I’m a little bit nervous about talking about ‘pretty’ covers because we’ve got eyeballs in here! OTOH, that might be the perfect garnish for this post-Halloween Stacking the Shelves!

Although, one of this week’s pretty covers is Her Wicked Roots, and that’s also creepy as hell. But rounding out the pretty list are It’s Different This Time and The Once and Future Queen, which really are quite pretty.

The books I’m most curious about in this stack are The Lost Reliquary, The Rush, and once again, The Once and Future Queen, while the book I’m most looking forward to is (no surprise to anyone) Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing.

What about you? What are you most looking forward to in YOUR stack?

For Review:
An Amateur Witch’s Guide to Murder by K. Valentin
The Dead Come to Stay (Ardemore House #2) by Brandy Schillace
Futility by Nuzo Onoh
The Gallery Assistant by Kate Belli
Guilty by Definition (Clarendon Lexicographers #1) by Susie Dent
Her Wicked Roots by Tanya Pell
Hollow (Gothic Shade of Romance #1) by Karina Halle
It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard
Lady Like by Mackenzi Lee
Leave Me Behind by K.M. Moronova
Local Heavens by K.M. Fajardo
The Lost Reliquary (Divine Thrall #1) by Lyndsay Ely
Love, Mom by Iliana Xander
The Macabre by Kosoko Jackson
The Once and Future Queen (Lives of Guinevere #1) by Paula Lafferty
Other People’s Houses (DC Morgan #3) by Clare Mackintosh
A Particularly Nasty Case by Adam Kay
Rumoured by Kelly Mancaruso and Kristina Mancaruso
The Rush by Beth Lewis
When We Talk to the Dead by Ian Chorao
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Borrowed from the Library:
Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing by Nicholas Meyer

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

A whole lot of these covers are more interesting than they are pretty. Some stacks are just like that.

If I had to pick, and I sorta/kinda set this thing up so that I do, it would be Moonrising, Murder at Donwell Abbey, and The White Octopus Hotel – which also looks pretty darn interesting.

Dead & Breakfast, OTOH, looks like a hoot and a half, so that’s one of the books I’m really looking forward to in this stack. Christmas at the Shelter Inn and Crescent City Christmas Chaos are both books I picked up in anticipation of this year’s upcoming Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon.

The book I’m most curious about, besides, again, Dead & Breakfast because that title just begs to be read, is Academy of Outcasts. The author is one I tried a long time ago. While I enjoyed Monster Hunter International and thought it was a lot of fun I wasn’t able to get into the second book in the series. But Academy of Outcasts looks like it’s a bit more my jam, so we’ll see.

What about you? What’s in your stack this week that looks too interesting to miss?

For Review:
A/S/L by Jeanne Thornton
Academy of Outcasts by Larry Correia
Boom Town by Nic Stone
Charlie Quinn Lets Go by Jamie Varon
Crescent City Christmas Chaos (Vintage Cookbook Mystery #4) by Ellen Byron
Darker Days by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Dead & Breakfast by Kat Hillis & Rosiee Thor
Exiles by Mason Coile
Famous by Blake Crouch
The Last Witch by C.J. Cooke
Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur
Mississippi Blue 42 by Eli Cranor
Moonrising by Claire Barner
Murder at Donwell Abbey (Emma Knightly #2) by Vanessa Kelly
Nobody Knows You’re Here by Bryn Greenwood
Simultaneous by Eric Heisserer
Soul Searching (Sweetwater Peak #1) by Lyla Sage
The Wax Child by Olga Ravn translated by Martin Aitken
We Met Like This by Kasie West
The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell
Wild Animal by Joël Dicker translated by Robert Bononno

Borrowed from the Library:
Christmas at the Shelter Inn (Shelter Springs #1) by RaeAnne Thayne

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

The pretty covers in this week’s stack are also pretty interesting, and in a couple of cases downright creepy. OTOH next week is Halloween so THAT’S not exactly out-of-season. Speaking of seasons it is starting to feel like fall around here, at least on alternate days. The nights are down in the high 50s and low 60s, but the afternoons can get plenty hot in the sun.

Back to the books. Always! Those pretty and pretty interesting COVERS are How a Game Lives, Lives of Bitter Rain, Our Vicious Oaths, The Satisfaction Cafe and Savage Blooms.

How a Game Lives is also one of the books I’m most curious about, along with The Tower and the Ruin, while for a completely different reason, Circle of Days. Game and The Tower are both books Galen and I were talking about reviewing together, while Circle of Days has my curiosity bump itching because it’s about the building of Stonehenge. I’ve been to Stonehenge several times, and it’s a truly uncanny place so I’m looking forward to seeing how an author captures some of that feeling AND handles the history of which we know very little at all and aren’t all that sure about what we think we do know.

The book I’m most looking forward to reading – in the immediate term at least – is Edge. The whole Detective Harriet Foster series, starting with Hide, has been fantastic. It’s just a terrific police procedural thriller series and its set in Chicago which I always love to visit, fictionally or IRL. However, I’m glad, at least based on the cover, that Harriet’s Chicago has moved on from the frozen wind chill of winter from the previous book, Echo, to what looks like spring. Reading about Chicago’s winter DURING the winter is just too much winter!

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

For Review:
All My Bones (Old Juniper Bookshop Mystery #2) by P.J. Nelson
All the Men I’ve Loved Again by Christine Pride
The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Circle of Days by Ken Follett
Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson
The Darkest Deep by Chris Butera
Edge (Detective Harriet Foster #4) by Tracy Clark
Fog and Fury (Haven Thriller #1) by Rachel Howzell Hall
The Glass Eel by J.J. Viertel
How a Game Lives by Jacob Geller
The Incredible Kindness of Paper by Evelyn Skye
Intergalactic Waste Management, LLC (Intergalactic Archives #2) by Ash Bishop
Lauryn Harper Falls Apart by Shauna Robinson
Moonflow by Bitter Karella
Our Vicious Oaths by N.E. Davenport
The Satisfaction Cafe by Kathy Wang
Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1) by S.T. Gibson
The Tower and the Ruin by Michael D.C. Drout
We Will Rise Again edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older
Witch of the Wolves by Kaylee Archer
Wreck (Rocky #2) by Catherine Newman

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Lives of Bitter Rain (Tyrant Philosophers #2.5) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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 time around, let’s start with something other than pretty. Because this stack has not one but THREE books I picked up for the title.  Specifically, How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps, How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder AND Slayers of Old. I mean, really, I’m not sure which title is more intriguing, although, come to think of it, it’s fortunate that the villains in Witch King hadn’t read that first book before they started out. They might have had a better chance at succeeding and that would have cut the series off before it even began, which would have been a crying shame.

How to Defeat a Demon King is ALSO one of this week’s pretty covers, and that IS a surprise. The other pretty ones look like  The Dragon Wakes with Thunder and Higher Magic, while A Murder in the Making isn’t exactly beautiful but it IS adorably cute.

The book I’m also the most curious about is Slayers of Old, and I just finished Saving Mr. Norcross because it’s next Friday’s book!

What’s in YOUR stack this week?

For Review:
Amity by Nathan Harris
Best Woman by Rose Dommu
The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner
Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley
Cry Havoc (Tom Reece #1) by Jack Carr
Damned (Scarlet Revolution #3) by Genevieve Cogman
Heart the Lover by Lily King
Higher Magic by Courtney Floyd
How Bad Things Can Get by Darcy Coates
How to Defeat a Demon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe
How to Talk to Your Dog About Murder by Emily Soderberg
The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes by Chanel Cleeton
A Murder in the Making (Magical Trinket Mysteries #2) by Victoria Laurie
Saving Mr. Norcross (Norcross Security #11) by Anna Hackett
Second Chance Romance (Harlot’s Bay #2) by Olivia Dade
The Second Death of Locke (Hand and the Heart #1) by V.L. Bovalino
Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines
Sweet Heat (Honey & Spice #2) by Bolu Babalola
The Wasp Trap by Mark Edwards
World Pacific by Peter Mann
You Weren’t Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White

Borrowed from the Library:
The Dragon Wakes with Thunder (Dragon Spirit #2) by K.X. Song

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:

There are a couple of really pretty covers this time around!  Both The Bookshop Below and Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore are lovely.

But the book on this list that I’m REALLY looking forward to is A Case of Life and Limb. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed the first book in the series, A Case of Mice and Murder, so I’ve been looking forward to this one for months. I have it in audio as well, and can’t decide how to dive in. That I’m going to dive in is NOT a question.

The two titles I’m quite curious about are The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective and Upton Arms – but not for the same thing. Marigold Cottages looks like an American variation on The Thursday Murder Club – and someone in my reading group has already read it and said it was good fun. Upton Arms is ‘old skool’ urban fantasy in the most literal sense. It’s about a ‘retirement home’ for immortals who may not be able to die but turn out to be not nearly as immune to the vicissitudes of age as they had once thought. It’s just taken a whole lot longer for those aches and pains to affect them. Then again, as immortals, they’re also going to have to put up with their ‘declining’ years a LOT longer. That one is either going to be really good or really terrible – and I’m terribly curious as to which.

The one book in this stack that I have already read is Violet Thistlewaite, and it was every bit as lovely as its cover.

What about you? What looks interesting in YOUR stack this week?

For Review:
13 Months Haunted by Jimmy Juliano
The Bookshop Below by Georgia Summers
The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver
A Case of Life and Limb (Trials of Gabriel Ward #2) by Sally Smith
Ecstasy by Ivy Pochoda
Her Soul for a Crown by Alysha Rameera
House of the Beast by Michelle Wong
The Marigold Cottages Murder Collective (Marigold Cottages #1) by Jo Nichols
Murder Most Haunted by Emma Mason
The Persian by David McCloskey
The Re-Write by Lizzie Damilola Blackburn
Scar the Sky by J. Todd Scott
Sheepdogs by Elliot Ackerman
Someone’s Gotta Give by Alisha Fernandez Miranda
Tracer by Brendan Deneen
Upton Arms by Scott Craven
Violet Thistlewaite Is Not a Villain Anymore by Emily Krempholtz
Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1) by S.A. MacLean
Wings of Steel and Fury by Sarah J. Daley
The Witch’s Orchard by Archer Sullivan

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:

There’s some pretty, and a whole lot of pretty interesting among this week’s covers. The prettiest covers, at least from this perspective, are Letters from an Imaginary Country, People Watching, Some Kind of Famous and Turns of Fate, although as usual, they are far from pretty in the same way. Snake-Eater‘s cover is really well done, but that’s not an image I’d ever think of as even in the same universe as pretty, so let’s just call that one pretty interesting and try not imagine the fate of that poor snake in too much detail.

I picked up Murder on Sex Island just for the title, because inquiring minds really do have to know.

The books I’m most looking forward to reading, and am just generally terribly curious about, are Slayers of Old and Wearing the Lion, along with the previously mentioned Letters, People and Snakes. I’ve already finished Brigands & Breadknives and Turns of Fate – and both were excellent!

What books are you most looking forward to in YOUR stack?

For Review:
Artificial Wisdom by Thomas R. Weaver
Beauty in the Blood by Charlotte Carter
Brigands & Breadknives (Legends & Lattes #2) by Travis Baldree
Christina the Astonishing by Marianne Leone
Flirting with Disaster by Naina Kumar
The Game Is Afoot (Mavis Miller #2) by Elise Bryant
How to Sell a Romance by Alexa Martin
Letters from an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss
Murder on Sex Island (Luella van Horn #1) by Jo Firestone
My Other Heart by Emma Nanami Strenner
Never Been Shipped by Alicia Thompson
People Watching by Hannah Bonam-Young
The Rivals (Claudia Lin #2) by Jane Pek
A Season for Spies (Lane Winslow #0.5) by Iona Whishaw
Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines
Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher
Some Kind of Famous by Ava Wilder
Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston
The Strength of the Few (Hierarchy #2) by James Islington
Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives
Turns of Fate (Isle of Wyrd #1) by Anne Bishop
Wearing the Lion by John Wiswell

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:

I don’t think that ‘pretty’ is the right word for this week’s covers, unless it’s part of the phrase ‘pretty fascinating’. THAT seems accurate because this week’s stack is chock-full of books I’m really curious about, really fascinated by, or just plain am simply gasping to read ASAP.

The book I’ve been looking forward to reading for the ENTIRE year is The Blackfire Blade. The first book in the series, The Silverblood Promise, left me with an absolutely aching book hangover so this one is at the top of the TBR pile although I’m planning to get the audiobook as soon as it’s available because the audio of that first book was just SO GOOD.

The other book I can’t wait to get to is Days at the Torunka Café. It’s by the same author as Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and I loved that one hard and am hoping for something similarly delightful.

The two that I’m most curious about, but in entirely different ways, are The Tortoise’s Tale and We Are Legion (We Are Bob). I’m kind of hoping that The Tortoise’s Tale is going to be bit like Remarkably Bright Creatures, but with a tortoise – with a much longer lifespan so much more time to observe  – that that remarkably bright octopus. As far as Bob goes, it’s not actually a new book, just a new cover, but it’s supposed to be humorous SF – which is damn hard to do. I could use a bit of funny these days.

How about you? What’s in your stack this week that you’re looking forward to?

For Review:
Angel Down by Daniel Kraus
Arcana Academy (Arcana Academy #1) by Elise Kova
The Blackfire Blade (Last Legacy #2) by James Logan
Bloodtide (Ex Romana #2) by Sophie Burnham
Days at the Torunka Café by Satoshi Yagisawa, translated by Eric Ozawa
The Dead Husband Cookbook by Danielle Valentine
The Devil in Oxford (Ruby Vaughn #3) by Jess Armstrong
Doll Parts by Penny Zang
History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook
How They Were Taken (Jenna Wyatt #1) by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson
I Did Warn Her by Sian Gilbert
I Would Die for You by Sandie Jones
The King Must Die by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
The Nameless Land (Witch Roads #2) by Kate Elliott
Observer by Robert Lanza, Nancy Kress
Off Menu by Amy Rosen
Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes (Savvy Summers #1) by Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Songs for Other People’s Weddings by David Levithan with songs by Jens Lekman
The Summer War by Naomi Novik
The Tortoise’s Tale by Kendra Coulter
Upstanding Young Man by Sharon Doering
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse #1) by Dennis E. Taylor

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 seems to be the week for the pinky-purples in the stack. Not everything, but a lot. There’s also a lot of pretty this time around, between The Everlasting, A House Between Sea and Sky, Letters From the Dead and the pink/purple beauty that is An Unlikely Coven. It’s also clear from this stack that Halloween AND Christmas are already closer than anyone wants to think about, considering Undead and Unwed – and yes, that title has been used before.

The book that I am unsurprisingly looking forward to is another holiday story, Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop, along with The Last Death of the Year, which doesn’t sound ominous at all, does it? The books I’m most curious about are Spiderlight and the previously mentioned The Everlasting. And the one I’ve already read and ADORED is Witches of Dubious Origin.

What’s intriguing you in YOUR stack this week?

Version 1.0.0

For Review:
Believe Me Now by S.M. Govett
Best Wishes from the Full Moon Coffee Shop (Full Moon Coffee Shop #2) by Mai Mochizuki, translated by Jordan Taylor
Blood for the Undying Throne (Bleeding Empire #2) by Sung-il Kim, translated by Anton Hur
The Brave and the Reckless (Bravetown) by Dilan Dyer
Conform (Thousand Voices) by Ariel Sullivan
Dead Hand Rule (Craft Wars #3) by Max Gladstone
Don’t Open Your Eyes by Liv Constantine
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Florida Palms by Joe Pan
Homebound (Boundless Players #2) by Meredith Trapp
The Last Death of the Year (New Hercule Poirot #6) by Sophie Hannah and Agatha Christie
Letters From the Dead by Isabella Valeri
The Night Birds by Christopher Golden
Overgrowth by Mira Grant
See You at the Finish Line by Zac Hammett
She Didn’t See It Coming by Shari Lapena
Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel
An Unlikely Coven (Green Witch Cycle #1) by AM Kvita
Undead and Unwed by Sam Tschida
Witches of Dubious Origin by Jenn McKinlay

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
A House Between Sea and Sky by Beth Cato (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:

Are book covers, and the books within, getting darker, or is it just the books I’m picking up. Inquiring minds are starting to NEED to know!

The pretty covers in this batch are The Isle in the Silver Sea, Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon, and When They Burned the Butterfly. The book I picked  up for the title, AND because I’m really curious about it AND because I’m looking forward to reading it, is Slayers of Old. The premise reminds me a lot of Never Too Old to Save the World and I LOVED that collection SO MUCH. So I have big hopes for this one.

The other book I’m really looking forward to reading is The Dentist. It looks like the kind of investigative thriller that I can easily get caught up in and I’m all for that!

I think that A Christmas Witness and The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah should each get a ten-yard penalty for rushing the season, but I know it’s getting to be the right time for publishing holiday books even though it feels too early. Way too early.

And I’ve already read Psychopomp & Circumstance and it was lovely!

What about you? What’s piqued your interest in YOUR stack?

For Review:
The Afterlife Project by Tim Weed
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 edited by Nnedi Okorafor
Cat Fight by Kit Conway
Cathedral of the Drowned (Lunar Gothic Trilogy #2) by Nathan Ballingrud
A Christmas Witness (Inspector Ian Rutledge) by Charles Todd
Death at the Door (Ruby and Cordelia Mysteries #2) by Olivia Blacke
The Dentist (DS George Cross #1) by Tim Sullivan
The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur
The Eight Heartbreaks of Hanukkah by Jean Meltzer
Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake
The Havana Syndrome (Nathan Burke #1) by Jeffrey James Higgins
A Heart So Haunted by Hollie Nelson
A Hex for Hunger (Rune Tithe #2) by Alistair Reeves
A Holy Maiden’s Guide to Getting Kidnapped (Scandals of the Gifted #1) by Katy Nyquist
Huntsman (Hunted Kingdom #1) by Naima Simone
The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon (Go-Between #1) by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Tejima
Psychopomp & Circumstance by Eden Royce
Slayers of Old by Jim C. Hines
Taming the Perilous Skies by Phil Marshall
When They Burned the Butterfly by Wen-yi Lee

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:

In a pretty creepy way, there’s an awful lot of pretty in this batch. Just think, Halloween is just two months away!

Honestly, I’m trying not to think about that part. Monday is Labor Day, and it seems like the year is on a fast slide from that point onwards – until it crashes head first into January 2 and it’s two or three months of unrelieved winter to get through.

But there are a bunch of pretty covers in this batch, In the Veins of the Drowning, The Keeper of Magical Things, The Lies They Told, Sisters of Fortune and even The Works of Vermin – although both the title and blurb for that last one also give me the shudders.

The books that I picked up for the title are The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee because WTF? and Murder at the Wham Bam Club because that title is one hell of a teaser.

The books I’m most looking forward to are Air Force One, because I love the Miranda Chase series and I’m REALLY sorry to see it end, and Red City because I’ve heard rumors that it might scratch my Jade City itch. I’ve already read The Keeper of Magical Things and it was every bit as marvelous as its predecessor, The Teller of Small Fortunes. The book I’m terribly curious about is The Last Spirits of Manhattan.

I can’t wait to read ALL of them! What about you, what books are you looking forward to in YOUR stack?

For Review:
Air Force One (Miranda Chase NTSB #16) by M.L. Buchman
The Albino’s Secret (Metatemporal Detectives #1) by Michael Moorcock, Mark Hodder
All That We See or Seem (Julia Z #1) by Ken Liu
The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee by Saki Kawashiro, translated by yuka Maeno
A Gargoyle’s Guide to Murder (Accidental Alchemist #9) by Gigi Pandian
The Haunting of Paynes Hollow by Kelley Armstrong
In the Veins of the Drowning (Siren Mage #1) by Kalie Cassidy
It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest
The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong
Kill the Beast by Serra Swift
The Last Spirits of Manhattan by John A. McDermott
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
Murder at the Wham Bam Club (Psychics and Soul Food Mystery #1) by Carolyn Marie Wilkins
The Princess Knight by Cait Jacobs
Red City (New Alchemists #1) by Marie Lu
Sisters of Fortune by Esther Chehebar
The Unveiling by Quan Barry
We Had a Hunch by Tom Ryan
The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes
You Belong Here by Megan Miranda

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Booked (Museum of Literature Romance #1-3) by Jenn McKinlay (ebook + audio)

Borrowed from the Library:
Bride (Bride #1) by Ali Hazelwood

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: