Very much apropos of Stacking the Shelves, I learned a new acronym from author Olivia Dade when I was prepping the post for Second Chance Romance earlier this week. I’ll confess that I feel both seen and a bit insulted at the same time. The acronym is STABLE or SABLE, and it’s short for “STash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy”. I think it was initially used by crafters, but it absolutely applies to book stashes because I hit that point a LONG time ago. Howsomever, I decided just as long ago that I’m collecting books to read based on the maxim (quoting Calvin and Hobbes cartoonist Bill Watterson) on one of my (late) aunt’s sweatshirts – “God put me on this earth to accomplish a certain number of things. I am so far behind I can never die” and yes, I do get the irony.

This size of this stack certainly doesn’t help, it merely adds more fuel to the (virtual) fire. And this bookaholic is just FINE with that!

For Review:
And Now, Back to You (Heartstrings #2) by B.K. Borison
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
The Bookstore Diaries by Susan Mallery
Burn the World Down (Unsanctioned #1) by Anna Hackett
A Crown of Stars by Shana Abe
The First Step (Thousand Li #1) by Tao Wong
The Girl and the Gravedigger (Leopold von Herzfeldt #2) by Oliver Pötzsch translated by Lisa Reinhardt
Green & Deadly Things by Jenn Lyons
The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow
Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall
Intergalactic Feast (Flavour Hacker #2) by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
The Iron Garden Sutra (Cosmic Wheel #1) by A.D. Sui
The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan
The Library of Amorlin (Age of Beasts #1) by Kalyn Josephson
The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum (Harriet Stone #1) by Valerie Wilson Wesley (book + audio)
Old Guns (Old Guns #1) by J.N. Chaney and Nicholas Sansbury Smith
The Politician (DS George Cross #4) by Tim Sullivan
River of Bones and Other Stories by Rebecca Roanhorse
That’s What Friends Are For by Wade Rouse (AKA Viola Shipman)
Thirty Feet Under by William Wodhams
The Tumbling Girl (Variety Palace Mysteries #1) by Bridget Walsh

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

A couple of these covers transcend merely pretty into absolutely beautiful. I’m thinking of The Astral Library and The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop and realizing that at least part of the reason I think they’re pretty because they feature books so prominently, in one way or another. I guess you can take the woman out of the library but not the librarian out of the woman – or something like that.

There are also a couple of ‘merely’ pretty covers in both the crowns, Crown City and Crown of War and Shadow, as well as Nightshade and Oak and The Rainseekers.

It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that I think that Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter and The Calico Cat at the Chibineko Kitchen are really, really cute considering their subjects.

The surprising thing about this particular stack, well, there are two surprising things. All the books in this stack will be published (or republished) in February 2026. And, in spite of having already read one third of the stack, there are still books I’m really, really looking forward to, including the previously mentioned Astral Library and Calico Cat, along with The Patient and Stolen in Death.

February looks like it will be a terrific reading month. Meanwhile, the holiday season is upon us!

For Review:
After the Fall by Edward Ashton
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
The Astral Library by Kate Quinn
Boy, with Accidental Dinosaur by Ian McDonald
The Calico Cat at the Chibineko Kitchen (Meals to Remember at the Chibineko Kitchen #2) by Yuta Takahashi, translated by Cat Anderson
Crown City (Japantown Mystery #2) by Naomi Hirahara
Crown of War and Shadow (Kingdoms of the Compass #1) by J.R. Ward
The Daughter Who Remains (She Who Knows #3) by Nnedi Okorafor
The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride
Love Binds (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #4) by Cynthia St. Aubin
The Midnight Taxi by Yosha Gunasekera
The Mysterious Death of Junetta Plum (Harriet Stone #1) by Valerie Wilson Wesley
Nightshade and Oak by Molly O’Neill
The Obake Code by Makana Yamamoto
The Patient (DS George Cross #3) by Tim Sullivan
The Rainseekers by Matthew Kressel
The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan
Sentient (Ice Plague Wars #2) by Michael Nayak
Stolen in Death (In Death #62) by J.D. Robb
To Kill a Cook by W.M. Akers
The Universe Box by Michael Swanwick
The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop by Takuya Asakura, translated by Yuka Maeno

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

This stack has a whole lot more pretty than it does “pretty weird”, not that there’s not a bit of that mixed in as well. (I’m looking at you, Monster in the Moonlight and Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead – which I also picked up for the title.)

