It’s not so much that this stack is shorter as it is that the stack of books for which I have covers is shorter. Some of the stuff that’s not being published until next year has eARCs available but no cover art yet. And so it goes.

I’m not sure that “pretty” is a word I would use for this bunch. Interesting, yes, but pretty, not so much. Although there’s certainly a whole lotta purple going on and that’s not bad.

But anticipation, well, I’ve got a TON of that. The books I’m most curious about at Cat’s People and The Museum Detective. The ones I’m most looking forward to reading are See How They Hide, The Tomb of Dragons and of course Scalzi’s latest, When the Moon Hits Your Eye because seriously WTF?

For Review:
Cat’s People by Tanya Guerrero
Countess by Suzan Palumbo
A Dragon of Black Glass (Moonfall #3) by James Rollins
Luminous by Silvia Park
The Museum Detective by Maha Khan Phillips
See How They Hide (Quinn & Costa #6) by Allison Brennan
The Tomb of Dragons (Cemeteries of Amalo #3) by Katherine Addison
When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
The Will of the Many (Hierarchy #1) by James Islington

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

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There are a few, let’s call them themes, in this week’s stack. There are two books about books, two books with pretty much the same premise, some really pretty covers with very similar color schemes, more pretty covers, and one book I just can’t wait to read.

In no particular order, the books about books are pretty obvious, The Banned Books Club and The Booklover’s Library. They’re even first alphabetically, although the book covers sort randomly in the display.

The two books with the same premise are I Made It Out of Clay and Magical Meet Cute. I’m really curious to see just how much the resulting stories resemble each other, because the whole thing about “making” a “perfect” man by cooking up a golem is, well, just a bit different.

Days of Wonder, I’d Rather Be Destroyed and Olive Days are both kind of the same orange-yellow shade – as is Magical Meet Cute.

Days of Shattered Faith (LOTS of ‘Days’ in this bunch) and The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club are pretty – in entirely different ways.

Last but not least, the book I’m most looking forward to is A Snake in the Barley. I have adored the Owen Archer series since all the way back in the first book, The Apothecary Rose, which I read THIRTY YEARS AGO, on a trip to its setting of York, which probably explains a bit about why it stuck with me and I’ve stuck with it all these years. That plus the fact that the series is just an awesome work of historical fiction AND mystery.

What books are tickling your various fancies this last day/week of August/end of the whole entire Summer?

For Review:
The Banned Books Club by Brenda Novak
The Booklover’s Library by Madeline Martin
Days of Shattered Faith (Tyrant Philosophers #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Days of Wonder by Caroline Leavitt
Edenfrost by Amit Tishler, Bruno Frenda, Taylor Esposito
Final Verdict by Tobias Buck
I Made It Out of Clay by Beth Kander
I’d Rather Be Destroyed by Zach Goldberg
Magical Meet Cute by Jean Meltzer
Olive Days by Jessica Elisheva Emerson
One Big Happy Family by Susan Mallery
A Snake in the Barley (Owen Archer #15) by Candace Robb
Street Corner Dreams by Florence Reiss Kraut
The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club (Carolina Tales #3) by Susan M. Boyer
Take (Fury Brothers #4) by Anna Hackett

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

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A slightly less ginormous stack this time around – even if it is no less splendiferous in its offerings. There are several really beautiful covers this time around, including Children of Gods and Fighting Men, Glance, and Upon a Starlit Tide. The two books that I’m most curious about are Picks and Shovels and Symbiote. Picks and Shovels because as much as I loved Doctorow’s first Martin Hench book, Red Team Blues, I didn’t expect the thing to stretch to a second book – which it did with The Bezzle. That there’s now a third makes me wonder where this technostalgia trip is going.

I’m curious about Symbiote because of the author’s c.v. which includes stints as a Space Shuttle engineer and in Antarctica.

And the book I’m most looking forward to, in a peculiar way, is Season of Death – no matter how off-putting the title might be. I’m loving the Barker & Llewelyn series, but I just finished book 8 (Hell Bay) and this is book 16. I’m looking forward to seeing how the series goes but I don’t want to get there TOO fast because then I’ll have to wait each year for the next one!

For Review:
The Children of Gods and Fighting Men (Gael Song #1) by Shauna Lawless
Following Similar Paths by Samuel C. Heilman and Mucahit Bilici
Glance by Chanda Feldman
The Library Game (Secret Staircase Mysteries #4) by Gigi Pandian
Marigold Mind Laundry by Jungeun Yun, translated by Shanna Tan
The Martian Contingency (Lady Astronaut #4) by Mary Robinette Kowal
Picks and Shovels (Martin Hench #3) by Cory Doctorow
Season of Death (Barker & Llewelyn #16) by Will Thomas
Symbiote by Michael Nayak
A Tainted Heart Bleeds (House of Croft #2) by Sophie Barnes
Upon a Starlit Tide by Kell Woods

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

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And we’re back! We’re still unpacking, it’s going to take weeks to sort through the books I picked up even though they are all ebooks, we’re still tired and the cats are all clinging tightly – they forgave us almost instantly and haven’t let us out of their sight for an instant ever since.

There are so many books in this stack that there are oodles of contenders on all counts; pretty, and curious and highly anticipated. The one I want to highlight has elements of all of the above, with just a little bit of something extra. I’m referring to The Legacy of Arniston House by T.L. Huchu, not just because I love the Edinburgh Nights series but because I heard him read from the book at Worldcon in Glasgow last weekend and now I can’t wait to sink my own reading teeth into the meat of what sounds like another outstanding installment in the series. The only sad note in my anticipation is that the author indicated that book five will be the final book in the series and I already know that this is one I’m going to miss a lot when it’s done – even if all my questions do finally get answered.

What about you? What new books are stacking your shelves this week?

For Review:
Beast of the North Woods (Monster Hunter Mystery #3) by Annelise Ryan
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 edited by Hugh Howey
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde #3) by Heather Fawcett
Feuds (Tales of Valdemar #18) edited by Mercedes Lackey
The Four Queens of Crime by Rosanne Limoncelli
Ghosts of Panama by Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll
Grimm Curiosities by Sharon Lynn Fisher
Holmes is Missing (Holmes, Margaret & Poe #2) by James Patterson and Brian Sitts
How to Summon a Fairy Godmother (Fairies and Familiars #1) by Laura J. Mayo
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com (Cosmic Chaos #1) by Kimberly Lemming
Jekyll & Hyde: Consulting Detectives by Tim Major
The Legacy of Arniston House (Edinburgh Nights #4) by T.L. Huchu
The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang, translated by Slin Jung
A Scandalous Affair (Daughter of Sherlock Holmes #8) by Leonard Goldberg
The Third Rule of Time Travel by Philip Fracassi

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Canines & Cocktails (Oberon’s Meaty Mysteries #4) by Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, Chuck Wendig
Cold Crematorium by József Debreczeni, translated by Paul Olchváry
Junkyard Roadhouse (Junkyard Cats #4) by Faith Hunter (ebook and audiobook)
Mr. & Mrs. Norcross (Norcross Security #9.5) by Anna Hackett
A Wounded Bird Sings (House of Croft #0.5) by Sophie Barnes

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

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Last week’s stack consisted of a whole bunch of September books, so it’s probably not a surprise that these are mostly October books – except for Miss Percy. I needed to work ahead because we’re away for a few days and I couldn’t let a Saturday go by without a Stacking the Shelves – even if it’s not much of one. Next week’s stack will probably be HUGE!

For Review:
The Civil War Diary of Emma Mordecai edited by Dianne Ashton with Melissa R. Klapper
Forbidden by Jordan D. Rosenblum
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern by Lynda Cohen Loigman
The Propagandist by Cécile Desprairies, translated by Natasha Lehrer
The Story of the Forest by Linda Grant
The Trade Off by Samantha Greene Woodruff

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Miss Percy’s Definitive Guide (to the Restoration of Dragons) (Miss Percy Guide #3) by Quenby Olson

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

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These are all September books. I’ve been kind of hanging onto this stack – although not in the literal sense because books are heavy – because I knew there were a couple of weekends coming up where I’d be away and this stack would give me the opportunity to get it done ahead and have it ready to go on the day.

Today is that day. One of those days, anyway.

The prettiest cover – although the book inside seems a bit dark – is Next Stop. The two books I’m most intrigued by are First Lady of Laughs – because I think I remember seeing Jean Carroll on TV when I was a child – and Night Owls because it looks like a really cool fantasy. We’ll see, sooner or later, in the months ahead!

