It's a lovely day to share some news about our publishing imprint's first book, A Complement of Scoundrels by S.V. Lockwood! I've got a final cover reveal for you, plus the back-cover copy that we've been sending out to authors as we attempt to get some quotes from them (we've got some HITTERS reading it right now!). The cover will go public on 1/12 but I wanted to give y'all early access. We've got other stuff planned for the Sickos/Mega Sickos so stay tuned for all that.

Anyway, let's not stand on ceremony, here she is:

Shout out to the folks in the Discord who got to weigh in on different versions of this and helping us land on this beauty! And as promised, this is the back-cover copy we've been working on and tweaking over these past months:

There are many ways to bring down the man who betrayed you—and Myria Cadessa has thought of them all.

Cracking the Elysius Vault should’ve made Myria the richest thief in all Carintheum. Instead, it shattered her crew and left her rotting in jail while her double-crossing master walked away with everything that should’ve been theirs.

But now she’s out, and it’s time to settle the score. Reunite her crew? A pleasure. Steal back everything her erstwhile leader took? And then some. She’ll just need to trick the king of all tricksters with the law on her heels—not to mention a troublesome new ally whose loyalties seem as conflicted as his feelings for Myria. It’s the most audacious heist she’s ever attempted. But she failed her crew once and now she’ll make it right at any cost.

A Complement of Scoundrels is a bold, raucous journey through the underbelly of an empire where the devil’s rules reign, and morality, loyalty, and friendship are values few can afford. But where there’s a wit, there’s a way—and Myria has plenty of that.

We will start to see all this populate in places like Goodreads, StoryGraph etc. in the coming days and our pre-order push is right around the corner. We're aiming for a publication date in early September, which is of course subject to change. It's all coming together and it's thanks to all of you!

Let me know what you think of the cover and I appreciate y'all!

Thank you to this gang +OhioEd for joining our very first Booksworn chat! We had a great time discussing The Only Good Indians, basketball, the way Robin Hobb hurts her characters and how Will still hasn’t read Liveships.

First Swords and Bright Stars can join us towards the end of the month to discuss Wolf of Wessex!

Truth and Courage

Okay, we are entering our final days before THIS IS NOT A TEST enters the world! If you haven't already, please email me a picture of you with your TINAT ARC or finished copy by the end of Saturday the 10th. Courtney has a beautiful thank you for us, and I'd like to add all of your smiling faces to the video!

Email your picture to: kathryn@kathrynbudig.com

LOVE YOU ALL!!!

Good news everyone!

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve signed with Nefarious Bat Press, and my debut novella THIS IS HOW THE WORLD ENDS will be published this autumn!

It’s a queer dystopian story about the end of humanity and what comes after. I can’t wait for it to be out in the world.

Nefarious Bat Press is an indie publisher that specialises in queer horror and dark fiction. They published Tradwife, one of my favourite books from last year!

Also they are very very anti-Gen AI, which I love.

Cover reveal hopefully coming soon!

Love,

Disco

I went into Dragon Cursed by Elise Kova knowing one thing: if you see a dragon, you’re probably already doomed. What I didn’t expect was how tense, immersive, and downright fun this story would be from the very first page.

This world is brutal in the best way. Dragons aren’t majestic sky pets, they're walking extinction events. Humanity has been whittled down to a single surviving city, Vingard, and even there, safety is an illusion. The real terror isn’t just the dragons raining hellfire from above, but the dragon curse lurking within. Anyone could be infected. Anyone could be lying. And the punishment? Capture, execution, or a slow, horrifying transformation into a monster.

Reading from the main character’s perspective had me constantly on edge. Living with the fear that you might be cursed and that discovery means death adds such a delicious layer of paranoia to every interaction. I loved how that tension seeped into even the smallest moments. Trust is rare. Secrets are everywhere. And I was side-eyeing everyone.

And then there’s Lucan. Oh, Lucan. Part bodyguard, part menace, part walking red flag wrapped in sarcasm and secrets. His dynamic with the main character is equal parts entertaining and infuriating in the best way. The banter, the suspicion, the way he clearly knows more than he’s saying? Chef’s kiss. I was yelling at the page while also wanting more of every single scene he was in.

Elise Kova absolutely nails the pacing here: there's action, emotional stakes, creeping dread, and just enough mystery to keep you turning pages at an alarming speed. By the time I hit the end, I was fully invested, mildly stressed, and already craving the next installment.

If you love fantasy with dragons that are actually terrifying, high-stakes secrets, morally gray characters, and a constant sense of oh no this could go very wrong very fast, Dragon Cursed delivers.

✨️Thank you Entangled Mayhem Books and Elise Kova for sharing Dragon Cursed with me! 

❓️Do you love dragons as majestic allies or terrifying world-ending nightmares and would you survive a dragon curse if it chose you? 🐉📚

I'm hosting my second giveaway for Spring Bindery giveaways, which includes the following books:

• Burn the Sea by Mona Tewari

• Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francis

• Wayward Souls by Susan J Morris

• Black as Diamond by U.M. Agoawike

• This is not a Test by Courtney Summers

• Our Sister's Keepers by Jasmine Homes

• Saturn Returning by Kim Narby

Conditions of Giveaway:

• Subscribe to Chanterelle Solace by clicking Join Free in here!

• Comment down below which Arcs you'd like to be considered for (you can enter to multiple but you will only be selected to win one of them)

• Extra Entry: Every paid subscriber gets +3 extra entry

Thanks no thanks to Dylin Hardcastle for bulldozing their limb through my gut, tearing out my heart and throwing it into a wood chipper

Dylin wrote A Language of Limbs as part of their PhD and it is their debut novel. (How they are ever going to top this - I have no idea!!)

The story is set in 1970’s Newcastle, following two queer youth referred to as Limb One and Limb Two. Spanning three decades, these two lives bring us through moments of collective queer history and culture where joy and grief exist side by side, inseparable. (Australia’s first Mardi Gras, the AIDS crisis, etc)

A Language of Limbs is a collection of lives stitched together with poetry, art, fragments, and feelings. The seemingly little moments carry enormous weight, reminding us how terrifyingly close we always are to a completely different life. The book is about love being policed, friendship as love, queerness lived loudly & quietly, and everything in between. It’s so dang heartbreakingly tragic, and yet sooo deeply hopeful. I cried and cried and cried.

This is an essential queer read. It is going to stick with me for a long, long time. The AIDS epidemic section had me fucking winded, gasping for air and sobbing (literally!!)

Shoutout to the author for their recognition and appreciation of Indigenous peoples, as well as the impact Indigenous liberation movements have had on queer ones. That was super cool of them to acknowledge and I am very grateful for it.

I will (and already have started) gifting this book to everyone I know.

I can’t wait to read more from Dylin!!

————————————

“Let me tell you / my dead friends were so much fun / let me tell you / we had so much fun / let me tell you / it was worth it.”

“I am most free when I am in connection, because I know my liberation is bound up with yours,"

“Grief is not sadness. Grief is the body cut open. Flows of blood and joy and salt and ache and words and memories and memories never made. Grief is undoing. Grief is wanting flesh, yearning for a voice. Grief is fear of forgetting...a face...the contour of a hip...your brilliant red hair...Grief is wondering what could have been made and what could have become. Grief is what if. Grief is endless cycles of why, and I wish I didn't. Grief is the guilt of the living, of my living. Grief is the sobbing into my birthday cake, because I'm older than you, now. Grief is the building of a world without you in it.

Then there’s the less obvious, the part no one writes about. How grief is horny. How I bend myself over the bed head and feel your fingers in my ass, real and imagined. Fried is pining for your touch. Grief is being wet for a ghost. Grief is not sadness, it is a kaleidoscope of desires like white lights refracted through skin. Sadness, it think, is the object. And grief is the negative space.”

“Queering. Queer, as in adjective, as in being, as in I am this. Queer, as in verb, as in doing. As in I queer this. Queer, as in fucking queers. Queer, as in I queer’d this, as in, I made it beautiful.

"Once, you hear a lesbian say I don t believe in transsexuals. And Daphne cries heaven forbid I believe in myself. I believe myself." 

“Against the impossibility of it all, joy persists. [...] I think, look at us. Witness us. In a world that wishes for our annihilation, here are our bodies, spectacularly colliding. [...] Look at our family. Look at our joy, our glorious, glorious joy”

“it is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language chiefly made by men to express theirs.”

Early access to SWANA* Book Club things:

Click here on the Canva link: Story template & Instagram templates to gain early access to our story template and instagram template for SWANA Book Club as a Storygraph Challenge (which you can join here)! And scroll below to see early sneak peeks to our post coming out end of this week or early next week!

Here are some links to everything I've shared over the last few weeks:

• GoodReads for 2026 releases

• Pagebound List

*: SWANA Stands for South West Asia and North Africa and is a repalcement for MENA as a decolonised term

Sneak Peak at graphics coming out this week:

Here's a sneak peak at some of the graphics coming out for the book club this week in collaboration with one of our mods and another surprise collab! Please don't share this anywhere as it isn't the final version and may undergo some changes till then:

Hey y'all!

It's a new year and I'm so excited to read more with y'all in 2026. Bindery has added a cool new "request a rec" feature where you can request book recs from me directly. Try it out!

I'm also gonna add some recent reads I recommend to this post. Click the links to read more!

Best,

Rae

The first Discord chat with the Bookclub is happening in 10 minutes! Join The Brothers Gwynne chat as everyone who joins chats about their thoughts on December's book, The Only Good Indians. Hope to see you there!