Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’ve got your new releases for this second week of June. (How the HECK is it already the second week of June?) Today, you’re getting a double dose of new releases because I just couldn’t choose.
Over the last week, I’ve read a bonkers number of audiobooks (4!) and seen Furiosa three times, so my brain is just swimming with extremely cool things. Paladin’s Hope by T. Kingfisher delighted me the most.
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Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here are two places to start: Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian relief to children in the Middle East regardless of nationality, religion, or political affiliation; and Ernesto’s Sanctuary, a cat sanctuary and animal rescue in Syria that is near and dear to my heart.
Bookish Goods
Book Shaped Bookmark Holders by mcs3Dstudios
3D printing can do a ton of cool stuff these days (have you seen what you can get out of Hero Forge now?) and this is a super fun and cute idea brought to us by that technology. Move over, old coffee cup! A new bookmark holder is in town. $9.50
New Releases
One of Our Kind by Nicola Yoon
Liberty is a planned Black utopia and a place where Jasmyn and King Williams hope they will finally find a community of like-minded people who care about peace and social justice. What they find is mostly residents who care only about setting up spa treatments and ignoring any and all social activism. Jasmyn finds a few others who are as frustrated as her by this outlook…and then she discovers a terrible secret about Liberty and its founders.
Hearts of Fire and Snow by David Bowles and Guadalupe García McCall
Blanca believes she can make a difference in the world, though she’s not getting a lot of support from her wealthy godfather or her spoiled-rotten boyfriend. When a new student shows up at her school, she decides to start with him. But their sudden friendship isn’t just personal chemistry…it’s the echo of lives lived a thousand years in the past.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Double dose of new releases, coming in fast!
Dancers of the Dawn by Zulekhá A. Afzal
Aasira is part of an elite troupe of dancers who serve at the pleasure of the queen—but all of them are so much more. They are also her assassins, wielders of magic and blade. Aasira is the rarest sort, one who wields flame to execute the enemies of the crown. But on the eve of her graduation from student to dancer, she begins to question the tension between her loyalty to her queen and the feeling that she was meant for more than death.
The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton
Twenty years ago, the crew of the Providence vanished; now, Cleo and her friends want to know why, so they sneak aboard to find out. But then the ship starts on its own. They’re suddenly all en route to Proxima Centauri and unable to turn around, and the show is being sort of run by a hologram that looks and sounds like the ship’s former captain Billie. As the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics seem to fall apart, mysteries are revealed, and Billie and Cleo’s combative relationship evolves into something far deeper.
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.