A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
By: Becky Chambers
Release Date | July 12
Genre | Science Fiction
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What Moves the Dead
By: T. Kingfisher
Release Date | July 12
Genre | Horror
What Moves the Dead is a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher," that is poised to fill you will fear. The House of Usher is a home of nightmares. With abnormal fungal growth, possessed wildlife, an ominous lake, and strange acting inhabitants it is up to three to determine why. Alex Easton along with a mycologist and doctor must work together to uncover the secrets behind the House of Usher to save the inhabitants, including his childhood best friend and brother, before the house consumes them all.
May I say, that cover give me the heebie-jeebies and that is a good thing because the reason I gravitated towards reading this book was the cover. As someone who loves mycology, all I crave from this novel is grotesquely beautiful descriptions of fungi. Please, beautiful descriptions and I'll be happy.
Find the review | HERE | for What Moves the Dead
The Book Eaters
By: Sunyi Dean
Release Date | August 2
Genre | Fantasy
For a small and very secret percentage of people in the Yorkshire Moors, books are food. Each genre has a distinct flavor and when eaten, the contents of the story are retained. Devon is one of those people, part of an old and reclusive clan of book eaters commonly known as The Family. Her brother grew up devouring stories of valour and adventure whereas Devon - like all women bookeaters, feasted on fairytales and cautionary stories. But, life always doesn't have a sweet ending, something Devon learns when her son is born with a rare hunger - one for human minds.
All I want from The Book Eaters is to see powerful motherly love and gripping horror. Nothing else but also, everything.
Four for the Road
By: K. J. Reilly
Release Date | August 23
Genre | Fiction
Asher Hunter wants revenge. Nobody thinks his fixation on the drunk driver who killed his mum is healthy, it's the reason why he now attends a meeting, well - many meetings, to understand his grief. It's at one of these meetings that he forms unexpected friendships with Sloane, who lost her dad to cancer; with Will, who too lost a family member to cancer and with Henry, whose wife of 50 years died without him.
It is these three new friends that Asher invites on his road trip. They don't need to know how he made the road trip happen or the real reason why (it's revenge obviously), but then again, they didn't offer their reasons for agreeing to the road trip. A road trip fuelled by revenge that may transform into one of forgiveness.
In Four for the Road, I don't know what to expect. I know nothing about the characters to guess how this road trip will transform, I just know I will follow that road. The reason why I adore The People We Keep and A Psalm for the Wild-Built, is for their touching stories. I resonate with them and based on this blurb, I think this novel has potential to to make me feel whole for a moment.
Meet Us by the Roaring Sea
By: Akil Kumarasamy
Release Date | August 23
Genre | Fiction
After finding her mother's body splayed out on the kitchen floor in Queens, a young woman begins a journey to find herself. Through use of language, archives, artificial intelligence, and TV - she will find herself again, starting with translation of an old manuscript. A manuscript revolving around a group of female medical students who are creating new ways to help others around them. Soon, the manuscript and the translator become intertwined.
Along the way, a childhood friend, a stranger, and an AI project will force her to ask herself difficult questions. How involved are we in the suffering of others? What is real compassion? How can one individual make a better world?
In Meet Us by the Roaring Sea, I am envisioning a heartbreaking novel that starts with her mother's unexpected death that evolves into her finding her purpose through the manuscript. All the arrivals will require painful questions to be asked and in the end, she will find peace within. If there is no healing, I'm going to be shocked.
Carrie Soto Is Back
By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Release Date | August 30
Genre | Historical Fiction
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a novel I appreciated reading in 2021 but I've been hesitant to read her other works as they focus heavily on romance and that's not something I'm interested in. Carrie Soto Is Back sounds like it will have a similar atmosphere to Malibu Rising with the history instead of romance at the forefront of the story which is something I am interested in reading. Including the fact it's about sports, sport achieving stories are my movie kryptonite - I have to watch them all, and I would be doing myself a disservice by not reading this. I cannot wait to see her writing style combined with another favourite genre of mine. All I know is I'm excited and really ready for this release.
Carrie Soto is fierce. Her determination to win regardless the cost has not made her popular but she doesn't care because by the time she's retired, she's the best tennis player in the world. She has shattered every record, won twenty Grand Slams, and if you ask her, deserved it all. She sacrificed almost everything to become the best with her father, Javier, as her coach.
Six years after retirement, Carrie finds herself at the 1994 US Open, watching in shock as her record is beaten by Nicki Chan. A record Carrie knows should be hers - a record she will win again with her father by her side. Coming out of retirement is no easy feat. The media bash "the Battle Axe," her body moves slower than before, and to succeed - she must train with Bowe Huntley, the only man she almost opened her heart too. Both have something to prove before they give up the game, forever.
Find the review | HERE | for Carrie Soto is Back
Other Birds
By: Sarah Addison Allen
Release Date | August 30
Genre | Fantasy
Magical realism is a genre I really appreciate. I actually took a course on it at uni and I think critically studying it increased my love for it and again, increased my appreciation for the simplest nuances that make it magical and real. What I want from Other Birds is the between that magical realism provides.
Mallow Island is one of those places. That takes the real and imagery and finds between the extraordinary, stories that fly in remarkable ways. Located off the coast of South Carolina, Mallow Island is home to the Dellawip - an old house shaped like a horseshoe and named after the turquoise birds on the island who, like the inhabitants, have an air of magic. It is Mallow Island where Zoey, packing up her mother's belongings, meets the secretive and quirky neighbours - each with their own story, each whose ending has not yet been written.
Killers of a Certain Age
By: Deanna Raybourn
Release Date | September 6
Genre | Mystery
Having worked together for decades - Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie are nearing their retirement age. At 60, it's almost time to put in their final notice at the Museum, an elite organisation of assassins, where they have worked for forty years. To mark the start of their retirement, the Museum gifted them with an all-expenses paid vacation. But, the gift is a cover as all four have been targeted for death.
The only person who can call for a strike on a Museum employee is a board member and this time, it's their lives at stake. To return home alive, it's up to them to work together and finish one last assignment. They're about to teach a very important lesson about what it means to be a woman - and a killer - of a certain age.
Killers of a Certain Age is a novel I am stoked for, and as long as the killer isn't easy to spot, I'll be content. I want powerful older women taking down an assassin, or even multiple demonstrating that age is but a number!
The Depths
By: Nicole Lesperance
Release Date | September 13
Genre | Horror
Being forced to join her mother on her two-week honeymoon is how Addie ends up on Eulalia island; an island with secluded beaches and blooming white flowers that take Addie's breath away but underneath the beauty, there is something eerie she cannot shake. When she meets an enigmatic boy on the beach, the island flowers turn pink. The island loves you, he tells her. But since arriving she can't stop sleep walking, she can hear the birds call her name, and she can't dismiss the little girl who beckons her to play hide-and-seek in the woods.
When Addie learns the history of the island and the two sisters whom died centuries ago, she begins to wonder if there is even more to Eulalia than she can see. Underneath its stunning landscape are dark secrets and if Addie doesn't unravel them soon, the island may remain her home - forever.
The Depths has strong potential to provide beautifully horrific imagery, something that I've realised when writing this list I really like. What can I say, beauty where beauty shouldn't be is beautiful and that's I want to see from The Depths.
Leech
By: Hiron Ennes
Release Date | September 27
Genre | Horror
The Interprovincial Medical Institute has exploded over the past few centuries taking root in adolescent mind's and shaping them to be doctors helping to eliminate and replace all human practitioners of medicine. The Institute exists to help humanity, to protect them from the horrors their ancestors unleashed.
In an isolated chateau far north, the baron's doctor has died and his replacement has one mystery to solve, where the Institute lost track of one of its bodies. It is in the frozen north where the Institute will discover a competitor vying for top spot on the evolutionary ladder - a parasite, spreading through the baron's castle leaving secrets, violence, and fear in its wake. The two will wage war with the human body as battlegrounds and whichever wins, means humanity has lost again.
I think Leech will be gruesome. What I want to see are graphic descriptions of the horror's the Institute has put upon humans and humankind somehow standing up to the "top dogs." Instead of human versus biological warfare its biological versus biological with humans as captives and I find that to be a cool take which I am excited to see explored in Leech.
We Spread
By: Iain Reid
Release Date | September 27
Genre | Horror
Penny has lived in her apartment for decades, overtime accumulating treasured pieces that remind her of precious moments from her long life. She accepts the mundaneness of old age, until things begin to slip. After one too many "incidents," Penny finds herself in a new room at a long-term nursing home, organised by her partner prior to their passing unbeknownst to her.
Initially, the new home breaks up the mundaneness of her previous life and all is well, she even begins to paint again. But the days soon bleed together and Penny begins to lose sense of time and also her place in the world. Is she losing herself to old age or is she part of something more unsettling occurring in her new home?
In We Spread, I anticipate the decline of Penny's sanity and us as readers required to figure out if the decline is from age or from something sinister. I think it's going to be a combination of both or if written well, a more horrifying story of sanity disappearing from Penny, sanity that when gone creates horrifying images in her own head that we have to decipher as real or fake. It's gonna be a creepy book, I can tell.
Pretty Dead Queens
By: Alexa Donne
Release Date | October 4
Genre | Young Adult
Alexa Donne, author of The Ivies, returns with another murderous YA mystery where a homecoming queen has been found murdered. After the death of her mother, Cecelia Ellis is taken in by her estranged grandmother into her Victorian home which is just as creepy as the murder mysteries she writes. On the surface, the coastal Californian home and new life is ordinary - until the homecoming queen is murdered. And she's not the first pretty dead queen to be found in Seaview.
With a copycat killer rampaging through Seaview, Cecilia latches onto the investigation, determined to solve it before the cops, just like the heroines in her grandmother's books. But the more she digs, the more she worries that she too, may end up a pretty dead queen.
Truthfully, I don't care how this plays out because I am going in with the mindset that there will be YA cringiness along with murder and that's all I want from this read. I am hoping that in Pretty Dead Queens there is less makeup/clothing descriptions compared to The Ivies and more internal conflict but regardless, I'm excited for this YA read.
Self-Portrait with Nothing
By: Aimee Pokwatka
Release Date | October 18
Genre | Fiction
Abandoned as an infant, Pepper Rafferty was taken in and raised by two loving mothers and at thirty-six, is now married to a stable and supportive husband named Ike. What she's hidden from all of them is that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her birth mother.
She never told anyone because her biological mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter known for the outrageous claims surrounding her work - that each portrait summons a doppelgänger from a parallel universe. The rumours make Pepper wonder what would she be like in a parallel universe where she was more confident, or more accomplished, or easier to love, or worthy of keeping, or lived somewhere where the abandonment no longer stung? Sometimes though, living our best life means embracing the imperfect one we have.
In Self-Portrait with Nothing, I expect to see heartwarming text and descriptions about how family is who you choose and that life is what you make it. I want some tears and emotional narration.
Sign Here
By: Claudia Lux
Release Date | October 25
Genre | Horror
Peyote Trip works on the fifth floor of Hell and he think his job is pretty good. Sure, the coffee machine has been out-of-order for centuries and his pens never work but he has a plan, all he needs is one last soul from the Harrison family currently enjoying their summer at their family lake house. The opportunity is perfect for Pey to put his plan into motion - he just needs Mickey Harrison to agree. With the help of his colleague Calamity, his plan is put into motion but things aren't always what they seem. As old secrets, new dangers, and the darkness beneath are revealed, everyone - on Earth and in Hell - must face the consequences of their choices.
Sign Here by Claudia Lux is a novel I think will toy the line between horror and light humour before becoming menacing. I anticipate moodiness and some dramatic secret exposing.
A Million to One
By: Adiba Jaigirdar
Release Date | December 13
Genre | Historical Fiction
A YA historical fiction novel presented as Ocean's 8 but about the Titanic? Sign me up. That one sentence has me hyped for this December release and I am hoping that the romance doesn't overpower other aspects of the story but I think even if it does, I'll still enjoy this read.
Four people with one goal: obtain the Rubaiyat - a jewel-encrusted book aboard the sunken Titanic that could be the ticket to solving all their problems. But history, romance, and carelessness threaten all their hard work and when tragedy strikes, puts them in perilous danger. With a thief, an artist, an acrobat, and an actress - the odds of pulling off the heist are slim and the odds of their survival are even slimmer.
