BP Note: Our scorching hot days of summer seem to have vanished practically overnight. We are back into cozy long sleeves, leggings, and boots or leg warmers. Mounds of colorful squash have replaced the piles of green, orange, and yellow melons. Berries have given way to apples and pears, and citrus is starting to make a comeback. I have a pot of beans simmering on the stove gently warming the house in both temperature and mind as their smell wafts throughout. My person reading has also skewed towards the cozy and less angsty for a variety of reasons, weather being only one of them. I hope all of you find something cozy and warming during these unsettled times…not just the weather. Take care of yourselves and others around you. Also… let us know what you are looking forward to reading this month.
Happy reading!
~E
- Contemporary Romance
- Cozy Fantasy
- Epic Fantasy
- Fantasy
- Fantasy Romance
- Holiday Romance
- Mystery
- Paranormal Romance
- Science Fiction
- Urban Fantasy
- World Literature
Contemporary Romance
Tied by Treachery (Betray Me Twice #1) by Wren Shaw – 9 Oct (Self)
She thought she’d put the worst betrayal of her life behind her.
Celia Cromwell was stunned when she discovered her husband was cheating. Then he made her fight for every dollar in their divorce before marrying his much younger mistress.
She never expected to fall for anyone again. Until Julian Hayes made her feel safe to love again.
Except when he asked her to meet his daughter…Celia found her ex sitting at the table with the pregnant woman who helped ruin her life. Forced to pick sides, Julian makes the wrong decision.
Now he has to grovel for the woman who never should have been the one to leave, while the people who already wrecked her try to do it again.
The Fall Fix Up (Peach Blossom #4) by Karmen Lee – 27 Oct (Afterglow Books)
Set in the cozy small town of Peach Blossom, a free-spirited mechanic and a fiercely independent artist make a pact to help each other rebuild, for fans of opposites attract romance and seasonal stories that celebrate autumn.
Welcome to Peach Blossom, an irresistibly charming small town where falling in love never goes quite as planned . . .
Aiden Flowers can fix anything. Cars, kitchens, houses—if something was broken, it could be rebuilt. Unless that something was his messy family. Especially his dad, who ruined Aiden’s credit. Or his sister, who Aiden hadn’t spoken to in years.
Janae Gunner is crafty, not handy. Give her a blank canvas, and she can make art. But she needed everything to be constructed before she could make it shine. That’s why she pretends her first marriage didn’t happen—pretty on the outside, with no foundation.
When an apartment fire leaves Aiden homeless and Janae living in a half-finished house, they agree to a practical fix Aiden will help Janae with repairs in exchange for a place to stay.
But neither of them planned on falling in love, especially not with their secrets threatening to surface. When the past catches up to them in the present, Aiden and Janae must weather the storm—or risk letting their spark burn out forever.
Cozy Fantasy
The Enchanted Cottage (Thornhaven Series #5) by R.J. Cole – 2 Oct (Self)
Cael Ashford spent twelve years as an adventurer and has nothing to show for it except a bad knee and a leather pack that holds everything he owns. So when a letter arrives telling him his estranged uncle has died and left him an enchanted workshop in a village he hasn’t visited since childhood, he almost doesn’t go.
Almost.
The catch: he has to stay for one year or lose everything. The workshop is falling apart. The two hundred and fourteen enchantments his uncle maintained for the village are breaking down. A soup pot is launching its contents at the ceiling. The local merchants are circling. And a judgmental orange tabby named Whiskers has been granted, by legal covenant, the right to evaluate everyone who enters the premises.
Thornhaven doesn’t need a hero. It needs someone who will stay.
But staying means fixing what’s broken, earning trust from people who loved the man he never bothered to visit, and learning that the hardest magic isn’t in the spellwork. It’s in putting down roots.
Whimsey, Wine and Whiskers (Tales of Silverfern Hollow #4) by R.S.S. Rodrigues – 17 Oct (Self)
When her children leave home and her husband quietly builds a life that no longer includes her, Esmayah decides she has spent enough of her life being invisible. She leaves everything behind for a forgotten magical vineyard beyond Silverfern Hollow, armed with determination, a love of good wine, and a whiskered hairless rat named Drusilla Scholastica the Third. Sometimes the most extraordinary magic in the world is simply the courage to begin again.
Epic Fantasy
Rise of the Temple (Of Gods and Phoenixes #1) by Josephine Le Tulle – 1 Oct (Self)
Vy believes every problem can be solved.
Finding Cana should have been no exception.The granddaughter of Vy’s master, the Temple Queen, Cana has been part of Vy’s life for as long as she can remember—the closest thing she has to a sister, even if they have spent much of that time as rivals.
Now newly appointed as a Blessing Master of the Moon Temple, Vy has taken on a life of service. So when the Temple Queen sends her to retrieve Cana from the neighboring Sun Kingdom, Vy leaves home for the first time, determined to bring her back.
Instead, she finds herself drawn into a mystery that has haunted the kingdom for three centuries.
Within the Sun giants’ mountain castle lies Emerald Wing, an abandoned residence infested with undead. Skeletons, wraiths, and ghouls roam its halls, yet no one has discovered why they remain—or what keeps drawing them back.
As Vy searches for Cana, she uncovers buried histories and secrets that challenge everything she thought she knew. Along the way, she finds help from unlikely allies—but in a kingdom filled with secrets, it is not always clear who can be trusted, or what their motives might be.
The deeper Vy ventures into the mystery of Emerald Wing, the closer she comes to a truth she has never had to face:
Some problems cannot be solved without a cost.
Fantasy
The Thrice Bound Fool (Blacktongue Thief #2) by Christopher Buehlman – 13 Oct (Tor Books)
Professional thief and inveterate trickster Kinch Na Shannack has always enjoyed a good book. But now his life, and the future of all of Manreach, depends on him deciphering a very bad book indeed; a stolen, sentient tome that tries to kill him every time he opens it—and often when it’s closed.
Galva, veteran of the goblin wars and death’s sworn handmaiden, has vowed to protect Kinch while he mines the book for its dark magic and even darker secrets. She does so not for Kinch’s sake—though the cheeky bastard is growing on her—but because the book is the key to stopping the shadowy tyrants out to kill the queen she serves, and loves.
The ruthless, all-seeing Taker’s Guild dogs their every step, and thief and knight must flee the known world entirely if they hope to succeed in their mission. But trouble finds Kinch wherever he goes, and the pair may have traded the devil they know for horrors far darker and hungrier as they enter lands unknown.
The Slantwise Histories (Collection) by Alix E. Harrow – 20 Oct (Tordotcom)
Alix E. Harrow spins tales never-told and seen just outside the periphery of reality–in the tradition of Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, and Carmen Maria Machado, these hauntingly resonant and defiant stories leap from the page and dance in and out of a history that never was (but could have been) and into a future startingly like our own.
Before I was a liar I was a historian, which is a kind of storyteller who doesn’t make any money and likes footnotes.
These are stories about the past as it wasn’t quite, but might have been, from ancient battlefields all the way up through roadside attractions off I-70. They’re about the people caught in the mean jaws of history: the women and workers, the soldiers and mothers, everyone shoved into the margins of the world.
But these aren’t singular tragedies―these are the stories of the ones that got away. The ones who defected and dissented, who broke the rules, who ran and tossed a match behind them. SLANTWISE HISTORIES AND OTHER STORIES collects the best known short fiction of Alix. E. Harrow, including the Hugo-award winning “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” and for the first time in print, Amazon original titles “The Six Deaths of the Saint” and “The Knight and the Butcherbird”. Updated to reflect the author’s preferred editions, Slantwise Histories also includes “The Long Way Up”, “Roadside Attraction”, “Mr. Death”, “The Ransom of Miss Coraline Connelly”, “The Sycamore and the Sybil”, “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, “The Whisper in the Weld”, “Dustbaby”, and four all-new short stories.
Tropes (Collection) by Sharon Shinn – 27 Oct (Fairwood Press LLC)
A man who can shift shapes. A woman who keeps being reincarnated. A world where unicorns are real. A city bound by elemental magic.
These are some of the touchpoints in Sharon Shinn’s new collection of stories and poems. It features two brand-new novellas, including a story set in the Elemental Blessings universe.
Fantasy Romance
The Barbarian Guide (Savagely Sweet Barbarians #5) by Amy Padilla – 6 Oct (Self)
After losing my bondmate to illness, I’d accepted that my time to love was in the past. I promised her on her death bed that I’d never take another bondmate, and I meant it.
Instead I’ve lived my life to serve my clan, lending my assistance when they needed me and continuing to act as clan leader while Uttin traveled from town to town, freeing those who were forced to hide who they loved. I told myself devotion was enough.
I never expected one of those townsfolk to sway my heart.
He looked at me not as a leader or a legend, but as a man. An equal. Someone worthy of soft smiles and unguarded hope.
Loving him would mean breaking the last promise I made to the woman I lost. This choice could be the one that finally breaks me, or it could put my heart back together again.
A Time of Gladiators and Fate (Last Road to Rome #1) by Susan Illiene – 12 Oct (Self)
Grace King grew up on a farm in Kansas, so nothing prepares her for landing in the Roman Colosseum while it’s still intact. A heart-pounding chase in her rental car follows with spear-throwing legionnaires, armed gladiators, and a couple of wild animals. Chaos ensues, but she’s not exactly Fast and Furious material. Grace is eventually forced to surrender in a floral sundress meant for vacation, not blood sport.
The emperor offers her two choices: execution or gladiator school. While she isn’t afraid of hard work, the ludus where she’ll train with other men and women is brutal. Most doubt her right to be there, adding pressure to an already difficult situation. Every aspect of her new life, down to the clothes she wears and how she’s treated, is vastly different and horrifying.
Her fate will rest in the hands of two dangerous, conflicting men.
In the training arena, the first is a formidable lead instructor with icy good looks. He will push her body to its absolute limits and test her willpower to survive while trading heated banter with her. The second is a wealthy, enigmatic sponsor who shields her against Rome’s darkest exploits for a price, but his own time-travel secrets weave a dangerous web. The handsome man knows far more about how she ended up in ancient Rome than he’s willing to tell her.
Twisted Iron Marks (Bitter Legacies #2) by Hailey Edwards – 13 Oct (Self)
Tangled are the promises given from the heart.
When the Council of Witches demands Bran Gallagher cast aside his dying coven and join a new one, he flees to the Otherworld with the man he loves to escape his sentencing.
Cillian Dunne returns to the Otherworld as the long-thought-dead Winter Prince, his past still lost to him in his mind. To win back the Winter Court stolen from him, Cillian must seek allies in the Fae who judged him guilty of associating with witches long ago.
Among the Fae, who are his sworn enemy, Bran will do and become anything to stay by his lover’s side, even if it means wearing Cillian’s collar and being seen as his pet.
Journeying with Bran to the Autumn Court, Cillian rejoins Fae high society during the Midsummer Festival. Little do they know the pitfalls that await, including an adversarial King Lugh, who wants Bran for his personal entertainment.
Cillian will do whatever it takes to keep Bran safe. Navigating a dance of long-forgotten manners and insidious words, he strikes an unbreakable bargain with Lugh that sets the clock ticking for Cillian to prove his innocence.
But as a threat to the Autumn Court creeps ever closer, the stakes become impossibly high. In the end, Cillian must choose between keeping his bargain and his life…or lose forever the witch who owns his heart.
Fracture (The Lattice Series #1) by Mira McKinney – 22 Oct (Free Mettle Press)
She’s forty-three, her twins are grown, and the organization that erased her wants her back.
They said she was the best they ever had. Too bad nobody told her.
For nineteen years, Stephanie Cross has graded eighth-grade lab reports, raised her twins, and protected the small, careful life she rebuilt after her husband’s death. Ordinary is the only thing she trusts.
Then reality tears open during her morning commute—a seam of silver light with something hungry pushing through. Stephanie seals it with her bare hands, moving on instincts that belong to someone she used to be.
By nightfall, she’s restrained in a concrete room four stories beneath Boston. A stranger has a file bearing her name, records of missions she doesn’t remember, and proof that she was once part of an organization she has never heard of.
Worse, her twins are beginning to show the same impossible abilities. And the people holding Stephanie already know their names.
The world has seams. They’re tearing. And the things slipping through hunt anyone who can feel the current.
When one of them comes through the wall of her school gym, Stephanie can no longer pretend she is the woman she remembers.
The organization gives her two choices: rejoin the people who declared her dead or let them erase her again.
Holiday Romance
Eight Ways to Say I Love You by Amanda Elliot – 27 Oct (Berkley)
This Hanukkah, Shira Levinson is returning home to New Jersey riding the high of achieving major milestones. Though she only just graduated from college, she’s got her dream job and a perfect Los Angeles apartment—an actual miracle in the city of dreams.
Life has not been quite as kind to Leo David. Not only did he fail out of college, he was forced to move in with his estranged dad, who he still hates for cheating on his mom years ago. The only silver lining? Getting to see Shira, his childhood friend (and crush, though he’ll never tell her that) while she’s home for her family’s holiday party.
But that’s just the beginning. Over the next eight years, Shira’s and Leo’s lives spin them in all sorts of directions as they grow and change, taking them places they never imagined going. Sometimes those paths take them farther away from each other, and other times closer together. If they can only time it right, they might uncover a love that burns forever.
Mystery
Miss Wolcott’s Ghost (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache #21) by Louise Penny – 20 Oct (Minotaur Books)
“There’s a body in Lost Nation.”
“Where?” demands Armand as he scribbles on the pad by his bed.
But the line goes dead before Chief Inspector Gamache can question the caller.
The head of homicide for the Sûreté du Québec has no idea where Lost Nation is, or who woke him in the small hours of the morning at his home in Three Pines. What he does know is that the man was terrified.
And so Armand is thrust out of a deep sleep and into the surrounding forests in search of the mythical Lost Nation. And a body.
When he and his team of Jean-Guy Beauvoir and Isabelle Lacoste find both, the situation only grows more bizarre. The unidentified dead man appears to be from an era more than a century old. He’s lying in a long-abandoned cemetery, on top of a grave with a date, but no name.
Adding to the mystery, the early morning call appears to have come from Gamache’s friend and neighbor, Clara Morrow. While she denies any knowledge of it, it becomes clear there is some connection between her, the Morrow family, and Lost Nation.
Soon, Gamache and his team are faced with tracking down not just the legend of Lost Nation, but a lost ship, lost documents belong to an eccentric Victorian botanist, , and a mysterious plant not seen in a century, that might save, or take, countless lives.
As the murder investigation deepens, nightmarish spectres from the past begin to haunt the Sûreté officers, only heightened by the appearance of one of Gamache’s former and now disgraced proteges, with whom he must form an uneasy alliance.
As the ghosts begin to gather, Gamache, Beauvoir, and Lacoste, with the help of Reine-Marie, Clara, and the other villagers of Three Pines, realize that the body on the grave is far from the only death. To solve the crime and avert catastrophe they must look to rancid secrets and old lies no longer dead and buried.
Paranormal Romance
The Feeder Legacy (The Vampire Dominion #1) by Louisa Masters – 15 Oct (Self)
When the family secret is a history of being lunch…
I don’t have the best track record when it comes to jobs. Since finishing uni, I’ve been drifting from hospo to retail and back again, searching for something that will hold my interest and leaving a trail of irritated wanker bosses behind me.
When I once again find myself unemployed, my long-lost cousin steps in with a fantastic opportunity. Turns out, when my parents decided to walk away from the family, they left a generational business as well, and there’s a job waiting for me if I want it.
The catch? Vampires are real, and they’ll pay to drink my blood.
The Barale family sets the gold-star standard for vampire feeders, and the mere mention of my name gets me a job with a salary and benefits beyond my wildest dreams. In return, I need to move into a vampire’s house and offer him my wrist twice a day. Simple.
Except my new community—including my vampire, Tristan—doesn’t know that I’m clueless about their world, and it’s more complicated and dangerous than I thought. I’ve got to keep my head down and mouth shut while I learn the basics. How hard can it be?
After all, I’m a legacy.
Science Fiction
A Wall is Also a Road by Annalee Newitz – 6 Oct (Tor Books)
Gardenpath is a graduate student in biology who desperately wants to pass their exams with the highest honor possible: a prize given to scholars who discover something truly novel in the universe. Gardenpath also happens to be an amoeba–a slime mold, to be exact–from an ancient civilization that dwells in a vast network of towers between the stars. Seeking their prize, Gardenpath heads to a remote, dangerous planet that other researchers have dismissed as dead and uninteresting. There, they are surprised to discover a complicated ecosystem unlike anything they’ve ever encountered–including some peculiar, multicellular animals who seem to have language and culture.
To learn more about these animals, Gardenpath changes their shape to resemble one of them. And that’s how they meet a creature named Murtis, who lives in a city she calls Pompeii and works in a brothel known to locals as “the lupanar.” Unfazed by a visitor who says she’s from the stars, Murtis takes Gardenpath into her care, introducing her to the seaside tourist town full of immigrants and shopkeepers who are just trying to get by.
A Wall Is Also a Road is a story about what happens when the alien becomes familiar–and beloved. Gardenpath expected to finish their research, present their discovery, and take their place among the decorated scholars of the floating cities. But when they look at their wild new friend Murtis’s sensor bulb, attached to a bizarre electro-chemical control system, they begin to realize there’s more to life than academic achievement. They’re not sure what it is, but they’re going to use science to find out.
As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers – 13 Oct (Harper Voyager)
Life on the resource-poor planet of Fortune is challenging, but for its inhabitants, it’s home. For two of them, Signy and Cora, this home might no longer be enough.
Signy is a brilliant but reclusive botanist who bio-prints medicine from her small plant shop, often bending the rules to help those the system leaves behind. Her life is filled with the green of her store, the warmth of her one elderly friend, and the quiet determination to help others without putting herself in danger.
Cora is a rorqual pilot, one of the few with the unique ability to navigate the massive, living ships that connect the scattered settlements of their solar system. Her bond with her rorqual, Colibri, is profound—a connection that is both her greatest gift and a threat to her career.
It is that threat—the “mindbleed,” a dangerous side effect of her piloting—that brings her to Signy’s shop, and her appearance puts Signy in the danger she so fears. But it’s soon apparent it’s not just about losing her license—this delicate balance between risk and trust has the potential to change everything for them.
Told in an alternating timeline of their initial coming together and a not-so-distant future where they have found domestic bliss, this is a story harrowing and haunting, heartfelt and hopeful. Through a love story centered around survival, we are given a glimpse into the very best of what Becky Chambers does in her writing: explore what it means to be human, and what it means to come together.
Urban Fantasy
How to Catch a Hellhound (Hellhounds of Paradise Falls #6) by Shannon Mae – 1 Oct (Self)
Paul
I’m not exactly sure how I became sheriff of Paradise Falls, but I take the protection of the people in my town seriously. That even includes Jude, who’s constantly pulling pranks in the hopes of getting arrested. I know he’s flirting with me, but how can someone as damaged as me be a match for his eternal good cheer? Never mind the fact that I may also be losing my mind—I’m getting crazy feelings about people, and the urge to act on them is getting stronger. My goal has always been to save people, not to harm them. Something is changing, though, and I’m not sure who I am anymore.Jude
Being an assassin and a hellhound is all-around fun, and teasing my sexy sheriff makes my life complete. Lately, though, something’s been wrong with Paul. He’s been cranky and secretive, and I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. Is something from Paul’s past haunting him? Because if someone needs killing, then I’ll be happy to do it. Although maybe it’s time to show the sheriff what he’s really capable of. He’s a kindred spirit—I can sense it—and I’m only too happy to show him how hellhounds take care of the bad guys.
The Ferryman’s Rest Inn & Grogshop (Sam Quinn #9) by Seana Kelly – 13 Oct (NYLA)
Meg, or Megaera, is one of the Furies you probably read about in Greek Mythology. She’s also been sitting on one of Sam Quinn’s stools in The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar since it opened, glaring into silence anyone who tries to strike up a conversation with her.
Sam, being Sam, eventually broke through Meg’s walls and a tentative friendship grew—not a warm one, certainly. Meg doesn’t do warm. She has, though, in a crisis situation, shown up to fight alongside Sam.
Until recently, that is.
Sam’s getting more and more concerned about Meg’s strange absences and then she and Clive receive a text that turns their lives upside down. Meg tells Sam and Clive it’s their turn to help her…in Greece…in the Underworld.
Sam badgers her friend Stheno into coming with them. I mean, if you have to descend into Hades’ realm, a Gorgon can be pretty handy.
Keep your fingers crossed. Things are about to get downright mythological around here.
World Literature
A Serving of Hope (Kamogawa Food Detectives #4) by Hisashi Kashiwai – 6 Oct (G.P. Putnam’s Sons)
Travel down the alleyways of Kyoto, passing the Higashi Honganji Temple, and you just might be lucky enough to find the Kamogawa Diner, where a father-daughter “food detective” duo help their clientele discover memories lost to time through recreating delicious food from their pasts.
Take your seat and observe the ginger pork reminiscent of unrequited love, the not-too-sour chilled noodles from grandma’s house, and even the macaroni gratin shared between a father and his young son for the final time. There is no dish or memory too complex for Chef Nagare and Detective Koishi, committed to providing the culinary closure their diners so desire.
The Kamogawa Diner won’t just sate your appetite, as the meals on offer can conjur any forgotten memory. A true tonic for the soul, its customers will leave with a warm belly and a full heart.
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!