It's time for The Page Ladies Book Club's 2025 Book Lovers Secret Santa Gift Exchange! We're turning up the holiday cheer and using the magic of Elfster to handle the anonymous matching. Let's make this Christmas the most bookish one yet!

🎁 How the Gift Exchange Works:

Matching: Elfster will anonymously pair you with one lucky recipient.

The Gift: You choose the perfect read! It can be a newly purchased book OR a beloved title from your own collection new or gently used.

Wish List Wisdom: Please head to Elfster and clearly state your "wishes"! Include specific titles, preferred genres, and your preferred book format physical, e-book, etc.. Help your Secret Santa out!

⭐Dates to Remember:

Register by: December 24th

Matches Drawn: December 25th A Christmas morning surprise!

Send Your Gift by: January 1st

A Quick Note on Spending: Please ignore the $50 spending limit on Elfster it's just a site requirement! There is no minimum or maximum amount. The true magic is in the exchange!

📍Our Golden Rule: The success of this event relies on commitment. Please only join if you are committed to sending a gift. Let's make sure every member is feeling the love this Christmas!

❗️If you or know of someone who maybe interested in joining us tap or send them this link! https://tinyurl.com/4hafcpsu

Guess what I've got for you today...

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I think that's enough to keep it out of the image preview, so....

Ta-daaaaa! Subscribers actually got this a couple weeks ago so shout out to you guys for keeping it a secret in the discord.

For those of you who don't know the lore here, let me give you a little background. Yes, you are reading that correct, that says this is announcing the 2024 Best of Books winners. In November. of 2025.

I wish I had a reasonable excuse for this, I really do...but I don't. I genuinely can't even tell you why I didn't release this in January like I was supposed to or why I haven't released it in the many months that these images have been sitting in my Canva projects, but from the bottom of my heart I have no idea. Anyway, it has now been almost a full year since we first started the process of nominating books for our Best of Books 2024 and for the love of god I need this to not be hanging over my head anymore. I say that as though there was literally anything or anyone but my own damn self keeping me from getting this out, BUT THERE WASN'T.

You ever get a text or an email from someone that you don't reply to right away and then you kind of forget about it until it's a few days later and you go "oh my god I need to reply to that" but you've remembered at 1am and that's not a reasonable hour to text someone so you'll do it in the morning, and then you wake up in the morning and for many more mornings until the next time you remember it's suddenly been weeks and now it's awkward but you really should reply to it but you put it off because now you're embarrassed and then the longer you wait the worse it gets so you just never reply and suddenly you've ignored someone you really meant to get back to?

That's normal...right? Anyway that's basically what has happened here and I refuse to have this sitting on my dusty, unseen to-do list any longer so HERE are the winners of our 2024 Best of Books:

And there we have it! I AM FREE. Free to get started all over again on our 2025 nominations...

The December book club pick is The Bone Ships by R.J. Barker! I’m so excited to start this trilogy with you guys. I’ve heard amazing things, including that it’s dark, gritty, intense, and inventive. A word of warning—I’ve heard a lot of people say the first 100 pages can be pretty confusing. Barker tends to throw you in the deep end of his world-building and you have to teach yourself how to swim 😅 The glossary will be our best friend!

Just a reminder that we have a virtual book club meeting scheduled for Sunday, November 30th at 8pm PT 📱

Check the Discord for the zoom link and for this month’s giveaway winner!

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs!

I apologize but it appears that the November 18th releases post didn't go up last week! I can't find the draft anywhere and I apologize for that. It's been a hectic few weeks, as my Mami has been having some health issues and we've been going to appointments nonstop. I'm working on the December post now for Libritos and Lectores members and it'll go up by next Monday and, of course, the regular newsletter on Tuesday. I'm actually debating just doing one big post for the month to give myself some breathing room to prepare for some new initiatives beginning in January.

I'll have a more robust post on what I'm working on, but a reminder that Lectores and Libritos members will have access to all the news FIRST as well as exclusive access to behind-the-scenes and exclusive content.

And, now, before we get to this week's books, a short holiday reminder--

A reminder that this holiday season, we're SHOPPING SMALL and we're getting our audiobooks at LibroFM! Their annual Shop Small sale begins today and ends December 31st. You can stock up on gift audiobooks (or some for yourself) with hundreds marked at $5.99 or less!

November 18th

Fruto: Bearing The Burden of Care by Daniela Rea and translated by John Gibler: This nonfiction work wasn't even on my radar until it was recommended to me by Marina Azahua at the Hay Festival. It's a memoir about childcare and rearing and the effects of it always falling to women caretakers.

NOVEMBER 25th

My Fair Senor by Alana Quintana Albertson (Audiobook) Before you dive into this one, I recommend you read some of the reviews by Latine reviewers on Goodreads, such as this one by Maya before picking this one up.

xoxo,

Carmen

International To Bargain With Mortals Day! is a thing I have just made up, but we’re going with it. 

Bargain has been out for almost a MONTH, which feels crazy. It’s out in the world. I’m seeing the pictures you guys send me of it from all over the place and people are reading it! It’s such a fun process to see this book that went from a tiny circle of people to a small publishing team to a little pool of early readers now be out in the world to everyone, but the work is not done! My work, anyway, but I’m gonna ask for your help on this one.

I’d love to ask for your help and support in making next Monday, December 1st, a big day for Bargain by doing any (or all!) of the following…

• Buy the book! For yourself if you haven’t picked it up yet, or if you’re planning on gifting it to a reader friend, it’s the perfect time

  • And there may or may not be an e-book sale coming up this week ;) 

• If you’ve finished the book, post your review!

  • On review sites like Goodreads (where we’re inching closer to 500 ratings!) or Storygraph, but even if you already have, it’s a great day to cross-share that review to retail sites like Amazon (this is extremely helpful), Barnes & Noble, Indigo, etc. wherever it is that you buy!
    

• Post about it on social media!

  • Whether you have 10 followers or 10,000, visibility is so incredibly important for a book. Post about Bargain to your feeds and/or in your stories, share it on your personal pages to let friends and family know what you’re reading, I’d love to see my mentions flooded with people sharing Bargain! 

The holidays are both an extremely important and extremely difficult promotional time for books, and I want to close out 2025 with as strong a finish as possible by giving Bargain as much of a leg up as we possibly can in its first months.

And on my end of our little celebration, I’ll be doing a giveaway of (possibly the last?) one of our VIP ARC boxes that we sent out to influencers to promote the book ^_^ So keep an eye out for that on Monday as well as whatever else I'm cooking up over here.

More to come, but I wanted to get this out of my brain and into your hands <3 Thank you all for being here. More than ever, I'm feeling so dedicated and motivated to create a space in publishing that is equitable and supportive of our authors and the work that we love so much, that refuses to overlook stories and writers based on the choices of executive boards and social media trends, and the way that we can continue to do that is by giving as much love and support to our books as possible.

- Emma

📚The Book: The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman

📽️The Movie: Directed by Derek Cianfrance 2016, starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander

The novel The Light Between Oceans is a quiet masterpiece, a story that starts with isolation and ends with devastation. As readers, we become privy to the innermost torment of Tom and Isabel Sherbourne on Janus Rock, forcing us to ask: If fate offered you a second chance at happiness at the cost of another's grief, would you take it?

❓️But did the film adaptation manage to capture the same moral storm that left us hollow and teary?

▫️Where the Movie Shines: Visual Beauty and Raw Grief: The 2016 film, directed by Derek Cianfrance, excels where cinema is naturally superior: visual atmosphere.

▫️The Setting as a Character: The movie beautifully captures the isolation of Janus Rock and the brutal, luminous beauty of the Australian coast. You can visually feel the salt spray and the overwhelming loneliness that makes Isabel's desperation believable.

▫️The Acting: The casting of Michael Fassbender, Tom and Alicia Vikander, Isabel was powerful. Vikander expertly conveyed Isabel's fragile, aching grief after the miscarriages, making her immediate, visceral connection to baby Lucy completely understandable. Fassbender, meanwhile, nailed Tom’s rigid moral principles struggling against his boundless love for his wife. Their performances anchor the tragedy.

📚Where the Book Holds the Light: Moral Nuance and Internal Torment: While the movie is beautiful, the book is necessary to truly grasp the depth of the couple's moral decline.

▫️The Weight of Silence: The novel spends significant time inside Tom’s conscience. His meticulous record-keeping and his background as a war survivor give immense weight to his decision to keep Lucy a secret. The book lets us experience the slow erosion of his certainty; in the film, this shift often feels faster, fueled more by passion than by the gradual weight of the lie.

▫️Isabel’s Justification: In the book, we fully inhabit Isabel's grief, which helps us understand not necessarily forgive why she feels entitled to this gift from the sea. Her desperation is the driver of the tragedy, and the book allows us more space to feel her profound loss before the baby arrives.

▫️The Blurry Spaces: As I noted in my review, the novel excels in the blurry spaces the moments where good people genuinely believe they are doing the least harmful thing. The movie, by necessity, has to simplify these internal dilemmas into spoken dialogue or expressions, sometimes lessening the terrible, aching inevitability that Stedman crafted on the page.

⚖️The Verdict: A Luminous, Yet Less Layered, Reflection: The film is a luminous, heart-wrenching visual tribute to a tragic story. If you loved the novel, you will appreciate seeing the world of Janus Rock brought to life.

However, the book remains the definitive, complex experience. It is the source of the profound moral questioning of the beautiful, aching torment that makes the story one that truly stays with you.

▫️Your Thoughts: In the book, Tom’s principles clash directly with Isabel’s maternal desperation. If you were the one who found the boat, and you were completely isolated, which object would you hide away with the baby to make your lie feel justifiable: the deceased man’s wedding ring symbolizing loss or the lighthouse logbook symbolizing Tom’s conscience?

Hi all!

I'd love to send you all a little something for the holidays, so if you'd like to receive it, please make sure to have your address added into your account profile. Thanks for being awesome!

Instagram Post Wrap-Up

Book Info
Titles: Spin of Fate (#1) and Wheel of Wrath (#2)
Author: A.A. Vora
Publisher: Penguin Teen
Release Dates: 05/07/2024 (#1) and TOMORROW 11/18/2025 (#2)
Synopses:
In an anime-inspired world ruled by a hard magic system based loosely off of karma / Indian philosophy, three teens encounter magnificent beasts, unforgiving magic, and epic battles. A wholly original YA fantasy trilogy with intricate worldbuilding; perfect for fans of Brandon Sanderson’s work and shounen anime like Naruto.

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N • Ninth House
O • Otherworldly
V • A Vow So Bold and Deadly
E • Empire of the Dawn
M • The Mirror of Beasts
B • Black Sun
E • An Echo of Things to Come
R • Ruthless Vows

Have you read any of these? I’ve read 5 of the 8 💛

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Book Info
Title: Innamorata
Author: Ava Reid | @avasreid
Publisher: DelRey | @delreybooks
Release Date: March 17th 2026
Genre: Necromantic, Gothic Fantasy
Synopsis:
Once there was an island where the dead walked the earth, and seven noble houses ruled by the arcane secrets of necromancy.
A conqueror’s blade brought them low, burning their libraries, killing their lords, and extinguishing their eldritch magic.
But defiant against the new order stands the House of Teeth and its last living members: beautiful Marozia, the heiress to the House, and her cousin, the uncanny Lady Agnes... [read more]

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What are you reading tonight?

Hello my loves! I’m buddy reading another @veschwab book- Bury Our Bones In the Midnight Soil and loving it. I think Addie Larue retains top spot so far for my faves from V though 💛

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Book Info
Title: Agnes Aubert's Mysical Cat Shelter
Author: Heather Fawcett
Release Date: February 17th 2026
Publisher: Del Rey Books
Synopsis: Agnes Aubert leads a meticulously organized life—and she likes it that way. As the proudly type-A manager of a much-needed cat rescue charity, she has devoted her life to finding forever homes for lost cats.
But after she is forced to move the cat shelter, Agnes learns that her new landlord is using her charity as a front—for an internationally renowned and thoroughly disreputable magic shop. Owned by the disorganized—not to mention self-absorbed, irritating, but also decidedly handsome—Havelock Renard, magician and failed Dark Lord, the shop draws magical clientele from around the world... [read more]

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Book Info
Title- Break Wide the Sea
Author- Sara Holland | @sarahollandwrites
Publisher- Wednesday Books | @wednesdaybooks
Release Date- November 11th, 2025
Synopsis- In the treacherous waters surrounding Kirkrell, sailors hunting magic whales live in fear of the finfolk—bloodthirsty sea fae who sink ships and curse bloodlines. Nineteen-year-old Annie, as heir to the city’s preeminent whaling company, is determined to carry on her parents’ life’s work. But she keeps a secret from everyone: she’s cursed to transform into a monster, with scales spreading up her arms and claws growing from her fingertips. [read more]

Hi Disco Dancers,

Today I want to talk about one of my favourite authors, Margaret Killjoy. She’s a transfem author who writes the most brilliant fantasy / alternative world prose, each book demonstrating a different way to live, a leftist point of view that encourages, not blames.

I started with A Country of Ghosts, which is still my favourite.

This is set in a fictional land at war, and follows a journalist from a capitalist society as he strays from the front line and immerses himself in a foreign country run on anarchist principles. He’s sceptical at first, and the society is not 100% perfect, but he slowly falls in love with their self-governing way of life.

I don’t like books that feel like they’re preaching at the expense of the narrative, and this does a masterful job of demonstrating how an alternative society could work, with a real emotional story along the way.

Next was The Sapling Cage, a fantasy with a YA protagonist.

A trans teenage girl pretends to be her friend and joins a coven of witches that only takes women, just as the coven is battling a deadly threat affecting the forests. A lot of the narrative is about the girl making friends and worrying that she’ll be found out to not be cis, and the witches’ reactions. It’s very honest about the growing pains of a young trans person. I loved the way the coven worked and the coven vs. evil storyline was complex and compelling.

And lastly, The Immortal Choir Holds Every Voice.

This is a brilliant novella about a group of leftists who are waiting at night to do something important, and tell each other stories. The three stories focus on leftists they have known and experiences they have had in alternative communities and protest movements. They range from horror, to fantasy, to the last one, which is all too real and raw. It made me cry, and also inspired me to do more, to not give up.

I can’t wait to see what she writes next.

Much love,

Disco

Hello Friends,

Happy Sunday! Today I went for a walk (2 days in a row!) after a month of inactivity due to illness, laziness and winterness. I called Michael and said GUESS WHY IM GOING FOR A WALK! And he said, TO UNBIG YOUR BACK? And I said YES, BUT FOR A VERY SPECIFIC REASON..... you see, during the winter months I clean, I organize and I want to move around my bookshelves, which got me thinking, I'd like to buy a nice reading chair! And I found many Ikea chairs I liked, but before investing, I had to check out the specs (As a BIG BACK!) and most of them said they can hold up to 242 lbs. That seems like a very precise number. Like they did the math and 242.5 lbs was gonna break that summabitch, so I'd like to get down to 230 lbs and as a reward buy a cute reading chair. UNBIG MY BACK is now in progress.

Which brings me to my next topic: 75 BOOKED. I created a channel in our community Discord if anyone wants to participate! This is a trend, a version of 75 Hard for bookies, started by @emilypaigebooks and the rules are as follows:

• Complete two 45 minute reading sessions daily (one of them NOT being in bed)

• Finish a water bottle during each session. (STAY HYDRATED)

• Log all reading in a physical journal

• NO PURCHASING BOOKS- all books must be owned, bought second hand or checked out from the library.

I am started 75 booked this coming Weds! But you can start anytime and join in the convo in the Discord. You also can add your own little rules. One of my will be 3 of my weekly sessions have to be audiobook walks. (One of my goals for 2026 is to start a local audiobook walking club)

Speaking of Discord - We just finished our first SOUP READATHON! And it was such a wild success that we are doing it again (You make soup, read all weekend and chat) Join us 12/19-12/21

We also have been sharing soup recipes. Here are a few:

Garlicky Chickpea Soup

Slow Cooker Pesto Minestrone

Potato Leek Soup

Vegan Lentil Soup

Curry Lentil Soup

Black Bean Soup

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

Mexican Quinoa Stew

Creamy Zucchini Chickpea Soup with Spinach

Simple Sweet Potato Soup

Vegetable Coconut Curry Soup

Creamy Gnocchi Chicken Soup

Indian Spiced Lentil Soup

Crack Chicken Noodle Soup

I am getting ready to plot out next year's bookclub. This year we are going to go in four month increments! Expect some voting polls coming your way soon. (Like today or tomorrow soon!)

Who is going to join?

PS Publishing news coming soon! A cover is near for What Feeds Below and dare I say....another announcement is on the way?????????

🍞🍺💘Book Series Review Emerald Creek Series, Never Let You Go, The Promise of You, Return to You by Bella Rivers

I went into Emerald Creek for the pastries and stayed for the emotional rescue missions. Reading these three felt like spending a blissfully chaotic summer in a town that’s equal parts cozy bakery, rowdy pub, and very effective matchmaking committee. Consider me converted.

In Never Let You Go, Christopher Wright broody single-dad, master baker, and apparently allergic to casual conversation had me swooning and grimacing in equal measure. I came for the inheritance plot and stayed for the late-night dinners, the too-close bedrooms, and the tiny human who stole my heart on page two. The slow melt of distrust into domestic warmth? Pure comfort-food romance!

The Promise of You serves up sturdy, stubborn Chloe and a pub owner with emotional armor thicker than his bar stools. That one-night-stand-turned-business-rivalry had me audibly gasping, then laughing, then cheering when both of them realized that pride is a lousy business plan for love. The grit and the grief give the romance stakes real weight and the banter makes the fall inevitable.

And Return to You brings the ache of second chances. Ten years away, one pulled muscle, and a town that refuses to let two stubborn people bury their past. The reunion scenes were deliciously awkward and achingly sincere, the kind of chapter that makes you reach for a tissue and a celebratory cupcake at once.

Together they’re equal parts swoon, snark, and small-town shenanigans. Bella Rivers writes about people who feel lived-in: flawed, fierce, and ultimately impossible to resist. I closed the last book with a smile, a slight book-hangover, and an odd craving for both bread pudding and a town square full of nosy neighbors!

❔️If you could move into a fictional small town for a month, what job would you take at the bakery or pub and which resident would you secretly hope to run into while on shift?