Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’m here with new releases and some books about brujas. I hope everyone had a great weekend — we finally had a break in the hot weather in Colorado, though I hear things are still pretty rough on the west coast. Hang in there, west coast friendos! May there be rain in everyone’s future.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Calaverita de azúcar by LoreSweetsShop
Since we got on a bit of a bruja kick in this newsletter, and one of the books mentioned below is Cemetery Boys, sugar skulls feel very fitting. It’s something mentioned in that book since it takes place around Dí de los Muertos. $35.
New Releases
Bindle Punk Bruja by Desideria Mesa
Rose is living a dangerous deception — her name is actually Luna, she comes from a family of bruja, and she isn’t actually white. But the identity she hides behind lets her gain power as a bootlegger who deals with the criminal families of Kansas City as she works to get her own jazz club. But the perilous game is about to come to an end, and she’s going to have to learn to rely on her magic and her allies if she’s going to survive.
Glorious Fiends by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
Roxanne, who is equal parts vampire and hot mess, resurrects her deceased friends. Of course it’s not that simple — she’s soon confronted by a Guardian of the Underworld who tells her she needs to replace them with three equally terrible monsters, or she will take their place instead. If she wants to save her friends and herself, they’re all going to need to team up and become monsters hunting monsters.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
In honor of Bindle Punk Bruja, I wanted to spotlight two other books that have brujas and brujos in them!
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas
Yadriel belongs to a family gifted by the goddess of death to see spirits and do all manner of magic. But Yadriel, as a trans boy, is fighting against the expectation that he do the magic of a bruja — because he’s a brujo. When his cousin suddenly dies, he tries to perform a ritual to set the ghost free. But who he ends up summoning isn’t his cousin. It’s Julian Diaz, the bad boy of his high school, and Julian was murdered — and he’s not about to rest until he finds out by whom.
Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova
Alex is the most powerful bruja in a generation. Too bad she hates magic and would do anything to rid herself of it — or so she thinks. When she tries to cast a spell to do just that, it backfires and causes her entire family to disappear. She has to team up with a brujo she doesn’t trust and use her magic if she wants to save her family.
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.