This is a not too ridiculously tall stack where everything turned out to be in pairs – not that it started out that way!

The two prettiest book covers, IMHO, are Hammajang Luck and The Serpent Called Mercy. Tea You at the Altar should have been a contender, but that slightly turned view that seems to be all that’s available at the moment makes the image too small to get the full effect. OTOH, it’s one of the two books I’m most looking forward to out of this week’s batch, with The Railway Conspiracy as the second in that category.

The two titles that I’m most curious about – although in entirely different ways, are the audiobook of The Atrocity Archives and the Mark Twain biography.

I’ve always meant to read Charles Stross’s Laundry Files series, of which The Atrocity Archives is the first book. But I was looking for a not-too-long audiobook to start this morning and saw that the narrator for this first book, along with most of the rest of the series, is one of my favorite videogame voice actors – and that made my decision for me.

The other book I’m really curious about is Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography. I don’t read a lot of biographies, and this book is an absolute doorstop at 1,200 pages, but I listened to Chernow’s Ulysses S. Grant biography at the same length and was utterly riveted – so I have high hopes for this book. (If Chernow’s name sounds familiar, that’s because he was the author of the Alexander Hamilton biography that Lin-Manuel Miranda used as the basis for the play Hamilton.

For Review:
Cold Eternity by S.A. Barnes
Cold Iron Task (Unorthodox Chronicles #3) by James J. Butcher
A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Catching a Killer (SCYTHE #1) by Maxie Dara
Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
Overcaptain (Saga of Recluce #24) by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.
The Railway Conspiracy (Dee & Lao #2) by SJ Rozan and John Shen Yen Nee
The Serpent Called Mercy by Roanne Lau
Tea You at the Altar (Tomes & Tea #3) by Rebecca Thorne

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Atrocity Archives (Laundry Files #1) by Charles Stross (audio)
Beginnings – The Sullivan’s Island Supper Club (Carolina Tales #1.5) by Susan M. Boyer

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

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Unlike last week’s stack, this time there are definitely some covers that are outright pretty, The Concealment of Endless Light, The Page Turner, and Rules for Ghosting. The books I’m really curious about are Kills Well With Others and Where the Axe is Buried. Kills Well With Others because it’s the follow-up to the marvelous Killers of a Certain Age, a book which, as much as I really wanted it to be the start of a series, showed no signs of actually being one. But now it is and YAY! I’m curious about Where the Axe is Buried because I’ve enjoyed the author’s first two books, The Mountain in the Sea and The Tusks of Extinction, very much, but neither is like the other so I’m extremely curious to read this one, which does not appear to be like either of his other books.

The book I most want to read in this stack is Murder of a Suffragette. The London Ladies’ Murder Club series, of which this is the fourth after A Body on the Doorstep, A Body at the Séance and A Body at the Dance Hall, has turned out to be quite charming – and I adore the main character. I’ve actually been jonesing for this next book in the series and now it’s HERE!

What about you? What books have you added to your stack this week?

For Review:
The Concealment of Endless Light by Yehoshua November
Kills Well With Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2) by Deanna Raybourn
The Library of Lost Dollhouses by Elise Hooper
Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner
Murder of a Suffragette (London Ladies’ Murder Club #4) by Marty Wingate
The Page Turner by Viola Shipman
Roman Year by André Aciman
Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore
The Way Up is Death by Dan Hanks
We Are Free to Change the World by Lyndsey Stonebridge
When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory
Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

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

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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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