For Review:
Bad Jew by Piotr Smolar, translated by Anthony Roberts
First Lady of Laughs by Grace Kessler Overbeke
The Genizah by Wayne Karlin
An Improbable Life by Karine Rashkovsky
Moguls by Michael Benson and Craig Singer
Next Stop by Benjamin Resnick
Night Owls by A.R. Vishny
Nothing Is for Everyone by Eden Pearlstein
A Place to Hide by Ronald H. Balson
Rachel Weiss’s Group Chat by Lauren Appelbaum
A Reason to See You Again by Jami Attenberg
There Was Night and There Was Morning by Sara Sherbill

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

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Yet another short stack. They’ll start getting bigger/taller soon, I think. I’m starting to accumulate candidates for the stack that do not yet have covers, pretty or otherwise, to liven up this post. (It kind of feels like I’m saying that Xmas is coming. More books! YAY!)

A short stack doesn’t mean that there aren’t pretty and/or interesting books in the stack. This week’s pretty cover is But Not Too Bold. The book I’m most looking forward to is Shattering Dawn, because I adore the author’s Arcane Society/Harmony series(es) and all of the spinoffs and tangents thereof. The one I’m most curious about  is Our Rotten Hearts, because the author’s previous book, A Tip for the Hangman, was utterly fantastic and I’m hoping for something equally so. I’m also really curious about the premise, the idea of seeing Oliver Twist‘s story through the ‘villain’ Fagin’s perspective.

We’ll certainly see in the months ahead!

For Review:
But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo
Einstein’s Tutor by Lee Phillips
On Vicious Worlds (Kindom Trilogy #2) by Bethany Jacobs
Our Rotten Hearts by Allison Epstein
Seeing Through by Ricky Ian Gordon
Shattering Dawn (Lost Night Files #3) by Jayne Ann Krentz

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

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Yet another short stack. ‘Tis the season, clearly. This is a stack that generates more curiosity and anticipation than it invokes pretty – at least for moi – but your mileage may vary. The two books I’m anticipating the most are Blood and Magic and The Hermit Next Door. The one that has my curiosity bump itching is Camp Jeff.

For Review:
Blood and Magic (Goddess with a Blade #8) by Lauren Dane
The Boy with the Star Tattoo by Talia Carner
Camp Jeff by Tova Reich
Heavyweight by Solomon J. Brager

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Hermit Next Door by Kevin Hearne (ebook and audio)

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

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This week’s stack is short. Like really, REALLY short. Summer just isn’t a big time for new books. Two of the books in this stack won’t be published until 2025 – in the winter.

The two with the prettiest covers this week are also two of the creepiest – A Harvest of Hearts and Out of the Drowning Deep. OTOH, Dead in the Frame is the book I’m most anticipating as the Pentecost and Parker series is ALWAYS a treat!

For Review:
Dead in the Frame (Pentecost and Parker #5) by Stephen Spotswood
A Harvest of Hearts by Andrea Eames
Out of the Drowning Deep by A.C. Wise
Stone (Sentinel Security #7) by Anna Hackett

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Hex Sells (Babylon Boy #2) by T.A. Moore

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

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Occasionally, Amazon’s attempts to match something-a-likes to whatever you’re searching for gets a bit, well, odd. The first entries for a search for Lightfall by Ed Crocker, I searched for “Lightfall Crocker” figuring that would be enough. The top entry for that search is a The Betty Crocker Cookbook. I get the “Crocker” part but can’t figure out where the “Lightfall” comes in.

Mr. Crocker’s not-a-cookbook aside, the prettiest covers in this week’s stack are The Bones Beneath My Skin and Remember When, and, as usual, they’re both pretty but not pretty the same at all. The books I’m most intrigued by are Earthlight and When Women Ran Fifth Avenue – of course for entirely different reasons.

Galen is particularly curious about The Elements of Marie Curie. I heard the author, Dava Sobel, speak at the ALA Conference last weekend, so I was interested, but when I told him about the book he was REALLY intrigued.

And the two books I’m most definitely looking forward to – and one of those immediately – are Penric and the Bandit and Shoestring Theory. I adore the Penric and Desdemona series, and Shoestring Theory, well, there’s a cat.

For Review:
Before We Forget Kindness (Before the Coffee Gets Cold #5) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune
Earthlight by J. Michael Straczynski (audio)
The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Jackpot Summer by Elyssa Friedland
Lightfall (Everlands #1) by Ed Crocker
Remember When: Clarissa’s Story (Ravenswood #4) by Mary Balogh
Shoestring Theory by Mariana Costa
Trajectory by Cambria Gordon
When Women Ran Fifth Avenue by Julie Satow
Wooing the Witch Queen (Queens of Villainy #1) by Stephanie Burgis

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Penric and the Bandit (Penric and Desdemona #13) by Lois McMaster Bujold

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

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