June 2nd is my 8th wedding anniversary. But that's old news...here are some NEW books to be excited about!

Bookstore Girls by Kei Aono 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you love heart-warming stories of found family or stories set in a bookstore.

Meeting New People by Daniel M. Lavery 3.25/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy stories with gossip and older protagonists...especially ones that may be the problem.

The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Young-Do 3/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy fantasy from a non-western lens. Fantasy and I are still in fight so it wasn't particularly for me, but I'm thankful we have this finally translated from Korean.

And ones that I'm excited to get my hands on:

Muneca by Cynthia Gomez

Why it interests me: gothic and queer, yes please.

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

Why it interests me: a speculative fiction take on an immigration story. I was happy to see that it was an Aardvark Book Club pick for this month.

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

Why it interests me: messy young queer people.

Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas

Why it interests me: it's been praised for beautiful prose, and is said to "challenge us to confront and reinvent questions of language, sex, prejudice, identity, and the shifting scales of morality."

Jellyfish Problem by Tessa Yang

Why it interests me: it sounds strange (a jellyfish that changes people?). I'm in.

There's Only One Sin in Hollywood by Rasheed Newson

Why it interests me: another gay, Black historical fiction book from the author of My Government Means to Kill Me.

The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham

Why it interests me: I've followed Cindy's process to get here on social media and am so excited to see it out in the world. This is queer sleeping beauty retelling.

Hello Froomies and Friends!

It is Pride Month and a new month! We are finally shifting into the summer, and I am loving it so far! So many fun plans as well as planning all of my outfits and such for July when my Ren Faire comes back!

And I am sooooooo glad to be back!

As touched on in one of my most recent posts, I am slowly getting back into routine posting, as well as sharing this focus on my Instagram as well. I want to challenge myself to not just focus on posting whenever I finish a book, but adding more of my creative side when it comes to my bookish content. This could be integrating fashion once more where I bring out the vibes of a book with my clothing, doing more short form content like DOBS, or just chronicling during my reads so I can snapshot the moments that really stick with me.

(Is it just me or do you also forget a book after reading it, but you know you loved it?)

So, adding more smaller quests when it comes to my bookish journey, I think will help me to not be overwhelmed and get stuck in that mentality where I need to "keep up with the Joneses".

Anywho, here is the schedule I am planning again!

Monday: Bi Weekly reading goals/plans. Planning to give myself more than just a week for any goals as well as time for the fun and short reads!

Wednesday: I am still planning to do the weekly check ins, using this for any book reviews/book unboxing. I will also pose a poll or question for my Fairy Circle friends as a writing challenge that will be posted on Saturdays, as well as any prep work

Friday: Fantasy Friday is back!

Saturday: As previously stated, I will be posting snippets and character analysis on my writing or working on the writing prompt that was voted for on Wednesday.

Okay, now that the technical things are out of the way, let us talk TBR for Pride Month!

The books that I am aiming to read within the first two weeks are:

Queerleaders by Olivia A. Cole and Ashley Woodfolk

You X Me by Ayla Vejdani

A Prince Among Pirates by Katie Abdou

Galaxy: The Prettiest Star by Jadzia Axelrod & Jess Taylor

Now this is not an exhaustive list of everything that I am planning/wanting to read during the month of June, these are some books that have stuck out to me the most and I want to include. Especially stories about Nonbinary and Trans characters as well as explorations of other identities within the LGBTQIA+ umbrella.

I cannot wait for all the fun to be had this summer as well as getting back into a routine that works best for me. I want to continue creating this cozy community with you as I continue growing in my whimsy and creativity.

I adore all of you. Stay safe, keep being you, and happy Pride!

I only care about books where women go insane. That's primarily what I read, and what I want to read, and what I write and want to write. This is because I have always wanted to go insane. 

Since becoming a mother in January, I've realized that all I needed to do to go insane was have a baby. 

A baby is a little unit of madness. There is no reasoning with a baby. They are thoroughly dysregulated — digestion, sleep, limb control. They rely on you to shepherd them into the realm of the living. This is how we eat. And this is how we sleep. And this is how we distinguish between day and night. And this is how we receive comfort when we are upset. And this is how we come to know and depend on one another. 

Onboarding someone to human existence would be a tough job if I were in peak condition. But I did it as most mothers do: my brain demented by lack of sleep, my taint in tatters.

Delivery was my first taste of the madness.

After pushing for a couple hours to no avail, the OBGYN on call informed me that my baby was “massive.” This news startled me. At the advice of my OBGYN (who wasn't on call and therefore not present), I hadn't done a third trimester ultrasound because my pregnancy was progressing normally without complications. Up until this moment everything indicated my baby was of average size. 

The doctor added that my baby’s shoulder was stuck on my pelvic bone (this is called “shoulder dystocia” if you want to look it up on TikTok and freak yourself out – no judgment here, it's one of my favorite pastimes). To get the baby out, I’d need either an episiotomy or a C-section, and my pushes in the next ten minutes would determine which. 

Suddenly, the room flooded with people in scrubs. In my memory, I blink and there they were, cluttering the previously empty room. I don't know what their jobs were and how they could help me. They just quietly watched me.

As I mustered all of my energy into each push, my doula, OB and nurse insisted over and over and over with unfailing enthusiasm: “You can do this!” 

Why are you saying that? I thought. What evidence do you have that I can do this? I didn't dare say this out loud.

Now I understand that this is the unhinged contradiction at the heart of motherhood: You are given an impossible task. You are told over and over that you can do it. When you express doubt or anxiety or despair, you risk being pathologized.

My plan was to enter the first weeks of motherhood on the lookout for anxiety and depression. I was determined to scan myself frequently for unrecognizable thoughts and behavior.

As soon as I was thrust into early motherhood, I found this understanding of postpartum anxiety and depression absurd. You know what was insane? The idea that anyone would not feel anxious or depressed in these circumstances. 

My vulva and butthole alternated between aching and burning. Even laughing sent a jolt of pain through my anus. When I told a lactation consultant that I found breastfeeding painful, she cocked her head and asked if I had especially sensitive nipples. I slept in mercilessly short bursts, awoken either by imaginary cries or real cries. My body seemed unable to refresh on this little sleep. To be awake meant brimming with sluggish confusion and dread.

I fantasized constantly about abandoning my life. How would I do it? I pictured jumping in my car and driving far, far away. But I wanted to bring my baby, whom I felt an opioid-level attachment to. I'd bring my baby with me, yes, but, somehow, when I was far, far away from my home, I wouldn't have to breastfeed or stay up all night, and I'd have an entirely new body. 

I can't even come up with a competent fucking fantasy, I seethed to myself.

I was absolutely certain I could not go on. I could not tolerate having milk sucked out of me every 2-3 hours – neither the physical discomfort nor the constricting schedule. I could not spend another hour rocking my baby with no guarantee of relief. I could not function on so little sleep. 

"I'm shocked more babies don't die," I told a friend when he called to check in.

"I mean, that does happen," he said with a nervous laugh.

"Not nearly as often as makes sense to me now," I replied.

Reading the book Matrescence by Lucy Jones was one of my sole comforts.

In it, she writes: "As a society, we just don't seem to be very interested in the actual flesh and bones of the maternal experience. Maternal subjectivity has, until very recently, been almost entirely absent from Western philosophy, literature and culture. I hadn't read about it in any of the core texts in my English literature degree."

I got a MFA in creative writing. None of our assigned short stories or novels addressed motherhood in depth. We were always talking about finding the universal in the specific. Mining life for magical moments that unexpectedly sparked empathy and revealed profound emotional truths. 

None of my life experience from before held a fucking candle to these raw months. I will never be done processing it. I could write about it forever. How has anyone kept silent about this?

