (Variety Palace Mysteries #3) by Bridget Walsh
A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston
The Whitechapel Full Moon Society by Elizabeth DeLozier

Borrowed from the Library:
Apprentice to the Villain (Assistant and the Villain #2)  by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

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:

Happy first weekend of the 2026. It’s good to have you along on this journey for another year of (hopefully) fantastic reads!

There are some pretty interesting covers this week, although pretty itself is always in the eye of the beholder. My personal picks for prettiness are The Chambermaid’s Key, Death in the Palace, In the Spirit of French Murder, and Japanese Gothic. I picked up It’s Hard to Be an Animal for the title, so now I’m curious about it, along with The Inklings Detective Agency. AND both Strange Beasts and Wayward Souls because the idea of Jonathan Harker’s and James Moriarty’s daughters teaming up looks like the kind of mystery and mayhem that I adored (and very much miss) in Theodora Goss’ Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club so I’m hoping for more!

The books I’m REALLY looking forward to reading are Radiant Star, Sorcerous Plates, Swords, Cider, and Other Distractions, as well as the previously mentioned Death in the Palace.

What about you? What’s catching your reading eye in your first stack of 2026?

For Review:
All These Worlds (Bobiverse #3) by Dennis E. Taylor
Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden
Cash and Gravity (Chevy Cole #1) by Perrin Pring
The Chambermaid’s Key by Genevieve Graham
Death in the Palace (Silver Screen Historical Mystery #4) by Barbara Hambly
The Franchise by Thomas Elrod
Heaven’s River (Bobiverse #4) by Dennis E. Taylor
In the Spirit of French Murder (American in Paris #4) by Colleen Cambridge
The Inklings Detective Agency by John R. Kelly
It’s Hard to Be an Animal by Robert Isaacs
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
Kill All Wizards (Barbaric Ledgers #1) by Jedediah Berry
Missing in Soho (Misty Divine #2) by Holly Stars
A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
Radiant Star (Imperial Radch) by Ann Leckie
A Shop Girl’s Guide to Wooing a Lord (Heiress Hunters #1) by Shana Galen
The Summer Share by Jenn McKinlay
Wayward Souls (Harker & Moriarty #2) by Susan J. Morris

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Sorcerous Plates (Hidden Dishes #4) by Tao Wong
Strange Beasts (Harker & Moriarty #1) by Susan J. Morris (book + audio)
Swords, Cider, and Other Distractions (Glass Immortals #0.6) by Brian McClellan (book + audio)

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

This is the final Stacking the Shelves post for 2025. This year has gone by in a blur – and perhaps that’s the best thing that can be said about it.

Nevertheless, I have some fascinating and fantastic books in this final stack of the year.

While these covers are definitely pretty, they are just as definitely not pretty in the same way. I’m looking at City of the Muse, Like Wafers in Honey, Sea of Charms and Song of Ancient Lovers and going “Oooh!”

There are two books here that I bought for their covers, not for their prettiness but for the sheer WTF’ery of it all. I got Everybody’s Perfect for the masks, especially for the cat masks. And Foundling Fathers because OMG that picture. Hopeless Necromantic, OTOH, I picked for the title.

The books I’m most looking forward to in this stack are Green City Wars, Moss’d in Space and, of course, the next book in the Barker & Llewelyn series, For Services Rendered – even though I’m still catching up with the series and am planning to read the book that I’m actually  up to in that catch up this coming week.

What have you picked out from your stack to read this holiday weekend? Happy Holidays and Happy Seasons Readings!

Version 1.0.0

For Review:
City of the Muse by Kate Hilton
Everybody’s Perfect by Jo Walton
For Services Rendered (Barker & Llewelyn #17) by Will Thomas
Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Heaven’s Graveyard (Idolfire #2) by Grace Curtis
Hopeless Necromantic by Shiloh Briar
How to Fake It in Society by KJ Charles
How to Hold Someone in Your Heart (Lost Souls #2) by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Tejima
Like Wafers in Honey by Leah Eskin
The Lost Book of Lancelot by John Glynn
Love Lost (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #5) by Cynthia St. Aubin
Moss’d in Space (Moss’d in Space #1) by Rebecca Thorne
Sea of Charms (Spellshop #3) by Sarah Beth Durst
The Shadows Tomorrow by Noelle Michel, translated by Frank Wynne
Song of Ancient Lovers by Laura Restrepo, translated by Carol De Robertis (book + audio)
Songs of the Dead (Strata Wars #1) by Brandon Sanderson and Peter Orullian
Twelve Months (Dresden Files #18) by Jim Butcher
The Unkillable Frank Lightning by Josh Rountree
Valet by J.P. Lacrampe
Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein

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

There are some terribly different definitions of “pretty” in this stack, aren’t there? The Architect of New York is real-world pretty, A Curse of Beasts and Magic and A Long and Speaking Silence are both fantasy pretty, and Every Day I Read is somewhere in the middle between the two.

Very much OTOH, The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos is really cute AND the book on this list I picked up for the title. Because I’ve got to find out WTF is going on with this one.

I haven’t read a single one of these yet, so there’s plenty in this stack that I’m looking forward to, but especially A Long and Speaking Silence, the next Murderbot, Platform Decay, The Shadow Carver (especially after this week’s Edge), Palaces of the Crow and OMG Villain. I adored Hench but wasn’t expected a sequel I am SO HAPPY to see that there is life after being a hench and that there’s a book to tell me all about it!

What’s at the top of your stack this week?

