BP Note: Welcome to Oct and life in interesting times continues. In light of that please look out for each other. Spare a kind word or considerate gesture for someone. We don’t know what upsetting information they might have just received. And your actions could make all the difference. Besides, you might get a mental boost yourself. We have an interesting mix with one subgenre(?) I have never heard about before… The benefit of more than one mind compiling this list. Hopefully you find something to read and enjoy below. Please let us know what we should check out in addition.
Happy reading!
~E
- Cozy Fantasy
- Cozy Fantasy Romance
- Cozy Mystery
- Fantasy
- Fantasy Romance
- Historical Mystery
- Christmas Mystery
- Relationship Fiction
- Science Fiction
- Science Fiction Romance
- Urban Fantasy
Cozy Fantasy
Witches of Dubious Origin by Jenn McKinlay – 28 Oct (Ace)
Zoe Ziakas enjoys a quiet life, working as a librarian in her quaint New England town. When a mysterious black book with an unbreakable latch is delivered to the library, Zoe has a strange feeling the tome is somehow calling to her. She decides to consult the Museum of Literature, home to volumes of indecipherable secrets, some possessing magic that must be guarded. The collection is known as the of Books of Dubious Origin.
Here, Zoe discovers that she is the last descendant of a family of witches and this little black book is their grimoire. Zoe knows she must decode the family’s spell book and solve the mystery of what happened to her mother and her grandmother. However, the book’s potential power draws all things magical to it, and Zoe finds herself under the constant watch of a pesky raven, while being chased by undead Vikings, ghost pirates, and assorted ghouls.
With assistance from the eccentric staff of the Books of Dubious Origin—including their annoyingly smart and handsome containment specialist, Jasper Griffin—Zoe must confront her past and the legacy of her family. But as their adventure unfolds, she’ll have to decide if she’s ready to embrace her destiny.
Cozy Fantasy Romance
The Witching Moon Manor (Spellbound Sisters #2) by Stacy Sivinski – 7 Oct (Atria)
The Crescent Moon is thriving after a much-needed expansion, with the ladies who step through its doors continuing to seek comfort in the glimpses of their futures found in the swirls at the bottom of their teacups. Anne is leading the city’s witches as Chicago’s Diviner, Beatrix is swept away on a book tour across the country, and Violet has found her place with her feet swinging through the air above the circus crowds. That is, until the Quigley sisters find themselves stumbling on their chosen paths, and they are drawn back home in search of refuge in each other’s company.
As Anne struggles to balance her growing responsibilities, Beatrix fears she has lost her gift for storytelling, and Violet is shaken after an accident at the circus, the future the sisters had drawn for themselves feels murkier than ever. And, when the threads of fate begin to unravel, Anne must lean on her sisters and team up with a mysterious—and oddly infuriating—necromancer to save the city from an uncertain destiny and help old friends find a happy end.
With all three Quigleys back in the warm comfort of the Crescent Moon, they set out to bargain with Fate once more. But will the sisters find the courage to embrace who they have become while returning to what they left behind, or will the future unfold in a way that even a Quigley couldn’t have predicted?
The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong – 14 Oct (Ace)
Certainty Bulrush wants to be useful—to the Guild of Mages that took her in as a novice, to the little brother who depends on her, and to anyone else she can help. Unfortunately, her tepid magic hasn’t proven much use to anyone. When Certainty has the chance to earn her magehood via a seemingly straightforward assignment, she takes it. Nevermind that she’ll have to work with Mage Aurelia, the brilliant, unfairly attractive overachiever who’s managed to alienate everyone around her.
The two must transport minorly magical artifacts somewhere safe: Shpelling, the dullest, least magical village around. There, they must fix up an old warehouse, separate the gossipy teapots from the kind-of-flaming swords, corral an unruly little catdragon who has tagged along, and above all: avoid complications. The Guild’s uneasy relationship with citizens is at a tipping point, and the last thing needed is a magical incident.
Still, as mage and novice come to know Shpelling’s residents—and each other—they realize the Guild’s hoarded magic might do more good being shared. Friendships blossom while Certainty and Aurelia work to make Shpelling the haven it could be. But magic is fickle—add attraction and it might spell trouble.
Cozy Mystery
A Gargoyle’s Guide to Murder (Accidental Alchemist #9) by Gigi Pandian – 7 Oct (Gargoyle Girl Productions)
A vanished body. A deadly bookshop. A country house party full of suspects. Can a living gargoyle and an alchemist decipher the clues before poisoned pages claim another victim?
Dorian Robert-Houdin is used to living his life in the shadows, his existence only known to a few trusted friends. When a dangerous book from his past resurfaces, he follows his closest confidante, alchemist Zoe Faust, from Oregon to England to investigate.
Before he can examine the magical book, Dorian witnesses a murder amidst the foggy lanes of Oxford. But when he takes Zoe to the scene, there’s no body—and no evidence a crime has taken place. Using his unique skills as a gargoyle, Dorian sets out to solve the baffling crime nobody else believes occurred.
When Dorian and Zoe discover a dead man in a bookshop filled with arsenic-laced books, the victim isn’t a stranger—he’s connected to the vanishing crime scene. The trail leads to a country house party where a group of bibliophile suspects have gathered and a storm is brewing. Could the killer be the mercurial Agatha Christie scholar? The prickly literature professor? The secretive rare books expert? With an unscrupulous book thief lurking, can sleuths Dorian and Zoe unmask a murderer before the next page brings them to a perilous end?
Mockingbird Court (Shady Hollow #6) by Juneau Black – 7 Oct (Vintage)
It’s a crisp, cool autumn in Shady Hollow, and preparations are underway for the annual Harvest Festival. Creatures have flocked from far and wide to partake in the seasonal festivities, from pumpkin carving to pie tasting to soup throwing. With all these new faces around town, it’s the perfect time for someone to slip in unnoticed.
Unless that someone is Bradley Marvel, the most famous author—and most noticeable personality—in any woodland warren. It seems the wolf is on the lam. Back in the city, a body was found in his penthouse apartment at Mockingbird Court, and Marvel skipped town before the questioning could commence.
Marvel claims to be innocent, and it’s up to Vera and her friends to piece together what might have happened that fateful night so many miles away in the beating heart of the big city. But things get complicated when Vera learns that she also knows the victim … and might even be implicated herself.
The Menu of Happiness (Kamogawa Food Detectives #3) by Hisashi Kashiwai – 14 Oct (Putnam)
Every memory has a flavor. A very special restaurant in Kyoto helps find them . . .
Tucked away down a Kyoto backstreet lies the extraordinary Kamogawa Diner, run by Chef Nagare and his daughter, Koishi. The father-daughter duo have reinvented themselves as “food detectives,” offering a service that goes beyond cooking mouthwatering meals. Through their culinary sleuthing, they harness the power of taste to rekindle forgotten memories.
From the yakisoba holding the memories of precious first love to the dumplings shared between sworn enemies, each client will be forever changed by what they find on the menu, because the Kamogawa Diner doesn’t just serve meals—it’s a door to the past.
Fantasy
Cinder House by Freya Marske – 7 Oct (Tordotcom)
Ella is a haunting.
Murdered at sixteen, her ghost is furiously trapped in her father’s house, invisible to everyone except her stepmother and stepsisters.
Even when she discovers how to untether herself from her prison, there are limits. She cannot be seen or heard by the living people who surround her. Her family must never learn she is able to leave. And at the stroke of every midnight, she finds herself back on the staircase where she died.
Until she forges a wary friendship with a fairy charm-seller, and makes a bargain for three nights of almost-living freedom. Freedom that means she can finally be seen. Danced with. Touched.
You think you know Ella’s the ball, the magical shoes, the handsome prince.
You’re halfway right, and all-the-way wrong.
A Mouthful of Dust (Singing Hills Cycle #6) by Nghi Vo – 7 Oct (Tordotcom)
Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes.
Trapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly… because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.
Fantasy Romance
Huntsman (Hunted Kingdom #1) by Naima Simone – 21 Oct (Bramble)
Welcome to the dark world of The Hunted Kingdom where the daughters of modern-day mob families are reimagined fairytale princesses like you’ve never seen before. In Huntsman, family is power… and power is everything.
Nine years ago, my aunt took everything from me.
My world. My throne. My mother.
I’ve bided my time since then, serving under her in the Mwuaji crime family, but she’s crossed another line. She put a price on my head, sending the legendary assassin the Huntsman, Malachi Bowden, after me.
The Huntsman’s never failed a contract before, but I know everything there is to know about him. It’s finally time for me to take my revenge and finish the war my aunt started.The Huntsman might be my death. But Malachi Bowden?
He’s my weakness.
Historical Mystery
Mirage City (Evander Mills #4) by Lev AC Rosen – 7 Oct (Minotaur Books)
Private Investigator Evander “Andy” Mills’ next case takes him out of his comfort zone in San Francisco—and much to his dismay, back home to Los Angeles. After a secretive queer rights organization called the Mattachine Society enlists Andy to find some missing members, he must dodge not only motorcycle gangs and mysterious forces, but his own mother, too.
Avoiding her proves to be a challenge when the case leads Andy to the psychological clinic she works at. Worlds collide, buried secrets are dug up, and Andy realizes he’s going to have to burn it all down this time if he wants to pull off a rescue. With secret societies, drugs, and doctors swirling around him, time is running out for Andy to locate the missing and get them to safety. And for him to make it back to San Francisco in one piece.
Christmas Mystery
Miss Winter in the Library with a Knife by Martin Edwards – 7 Oct (Poisoned Pen)
Six contestants. One chance at a new life. Who wouldn’t be tempted to cheat?
Six down-on-their-luck people with links to the world of crime writing have been invited to play a game this Christmas by the mysterious Midwinter Trust. The challenge seems simple but exciting: Solve the murder of a fictional crime writer in a remote but wonderfully atmospheric village in north Yorkshire to win a prize that will change your fortunes for good.
Six members of staff from the shadowy Trust are there to make sure everyone plays fair. The contestants have been meticulously vetted but you can never be too careful. And with the village about to be cut off by a snow storm, everyone needs to be extra vigilant. Midwinter can play tricks on people’s minds.
The game is set – but playing fair isn’t on everyone’s Christmas list.
Relationship Fiction
The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee by Saki Kawashiro – 14 Oct (Crown)
Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. She thought she and her boyfriend were soulmates. He even took her to a love hotel, where she believed he was going to propose. Instead, he left her after four years.
So Momoko does what many broken-hearted people do—she gets incredibly drunk. So drunk that she passes out in an empty cafe. When she awakens, she’s eager to tell her story to anyone who will listen, and pours her heart out to a curious manager and the sole other customer in the cafe, a monk who trains at a temple nearby. When she starts to describe how she doted on her boyfriend, how he loved her cooking, the manager decides to indulge her, and allows her to slip into the kitchen, and cook up her ex’s favorite a warm, delightful butter chicken curry. As Momoko finishes telling her story, she realizes this combination of cooking and sharing has healed her heart in a way nothing else can.
The cafe is failing—subpar curry and a remote location has led to months of financial troubles. But as he devours Momoko’s dish, the manager gets an idea about how to save the what if they started doing this regularly, inviting in patrons to share stories about breakups, heartbreaks, and tragic endings, cooking dishes that meant something to the relationship? Like an unconventional therapy group, the “Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee” is born, with Momoko leading the Friday night sessions, and the monk-in-training offering blessings.
Inspired by the author’s actual experience working at a café where she posted a recipe called “My Ex’s Favorite Butter Chicken Curry,” The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favorite Recipe Funeral Committee is a magical, soul-nourishing comfort read for anyone who has loved and lost and loved again. With eight recipes included!
Science Fiction
Queen Demon (The Rising World #2) by Martha Wells – 7 Oct (Tor)
Dahin believes he has clues to the location of the Hierarchs’ Well, and the Witch King Kai, along with his companions Ziede and Tahren, knowing there’s something he isn’t telling them, travel with him to the rebuilt university of Ancartre, which may be dangerously close to finding the Well itself.
Can Kai stop the rise of a new Hierarch?
And can he trust his companions to do what’s right?
Science Fiction Romance
Her Alien Cyborgs by Susan Hayes – 3 Oct (Self)
The only thing that ever came easy for her was trouble.
After a lifetime of busting her ass and bending the law just to scrape by, Hezza is running on fumes. Her ship is even older than she is, and both are feeling their age. Is she ready to retire? Hell no. Hanging up her flight suit is the last thing she wants, even if it’s the smart thing to do.
Before she can make that choice, though, trouble finds her again… and this time it comes with a double order of hard muscles, sinful smiles, and alpha attitude.
They had nothing. No past. No future. No names. Then she appeared… and everything changed.
Subjects Six and Seven are failed experiments. Created in secret using banned technology and stolen DNA, they were crafted as weapons for a not-so-distant war. Too stubborn to be controlled and too valuable to terminate, they exist only to serve… and to dream of freedom.
Fate brought three battered hearts together, but it will take more than luck to survive the coming storm. Hezza is their key to happiness, and the cyborgs are her first rays of hope in a life spent in the shadows. Together, they’re going to change the galaxy… or die trying.
Pets in Space (Pets in Space #10) by Carol van Natta et.al. – 7 Oct (Pets in Space)
Nine Interstellar Tales. Nine Unforgettable Romances. Nineteen Adorably Badass Pets.
In this tenth-anniversary edition of PETS IN SPACE®, you’ll find smart-mouthed birds, cyber armadillos, tiny dragons, and alien creatures who steal the show — and sometimes save it. Across distant planets, space stations, and magical realms, unlikely heroes and heroines are drawn together by danger, fate… and the meddling of their pet sidekicks. These stories blend swoon-worthy romance with thrilling sci-fi adventure in a way only PETS IN SPACE can deliver.
🐾 Don’t miss your chance to escape into the stars with nine sizzling sci-fi romances — each with a pet who will steal your heart and a hero or heroine who will make it race. Grab PETS IN SPACE 10 and get ready to binge beyond the stars!
Pets in Space authors are proud supporters of Hero Dogs, a charity that raises and trains service dogs for disabled veterans and first-responders. 10% of the initial sales go to this excellent nonprofit organization.🐕
Urban Fantasy
Mystic Justice (The Other Detective #2) by Heather G. Harris – 2 Oct (Hellhound Press Limited)
A drowned dryad. Ritual markings. A killer who isn’t finished.
They pulled her from the lake – young, beautiful, and very, very dead. As Chester’s only magical Detective Inspector, I get the cases the Common police can’t handle, and this one has Other Realm written all over it.
When the medical examiner discovers runes carved into the corpse’s bones, I know we’re in for a bumpy ride. Elemental runes. First victim drowned. My gut says there’s more coming, and my gut is rarely wrong.
Then a centaur drops out of the sky, literally, and my theory’s confirmed. The only link between the victims? Botany, a vampire-owned bar that serves the magical and the mundane… and never seems short of trouble.
I’ve got a new unit at my back, Unit 13, and we’re still figuring out how to work together. Add Krieg, the King of Ogres – deadly, smart, and far too good at getting under my skin – and things get complicated fast. With a killer on the loose and the clock ticking, we’ll have to move quickly… or the next body that drops may well be one of ours.
Royal Duty (The Burden of Royals #1) by Nicole Eatough – 6 Oct (Silver Spark Publishing Inc)
Soon Cynthia must choose who among her marriage candidates will stand by her side and help her lead the sorcerer race. Too bad the one she wants isn’t interested—in ruling or in her.
Cynthia’s fate has always been to marry one of the marriage candidates picked out by her father from the top sorcerer families, and the time is soon coming for her to choose. But the one she wants, Jayden Becket, hates politics . . . and maybe her too. Resigned to marrying someone she doesn’t love, she leaves for a human college—alone—to gather her thoughts and make her choice.
Which works great until a vampire coven leader comes along insisting she hand over a list of all sorcerers with vampire blood. Which, rumor has it, includes Jayden. Unwilling to betray any of her people to another race, Cynthia scrambles to counter the threats from the vampires with a new alliance unheard of among the enchanted races—the werewolves.
Though there’s a growing number of sorcerers in the background unhappy with Cynthia’s method of ruling who don’t appreciate her risking the vampires’ wrath for the sake of mixed bloods. And this might just be enough to tip them into rebelling against the ruling sorcerer family.
The Mermaid’s Bubble Lounge (Sam Quinn #8) by Seana Kelly – 7 Oct (NYLA)
The vampire Guild is in shambles. My husband Clive and I might have given more than a few Masters their final deaths—allegedly—so it’s fallen on us to fix the problem. Mostly on Clive, that is, as he’s the Master vampire. I’m Sam Quinn, werewolf book nerd and owner of The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar.
Vlad (yes, that one) and Cadmael are the houseguests no one would want, but we’re trying to grin and bear it because the Guild must be rebuilt, and we must make haste as rogue vamps are becoming a big bloody problem.
Finvarra, the fae king who had it out for me even before I helped cause his brother’s death, is coming to do what none of his assassins have managed: end me in as painful a manner as possible.
In other news, Stheno and Vlad have been hooking up and we’re all a little afraid of those two together.
A Skirl of Sorcery (Cat Lady Chronicles #3) by Helen Harper – 13 Oct (Self)
Death has a new address—and it’s Kit McCafferty’s.
When Kit offers a room to a powerless ban sith who has lost her magic, she sets off a chain reaction across Coldstream’s supernatural streets. Her neighbors are panicking. Dangerous werewolves are on the prowl. And Kit finds herself trying to solve several desperate problems all at once.
Kit knows the world’s a messy place, especially when magic’s involved. But this reeks of something dark and nasty. She’s paws deep – and there’s every chance that Thane, the copper-haired werewolf who stirs Kit’s heart, will become collateral damage.
Her house is full of cats, and her city is full of monsters … fortunately, Kit McCafferty is one of them.
Blind Date with a Werewolf by Patricia Briggs – 21 Oct (Ace)
When the deadly werewolf Asil is gifted five blind dates by some anonymous “friends,” his reclusive life will never be the same, in this enthralling novel in stories from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Mercy Thompson series.
Includes two all-new stories as well as three previously published stories.
Dear Asil:
We are worried about you. A werewolf alone is a sad thing, especially at Christmastime. So we have a challenge for you: five dates in three weeks. We have taken the work out of it and connected you with five people from online dating sites. You should also know that we have informed the whole pack and instigated a betting pool. Have fun!
Sincerely,
Your Concerned Friends.
The monthly Must Have list is a compilation of the upcoming release titles that we, The Book Pushers, just can’t wait to get our hands on. Don’t see a title you’re excited about listed here? Add it to the comments section below. Let us know what you’re looking forward to!