Happy Friday shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’ve got a couple of new releases for you, and some timey-wimey books. But holy crap, is it COLD. As I’m writing this, the temperature in the Colorado front range dropped about 50 degrees in a couple of hours and we’re battening down the hatches. I know this arctic wind is visiting only briefly — and then heading to chill other places in the US — so just hang on and bundle up! Stay safe and warm out there, space pirates (and have a happy holiday weekend!), and I’ll see you on Tuesday.
Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge is in its ninth year, with a set of 24 tasks that invite readers to expand their worldview through books. Read one book per task, or do some multi-tasking by counting one book for multiple tasks. It’s all fine! The point of the challenge is to push yourself to expand your horizons. Thank you to Thriftbooks for sponsoring Read Harder 2023.
To find the tasks and subscribe to our newsletter for tips and recommendations, visit Read Harder 2023.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Necklace by FiftyShadesofGlitter
In honor of the theme for this newsletter, it’s a cute necklace about how time is really just a ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff. $8
New Releases
Never After: The Broken Mirror by Melissa de la Cruz
The Never After crew is headed to Snow Country, though they make a stop to rescue the hapless Lord Sharif of Nottingham from a thieving scoundrel named Robin Hood. His are the least of their problems, though; Prince Charming has been turned into a frog, and there’s still an ominous capital-P Prophecy to deal with. The best bet to deal with all these problems is to find the League of Seven, a group of warriors devoted to fighting ogres — and even with their help, Olga and the ogres might still prevail.
Expect Me Tomorrow by Christopher Priest
In 1852, the father of twins Adolf and Adler Beck dies on a glacier; one of his sons goes on to become a respected scientist who studies climate, and the other claims to have become a famous opera singer. Both hear mysterious voices no one else can. In 2050, twins Charles and Greg Ramsey are, respectively, a police profiler recently made redundant and a climate journalist. At loose ends, Charles ends up digging into their family history. And all these lives intersect, along with a petty thief hanged in 1877, as the climate continues to change…
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
It is no secret that I love time travel/timey-wimey nonsense books, so of course I’m going to take this opportunity to recommend a couple!
Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
Kin Stewart is a regular 9-5 IT worker with a massive, unbelievable secret: he’s a time-traveling secret agent who got stuck in 1990 after a mission went completely belly up. He does what he’s supposed to and lays low, eventually giving up on rescue and continuing on to have a life…until his rescue team shows up 18 years too late, determined to erase the family he’s built in the past and return him to the one waiting for him in the future, which he can no longer remember.
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
This is a very classic time loop “living life over and over until it’s right” novel, but this one is a standout to me because the writing is lovely, with just enough dark humor to it, and the time period (starting at the ever of World War I and careening toward World War II) is excellently rendered.
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.