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Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’ve got four brand-spanking new releases for your perusal today. It’s mid-September already, somehow, and I don’t know about where you are, but summer is clinging to the year with claws of fire. I’m ready for fall, I’m ready for decorative gourds, and I am beyond ready to be able to go outside to read on the patio without decorating my pages with sweat. May cool weather and peaceful afternoons find us all soon!
Bookish Goods
Pride & Prejudice Book Purse by WellReadCompany
This is a very cute idea for a purse if you’re not looking for anything huge. The seller has a couple other book-purses as well. At 19x25x5 cm, I daresay you could fit a paperback book inside it, too. $65.
New Releases
Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Professor Arton Daghdev is a xeno-ecologist. But more importantly, he’s a political dissident, and that’s what has landed him on the plant of Kiln, the prison colony for the Mandate. Because of his studies, Arton is able to recognize the signs that humans are not the first intelligent life on Kiln, and if he can survive the torments of prison and the threats of its hostile environment, he may well bring change the planet and all of the Mandate.
Spells to Forget Us by Aislinn Brophy
Luna is a powerful witch who is expected to preserve a family legacy she’s entirely uninterested in. Aoife is the child of a family of influencers who desperately wants the privacy her parents have refused to allow her. Both girls are at their lowest when they find each other and begin dating, and for a while it’s good. But when the breakup comes, Luna casts a spell to erase Aoife’s memories of her. This is something that is required by magic law. But the spell malfunctions, somehow, and erases both their memories…until they meet and fall for each other again.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
It’s a double decker of new releases today because I just could not whittle things down enough this week. I apologize to your TBR in advance.
Ruin Road by Lamar Giles
Cade Webster is a star football player at a good school. He’s also Black. As soon as he leaves his neighborhood—which is a bad one, according to his classmates—he’s constantly surrounded by people acting out their fear of him. Then, one night, he ducks into a pawn shop to avoid the police, and everything changes. He tells the shopkeeper that he wishes people would stop being afraid around him, and it’s a wish that is granted. Unfortunately, it’s not just that people are no longer afraid of Cade. It’s when they’re around him, they’re no longer afraid of anything.
Such Lovely Skin by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Viv is a great gamer, a chronic liar, and a Twitch streamer with serious ambitions. She’s been off her feed for the summer, though, unable to bring herself to play after causing an accident that kills her little sister. But she believes she’s now found the perfect game to bring her stream back to life. It’s something dark and horrific and suited to her mood. In an unbroadcasted practice run, she tells an NPC the truth when it asks for a secret. The secret is that she was the one who caused her sister’s death. That one moment of honesty costs more than she could imagine. It summons a demonic mimic who sets about ruining her life. No one will believe her when she tells them what happened.
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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