I had a friend whose newborn was deemed underweight at one of her first pediatrician appointments. The pediatrician informed her that she'd need to "triple feed" her baby, which means breastfeed the infant every two hours, then bottle feed the baby formula and then pump to encourage her breasts to produce more milk. 

By my estimation, it would take two hours to do all of this – nurse, then give the baby a bottle and then pump – meaning this schedule effectively guaranteed no sleep. It demanded round-the-clock physical and mental labor.  

At the same appointment, my friend had to fill out the Edinburgh survey. I know because I had to at my baby's appointments too. We were asked to rank how much we identified with the following sentences:

I look forward with enjoyment to things. What should I look forward to? I alternated between changing my diaper and the baby's diaper. Nobody could give me a clear answer on when this would change.

I have been so unhappy that I've had trouble sleeping. I wasn't sleeping because my baby wouldn't sleep, and that made me unhappy. My sleep-deprived mind couldn't sort out the causal relationship here. Which came first? The chicken or the egg? The unhappiness or the lack of sleep?

I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong. This baby depended on me for food, sleep, hygiene, comfort. Was it irrational to have a pronounced sense of culpability? 

I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. Sorry, what was funny about all of this? (I actually did find many moments hysterical, like watching my baby stare in amazement at an illustration of just a white circle on a black background, but I blame delirium.)

In Matrescence, Lucy Jones writes, "Why are we sending a high-risk group off the spend an unknown period of time at home alone, where they must look after vulnerable infants and recover from the trauma of giving birth, while burdened with loneliness, lack of sleep, and a shedload of impossible cultural expectations, including the imperative to enjoy every minute of it? Are these the actions of a responsible or functional society?"

When they tell you, “You can do this!”, what they actually mean is, “You have to do this." 

What they should say is, "You have no choice but to reconfigure yourself in such a way that you can do this.” 

I would have told myself, "You're right. You cannot do this. What's being asked of you is unfeasible. Your despair is normal. You have every right to question platitudes, doctors, reality itself. And also, little by little, your brain and body will transform and adapt. The process is unprecedentedly painful and gradual. It will render you unrecognizable. You will run yourself dry of your resilience. You will continue somehow. This is insanity."

It’s not insane that mothers think they can’t do it. What’s insane is that mothers do do it.

Hey hey Sickos, the Monday Update/Weekly Checkpoint is back after a brief hiatus due to day drinking all Memorial Day weekend. Tell me what you've been reading and plan to read and let's boogie!

READING

REVIEW

THE ROMAN EMNPIRE IN CRISIS, 248-260: WHEN THE GODS ABANDONED ROME by PAUL N. PEARSON (historical nonfiction)

Progress: Finished

This attempted to be a mix of academic and popular history and it pulled that off pretty well. I was concerned how interesting Pearson could make this as most historians just blitz through this run. The first half was super strong when working through Philip the Arab and Decius, and the rest wasn't too shabby either. Was not as bored as I thought I'd be and I become obsessed with that scamp Decius, so that's worth somethin'. Falls in the 3.5 - 3.75 range with a yes recommendation for Roman nuts.

PARABLE OF THE TALENTS [EARTHSEED #2] by OCTAVIA E. BUTLER (speculative fiction)

Progress: Finished

I was promised this was bleaker than Parable of the Sower and damn did it deliver on that. I did a full review of those two books on YouTube so I'll keep it brief. Loved it. 5 stars.

EMPIRES OF THE STEPPES: A HISTORY OF THE NOMADIC TRIBES WHO SHAPED CIVILIZATION by KENNETH W. HARL (historical nonfiction)

Progress: 117/410

For the early portions of this, I've been using The Horse, the Wheel, and Language as a supplementary reference because it goes into much greater detail on the archaeological evidence and the development of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) languages. Not that this one isn't packed with detail, it's just much more brisk and sweeping.

