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Today, I have a couple exciting new sci-fi and fantasy books out this week to share with you, plus recommendations for recent indie SFF books worth adding to your TBR!
Bookish Goods
Stabby Cat Door Topper by Pintobo
I had ghostly cats on the brain (for obvious reasons — see below) but I found this hilarious door topper instead. If you’re a cat owner, I have no doubt you can feel how appropriate it is in your bones as well. Comes in a variety of sizes! ($5+)
New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Releases Out This Week
Twin Flames by Olivia Abtahi
Bianca and Leila might be twins, by they couldn’t be more different from each other as people. They’re already outsiders in small-town Virginia with their Iranian and Argentinian heritage, but Bianca embraces that difference while Leila does her best to pretend her cultural inheritances don’t even exist. Before they can grow completely apart, on their eighteenth birthday their neighbor’s barn burns down for no apparent reason…then a monster comes out of the flames and seems to infect Leila with strange magic that makes her allergic to iron. As different as they are, it’s time for the twins to pull back together and learn to rely on each other if they want their family and their town to survive.
The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard
The story of Grimalkin the cat starts one morning in 1902 as he settles in front of a fire. But it doesn’t end for another 120 years after he becomes a ghost cat and watches Edinburgh change around him over several human-length lifetimes.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Recent SFF Indie Novels
Here are two recent indie novels that I wanted to highlight for you!
The Avian Hourglass by Lindsey Drager
In an isolated town, a woman struggles to raise triplets that she intended only to be the surrogate for but now must parent after their intended parents die in a car accident. She sets aside her dreams of being a radio astronomer in a world where the stars are no longer visible and the birds have vanished. Adrift, she pursues a local legend about this one town being the whole of the universe, and soon finds her life and understanding of reality slipping away.
The Body Harvest by Michael J. Seidlinger
Will and Olivia meet at a grief-sharing group and bond over the fact that they are both absolute wrecks who share a strange hobby: seeking out sickness. They’re virus chasers, willingly seeking out infections and bolstering their sense of self and confidence by conquering each new disease. They soon find an online community of similarly obsessed people, and when a mysterious poster claims to know where the next outbreak will occur, they decide to head to ground zero together. After all, if they can survive this newest strain of illness, it will truly prove that nothing — and no one — can hurt them.
I’m back from Scotland this week, and unfortunately also back with the lingering effects of COVID. Some day I hope to have a vacation during which I don’t get sick, but this one wasn’t it. Still, I had a lot of fun, and I’ll try to point you at some neat things I saw while I was there! First up, my favorite thing of the trip: Fingal’s Cave. I sadly didn’t get to go inside because the water was too rough, but just seeing Staffa was cool as heck for a geologist like me. Enjoy the columnar basalts and also the books in this newsletter — I’ll see you on Friday!
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.
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