Stacking the Shelves (640)

This is, well, this is a lot. And it’s only the beginning of a deluge that probably won’t taper off much until fall. And some of you are probably wondering if I’ve lost my mind, wondering when I’m going to manage to read all of these, or both. Most likely both.

Consider this the annual posting of the disclaimers, of which there are basically two.

First, I am (again) on a book awards committee for the American Library Association. This year it’s The Reading List, which selects the best books of the year for adult fiction in eight genres, Adrenaline (read as thriller), Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Relationship Fiction (AKA Women’s Fiction), Romance and Science Fiction. A significant portion of the books I’ll be picking up for the rest of the year are FOR the committee. I never say which ones, and it’s more difficult to tell with this particular committee as it’s the kind of stuff I read anyway. I probably won’t even mention the committee again by name until next January when our deliberations are done, dusted and distributed.

While it’s particularly germane right now because of the size of this stack and the stacks to come, I (a) don’t have to read all the books the committee requests. There’s a winnowing process that condenses the already ginormous number into a semi-manageable mass. Which leads to (b), that even without whatever committee I happen to be on, in the end – for very long definitions of end – I only read about half of what I receive. Some books turn out not to be for me. Sometimes it’s the right book at the wrong time and I pick them up again later, and sometimes that’s it for always. And sometimes the ’round tuit’ just doesn’t come around. This is part of what makes ebooks so marvelous. If I had this many physical books coming in, my house would have fallen in a LONG time ago!

For Review:
An Age of Winters by Gemma Liviero (ebook and audio)
At Dark, I Become Loathsome by Eric LaRocca
Bitter Passage by Colin Mills (ebook and audio)
ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado, translated by Sue Burke
The Crash by Freida McFadden
Crush by Ada Calhoun
Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier
The Family Inside by Katie Garner
The Garden by Nick Newman
Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Immortal (Celestial Kingdom) by Sue Lynn Tan
The Legend of Meneka (Divine Dancers #1) by Kritika H. Rao
The Lotus Shoes by Jane Yang
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
The National Telepathy by Roque Larraquy, translated by Frank Wynne
One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed
The Relationship Mechanic (Peach Blossom #2) by Karmen Lee
The Shiver Tree by Holly Searcy
The Starlight Heir by Amalie Howard
The Strange Case of Jane O. by Karen Thompson Walker
A Tiny Piece of Blue by Charlotte Whitney
Trust Issues by Elizabeth McCullough Keenan and Greg Wands
Untethered by Angela Jackson-Brown
Variation by Rebecca Yarros (ebook and audio)
A Very Bad Thing by J.T. Ellison (ebook and audio)
We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes


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:


Stacking the Shelves (639)

This week’s stack needs a new category! The two creepiest covers are Girl in the Creek and The Knight and the Butcherbird, although I’m also giving some side-eye in that department to Hemlock & Silver.

The prettiest covers, also the two books with the completely opposite titles, are Heir of Light and Written on the Dark, with the most adorable cover award going to Bodies and Battlements. Heir of Light is also one of the books I’m most looking forward to, along with Thaumaturgic Tapas. Although I’m technically not looking FORWARD to Thaumaturgic Tapas because I was looking forward so hard that I’ve already started it!

For Review:
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
Bodies and Battlements (Ravensea Castle #1) by Elizabeth Penney
Everything is Probably Fine by Julia London
The Game is Murder by Hazell Ward
Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner
Heir of Light (Lessons of the Academia #2) by Michelle Sagara
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow
Love at First Sighting by Mallory Marlowe
Thaumaturgic Tapas (Hidden Dishes #3) by Tao Wong (eARC and audio)
The Undercutting of Rosie and Adam (Hart and Mercy #3) by Megan Bannen
Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay


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:


Stacking the Shelves (638)

Well, the blue/purples certainly reign supreme in this batch of covers, don’t they? And they are all so very pretty, too! Personally, I think that The God and the Gwisin, The Lady Sparks a Flame and The Love Remedy are vying for prettiest cover, but an argument could be made for nearly every book in the stack. Except maybe Marble Hall Murders and Space Brooms! Neither of those is exactly pretty, but I’m really, really curious about Space Brooms!, along with The Gravedigger’s Almanac.