I've been irritated by the formatting (which is just massive paragraphs with no subheadings) and how Rick from Walking Dead voice HAAAARL will jump around the timelines within the same topic, but the information is excellent. I loved the section on the Scythians and Xiongnu and as I mentioned yesterday, will be doing some Scythian content regarding their conflicts with the Persians. So basically it's flawed in execution, but great with insight so far.

AUGUSTUS by JOHN WILLIAMS

Progress: 121/305

The only thing that could make this better is if it were a little sluttier, because the Romans, especially the men, were nothing if not enormous, messy sluts. By that I mean I'd love a bit more raunchiness and humanity in these communications between characters. That said, I understand why that's not a realistic ask. This is, after all, a novel assembled from letters, diary entries, and official decrees ("epistolary" is the fancy term), so there's only so much room for that sort of thing. A man can dream though.

Anyway I'm a meme of a man because the least predictable thing has happened; I'm loving it. I wouldn't jump into this without any previous knowledge of the period but if you fw ancient Rome you'll probably love it too.

PREVIEW

Once I finish these I'll likely go right to the Fiction/History Sickos Book Club picks, which will be a re-read of The Spear Cuts Through Water and And AND And the Band Played On.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I finished my Breaking Bad re-watch, and I'm gonna rank the seasons 5 > 4 > 2 > 3 > 1. There's a stretch in those last two seasons that's just f'n elite. I watched El Camino to cap it off and I've been using Better Call Saul as my background show while I rotate between games like Disco Elysium, Old World, and Tropico 6.

My build for Disco Elysium this time around is a communist, druggie, Disco superstar. Old World I'm only just learning as I'm hoping it takes away some of the pain of Civilization VII bombing. Tropico 6 is yet another run through the core missions and DLC as we await a Tropico 7 release date. If you've ever wanted to be a dictator of a small island (and whomst amongst us hasn't?), Tropico is your game.

It's officially Aggressive Cut Szn so if I'm miserable in the Discord just blame it on the 1500 calories a day during the week. K bai

Happy pride month, everyone! Last year I featured only queer authors on Rebel Ever After during June. This year... every author on the podcast so far has written a queer romance novel or several! Funny how that happens when your goal is to feature progressive voices in the genre who don't receive as much publishing support as their peers.

There is a flood of phenomenal queer romances coming to shelves in the next few months. Here are some upcoming books written by previous REA guests that you should support. Pre-orders make a huge difference, from helping an author reach best-seller lists to signaling to their publisher that it's worth investing more in marketing and promotion. If you can't pre-order at this time, consider adding the book on GoodReads, requesting that your local library stock the book, or simply sharing this post with a friend.

Cheers queers, and happy reading!

Thank you to everyone who voted for our Q3 book club books! If you are not a member, and are interested in how my book club works, check out the pinned post where I explain it all! The winners and months are going to be:

July: Jade city by Fonda Lee

AugustL The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem

September: Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

If you are a member here on Bindery and want to participate in the Discord server/Discord portion of the book club, but have not gotten into Discord, you can either check your emails from when you Joined as a Bindery member for the Discord invite, or click here to join the channel (there are a few application questions to ensure no bots are getting in!).

Also, for those interested, we will be having our in-person discussion on Sunday, June 7 at 8 PM EST. That runs through th video chat channel on Discord, and would love to have you all there to discuss this really interesting book! If you are seeing this and are not a member, you do need to be a member (free or paid tier) to join in our book club, so join on up!

Finally, remember you can buy books through the links here on Bindery, buy through my Bookshop.org affiliate store, or buy through Pango for used books and get $5 off your first order of $10 or more and it all helps me out! Looking forward to some great reads in the next quarter!

We are officially launching a brand-new monthly author spotlight series on the blog! Every month, we’ll be featuring a new author with an upcoming book.

We are kicking things off with features centered around July, so if you have a book releasing in July or anytime close to it we want to feature you!

We know how exhausting promo weeks can be, which is why our Q&As are 100% written. That means zero Zoom fatigue. Just fun, thoughtful, deep-dive questions sent straight to your inbox for you to answer whenever and in whatever pajamas you want! ☕️📚

How to get involved:

• Authors: Leave a comment below with your book info and release date if you'd like to be featured!

• Know an author? Share this post or tag them in the comments below.

• Readers: What upcoming titles are at the very top of your TBR? Let us know so we can invite those authors to the blog!

❗️If you have any questions, concerns, or need further details, please feel free to reach out to us directly at thepageladies6@gmail.com

#bookblog #authorinterview #bookreleases #booktbr #indieauthors

Happy Monday! For Must Read Monday this week, I'm featuring The Actual Star by Monica Byrne.

This is one of those books where I finished it and just kind of had to stare at the wall for awhile while I processed it.

The Actual Star is a massive undertaking, telling the stories of three sets of people in three timelines each a thousand years apart. We watch as their stories braid, repeat, differ, and merge. I saw elements of Ursula LeGuin, Octavia E. Butler, Simon Jimenez, and more from across decades of sci-fi and fantasy literature in this story (and know I do not invoke these greats lightly!)

Often with multi-timeline books, I find myself wishing to get back to a particular story, but here I felt deeply invested in each timeline, and was on the edge of my seat as the stories came together. It’s quite a feat to make a slow paced, 600+ page novel a page turner.

The worldbuilding is intricate but never bogged down in the details, and it weaves in a little sci-fi, a little fantasy, and a little mystery as you begin to piece together the overarching story.

Everyone has a first Tingle. This was mine! I tried Bury Our Gays and wasn't in the right mindspace so I dnf'd it, and had initially dnf'd this too! But I came back and I'm glad I did! So let's talk about it.

SUMMARY:

Four years ago, an unthinkable disaster occurred. In what was later known as the Low-Probability Event, eight million people were killed in a single day, each of them dying in improbable, bizarre ways: strangled by balloon ropes, torn apart by exploding manhole covers, attacked by a chimpanzee wielding a typewriter. A day of freak accidents that proved anything is possible, no matter the odds. Luck is real now, and it's not always good.

Vera, a former statistics and probability professor, lost everything that day, and she still struggles to make sense of the unbelievable catastrophe. To her, the LPE proved that the God of Order is dead and nothing matters anymore.

When Special Agent Layne shows up on Vera’s doorstep, she learns he's investigating a suspiciously—and statistically impossibly—lucky casino. He needs her help to prove the casino’s success is connected to the deaths of millions, and it's Vera's last chance to make sense of a world that doesn’t.

Because what's happening in Vegas isn't staying there, and she's the only thing that stands between the world and another deadly improbability.

WHAT WORKED (for me!):

• Characterization: I loved Vera's character. I also love her arc very much. I felt it was appropriate and well-structured!

• Pace: This is a borderline thing for me on this one because I do feel like the pace lagged a bit in the middle, but overall the pacing was good!

• Absurdity: LOVED IT. I need a movie version of this movie like stat.

WHAT DIDN'T (for me!):

• All the stats talk. I understand why, but dang. My focus drifted during those sections. I'm not a mathematician!

• The length. I think it could have been a bit shorter to help with the pacing issues I mentioned above.

BUY, BORROW, OR PASS?

I think this is one you can BUY. It's short at like 267 pages, the cover is gorgeous, and it's just enough of a whirlwind of a book to keep you entertained.

I'm eager to read his other two horror novels now, so I'm gonna be getting those as soon as I can. If you've read this one, what were your thoughts? If you haven't and you're looking for absurd horror (definitely different from humorous horror), then I recommend it!

Till next time!

-Ryn

Happy Sunday, mis internet amigxs,

I wanted to kickstart you summer reading with ALL the Latine books on my radar releasing in June, but before that, some book club announcements!

We will be chatting with Natalia Hernandez TOMORROW NIGHT on Zoom! Questions for Natalia are open until 8 PM EST on Discord.

Book club announcements coming up on social media this week, but here is a list of our book club books for the next few months:

• June fiction: And I'll Take Your Eyes Out by A.M. Sosa

• June nonfiction: continue reading Accordion Eulogies by Noe Alvarez

• July Summer School reads:

  • 1 month to read P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Diaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau

  • July - August read: Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

• August fiction: The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

• August nonfiction: continue reading Cuba: An American History

• October: You Should Have Been Nicer To My Mom by Vincent Tirado

September book club pick poll will be up by the 2nd week of June.

CHISME

You'll be receiving an email this week telling you about an initiative I'm starting in July for Lectores and Libritos members. I'm so excited to finally spill the tea on this!

And finally, for ALL THE JUNE LATE BOOKS ON MY RADAR....be prepared to scroll!

June 2nd

Horror

Muneca by Cynthia Gomez (Audiobook) Adult Horror vivid, surreal gothic about a queer latine working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process

YA Fantasy

Their Will Undone by RJ Valideperas (Audiobook) coming of RAGE about an imprisoned girl rescued from certain death by a duty bound soldier, who's forced to choose between becoming a bride or a weapon (forced proximity, political intrigue, dark magic AND dommed love)

Middle Grade

Stream by Aida Salazaar (Audiobook) Dual POV novel in verse about 2 teens sent to Mexico to unplug

Young Adult Contemporary

Monarchs In The Wild by Israel Moya (Audiobook) Young Adult : A teen searches for a way out of his small California town after witnessing a classmate's death

Fantasy

Beneath The Sacred Well by Rocio Carranza: Historical fantasy novella--the Mummy meets Zorro in 1920's Yucatan

Mystery

The Adventure of Juan Planchard by Jonathan Jakubowicz (Audiobook) Wolf of Wall Street meets Scarface

Short Stories

Amarisa's Cooking Pot: Tales of Life in All Its Wonders by Désirée Zamorano: Short Stories from the author of The Amado Women

June 9th

Cathedrals by Claudia Pinero and translated by Frances Riddle

Historical fiction

Cages by Chantel Acevedo: Adult fiction debut from Cuban-Amerian author, Acevedo, follows 1960's zookeeper in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, an exile in 1960's swinging London and a dying man in 1980's AIDS Era Miami.

It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo (Audiobook) Peter Pan x Stephen King's It -- twisted horror retelling of a childhood fairytale set during WWI

Cat Love by Tomas Q. Morin (Audiobook) Notes from an Underground meet Kafka's "The Burrow"

Paperback Release - Queer nonfiction

So Many Stars by Caro DeRobertis (Audiobook)

June 16th

YA Fantasy

The Hero Twins in the Realm of Fright By David Bowles, Charlene Bowles: Fantasy (Tales of the Feathered Serpent #3)

Middle Grade Fiction

Tangled Roots & Wild Dreams by Angela Velez (Audiobook) Love letter to overthinking crafting girlies

YA Novel In Verse

Together We See by Ari Tison (Audiobook) Indigenous murder-mystery set in Costa Rica told in prose and focused on missing and murdered Indigenous peoples

Translated Literary Fiction

Medea Sang Me A Corrido by Dahlia De La Cerda and translated by Heather Cleary and Julia Sanches: A punk revival of Medea as a meddling anti-angel of birth and death

June 23rd

History

Cuba: A Brief History by Sergio Guerra-Vilaboy and Oscar Loyola-Vega (Audiobook)

Translated Fiction

Animal Spiral by Luis Othoniel Rosa and translated by Katie Marya: Puerto Rican translated fiction about the post-colonial birth, life, and death of the collective consciousness known as the Animal.

It's All River by Carla Madeira and translated by Alison Entrekin (Audiobook) Brazillian translated allegory about violence and forgiveness

June 30th

Translated Horror

The Summer of the Serpent by Cecilia Eudave and translated by Robin Myers (Audiobook) A kaleidescopic descent into the small violences and hidden horrors of a sweltering Guadalajaran summer

Romantasy

Cursed Ever After by Andy C. Naranjo (Audiobook) Subversive romantasy fairytale

Anthology (featuring Latine contributors)

These Kindred Hearts: A YA Romantasy Anthology edited by Shari B. Pennants (Audiobook) features Zoraida Cordova, Vanessa Montalban and Angela Montoya!

xo,

Carmen

Friends! Enemies! Everyone in between!

I hope you're all doing as best as you can be and taking care of yourselves. It's time to vote for the July book club!

Sunny’s Book Club is a monthly book club highlighting both new releases and backlist titles we love. A virtual discussion is hosted over Zoom on the last Sunday of the month.

A new physical book will be shipped to you (or available for in store pickup) the month prior to when this month’s book club will take place. The July pick will ship the last week of June to ensure you have the entire month to read the book.

The link for sign up is not a subscription service, you opt in on a monthly basis dependent on your interest in that months chosen title. We do however have a recurring book club subscription if you are interested here.

A gripping, propulsive novel about succession, sex, and revenge on a California marijuana farm

“Deliciously written and compulsively readable . . . As the ex-lovers of a missing weed farmer grapple for control of her land and harvest, they contend with the force of her presence and the complexities of their own pasts.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties

Sapphire and her farm, Sourland, are fixtures of Northern California’s rugged wilderness, offering refuge to rejects, rebels, and outcasts—anyone willing to work and learn. But the haven Sapphire has built is fractured when she suddenly goes missing, her scorched truck abandoned on a mountain road.

Frankie, a disgraced ballerina and Sapphire’s former girlfriend and right-hand woman, returns to Sourland, claiming ownership of the farm. When she arrives, Frankie finds that Fizz—Sapphire’s most recent lover, an ex–baseball player with a preternatural green thumb—has already begun prepping Sourland for its biggest harvest yet.

As the two grapple for power, the farm’s fate hangs in the balance, and with it, the future Fizz and Frankie each covet for themselves. Past demons and scorned admirers remain hauntingly close, while the specter of Sapphire looms over the farm: in cryptic notes, in bud-tender gossip, in every blade of grass and whorl of smoke.

A brilliantly constructed novel of desire and betrayal, Sourland sparkles with the beauty and grime of the California woods. Dixon’s novel warns that our true nature catches up to us all—no matter how far we run.

“An extraordinary book. It’s a page-turner, full of mystery, but that’s the least of it. The language is dusted with magic. The Children reminded me of Ray Bradbury at his best.” —Stephen King

The haunting new novel from New York Times bestselling author Melissa Albert, in which the estranged adult children of a legendary author, written into their dead mother’s beloved fantasy series, must contend with the vine-like creep of legacy, memory, and magic.

Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.

In one, she and her brother, Ennis, live in the wooded shadow of their family's isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of their mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where their magical adventures have made them household names. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and Ennis are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the wild woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.

Now an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled, simply, Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s fantasy world?

The Children is wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, and the way our most beloved stories grow up with us. It's for anyone who's ever revisited an old favorite and found its pages cast in a darker light, the line separating magic from reality blurring as we discover the books that once comforted us carry shadows of their own.

The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. Now fifty-three, Daphne hasn’t seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It’s a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.

It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.

Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?

As feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghosts— ones she hoped would stay gone forever. 

Riveting and richly layered, Muñeca explores how far one will go to save the person they love—even if that means damning themselves. Cynthia Gómez fills her debut novel with moments that chill your bones and warm your heart, a razor-sharp examination of deep-rooted issues that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

Four very compelling choices! Happy voting and remember we are reading Canon by Paige Lewis in June, today is your last day to sign up.

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