Some of these covers are pretty, and some of these books are interesting, as usual. There are a couple that meet in the middle as being ‘pretty damn interesting’, at least for me.

The two prettiest covers are All the Hidden Paths and Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands. They are also more than a bit alike. Generation Ship and System Collapse are damn interesting and much anticipated, although their covers aren’t all that. And then there’s John Scalzi’s Starter Villain. I’ve had an ARC of Starter Villain for several weeks, waiting for the cover to be revealed. Now that it has been, I can’t stop laughing every time I see it. To the point where I can’t resist the damn thing at all so it’s what I’ll be reading this weekend, even if it won’t be published for several more months.

How’s your stack looking this week?

For Review:
All the Hidden Paths (Tithenai Chronicles #2) by Foz Meadows
Artificial by Amy Kurzweil
The Dead Take the A Train (Carrion City #1) by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde #2) by Heather Fawcett
Fat Time and Other Stories by Jeffrey Renard Allen
Generation Ship by Michael Mammay
The Hurricane Wars (Hurricane Wars #1) by Thea Guanzon
Juliette by Camille Jourdy
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
Okinawa by Susumu Higa
Starter Villain by John Scalzi
Sunset, Water City (Water City Trilogy #3) by Chris McKinney
System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7) by Martha Wells
A True Account by Katherine Howe
Wild Girls by Tiya Miles
The Wingmen by Adam Lazarus

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

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Luna decided that this Stacking the Shelves post needed her touch. So she erased part of it. (Thank goodness for the ‘UNDO’ button!) All the cats have been clingy since Galen returned from his trip, but Luna has been taking that state to new heights this week. Sometimes literally as she’s sitting on the back of my chair as I type this.

I’ve found a new source for audio ARCs, or ALCs as the distributor Libro.fm calls them. As a librarian, I can pick up entirely too many audiobooks in advance of publications. It’s a lovely service – and entirely too tempting!

For Review:
Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai (audio)
The Boyfriend Candidate by Ashley Winstead
The Burning of the World by Scott W. Berg
Cassandra in Reverse by Holly Smale
Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (audio)
Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
Let’s Go Let’s Go Let’s Go by Cleo Qian
The Nameless Restaurant by Tao Wong (book AND audio)
The Peach Seed by Anita Gail Jones
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Nampeshiweisit #1) by Moniquill Blackgoose (audio)
Witness by Jamel Brinkley
Women of the Post by Joshunda Sanders

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Art of Dying (Raven and Fisher #2) by Ambrose Parry
A Corruption of Blood (Raven and Fisher #3) by Ambrose Parry
Tamam Shud (Phryne Fisher) by Kerry Greenwood (audio)
The Way of All Flesh (Raven and Fisher #1) by Ambrose Parry

Borrowed from the Library:
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

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LOTS of pretty covers this week! All in the S’s and all in the blues, Shorefall, The Square of Sevens and Starling House. Although Starling House is also just a bit creepy looking. But probably not as actually creepy as yesterday’s book, The Salt Grows Heavy. Which was excellent but pretty much broke my creep-o-meter for a while.

Audible had a 2-for-1 sale, and those are always my downfall, plus The Fossil Hunter was the Audible Daily Deal one day this week. If you’re not signed up for the Audible Daily Deal daily email, and you’re willing to be tempted by excellent audiobooks going for a song, it’s definitely worth the minute or two it takes every day just to check out what’s on sale that day.

For Review:
Colorful Palate by Raj Tawney
Famous in a Small Town by Viola Shipman
Long Past Dues (Unorthodox Chronicles #2) by James J. Butcher
The Navigating Fox by Christopher Rowe
The Never Wars by David Pedreira
Of Time and Turtles by Sy Montgomery
Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond
A Power Unbound (Last Binding #3) by Freya Marske
The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias Buckell (book AND audio)
Technically Yours by Denise Williams

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Empire’s Ruin (Ashes of the Unhewn Throne #1) by Brian Staveley (audio)
For Love of Magic by Simon R. Green
The Fossil Hunter by Tea Cooper (audio)
Postcards from Stella Maris (Liz Talbot) by Susan M. Boyer
Shorefall (Founders #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

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 got just a bit out of hand (LOL). On that other hand, I did get some really pretty covers in The Blue, Beautiful World and The Curse of Penryth Hall. I’ve finished one book (Excalibur) and am in the middle of the audio of The Salt Grows Heavy which is creepy and poetic at the same time. And Galen’s read The Ship Beneath the Ice because he’s always drawn to stuff about the Shackleton Expedition. So we have pretty, compelling and interesting already checked off of the book bingo boxes for this week’s stack!

For Review:
All the Dead Shall Weep (Gunnie Rose #5) by Charlaine Harris
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord
The Curse of Penryth Hall by Jess Armstrong
Daughters of Latin America edited by Sandra Guzman
Dreambound by Dan Frey
Excalibur (Sentinel Security #5) by Anna Hackett
The General and Julia by Jon Clinch
The Great Escape by Saket Soni
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim
Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
The New Life by Tom Crewe
The Only Purple House in Town (Fix-It Witches #4) by Ann Aguirre
The Piano Tuner by Chiang-sheng Kuo
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw (audio)
The Ship Beneath the Ice by Mensun Bound
The Six by Loren Grush
Witch King by Martha Wells (audio)
You Are Here by Karin Lin-Greenberg (audio)
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

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This week’s stack just didn’t go in much for pretty covers, did it? Although any stack with two Phryne Fisher books in it can’t be all bad on that front. I was having a terrible book bounce problem at the end of this week, so when the later of the two books, Murder in Williamstown, popped up on Edelweiss I found myself thinking about diving back into the series wherever it was I left off. When turned out to be Murder and Mendelssohn, which I turned out not to already have, but which turned out to be one of the longest books in the entire series so I went looking elsewhere to solve my inability to settle into a good book. I have PLENTY to choose from!

For Review:
All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley
Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island (Carolina Tales #1) by Susan M. Boyer (audio)
The Bookbinder by Pip Williams
Dark Days by Roger Reeves
The Faraway World by Patricia Engel
Hang the Moon by Jeannette Walls
The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Murder in Williamstown (Phryne Fisher #22) by Kerry Greenwood
Shadow Speaker (Desert Magician’s Duology #1) by Nnedi Okorafor
Straw Dogs of the Universe by Ye Chun
Two Sherpas by Sebastian Martinez Daniell
The Wager by David Grann (audio)
The Warden (Warden #1) by Daniel M. Ford (audio)

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Murder and Mendelssohn (Phryne Fisher #20) by Kerry Greenwood

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

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My annual Blogo-Birthday Celebration has come to an end for another year. But the giveaways are all still active so please check out all the posts and possibilities!

And we have books! More books! Always books! (I also have a cat’s tail in my face.)

The most interesting title in this week’s batch is Better Living Through Birding. Two of my dear friends are avid birders, so my curiosity bump definitely itches over that one. A couple of other titles I’m really curious are the whole Time Traveler Professor series because they are Sherlock Holmes pastiches featuring Arthur Conan Doyle as one of the protagonists and Tsalmoth by Steven Brust as once upon a time I LOVED his Vlad Taltos series but haven’t been back in lo these many years.

The pretty cover award in this week’s batch goes to The Circumference of the World. I can’t wait to see if the book is as good as its cover!

For Review:
Better Living Through Birding by Christian Cooper
Beyond the Reach of Earth (Lightspeed Trilogy #2) by Ken MacLeod
The Circumference of the World by Lavie Tidhar
Eastbound by Maylis De Kerangal
The Ghost Forest by Greg King
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu
Knowing What We Know by Simon Winchester
The Pomegranate Gate (Mirror Realm Cycle #1) by Ariel Kaplan
Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald
Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
Tsalmoth (Vlad Taltos #16) by Steven Brust
A War in Too Many Worlds (Time Traveler Professor #3) by Elizabeth Crowens
Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Iron Princess by Barbara Hambly
A Pocketful of Lodestones (Time Traveler Professor #2) by Elizabeth Crowens
Silent Meridian (Time Traveler Professor #1) by Elizabeth Crowens

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

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Happy April Fools’ Day! Here’s wishing you a day of jokes that are actually funny, and pranks that sit on the right side of the balance between embarrassment and laughter.

There’s no fooling around about the books on this list. There are LOTS of pretty covers to drool over, along with a few titles that I’m personally salivating over whether their covers are pretty or not. Of course, Gryphon in Light is both, pretty and much anticipated, at least by this reader. Under the Smokestrewn Sky is another in that category, with the added fillip that it’s the final book in the McGuire writing as Baker series, The Up-and-Under.

Which covers look pretty and/or interesting to you?

For Review:
The Bell in the Fog (Andy Mills #2) by Lev AC Rosen
Brave the Wild River by Melissa L. Sevigny
Dioramas by Blair Austin
Gods of the Wyrdwood (Forsaken Trilogy #1) by RJ Barker
Gryphon in Light (Kelvren’s Saga #1, Valdemar (Publication order #56)) by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon
He Who Drowned the World (Radiant Emperor Duology #2) by Shelley Parker-Chan
Labyrinth’s Heart (Rook & Rose #3) by M.A. Carrick
The Midnight Kingdom (Dark Gods #2) by Tara Sim
Open Throat by Henry Hoke
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar
A Season of Monstrous Conceptions by Lina Rather
This is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor
Tomb Sweeping by Alexandra Chang
Under the Smokestrewn Sky (Up-and-Under #4) by Seanan McGuire writing as A. Deborah Baker
Why Beethoven by Norman Lebrecht

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
The Keeper of Happy Endings by Barbara Davis

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Well, this stack is certainly…eclectic to say the least. I picked up The Right Stuff because of The New Guys, Summer in Orcus because of Illuminations and Midnight, Water City (Water City Trilogy #1) because of Eventide, Water City (Water City Trilogy #2). Books are kind of like potato chips, in that I can’t grab just one!

There seem to be more pretty covers than usual this time around, but the book I’m most looking forward to is Cassiel’s Servant. I think there have been rumors about that book coming ‘real soon now’ for at least a decade if not longer, so I’m thrilled to have it in my hands at last!

For Review:
The Beach Reads Bookshop (Hometown Brothers #3) by Lee Tobin McClain
Biography of X by Catherine Lacey
Cassiel’s Servant (Kushiel’s Legacy #4) by Jacqueline Carey
The Comeback Cowboy (Jasper Creek #4) by Jackie Ashenden, Caitlin Crews, Nicole Helm, Maisey Yates
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Eventide, Water City (Water City Trilogy #2) by Chris McKinney
Fatal Legacy (Flavia Albia #11) by Lindsey Davis
The Great Reclamation by Rachel Heng
The Isolated Séance (Irregular Detective #1) by Jeri Westerson
Monsters by Claire Dederer
A Rogue at Stonecliffe (Stonecliffe #2) by Candace Camp
Sir Hereward and Mister Fitz by Garth Nix
Sleeping with the Ancestors by Joseph McGill Jr., and Herb Frazier
Traffic by Ben Smith
The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang
Whispers at Dusk (Blackbird Trilogy #1) by Heather Graham

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Midnight, Water City (Water City Trilogy #1) by Chris McKinney
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher

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I’m looking forward to several books in this batch, but in completely different ways. The Court War because the first book, The Godstone – which at the time wasn’t obviously the first of anything – was a compelling hot mess and I want to see where things go next. Mammoths at the Gates because the Singing Hills Cycle has been lovely and awesome and fascinating, and The Splinter in the Sky because OMG the protagonist is a TEA expert and I can’t wait to see how that works in a space opera.

Come to think of it, Mammoths at the Gates is also a contender for the prettiest cover of the week, right along with The Berry Pickers – especially because all those luscious blueberries look delicious as well as pretty.

For Review:
The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Better Left Unsaid by Tufayel Ahmed
Beyond the Hallowed Sky (Lightspeed Trilogy #1) by Ken MacLeod
Big Little Spells (Witchlore #2) by Hazel Beck
Blind Fear (Finn Thrillers #3) by Brandon Webb and John David Mann
The Court War (Godstone #2) by Violette Malan
Daughters of Muscadine by Monic Ductan
The Great Displacement by Jake Bittle
The Happiness Plan by Susan Mallery
The Horoscope Writer by Ash Bishop
Mammoths at the Gates (Singing Hills Cycle #4) by Nghi Vo
Marion Lane and the Raven’s Revenge (Marion Lane #3) by T.A. Willberg
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron
The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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After diving back into the Sebastian St. Cyr series a couple of weeks ago I decided to just go ahead and get the few in the middle that I had neither read nor already acquired. I know I’ll be getting around to them eventually so I figured I might as well just give in to the impulse.

The book I’m most looking forward to is, of course, Anna Hackett’s new SFR series opener, Knightmaster. I’ve already started and so far, so wonderful! I think the prettiest cover in this stack is Banyan Moon, but a case could certainly be made for The Witching Tide. We’ll just have to see whether the books inside those covers live up to them!

For Review:
Banyan Moon by Thao Thai
Differ We Must by Steve Inskeep
The History of a Difficult Child by Mihret Sibhat
Knightmaster (Oronis Knights #1) by Anna Hackett
The Light at the End of the World by Siddhartha Deb
Loot by Tania James
The Moon Represents My Heart by Pim Wangtechawat
The People’s Hospital by Ricardo Nuila
Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths
The Salt-Black Tree (Dead God’s Heart #2) by Lilith Saintcrow
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath (Nampeshiweisit #1) by Moniquill Blackgoose
When the Hibiscus Falls by M. Evelina Galang
The Witching Tide by Margaret Meyer

Purchased from Amazon/Audible/Etc.:
Where the Dead Lie (Sebastian St. Cyr #12) by C.S. Harris
Who Buries the Dead (Sebastian St. Cyr #10) by C.S. Harris
Why Kings Confess (Sebastian St. Cyr #9) by C.S. Harris

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

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