The two I’m most looking forward to, like really a LOT, are Knave of Diamonds and Marble Hall Murders. I’ve loved the Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series from its beginning with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and I always get caught up in the twists and turns of Horowitz’ Moonflower Murders series even though I’m not generally fond of any of the characters. We’ll certainly see how this one turns out in the months ahead!

For Review:
The God and the Gwisin (Fate’s Thread #2) by Sophie Kim
The Gravedigger’s Almanac (Leopold von Herzfeldt Case Book #1) by Oliver Pötzsch, translated by Lisa Reinhardt
Knave of Diamonds (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #19) by Laurie R. King
The Lady Sparks a Flame (Damsels of Discovery #2) by Elizabeth Everett
The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World by J.R. Dawson
Marble Hall Murders (Susan Ryeland #3) by Anthony Horowitz
The Miniaturist’s Assistant by Katherine Scott Crawford
Never the Roses by Jennifer K. Lambert
Space Brooms! by A.G. Rodriguez
Whisper in the Wind (Fetch Phillips #4) by Luke Arnold

Borrowed from the Library:
The Love Remedy (Damsels of Discovery #1) by Elizabeth Everett


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:


Stacking the Shelves (637)

I don’t know about where you are, but it’s been a great week to read around here! We were icebound for a couple of days! Atlanta didn’t get a lot of actual snow, but just enough and just enough of it melting to create a whole lot of black ice. Everything shut down, and a lot of streets were blocked by abandoned cars that just couldn’t safely get where they intended – or couldn’t get through because of all the previously abandoned cars because same.

The cats weren’t even going out on their catio because it was too cold even for little fur-people with their very own fur coats!

From the size of this stack, it’s pretty easy to see that I might have plenty of books to tide me over any cold snap. These are spring and summer books, which is a bit of mind game. The prettiest covers, IMNSHO, are A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic and The Magician of Tiger Castle. It has to be both of them because those covers really are a LOT alike, with an honorable mention to A Murderous Business.

The books I’m most looking forward to in this batch are Do Me A Favor and Zomromcom, while Zomromcom is also the book I’m most curious about. Because seriously, a zombie romantic comedy? I’ve got to know. I’m also grateful to it because discovering THAT book somehow led me to Do Me A Favor which I’d missed last month. I’m hoping that the book will “do me a favor” and be the excellent happy ever after comfort read and/or listen that I think I’ll be needing for a very long next little while.

What have you added to your stack this week?

For Review:
Blood and Treasure by Ryan Pote
A Fellowship of Bakers & Magic (Adenashire #1) by J. Penner
Heart Marks the Spot by Libby Huscher
Love Walked In by Sarah Chamberlain
The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar
The Memory of the Ogisi (Forever Desert #3) by Moses Ose Utomi
A Murderous Business (Harriman & Mancini #1) by Cathy Pegau
The Peculiar Gift of July by Ashley Ream
Zomromcom by Olivia Dade

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Do Me A Favor by Cathy Yardley (ebook and audio)


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:


Stacking the Shelves (636)

Well, this is certainly a group of pretty curious books that I’m looking forward to! Although not all in the same way – of course. I think the pretty cover in this bunch is The Amalfi Curse – I love all the blues in it. The book or that should be books, I’m most curious about are Death at the White Hart, because the author was one of the recent showrunners for Doctor Who as well as Broadchurch (probably the more relevant experience to this book!) and Dana Stabenow’s Eye of Isis series because the setting is so, so far from the Alaska mysteries that she’s known for. The two I’m most looking forward to are Infinite Archive because I’m enjoying the series, and Roll for Romance because it reminds me a lot of a previous book I really liked, Role Playing by Cathy Yardley, and I’m hoping for something equally good!

What are you looking forward to reading this week?

For Review:
The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner
Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall
Infinite Archive (Midsolar Murders #3) by Mur Lafferty
Roll for Romance by Lenora Woods

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Death of an Eye (Eye of Isis #1) by Dana Stabenow
Disappearance of a Scribe (Eye of Isis #2) by Dana Stabenow
Recluce Tales (Saga of Recluce) by L.E. Modesitt Jr.
Theft of an Idol (Eye of Isis #3) by Dana Stabenow


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:


Stacking the Shelves (635)

We’re having a SNOW DAY here in Atlanta on Friday as I write this. An actual, honest to goodness snow day. So far there’s been 2 inches of wet stuff, enough to coat everything. It will probably ice over and then melt, but right now we’re living in a winter wonderland. All the better to stay in, curl up with a warm cat and a cup of hot cocoa, and READ!

The two prettiest covers this week are Last Dance Before Dawn and The Library at Hellebore, with a honorable – or, considering the series, dishonorable – mention for Red Seas Under Red Skies. After all, that’s book 2 in the Gentleman Bastards series, so calling anything about it ‘honorable’ is most likely a stretch.

Although that is one of the two books I’m most curious about this week. I picked up Red Seas because the series it’s part of, which begins with the oft recommended The Lies of Locke Lamora, is mentioned as a readalike for The Silverblood Promise, which I finally started in audio and am absolutely loving so far. The other book I’m curious about is The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, the first book in the Dearly Beloathed duology. I fully admit that I grabbed that one for the SERIES title, and I’m really curious to see how it goes.

I’d have said that the book I’m most looking forward to was The Hero She Loves, but I finished that yesterday and it was terrific and I need to get the review written . The other book I’m really looking forward to I believe might be ITS series ender, and that’s Last Dance Before Dawn.

I should have plenty of time to make a dent in SOMETHING this weekend! What about you? What’s in your stack?

For Review:
The Hero She Loves (Unbroken Heroes #5) by Anna Hackett
Holmes & Moriarty by Gareth Rubin
The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy (Dearly Beloathed #1) by Brigitte Knightley
Last Dance Before Dawn (Nightingale Mysteries #4) by Katharine Schellman
The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw
Volatile Memory by Seth Haddon

Borrowed from the Library:
Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastards #2) by Scott Lynch


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:


Stacking the Shelves (634)

Happy New Year!

I thought the stacks might get back to normal after the holidays but I didn’t expect it to be quite this instantaneous!

If you like SF/F you might want to check out Tachyon Publications 30th anniversary celebration. They’re giving away an ebook every month to newsletter subscribers. This month’s book is Jane Yolen’s The Transfigured Hart. And there’s plenty more where that came from!

The Transfigured Hart is also a contender for this week’s prettiest cover, along with Alchemy and a Cup of Tea and Weyward. The books I’m most curious about in this stack are A Case of Mice and Murder, a historical mystery I picked up on a recommendation from First Clue Reviews, and Death on the Caldera because I love SF mysteries.

The title I’m most looking forward to in this stack is Pearl City, to absolutely no one’s surprise at all after last week’s review of Blood Jade.

What about you? Has your stack recovered from the holidays? Have you?

For Review:
Alchemy and a Cup of Tea (Tomes & Tea #4) by Rebecca Thorne
A Case of Mice and Murder (Trials of Gabriel Ward #1) by Sally Smith
The Conjurer’s Wife by Sarah Penner
Death on the Caldera by Emily Paxman
The Folded Sky (White Space #3) by Elizabeth Bear
Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove
Pearl City (Phoenix Hoard #3) by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle
The Second Chance Convenience Store by Ho-Yeon Kim, translated by Janet Hong
The Transfigured Hart by Jane Yolen

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Ancestral Night (White Space #1) by Elizabeth Bear
Shadow of the Smoking Mountain (Chronicles of Hanuvar #3) by Howard Andrew Jones (ebook and audio)
Weyward by Emilia Hart (ebook and audio)


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:


Stacking the Shelves (633)

This is OMG the last and final Stacking the Shelves for 2024. It’s a bit on the puny side, isn’t it? That’s the way things go at the end of the year. Not much new is being published – like, not at all – and not many people are feeding new content into NetGalley and Edelweiss. I’m not expecting much for next week’s stack either because holiday recovery/post-holiday doldrums. But I expect the stack after that to be at least a bit bigger.

This week’s covers, few as they are, all elicit one sort of feels or another. The prettiest covers, IMHO, although they are absolutely NOT pretty in the same ways, are Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me (also awards for BEST TITLE and book I’m most eagerly anticipating this week!) and Small Town Hero.