For Review:
Abyss by Nicholas Binge
And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer
The Architect of New York by Javier Moro, translated by Peter J. Hearn
Battlestorm (Galaxy Raiders #2) by Ian Douglas
A Curse of Beasts and Magic (Beautiful & Beastly #1) by Jeaniene Frost
Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-Reum, translated by Shanna Tan
The Great Houses of Pill Hill by Diane Josefowicz
The Innocents (Variety Palace #2) by Bridget Walsh (book + audio)
A Long and Speaking Silence (Singing Hills Cycle #7) by Nghi Vo
Love is an Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson
Magic and Bullets (Academy of Outcasts #2) by Larry Correia
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
Murder at the Hotel Orient by Alessandra Ranelli
The Object by Joshua T. Calvert, translated by Marcia Kwiecinski and Stephen Kwiecinski
Palaces of the Crow by Ray Nayler
The People Game by Jamie Kirkpatrick
The Pillagers’ Guide to Arctic Pianos by Kendra Langford Shaw
Platform Decay (Murderbot Diaries #8) by Martha Wells
The Shadow Carver (Inspector Anjelica Henley #4) by Nadine Matheson
Strange Familiars (Seamere College #1) by Keshe Chow
Villain (Hench #2) by Natalie Zina Walschots

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

I had a grand ambition to fit everything I picked up this year into this year’s remaining Stacking the Shelves posts. It’s not going to happen. I cap these things at 20-ish just to keep the download with all the covers from being overwhelming. So I’ve already picked up stuff that’s going to be a stack in 2026. 2026! When did THAT sneak up on me?

The really pretty cover in this batch is The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire. All the covers in the Love’s Academic series have been lovely, but this one is just extra so. There are some pretty creepy covers here in Morsel and Tea & Alchemy, while An Accident of Dragons, Death Meets Cute and Stay for a Spell are, well, cute.

The one book in this stack I’m absolutely gasping for is the new St. Cyr book, When the Wolves Are Silent. It’s not out until April but I don’t think I’m going to be able to wait that long. I’m also looking forward to The Monk, but that’s book 5 in its series (DS George Cross) and books 2,3, and 4 aren’t out yet although I do have them. (The series was published in the UK several years ago but didn’t catch on here then. It is now and the US publisher is catching up fast. And YAY because the first book, The Dentist, was awesome so I’m looking forward to the rest.)

I’ve read two books in this stack that won’t be out for a while, Double Shadow and Stay for a Spell. Double Shadow is fun if you like time travel adventures – and I do, while Stay for a Spell is an absolutely adorable cozy fantasy that I’m going to be highly recommending.

How’s your stack looking this week?

For Review:
An Accident of Dragons (Tales of Summer #1) by Cheri Radke
The Antiquarian’s Object of Desire (Love’s Academic #3) by India Holton
Cast in Blood (Chronicles of Elantra #19) by Michelle Sagara
Death Meets Cute by J. Penner
Death Times Seven (Daniel Pitt #7) by Anne Perry and Victoria Zackheim
Doctor Who: 1,001 Nights in Time and Space by Steve Cole and Paul Magrs
Double Shadow (Splinter Effect #2) by Andrew Ludington
The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
The Faith of Beasts (Captive’s War #2) by James S.A. Corey
The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang
Margery and Me by Maryka Biaggio
The Monk (DS George Cross #5) by Tim Sullivan
Morsel by Carter Keane
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
Paranormal Payback edited by Jim Butcher and Kerrie L. Hughes
The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen
The Silver Fish by Connor Martin
Stay for a Spell by Amy Coombe
We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune
When the Wolves Are Silent (Sebastian St. Cyr #21) by C.S. Harris

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Tea & Alchemy by Sharon Lynn Fisher (Amazon First Reads)

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

Welcome to this week’s contribution to the STABLE environment at Chez Reading Reality. By STABLE, I’m referencing that acronym I talked about last week, where STABLE stands for STash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy, because my book collection, including ebooks, passed that point YEARS ago. Now that I think of it, this interpretation of STABLE fits entirely too well with the interpretation of FINE in the Chief Inspector Gamache books, where FINE is an acronym for “Fucked Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical.” The world in general is a very strange place – and books help even if what they help with is a temporary escape!

This stack has a some really pretty books in it, especially The Book Witch, The Geomagician, The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale, and The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains. Green & Deadly Things and Seasons of Glass and Iron are both on the pretty side, but they’re also pretty damn creepy so they merits a special category all by themselves where they can’t infect anything else. They’ve already infected Wolf Worm.

The books I’m most looking forward to are A Day of Judgment (even if I won’t get there until I’ve read more of the series unless I skip a lot – and I might because A Christmas Witness was just SO GOOD), This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me, Lightning Runes and Wolf Worm. I’ve already read Blindside, The Girl Who Made a Mouse From Her Grandfather’s Whiskers, and Nobody’s Baby, and I’m in the middle of The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale and Trace Elements, both of which are excellent so far but in entirely different ways!

This turned out to be a GREAT stack! What about yours?

For Review:
Blindside (Planetside #5) by Michael Mammay
The Book of Fallen Leaves (Autumn Empire #1) by A.S. Tamaki
The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer
Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo
Crawlspace by Adam Christopher
A Day of Judgment (Inspector Ian Rutledge #25) by Charles Todd
Dig by J.H. Markert
The Fortune Tellers of Rue Daru by Olesya Salnikova Gilmore
The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula
The Girl Who Made a Mouse From Her Grandfather’s Whiskers by Kenneth Hunter Gordon
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons
Lightning Runes (City of Shadows #2) by Harry Turtledove
Nobody’s Baby (Dorothy Gentleman #2) by Olivia Waite
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar
The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale by C.M. Waggoner
The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu
This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me (Maggie the Undying #1) by Ilona Andrews
Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
The Tricky Business of Faerie Bargains by Reena McCarty
Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Smoke and Mirrors (Tales of Valdemar #19) edited by Mercedes Lackey

Borrowed from the Library:
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (book + audio)

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