Happy Tuesday, readers! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. I attended a conference not far from my home in honor of Christopher Golden to mark the 30th anniversary of his first book and celebrate his new book, The House of Last Resort, out next week. I moderated a panel and talked with authors and other book lovers about scary books. I don’t have any scary new releases for you today, but they’re still excellent. I have a great YA collection of stories about girls in sports, a book about the little-known history of one of the last segregated asylums that existed in America, and a collection of fantasy stories for adults from a fabulous small press!
As for other new releases, at the top of my list of today’s books that I want to buy are The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James, Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke, and Bad Foundations by Brian Allen Carr. You can hear about more of the fabulous books coming out today on this week’s episode of All the Books! Tirzah and I talked about great books we loved that are out this week, including Martyr!, Radiant Heat, and No One Can Know.
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
And now it’s time for everyone’s favorite game, “Ahhh, My TBR!” Here are today’s contestants!
Out of Our League: 16 Stories of Girls in Sports edited by Dahlia Adler and Jennifer Iacopelli
Sixteen wonderful YA authors working today have contributed stories to this anthology — each about a different sport, and all with a focus on the challenges and triumphs women face in sports. There’s Marieke Nijkamp on archery, Sara Farizan on golf, Dahlia Alder on volleyball, plus stories of softball, cheerleading, basketball, volleyball, and more! It’s a great collection about perseverance, skill, and sisterhood. Iron sharpens iron! (CW for mentions of disordered eating, sexism and misogyny, racism, ableism, attempted sexual assault, and loss of a loved one.)
Backlist bump: Home Field Advantage by Dahlia Adler
Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton
Award-winning journalist Hylton draws on over a decade of research to tell the heartbreaking and infuriating true story of a segregated asylum that existed in Maryland for almost a century. Crownsville Asylum in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, operated as a work camp dressed up as a hospital. Hylton discusses how the asylum was able to exist for so long and America’s history of enslaving and exploiting Black people, even after the 19th century. She also talks about mental illness and the Black families affected by the asylum, as well as her own family’s history of mental illness. It’s a little-discussed part of American history that has been expertly and sensitively documented on these pages. (CW for ableism, racism, violence and injury, torture, mental health issues, and loss of a loved one.)
Backlist bump: We Carry Their Bones: The Search for Justice at the Dozier School for Boys by Erin Kimmerle
Kindling: Stories by Kathleen Jennings
I am a fan of Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings, who writes great tales of fantasy and fairy tales, and I am very excited about this book from Small Beer Press! This new collection draws from known stories, such as Sleeping Beauty and tales from Greek mythology, and brings the readers characters who are hopeful and ambitious, who are looking for change of place, change of life, change of heart. There is magic and mayhem, hard-learned lessons, and some happy endings, too. (Related: sadly, Small Beer Press recently announced they were no longer going to publish new titles going forward after the release of their two 2024 books, at least for the foreseeable future. Luckily, their backlist will still be available.)
Backlist bump: The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe
This week, I am reading Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley and Smoke Kings by Jahmal Mayfield. This past week, I found a book of sudoku puzzles while cleaning my office, and I have almost done every one of them. I can only do the easy ones, though. The song stuck in my head this week is “Saints” by The Breeders. And here is your weekly cat picture: This is Farrokh’s new favorite sleeping spot. He’s giving me the stink eye for taking his photo while he’s trying to sleep.
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