Very much on the other hand, the cover of Engines of War is kind of ‘meh’. I keep confusing this one with the previous books in the series, Engines of Empire and Engines of Chaos, and the COVERS are ALL very ‘meh’ and all ‘meh’ in the same way. The books, however, well, Engines of Empire drove me bananas but it was never ‘meh’. We’ll see about books 2 and 3.

The remaining books, I Think I’m in Love with an Alien, Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil and The Last Vigilant, well, I’m terribly curious about all of them but not in the same way. Alien seems like it might be a LOT like I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com by Kimberly Lemming which is coming out in February. The COVER of Alien, however, reminds me more than a bit of one of the romances in Mass Effect. (#IYKYK). We’ll see.

Isabella Nagg has a black cat on the cover, which plucked my heartstrings, and its blurb reads like a cozy fantasy. Also it’s on the short side and sometimes those are just right. The Last Vigilant has simply grabbed me by the cover and won’t let go. That picture, of the young knight and the old wizard riding off to war hints at so many fascinating stories and I NEED to find out what happened!

Did you get any good books as presents? What’s been added to your stack this week?

For Review:
Engines of War (Age of Uprising #3) by R.S. Ford
Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me (Dark Lord Davi #2) by Django Wexler
I Think I’m in Love with an Alien by Ann Aguirre
Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire
The Last Vigilant (Kingdom of Oak and Steel #1) by Mark A. Latham
Small Town Hero by Linda Lael Miller and Maisey Yates


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:


Stacking the Shelves (632)

I have a new category for judging book covers this week, because The cover of The Baby Dragon Café goes beyond pretty and straight into ADORABLE. I also can’t wait to read it so I’m really happy that it comes out in January – at least in ebook – so I don’t need to. To compare, Faithbreaker‘s cover is MERELY pretty, perhaps even verging on beautiful, but it is NOT adorable.

The other books I’m most looking forward to, besides that cute Baby Dragon, are The Cat Who Saved the Library and Chaos. Although, come to think of it, a cat attempting to save a library probably would result in chaos. Both books are parts of series where I loved the first books (The Cat Who Saved Books and Calamity, respectively) so I’m happy to see more of both.

The books I’m most curious about are by process of elimination but both truly so in different ways, The Final Stand and Twice as Dead. The Final Stand because I do enjoy the occasional military space opera type SF and I’ve never read either this author nor, I believe anything from this publisher, so I’m intrigued on both counts. I’m seriously curious about Twice as Dead because the cover looks SO “old school” urban fantasy, while the author is best known for his well researched alternate history, so I had to check to make sure this was a new book and not a reprint. It’s new, it’s different for this author, and I’m terribly curious. I also happen to love “old school” urban fantasy so I have hopes this will bring readers – and perhaps even publishers – back to that genre.

For Review:
The Baby Dragon Café (Baby Dragon #1) by A.T. Qureshi
The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
Chaos (Uncharted Hearts #3) by Constance Fay
Faithbreaker (Fallen Gods #3) by Hannah Kaner
The Final Stand (Nexus House #1) by Rick Campbell
Twice as Dead (City of Shadows #1) by Harry Turtledove


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:


Stacking the Shelves (631)

A really short stack this time around, and ALL coincidentally at the end of the alphabet. My stacks tend to get short at the end of the year because they’re usually all eARCs that I get from NetGalley and Edelweiss. I’ve always assumed that the publishing folks take a bit of time off at the end of the year just like the rest of us, because not much gets added from now until after New Year’s.

Of course, is you happen to be someone who RECEIVES books for the holidays, your stack could get blissfully huge.

In spite of ONLY having FOUR books this time around, I’ve actually got something to say about each of them. The ‘pretty cover’ award is split evenly between The Sirens and Tideborn. Shadow of the Solstice is the book I’m most looking forward to because I’ve been looking forward to the next book in the Leaphorn, Chee and now Manuelito series, and the next and the next and the next, for decades at this point.

And the book that has me intensely curious is Six Wild Crowns because its based, I suspect loosely based but we’ll see, on the court of Henry VIII and I can’t wait to learn how THAT’s going to work!

For Review:
Shadow of the Solstice (Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito #28) by Anne Hillerman
The Sirens by Emilia Hart (eARC and audio)
Six Wild Crowns (Queens of Elben #1) by Holly Race
Tideborn (Drowned World #2) by Eliza Chan


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: