Happy Tuesday, star bits! I hope you all had a great weekend. (Weekend plus Monday, really.) Mine was very busy with little time for reading, which I give two thumbs down, but you can’t win them all. And the books are still here waiting for me! I am trying to organize them, but so far, I have mostly just moved them from room to room. For you today, I have a follow-up to a Book Riot science fiction favorite, a collection of speculative stories, and a queer technothriller!
As for other new releases, at the top of my list of today’s books that I want to get my hands on are Great Expectations by Vinson Cunningham, Blessed Water: A Sister Holiday Mystery by Margot Douaihy, and Mother Doll by Katya Apekina. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Vanessa and I talked about great books we loved that are out this week, including Headshot, The Tower, and Victim.
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And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game, “Ahhh, My TBR!” Here are today’s contestants!
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
We are such big fans here at Book Riot of Johnson’s debut, The Space Between Worlds! This new novel is set outside the city of the first novel. Hang on for another smart sci-fi thrill ride! It follows Scales, a mechanic who is also the only trusted member of the Emperor’s crew. The Emperor rules over the rough desert town of Ashtown, showing no mercy, and using Scales to help keep the peace. But everything Scales thought she knew about their community and the neighboring city is in doubt when people start being murdered. And even though Scale is a witness to one of the killings, she’s pretty sure the killer is invisible. Honestly, I should have led with invisible killer. How can you pass that up???
Backlist bump: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
Green Frog: Stories by Gina Chung
Chung’s last book, Sea Change, was one of the great recent novels to feature the hot trend of octopuses in fiction. This is a collection of achingly real but also sometimes unusual stories about survival, change, nature, and womanhood, with a dash of Korean mythology and culture. There’s a woman who reconnects with her mother after she gets pregnant, a fox demon hellbent on avenging her sister’s death, a pair of helpful talking dolls, a heart boiling on a stove as a means to end sadness, and more. These are great for people who like Bora Chung, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Yōko Ogawa, Carmen Maria Machado, and so many more. And if you get a chance, google the UK edition of this book and check out the amazing cover. (Spoiler: it’s a woman riding a praying mantis like a bucking bull!)
Backlist bump: Sea Change by Gina Chung
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
And last, but not least, this is a technothriller novella set in Kansas City about three decades in the future. It’s about a trans woman who must return to her old commune after her ex-girlfriend is killed. When Dora hears that Kay has been murdered, she knows that since she doesn’t live there anymore, she’s the only one who isn’t a suspect. Therefore, she should be the one to solve it. What Dora finds at the commune is a place slipping into violence, with two corporations battling it out in Dora’s old stomping grounds, people from her past who wish her harm, and a conspiracy that might be at the heart of it all.
Backlist bump: All the Hometowns You Can’t Stay Away From by Izzy Wasserstein
This week, I am reading Calvin by Martine Leavitt, Monkey King and the World of Myths: The Monster and the Maze by Maple Lam, and No Rules Tonight by Kim Hyun Sook and Ryan Estrada. We finished season three of Slow Horses, so now we wait along with everyone else for the fourth season, which I have heard will be out in November. We haven’t decided on a new show to watch yet, but that’s okay. I like to have the time to read, too. The song stuck in my head this week is “Evergreen” by Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners (which I wish was three times longer.) And here is your weekly cat picture: Farrokh says, “Blep.”
That’s all for this week! I appreciate you more than I can say, friends. Thank you for joining me each Tuesday as I rave about books! I am wishing you all a wonderful rest of your week, whatever situation you find yourself in now. And yay, books! See you next week! – XO, Liberty
“Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first woman she meets and then teams up with three complete strangers to kill again.”—Rick Polito