The pretties in this stack look like The Elsewhere Express, A Hole in the Sky (you’ve seen the TITLE before recently, but book titles are not copyrightable so this is an entirely different book), How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days (another one that was also picked for its title) and The Poet Empress. Admittedly, The Demon of Beausoleil, Enchanting the Fae Queen, A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang and Nine Goblins are looking pretty cute as well, if not quite ‘pretty’.

The books I’m most looking forward to reading in this stack are Make It Out Alive, The Poet Empress, Smeg and We Are All Guilty Here, while the titles I’m pleased as punch that I’ve already read, because they were excellent, are The Demon of Beausoleil, The Elsewhere Express, and T. Kingfisher’s Nine Goblins.

The year is starting to wind down, and more of the books in this stack are being published – or re-published – in 2026 than are already out in 2025. It looks like it’s going to be a great year for reading. What are you looking forward to in YOUR stack?

For Review:
Artifact Space (Arcana Imperii #1) by Miles Cameron
The Demon of Beausoleil by Mari Costa
Detour (Detour #1) by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart
The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao
Enchanting the Fae Queen (Queens of Villainy #2) by Stephanie Burgis
A Field Guide to Murder by Michelle L. Cullen
For We Are Many (Bobiverse #2) by Dennis E. Taylor
Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds
A Hole in the Sky (Arkship Trilogy #1) by Peter F. Hamilton
How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jessie Sylva
Love Lies (Tails from the Alpha Art Gallery #3) by Cynthia St. Aubin
Make It Out Alive (Quinn & Costa #7) by Allison Brennan
A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa, translated by Slin Jung
Monster in the Moonlight (Monster Hunter Mystery #4) by Annelise Ryan
Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher
No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah
The Other Side of Now by Paige Harbison
The Poet Empress by Shen Tao
Sister Svangerd and the Not Quite Dead (Loyal Opposition #1) by K.J. Parker
Smeg by Diane Wishart
We Are All Guilty Here (North Falls #1) by Karin Slaughter

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

There are certainly some pretty covers in this stack, but that’s not the important bit this time around. Instead, this is a stack of books that I’m just plain looking forward to reading, to the point where a whole bunch of these are going straight into my “Most Anticipated” post for 2026.

There are lots of books that are next in series in series that I just can’t wait to read. Including, but very definitely not limited to, The Cyclist, Fire Must Burn, Inside Man, A Lion’s Ransom, The Shop on Hidden Lane, Testimony of Mute Things AND Through Gates of Garnet and Gold. OMG that’s a LOT! I just heard the virtually towering TBR pile let out an audible, if virtual, groan at the very thought!

What about you? Is your stack groaning as it looks towards 2026?

For Review:
Alchemised by SenLinYu
City of Others (DEUS Files #1) by Jared Poon
The Cyclist (DS George Cross #2) by Tim Sullivan
Crossroads of Ravens (Witcher #0.1) by Andrzej Sapkowski
The Cyprian (Elemental Masters #18) by Mercedes Lackey
Departure 37 by Scott Carson
Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun
Fire Must Burn (Sparks & Bainbridge #8) by Allison Montclair
A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper
The Guest in Room 120 by Sara Ackerman
Inside Man (PAR Unit #2) by John McMahon
A Lion’s Ransom (Owen Archer #16) by Candace Robb
Mist and Divide (Soulquake #1) by M.E. Shotwell
The Murder at World’s End (Stockingham & Pike #1) by Ross Montgomery
Murder in Constantinople by A.E. Golden (book + audio)
Remember That Day (Ravenswood #5) by Mary Balogh
Secrets of the First School (Edinburgh Nights #5) by T.L. Huchu (book + audio)
Shadow’s Heart (Immortals After Dark #19) by Kresley Cole
The Shop on Hidden Lane by Jayne Ann Krentz
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Wayward Children #11) by Seanan McGuire

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Testimony of Mute Things (Penric & Desdemona #15) by Lois McMaster Bujold

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

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: