Recently, I finished a book that is entirely too hard to describe. Not that I can't, just that it won't make much sense because for a majority of the book nothing made sense.

Which is why I loved it.

We have been craving something inventive and new in fantasy. Something that isn't brooding shadow daddies and chosen ones and grimdark and dragon Europe. A deviation from stories of magic and wizards and court intrigue that makes us think, gives us something to chew on, forces us to change what we conceive of as fantasy.

Benjamin Liar gave us that in The Failures. Tenfold, he gave us something that actually feels new in fantasy. Nothing makes sense, he explains very little, but in a way where it doesn't matter and the inventiveness of his world is enough to string along my curiosity for over 500 pages. We have a desolate mountain world, automata, immortal gods, superpowered beings called Behemoths, world-ending giants, portals, sorcerers that vanished, a sun covered in buildings, a universe bereft of sky.

Liar demands a lot of his readers in this book, but he rewards you with beautiful prose and fun, unique characters that I fell in love with. He leans into their failures, the things they get wrong, they ways their human nature interferes with them doing the right thing. We get a woven story that is stretched between timelines and characters, slowly converging and revealing to us that there is a quest we are going to learn about and it failed spectacularly. Now, the ghosts of that quest are coming back to haunt everyone. The worst part?

Nobody knows what the right move is next.

I want to talk about the characters, but I feel to do so is to betray some special moments in the book that you really have to be there to understand. Suffice it to say, you will be meeting a lot of people and people-adjacent characters. I loved The Killers' POVs. I love how he has this gritty, complicated cast of characters that slowly converge and when you realize who they all are, you will actually gasp. His use of portals and this peculiar arcane mystery of lost knowledge and dead Ages is fascinating. We learn about Dirt Magic and Silver Magic and Old Gold and this entire lexicon of terms that is unique to his world, a language that is special to these characters and people that I don't see anywhere else.

I think my favorite thing about this book is the intensity of the world building. If you love a layered, complex, dreamlike world with tons of lore you will only start to pull apart in book 1? This is for you. Liar created this gigantic space all contained within the fabled Mountain that blocks out the sky. He gives you pieces without betraying the whole because part of the journey in The Wanderlands series is the story of the world. To explain hierarchy and location and kingdoms and portals would be to give away the plot and the story, which he is allowing to unfold as he teaches you about the quest our... characters... must go on.

I don't care to say "heroes" because all of them are anything but. West and Candle and Winter and Bear and all of them are flawed with a history that isn't exactly heroic and where nobody knows who is making the "right choice". Liar does an excellent job of showing you right and wrong are, often, dependent on your perspective about a problem. That is one of my favorite themes - the flexibility of morality and human nature. His characters are all spectacularly gray. Even the character we consider a villain or villain-adjacent is one I found myself rooting for several times. He twists you and turns you until it's very difficult to articulate why one person is "right" and another is "wrong".

The Failures sets up something so unique to fantasy that it has to be read to be understood. I cannot go into a lot of detail because the detail is the story. This book is ambitious as hell and very well written. Though I found Liar repeating themes and details and moments a lot, I can see why the choice was made to do it. I have a memory like a steel trap and I read fast, but if you're a slower reader and things get tangled? I can see losing track of the details that are so critical to his tale. Still, it never muted the beautiful, lyrical writing style of Liar, which was something I deeply loved. It called back Tamsyn Muir or Hiron Ennes for me, two authors I adore. He writes in such a sing-song way that fits the story fantastically. Everything in this tale is familiar, yet alien. Ours, yet not ours. Like looking at a TV remote underwater. The things we anticipate or think we understand bend just slightly until they become something new and foreign, demanding we consider what is "normal" in this world versus our own. The way Liar writes is so well suit for this task that it made the experience of trying to hold onto everything he says... charming? I think that's the right word.

The Failures is a story that's all its own. It's demanding, but it rewards you with a delightfully complicated world, characters that really shine and test your morality and patience, and sets you off on an adventure where you truly don't know what the correct answer is - or if there even is one at all.

Tuesday is the best day of the week for readers — new release day! Book discovery is hella broken, so it can be easy to miss publishing announcements of fresh titles. Here is a roundup of romances hitting shelves today that have a Rebel Ever After vibe. I haven't read any of these titles yet, so this isn't an official endorsement, but they are authors I respect and want to see succeed.

[This isn't an exhaustive list of every romance novel published today. If you are an author with a progressive romance coming out soon, please email brosandprose@gmail.com to get it on my radar!]

Thighs Wide Shut by Hayley Fleming (Dial Press) — Hayley wrote a great essay for People Magazine about what inspired her to write a romance about a heroine with vaginismus.

Unfinished Business by Clare Osongco (Dell) — this GoodReads review really sold me: "You may think this is a book about a ghost haunting Slack. You may think it's a romance featuring a High Value Man™. It's actually about the horrors of capitalism."

Just a Highland Fling By Naina Kumar (Dell) — You probably know Naina as the author of Say You’ll Be Mine and Flirting with Disaster. I did not know she was also a civil rights lawyer?? Anyway, the love interest is described in the marketing copy as "a hot desi bagpiper from the wedding who just happens to be Neelu’s recent one-night stand." Yes please.

Married with Benefits by Ellie Palmer (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) — A NEW MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE FOR HEALTH INSURANCE CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE!!!! LET'S F*CKING GO!!!!

The Princess Trap (Deluxe Edition) by Talia Hibbert (Sourcebooks Casablanca) — Love to see a beautiful reissue of a brilliant author's backlist. I hear it has the touchstones of a Talia Hibbert classic: casually bi characters, the celebration of fat bodies, a good mix of angst and steam. Plus a royal fake engagement! Hibbert included the following content warning on her website: "Please be aware: This story contains scenes of abuse that could potentially trigger certain audiences."

Vera Stein Is Fine by Julie Murphy (Avon) — Heroine in her 40s!!! Murphy has written a bunch of books, including If The Shoe Fits and the YA hit Dumplin'. She also writes romances with Sierra Simone, like A Merry Little Meet Cute and Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl, which is burning a hole in my TBR.

Welcome to our Bindery page! A place where we will be sharing our favorite books for business and pleasure. Our Researcher Joel shares their Inaugural Pick: When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile

Mormons are the cult that I return to over and over. They're fascinating. And Mormons are the most successful modern cult, [in my opinion]. My best friend growing up was Mormon and I remember watching 20-year-old Mormon men on their missions wash his brain, trying to convince him that sex was something that could only happen between husband and wife--and that gay relationships were forbidden altogether. Thankfully I had a healthy dose of teenage skepticism--and flat out disobedience--that kept me safe from his family's repeated attempts to indoctrinate me. Anyways, I love researching Mormons, they're incredible! Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell are the funniest losers. When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile is an incredible book for understanding how insidious Mormon cultism is and how deeply interconnected it is with American politics. 

That's right. This is so early in the process I haven't decided on a name for this beast yet. I've written the spine of the story so far and it's probably going to cap out at 6/7 books. Screw it. Let's have fun and write it anyway.

The whole purpose of this project? Write an epic fantasy character-driven story with inspiration from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Throne of Glass, and several other epic series that make me want to try my hand at character-driven storytelling. I'm typically more thematic and atmospheric so this is going to challenge me in big ways to do something different. In the spirit of bravery, catch Chapter 1 in all it's rough-draft glory below.

Chapter 1: Whisper

Nobody ever tells you what happens after you save the world. If someone had, maybe eight-year-old Elara Tartenna would have left the Tempest Gate open and let it burn. She had not, unfortunately, and it changed nothing. The Gate closed, but the wars raged on and over the course of sixteen years she had lost her family, her kingdom, and the life she was delusional enough to believe she was supposed to have. Now, the world thought Elara Tartenna had died when she closed the Gate. As far as Keelie Sharp was concerned? She did. 

Keelie knew one thing better than most people at the ripe old age of twenty-four--she knew how to listen. Hood high to cover the distinct silver-blonde hair she kept tightly plaited down her back, she leaned on her forearms and listened. The stew in front of her steamed, bread broken in her hands paused on its journey from bowl to mouth. All her focus lingered on the figure in the other chair, back to her. 

“You know how he is. Selling out his own uncle so he can inch closer to the seat of power,” the man spoke too loud, too drunk, and threw an arm across the empty seat beside him. “Finch will do what he always does. He’s a rat bastard, he’ll be at the Pits and make it look like he had no idea what’s been done.”

It was what she needed to hear. She dug into one of several pouches belted around her waist and left a coin on the table, striding for the back door. Darkness had become the nature of her, the night opened its arms to welcome her out. Black cloak over a black tunic and a dark vest. Gray wool pants tucked into calf-high boots that ended at her knees. Her work tended to be nocturnal, so that was what she had become. Save for the blasted silvery hair that only ever came out when the moon was full, anyway. She should dye it again, she knew that, but it washed out her already too-pale skin and made her look like a ghost. In her line of work, ghosts stuck out. 

Finch was a bastard, the man spoke true. A dumb bastard, but still one all the same. The dumb ones died same as the smart ones--with one of her longknives in their throat. She adjusted her sleeves, bracers snagging the fabric, and checked the hold on her bandolier. Everything orderly, everything sharp. That was how she liked it. 

She had no plan for him, not yet. It would come to her while she walked the streets of the Dawn Empire’s illustrious capital Hoardann, pinnacle of civilization. The shining city of the shining Empire that swallowed the continent by inches. Eroding the nations it called allies, bleeding their wealth dry, and leaving them withered in its wake. To know Hoardann, was to love it and hate it. Usually the latter a little more. 

She stayed out of the wealthy neighborhoods, preferring to catch her quarry when it dared to venture into the slums she called home. Buildings cramped against each other, bending inward on shaky foundations over cobbled streets that had seen better days. Shouts from amber glowing windows, men stumbling from taverns half removed and half of their own accord. She moved without a sound around the teeming life of the darkest parts of the city. Women discretely watching for customers lingered in doorways that smelled like jasmine and rose to mask the opium smoke. Weathered-faced men exchanged whispered words and bags whose contents she would rather not ask about. A cat stepped into her path and she danced over it without losing her pace. 

She knew what she sought in these stinking, crumbling alleys. Knew it too well from her time in Hoardann. The last seventeen years of her life had been spent here, found and trained and tested against everything the city had to offer. Trained to fight and survive, watch the movements of people, read unspoken thoughts in every furtive glance. Trained to listen. 

The Pit was always heard before it was seen. Shouting, cheering. Not the good kind. Men came in droves to this cesspool, women followed in hopes of making or taking good coin. The briny scent of the River Maga washed away the human stench of the alley thanks to a well-timed breeze. The rickety docks stretched into the river, lit by dull lanterns in a feeble effort to make all of the slapdash boats feel watched over as they bobbed in the harbor. It was already drizzling when she reached the Pit. It was always drizzling. That was the worst part about this place--everything was damp. Nobody bothered to dry anymore. 

The building stood several floors tall and long, the only one on the block that looked to be marginally stable. The only one that made any real money, thanks to the fighting pits it pretended not to have buried inside. Its owner, a skeletal man she had only met once, called it “hiding in plain sight”. Keelie called it “idiocy”. They had exchanged a few fist-based words about it before she was banned for a month. 

She stared at the heavy wooden doors that did nothing to dampen the sound. The brilliant light dancing in the blown glass windows, flickering as the shadows of spectators drifted around tables and bars. Breathing deep, she stepped up and pushed. The noise hit her like a wall and she flinched, trying to make herself small. She slipped across the back wall as far as she could go before a worn wooden bar forced her to either order a drink or walk with too much purpose for a place like this.

Hood still up, she flagged the bartender, “Whatever’s tapped and cheap.”

He grunted, eyeing her, before turning to pour her a glass of something that foamed too much. He knew better than to ask anyone who went to that much trouble to hide their face many questions. She was known here, to her great misfortune. It was likely this would be traced back to her, yes. By the time they had, she was sure it wouldn’t matter and nothing would come out of it. She turned and crossed one booted ankle over the other, leaning back against the bar, and scanned the upper viewing area. 

It was two stories only, the rest reserved for the illegal brothel and gambling houses disguised as tenant properties. At the center of a square of boardwalks lined with railings threatening to collapse from the crowd, a square pit was sunken several yards into the ground. The tunnels at the back were the only way in or out. There were five of these pits built into the foundation. Five squares filled with two men each who paid or were paid good money to brawl. Sometimes it was less clear how willing each fighter was. 

Sometimes, she remembered with a familiar ache in her shoulder, it was a fighter who was foolish enough to think herself capable of a noble deed. She pushed the thought out and rolled her shoulders. She sipped and grimaced, half tempted to cause a scene over the audacity they had to serve something so grotesque. Cheering erupted and she used the moment to lean forward and scan anyone who stood around this pit. 

No sign of Finch, but she could feel him. Sense him in this place. It was her gift from Oisha, the Guild Master said. Her ability to sense things if she focused, sense people more easily. Magic? No, they would not dare utter the possibility it was magic. Not in these times where it was becoming increasingly dangerous to engage in that nasty business. She had fought the urge to spit on Oisha’s name back then. Young enough to be taken and taught, old enough to remember this was not where she was supposed to be. Not even a little. Another life she shook off with a shrug and continued her scouting around the space. Slow, unhurried steps. Weaving through the ebbing and flowing tide of the crowd, dodging a waitress with a too-full tray and ducking under the wide-thrown arm of a patron deep in his cups. 

It was the third pit where she found her mark. The young nephew she had been told in no uncertain terms to dispense with. The weak link in the family chain. A child who fancied himself a schemer against the master of scheming himself. The boy was a fool. Finch sat with a glass of something cherry red and expensive in his hand, leaning against a balustrade with a concubine on his lap. Also expensive, from the look of her. His dark hair too short, his nose too flat, his eyes too beady. It irritated Keelie to look at a man and know on appearances alone that he was a slimy, miserable thing. She would not feel an ounce of remorse for this. 

So she sat and she watched and she tracked and she waited. Most importantly, she listened. 

“Their tab’s getting awfully high,” the barmaid who had been running trays up and down muttered. “Last time he did this, he stumbled out and we had to call in the account to his uncle.”

“Filch?” Both women laughed quietly at the mocking nickname, “Fancies himself the heir of Tobin’s secret empire. Wouldn’t shock me if he was dumb enough to try and take it.”

Then what Keelie knew would not shock this woman, indeed. Finch had made a mistake. A series of them, actually. He had decided he was tired of playing the libertine to his underworld-myth of an uncle. The man was hard as nails, vicious as sea dragon, and ruthless as the death-god Haln himself. She should know. Tobin was her Guild Master, after all. 

His idiot of a nephew had wanted more. Gorged himself on a cushioned lifestyle and decided he was now hungry for power. That was his first mistake. The second was believing anyone in that den of vipers was his friend and ally. An unofficial Guild, they were. Bound by loyalty, money, and a healthy fear of the man in charge. Tobin, unfortunately for all but himself, possessed a formidable amount of fire affinity. He was Katur-touched, so they liked to say. He was very strong and very good at wielding what he had been given. He was also very, very good at hiding it until it was too late to do anything about it.

If you called it a god-touch, you could skirt the technicalities about calling it magic. That’s what most people did to avoid getting pinched by the Black Guard, those secret police the Dawn Emperor had patrolling every street in his empire who were more than happy to make examples out of the gifted who failed to report and be registered. She shuddered at the thought of the last example making she had accidentally passed by. 

Finch, that was her priority. Not the Black Guard and certainly not magic.

Keelie stared up at the man too old to be pulling this shit and made her plan up in her head. She was typically better than that, but Finch was a dumb bastard and she didn’t feel like it would take too much to handle him. When one of the barmaids began filling a tray with drinks, the other made an irritated sound. 

“Again?” 

“Just ready the runner to go find his uncle again,” one sighed, annoyed, and turned her back. 

With a pass of her hand and a twitch of her fingers--quick as a blink--Keelie unstoppered and dropped an equally mean-looking liquid into the glass of something cherry red and expensive. She made the maneuver look like she was turning back to stare down at the bar and into her glass of what was really just tangy water pretending to be ale. She kept her eyes in shadow and waited. 

The barmaid said something innocuous, gathered her tray, and headed for the stairs. Keelie turned her head slightly and took in the sounds of the crowd. Jeering, angry bets being fulfilled, some crooning too-young woman insisting a man too old and too drunk could afford it. She did her best to pretend she didn’t know what he could potentially afford. Being an assassin--a Whisper, as Tobin loved to call them as if it made what they did not the exact same thing--was not as exciting as she had been led to believe as a child. Yes, there were the knives and the acrobatics and the disguises and the coded languages, but mostly it was just a lot of sitting around and waiting. 

She timed it in breaths, how long she would have before it would be best to pack it up and leave. Each one passed, each sound becoming a dull buzz in her ear. It was like being underwater, tossed around by a river, unable to hear anything but the roar of static and silence in her head. 

Finally, a scream. 

It cut through the buzz and the water and snapped her attention along with the other patrons who knew a death scream when they heard one. Which, frankly, was far too many for one building. She glanced up and saw her mark--slumped over the railing, red foam falling from his pale lips with a sickening plop onto the floor below. He was twitching and spasming, would be for a while if the dose of gadras poison she had been forced to estimate was correct. 

Keelie took advantage of the momentary pause, then the subsequent chaotic shouting. She pulled off her cloak and tugged her hair free, screaming and pushing with the flow of the crowd like the rest of them. They mobbed towards the front door and she was so immersed in her act of panic that it almost felt real for a moment. The crowd spilled out onto the street into the dark, heading for the Avenue Provence as if the main street in the worst part of the city would offer them any safety. The guards that patrolled it were mostly decorative this far down. 

She ran and shoved and surged and eventually, slipped quietly off down an alley and slowed her pace to a leisurely walk. She sighed and raked her hands through now-tangled hair, irked at how much time she’d spent brushing it that morning. A shadow fell in beside her, swallowing the light. The only sign it was a person was the burning end of a hand rolled cigarette on the inhale and a tendril of earthy smoke on the exhale. 

She coughed theatrically and waved it away, “That’s a horrible habit, Whis.”

The figure shrugged and light caught its face. A man, older than her by a decade with a battlescarred face and too much gray threading the black at his temples to be nowhere close to forty yet. He was wiry and lithe, like most of them in this line of work. It didn’t do well to be a barrel chested bruiser when you were trying to kill people with subtlety. 

“Yeah, well, don’t tell my mum will you,” he flicked the butt away knowing full well his mum was dead. All of their parents were, it was practically a prerequisite for depressing, murderous work, “You get it done?”

“You think a mob of people just decided to run out of the Pit screaming?” She hastily plaited her hair again and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. He was looking at her with a raised brow, she could see it even in the dark, “If you walk into someplace with your hood up acting mysterious, then someone dies, do you think it’s best to keep looking mysterious with your hood up when you leave?” He shrugged, “Thought not.”

They walked in companionable silence for a while. Whistler was less of an active taker of lives nowadays and more of a master of espionage. If someone made it ten years in the trenches, Tobin tended to find a better use for them. Recently, his empire had been expanding into rudimentary spycraft she suspected had to do with a natural inclination to grab for power that seemed to run in his family. 

“Boss wants to see you tomorrow night,” Whistler said in his reedy voice. He had so many now that Keelie wondered occasionally if that was the real one or if he’d forgotten what his real one sounded like, “I’ll tell him it’s a success. Give the man the evening to mourn. But you’re back out on something big, Keels.”

She sighed heavily and held out her hand. The pouch appeared without so much as a perceptible movement of his hand and she weighed it, calculating in her head. It was almost double what Tobin had said she would make for this. She frowned, “He feeling generous?”

It was not a good thing when the boss felt generous. 

“Nah,” he struck a match along the wall and lit another cigarette, “Finch was up to worse than he thought. Decided to add a bit’a weight to match the recalculated value of the target.”

She hummed and pocketed the coins, then reached out to pluck the smoke from his fingers. She took a long drag and grimaced, hating the smoke as much as she hated herself for indulging the habit, “What’s the job tomorrow? Or are you solemnly sworn to secrecy?”

He shrugged and exhaled, “Don’t know the details. Just know you’re involved. Something about a lovely field trip to the castle, I hear.”

Keelie froze, a chill settling into her blood. She repeated dumbly, “The Labyrinth Castle?”

Whistler took two or three steps that felt a lot like skipping to her, then turned with a far more theatrical shrug that betrayed he knew significantly more than he was ever going to tell her, “And Finn’s going, too.”

She groaned and threw her hands in the air, “Of course he is. Finn. Spectacular. Keelie, please kill my nephew. Keelie, please spend more time with the worst man in the Guild in the worst place in the city for one of the Whispers to go--let alone two.”

Whistler laughed, musical in a way that chilled the bones of anyone who didn’t know him well. She lengthened her strides and caught up with him, annoyed, and unwilling to hide it. Whatever this mysterious job was, there was no way in all of the hells that she was going to agree to that. Haln himself could step across the Veiled Sea and tell her she had to do it and she would still not agree. She and Finneas didn’t do jobs together anymore for a reason and the reason was Finneas.

**

“No,” Keelie folded her arms. She was slouched in a fine velvet chair in a fine velvet room in a fine velvet house in the Gilded Quarter. 

Tobin’s house, borrowing from the “in plain sight” mantra of the Pit’s owner. Ever the mask covering his true line of work, Tobin played the successful merchant-lord who had hit the ceiling of his power without a family House. It made a wonderful alibi for what he really did and explained the regular comings and goings of all manner of person in his home. Their home, really. Base, Whistler called it. 

Tobin sighed, exasperated, and ran a hand across his brow. He was a handsome man, by all accounts. Tall, well-built with hair that had gone silver-gray in his twenties and become a bit of a trademark for him. He retained the boyish youth in his face, tempered by time and an impeccably maintained silver beard. He looked at her with melancholy, honey-brown eyes and a reprimanding frown. 

“Keelie,” he said, voice a firm and deep baritone, “nobody else can do this.”

“Of course nobody else can do this, nobody else is me.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder for emphasis, “Whatever it is, I’m not doing it with him.”

She jammed a finger in the direction of the young man, a year her senior and cocky as hell. His thoughtful frown and handsome face weren’t fooling her. She could see through the short ash-brown hair and soulful dark eyes, all the accoutrements of a young man with a noble calling who took a wrong turn and ended up in the Whisper Guild. 

He leaned against the far wall, arms folded over a blue wrapped tunic secured with the dark leather belt of a shortsword. He balanced the heel of one dark boot against the wall, the other kept long. Finn sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair, tousling it in a way that somehow made him more irritating and handsome at the same time. Women tended to fawn over Finn, which he pretended to hate as much as he pretended to be humble. Keelie hated him. 

“It’s not a matter of whether or not you want to, my darling girl,” Tobin unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured himself a drink. He thought better of it, and poured one for her, too. She accepted the bribe with a glower, “I need information and Finn can get it for me. I need Finn protected and you can protect him for me.”

“How does it feel to know you’re going to play fetch while I watch over you, Finnsy?” Keelie fired off a sharp smirk at him. He rolled his eyes, but wouldn’t dignify her with a response, “I hate this and I don’t want to go.”

“I know you don’t, beloved pain in my ass,” Tobin patted her shoulder. She would go. They all knew it. She just wouldn’t go without a fight.

“Whistler said it involved the castle,” she frowned, grim. “I really, really don’t want to go to the castle. Especially not with that pompous ass.”

“Right, I’m the pompous, arrogant one,” Finn finally spoke and pushed away from the wall. He dropped into the seat across from her, face serious, “Can you ever take this work seriously, Keelie? Just once in your life, can we pretend that we are affected by what we do?”

She scoffed and took a long drink, waving Tobin on. Only she could get away with such an affectation. Tobin loved her, she was essentially his adopted daughter. She was also the best weapon he had. People rarely suspected a beautiful woman had the ability to cut their throat in an alley or poison their drink in a bar. They expected her to wind up more in Saskia’s line of work. 

The woman opened the ornate wooden door and peered around it, beaming at Finn. Her seaglass eyes settled on Keelie and her expression soured, “I thought I smelled piss. Hello, Keelie.”

Her smile curved like a scimitar, sharp and perfect. Everything about Saskia was perfect. Her stunning face, her perfectly shaped figure, her wavy black hair. She was an absolute beauty and the crown of Tobin’s brothel empire. Men and women paid by the pound for a night with his favorite concubine and he gladly charged it. She and Keelie had been found at about the same time, but Keelie ended up under Tobin’s wing while he sent Saskia to Madam Artois. Keelie killed, Saskia moaned. They, too, hated each other. 

“Funny, I thought I smelled opium. Lovely to see you, Sas,” Keelie raised her glass to the woman and was pointedly ignored. 

“The dressmaker dropped off your parcels,” Saskia directed her statement to Tobin. “The final fitting will have to be tonight so when you’re done with her, I’ll take her up.”

“Her is capable of speaking,” Keelie frowned now. She looked between the two of them, then at Finn, “What’s going on? I love a new dress and all, but this feels like an awful lot of people to put me in a gown.”

Tobin sighed and sat down in the only remaining chair. He pinched his nose and finished his drink. Saskia slipped away and shut the door behind her, ever the emotionally attuned lady, “You’re going to participate in the Argunfell Games and get Finneas access to the castle. He’s going to do some fact-finding for me while all the lovely lords and ladies of the realm are gathered in one place. Your only job is to do your best without exposing either of you and keep Finn from trouble.”

“What?!” She half spit out her drink and hissed at the residual burn in her throat, “Are you serious?” She looked frantically at Finn, “Is he serious?”

“As a summer day,” Finn sighed. “Papers are already forged. Congratulations on qualifying with flying colors, by the way. Everything’s been worked out for months, we just needed the final approval before bringing you in.”

Keelie sneered at him, then at Tobin, “There’s not a better way to do any of this? I feel like we could come up with several plans to get this information you’re so worried about without involving me. Send him in as a serf or a stable boy! Let him get kicked around by a few of the royal horses, it’ll build character!”

Tobin was already shaking his head, “Someone needs to be able to converse with the Houses in ways I cannot. It’s rare they gather like this in one place so I’m seizing a moment. You and Finn look the most passable for nobility from the bunch, so it’s you two going in.”

Something passed between them. A knowing look that reminded her he knew all too well why she would pass just fine in Hoardann’s central court. Finn just happened to avoid any work that wound up with a scar on his pretty face or a broken nose. Maybe if she changed that, she could get out of this. As if he could read her mind, Finn made a disgusted sound and threw up his hands. 

“Why don’t I go in alone and fish up your information?” She bargained, “I can tease it out of them over two weeks. I can get anyone to tell me anything. I learned from the best, remember?”

“You have the spycrafting ability of an ox and you are quite possibly the least charming person I have ever met,” Finn spat. 

She leaned forward and pointed at him with her now empty glass, “Only with you. I’m the most charming person with everyone else-”

“You can’t even charm your shoes on in the morning-”

“I will charm that look right off your f-”

“Enough!” Tobin shouted with a finality that shut them both up. Not without an exchange of withering glares, though. “Oisha forgive me for this horrible mistake I am making. I need you both to find a way to work together and get this done. It’s two weeks. Keelie, go participate in the Games and enjoy yourself. Win, even. You can keep the whole purse if you do. Finn, do your job and get me my intelligence and I’ll forgive the last of your debt. Fair?”

Finn blinked at him, stunned. The last of his debt. Keelie stared, too. This was how Tobin kept them all. He invested in every Whisper he brought on, so he expected that investment to pay him back. He kept meticulous ledgers of what every single Whisper owed him and allowed them to cash out or repay every time they finished a job. Keelie had no intention of leaving this life, not when Tobin made it clear she was his heir-apparent. All of her earnings had gone right into her bank account and subsequently into her rather elevated tastes. 

She liked nice things, sue her. 

Finneas Asper, though. He was a completely different kind of animal. She didn’t know how he’d ended up in the Guild, nobody really did. He had the stick-up-his-ass morality of a noble-born fop and took everything so seriously. He offered prayer candles at all of the altars to Haln and Emrillen after every job and, she suspected, twice on Altarday. Every kill came with a plea for forgiveness and he never took jobs that ended the life of someone who didn’t have an existing criminal background. It was insufferable how painfully moralistic he was. 

He had put every piece of his earnings to pay back his debts. The debts were, of course, nearly insurmountable. Designed to be. It was more likely to achieve a lordship than to pay off Tobin Parnel, still Finn tried. Now, on a silver platter, was his freedom. 

Keelie was staring at him, the haughty irritation fell away for a moment and she looked at him with genuine hope. Finn wasn’t made for their world. Her loathing aside, she felt a flicker of elation for him at the sound of his freedom. She could see him joining the Brothers of Death, the servants of Haln tucked deep in the mountain monastery in the Ubron Peaks to the north. 

She blinked away her surprise and the mask slid back on, “What if I don’t win, though? Finn gets to run free and I get the satisfaction of placing, what, third?”

“You’ll win,” Tobin waved her off, but his focus was entirely on Finn. “Acceptable terms, then?”

Finn nodded, mute. If he spoke, he feared the offer would vanish before he had time to enjoy it. Keelie grumbled her annoyance, “Fine. Accepted. Now,” she clapped her hand against her empty glass, “I believe I was promised dresses?”

Hello my Bindery Babes! I'm so excited to share the first chapter of Creative Differences by Annabel Paulsen & Lydia Wang with you.

THE BOOK IS NOW AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER BTW!!!!! Tell everyone you know!!!!

This is from the POV of Ramona (aka the character of the right side of the cover) and was written by Annabel! Amelia's first chapter, written by Lydia, will be coming soon so stay tuned for that Bindery post coming sometime next week <3

Remember, if you sign up for the Sapph-Lit Producer or BRAND NEW Literary Salon tier, you'll get a physical ARC of Creative Differences shipped to you!

Also, thank you all SO MUCH for your feedback on the Swanboat logo. We took everything you voted on & your comments on that post into consideration and the Bindery team made some adjustments.

PRESENTING THE OFFICIAL LOGO BELOW, followed by Chapter 1 :) xoxo Nina

CHAPTER 1

Chicago, IL

“I’m not playing that song.”

Ramona Sloane has lost track of how many times she’s said so. And it’s not like Patrick isn’t listening—he definitely hears her.

The first time the station manager suggested she play “Emergency Contact,” Mia Wells’s latest chart-topper, Ramona politely declined. The second time, it was clear the suggestion was more of a request, which she less than professionally flouted. The third time, when she was greeted at her desk by some very angry-looking capital letters, she may have stuck a half-chewed wad of Extra onto the hand-scrawled directive and slapped it onto the door of the recording booth.

So, yeah, he definitely hears her.

And yet here he is, gum be damned, towering above her with that expression that says, I resent you more than Journey’s 1981 single “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

Ramona swivels around in her chair, pushing her headphones behind her ears. “Patrick, your request has been logged. Please expect a response in five to ten business days.”

“Sloane, I’m not asking this time. And you’re not a bank.” Patrick runs a hand through his gray flop of hair. “In fact, you don’t handle the money at all. I do. You know what my niece told me?” He answers his own question before Ramona can even open her mouth. “She said, ‘Uncle Pat, how come your radio station never plays anything cool?’”

Ramona throws her hands in the air. “Whatever happened to creative freedom?”

Patrick continues in an imitation of his niece’s voice. “‘My friends and I want to hear Mia Wells, not this random B-side from an album that came out twenty years ago.’”

“Really?” Ramona raises a dubious eyebrow. “Your niece said that?”

“I happen to know that playing this song on the air, regardless of your feelings about it, will increase listenership by a significant margin,” Patrick finishes, apparently satisfied with his defense. “And advertisers only want to pay for airtime on a radio station that actually has listeners.”

Ramona sighs. “You hired me to bring some ‘fresh blood’—your words—into this station. Because I have my finger on the pulse. Now you want me to take my finger off the pulse and put it on a cadaver.”

“Okay, that’s morbid.”

“Patrick, I’m doing you a favor. If you want a heartless android picking the songs, you should just plug in a Spotify algorithm.” She stares him down, watching him wince. She knows she’s hitting the Walkman-carrying Luddite where it hurts. She clasps her hands together, infusing her voice with entirely unconvincing sweetness. “I’m preventing us from turning into another Top 40–-worshipping slop station.”

“Sloane.” Patrick pinches the bridge of his nose. “You’re killing me here. Who the hell cares if it’s on the charts? It’s still indie, and people wanna hear it.”

Ramona scoffs. “Mia Wells is far from indie. She’s signed to fucking Interscope.”

Patrick holds up a hand. “There’s genre crossover.”

“Indie is short for ‘independent’—”

“I don’t give a shit. Listen. It’s not like I’m spinning ‘Emergency Contact’ in my free time either. But when people are on their morning commute, and our station isn’t playing their favorite song, they switch to one that is.”

Ramona huffs. She knows he’s right. “Emergency Contact” is already ubiquitous, and she somehow knows all the words without ever listening to it of her own volition. She just thought she could keep this space, her allocated five-hour daily broadcast of WBQR Chicago’s Home for Indie-Heads, free of the dirty-blond Best New Artist nominee that is Mia Wells. Or, that she’s become.

Patrick sighs. “Look. I don’t need to know about your personal life, or whatever, but I know you know her. . . .” He looks at Ramona and waits, clearly hoping she’ll pick up what he’s putting down.

She doesn’t.

The truth is, Ramona doesn’t know Mia Wells. She knew Amelia. And if she were bitter, she might say she never really knew Amelia Wells at all, because she left their band to go solo, move to Silver Lake, and shop at, like, Erewhon. But Ramona isn’t bitter.

Everything Patrick knows about Ramona’s relationship to Mia Wells can be read in a four-sentence paragraph on their band’s Wikipedia page, and Ramona would prefer to keep it that way.

“Just . . .” Patrick starts again. “Try to separate any personal feelings from this, all right? This is just a boss, me, telling his employee, you, to do your job. Simple as.”

“Uh-huh,” Ramona says, straight-faced. She can tell he’s getting agitated, and yeah, it’s not the best idea to piss off the guy who signs her paychecks, but she can’t help it.

“I’m sure you’ve always aspired to have an early-morning block at a dying local radio station five days a week,” Patrick deadpans. “So if you wanna keep living the dream, I’m gonna take that as ‘Yes, Patrick, I’ll add “Emergency Contact” to the eight o’clock hour tomorrow morning.’”

Then he turns and walks out of the sound booth. Ramona salutes his retreating back, slips her headphones back over both ears, and flips the microphone on. “That was ‘Hysteric’ from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and before that, the new single from Ratboys. I’m Ramona Sloane, and you’re listening to 103.1 WBQR. One more from me today before I pass it over to my friend Kate Breed. This is illuminati hotties with ‘(You’re Better) Than Ever.’”

Then Ramona flicks her mic off and places the headphones on their stand, leaning back in her chair and feeling the tiniest kernel of satisfaction. She may have to bow to Patrick’s musical whims eventually, but that day is not today.

***

There are a lot of reasons Ramona moved back to Chicago after college. One, she missed her parents, who still live in her childhood house out in the suburbs. Two, she never really liked Boston, and she hates New York even more than she hates LA. And three, the first actually warm day each year after eight brutal months of lakeshore winter.

As she walks through downtown toward Millennium Park, she thinks to herself that the air smells kind of good—mildly springlike. Spring-adjacent. On the first actually warm day, everyone is in a great mood. Patrons tip their baristas extra well. No one’s blowing a gasket trying to find parking, because they all decided to walk.

Ramona crosses Michigan Avenue into the park, passing Crown Fountain. Kids are already playing barefoot in the interactive art installation, despite the fact that the water feature hasn’t been turned on for the summer yet. She can’t help herself—she smiles.

She rounds the footpath and finds a patch of grass on the Great Lawn, several yards away from a shirtless man doing push-ups. Normally, she would scowl at the sweaty display of machismo, but today, she’ll cut him a break. She sits down and pulls a bag of Miss Vickie’s out of her canvas tote.

Around her, she hears the playful shrieks of children yelping and giggling giddily. A young woman in a bikini top squints at her laptop screen, the camera evidently off on her Zoom call. Sitting on a faded astrology-themed tapestry, two art students gossip about someone dating someone’s ex.

On a day like today, Ramona almost doesn’t have to listen to music.

Almost.

She opens the Bandcamp app and searches for a new album from a band whose debut she remembers liking. Then she slips in her earbuds—wired, thanks—and lies down in the grass, watching the clouds drift over her. She closes her eyes.

The fourth track is interrupted by the rhythmic buzzing of an incoming call. She checks the caller ID before answering: Celeste Nguyen, her manager.

“Good tidings, Celeste,” Ramona answers.

“Hi, Ramona,” Celeste chirps. “You’re sounding chipper today.”

“Sue me for being in a good mood,” Ramona responds. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it is a balmy sixty-eight degrees in Chicago right now.”

“I wasn’t.” She pauses. “But maybe I should start checking the weather before calling if it stacks the odds in my favor.”

Ramona sits up. “Now you’re making it sound like you have bad news.”

“No, no.” Ramona can practically hear Celeste shaking her head. “It’s not bad news! I swear.”

Ramona crosses her legs. “So then what? Why are you making it seem like you’re about to ruin my beautiful day?”

“Okay, listen to the whole thing before responding, okay?” Celeste can’t help but tack another “okay” at the end of the question, which is how Ramona knows she’s about to say something that will ruin her beautiful day.

“Go on,” Ramona says because she doesn’t have a choice.

“Okay,” Celeste says again. “We were approached by Interscope about a summer tour.”

Ramona thinks. “A tour for me?”

“Yes.”

“Why? I’m not signed to Interscope.”

“I know.” Celeste pauses, waiting for Ramona to understand.

For the second time today, Ramona wishes everyone would just say what they mean. Although, if it’s what she thinks it is, she’d prefer Celeste to not say anything at all.

Her face grows hot with indignation. “If you’re about to ask me to fucking open for Amelia on her latest victory lap, the answer is absolutely fucking not. We don’t even make the same kind of music anymore, not to mention the fact that I don’t talk to her.”

“No!” Celeste assures her, already trying to do damage control. “No, that is not what they’re asking. No one’s opening for anybody.”

Ramona sighs, blood still rushing. She pops a sea salt and vinegar–flavored chip in her mouth to calm down. “Well . . . good.”

Celeste must take her response as a positive sign, because she finishes the pitch. “They want all three of you. They want a Swanboat tour.”

It takes a moment to sink in. All three of them. Swanboat. A tour. “They want . . . a reunion?” The word comes out twisted and high-pitched.

“Kind of. Well, yes.”

Ramona grimaces. “Aren’t I too young to be part of a reunion?” she asks between chip crunches. “Aren’t those for, like, glam-rock bands and musicians, I don’t know, over the age of forty? I know I’m not totally killing the game right now, but I’m not completely washed up.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Who’s getting ahead?” Ramona squints at the light reflecting off the skyscrapers. “I’m just asking why any rich label exec would want to revive a band that broke up five years ago when they already have a cash cow in one of its members.”

“That’s kind of the point,” Celeste explains. “Beatrix is making that weird techno on a farm in Indiana, which has resonated with a niche fanbase I didn’t even know existed. And Mia is clearly having a moment—”

“Yeah, that,” Ramona interrupts. “Amelia’s successful enough as it is. There’s no way she’d agree to this.”

Celeste pauses. “Amelia already said yes.”

Ramona’s jaw goes slack. A half-dissolved kettle chip falls dumbly out of her mouth and onto the grass.

She tries to make sense of it. The band dissolved years ago. And yeah, she’s still friends with Bea, because they were always friends, even if they did meet on Tinder. But she hasn’t spoken to Amelia in five years, since the last night of their first and only tour, which fell apart as quickly and seamlessly as it came together.

And besides, Amelia is wildly successful, especially for someone who started as an indie darling. Pitchfork named her sophomore album Best New Music. But most importantly, Amelia has fans. More than that, she has stans—teenagers who have her face as their profile pictures and call her “Mmother.” When they were a band, they sold out extremely small venues filled with fans mostly their own age, who talked to them outside the van after the show. That’s nothing like what Amelia has now.

Ramona swallows. “What about Bea?”

“Their team told me to ask you first.”

Ramona rolls her eyes. “So they told you they’d do it if I said I would.”

“Yes.”

“Awesome.” Her tone is flat.

Ramona stares at the grass. She likes her job, even if she has to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to start her shift. She likes curating morning drives and sharing her favorite songs with loyal listeners. But she didn’t ever dream of working at a radio station; she dreamed of making the music they played. And she used to do that, even after Swanboat disbanded. For those first three years post-Swanboat, after she finished her degree, Ramona made an honest attempt at a solo career—before she got dropped from her label and started losing more money touring than she was making.

When Celeste first broke the news, Ramona felt like her life was over. So young, she’d held in her hands what so many spend their whole lives grasping for. She was good, she knew that, but she’d also been lucky. And sometimes people needed to make “tough business decisions” about their investments, ones that almost made Ramona wish they’d never bet on her in the first place. All of a sudden, she was twenty-four—young enough to start over, but old enough to feel like she already knew what she wanted, and that it was never going to change.

Celeste, who offered to represent Ramona back when Celeste was still some hotshot music exec’s assistant, told her to use the time to “focus on her craft.” Instead, Ramona decided to just consider it a fate-imposed break, until Bea taught Ramona what they knew about production, and she started releasing music independently, like they did when Swanboat first started. For two years now, she’s maintained a real adult job with a meager but steady paycheck, and played the occasional show to small rooms of people drinking PBRs, as long as she’s been able to get there in her 2004 Subaru Forester. And if you ask her, she’ll say it’s been good. But the truth is, working adjacent to music isn’t the same. Working in the business of music isn’t the same.

When she was twenty-one, she had a small, rich taste of what her life could be: making music she loves with people she loves even more. And now that she’s twenty-six, the tug in her gut tells her she wants it again.

Amelia already said yes. Ramona tries not to think it, but it comes anyway: Amelia wants to see me. But she doesn’t know that. And she won’t hope for it. Because she hoped for Amelia once, and it just left her a bigger mess than she already was before.

“I don’t take handouts,” Ramona warns, aware that she sounds prideful. She’ll be damned if she lets them take her last modicum of integrity.

“This isn’t a handout,” Celeste says. “Trust me. No one I know in this industry would risk investing the kind of money they’re talking about throwing into this tour if they didn’t think they’d make it back tenfold. As your manager, I’m obligated to tell you that this is a great business move.” She sucks her teeth. “Actually, and don’t kill me for saying this, it might be your only move. It’s been a couple of years now since things changed. This is the best possible way for an A&R rep to finally see what they’ve all been missing out on, and it’s just fallen into our lap.”

Since things changed is a nice way of putting it. Ramona almost laughs. Since Ramona failed at the only thing she’s good at is more like it.

“You’d be on everyone’s radar again,” Celeste says, voice gently prodding. “But you have to make the best decision for you. If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to.”

Over the past several years, Celeste has handled Ramona’s prickly nature with more than the appropriate amount of patience. Even now, Ramona can tell she isn’t being pressured in one direction or another, even though it’s clear one direction would be significantly more beneficial to Celeste.

Ramona leans back in the grass, tilting her face toward the sun,; hoping for the universe, or the stars or something, to offer her some clarity. Frankly, it’s exceedingly rare for her to do anything she doesn’t want to do—Ramona is very, very good at saying no. It’s the reason she was never featured in her school yearbooks. But this is different.

She knows saying yes won’t make her happy; she’s also fairly certain saying no won’t make her feel . . . anything. And this decision impacts more than just her and her career—it impacts Celeste, and Bea, and a whole team of crew members and musicians who would get paid if she says yes. The only casualty would be her sanity.

“Can I think about it?” she asks, blinking in the bright sunshine.

“Sure,” Celeste says. “But not for too long. They want to start planning ASAP, so I’ll need to give them an answer soon.”

“Got it.”

The line beeps, then disconnects. Ramona lets herself fall unceremoniously back onto the grass. She groans. Then she texts Bea, who responds immediately.

R: just talked to celeste.

B: and??????

R: thanks for putting me on the hook, btw

B: i thought it should be yr decision

R: well you should know by now how much i hate making those

B: ha ha

B: seriously, i’m cool either way. could be fun tho

Ramona pulls herself back up. She digs around the bag for another chip, but finds none. “Goddamn it,” she mutters. Then she shoots off another text to Bea: how’s farm life treating you?

Bea responds with a photo of a baby goat. Ramona sends a fury of emojis.

R: you’d be ok leaving it for two months?

B: i already talked to mar about it and she said she could hold it down.

Marin is Bea’s partner of five years. The two of them met the first day the band was recording the album. Bea had picked up coffees from the small café across the street from the studio, and then insisted on running out for more every time someone finished their cup. Everyone thought Bea was developing a legitimate caffeine addiction before they realized the reason for Bea’s fixation was a certain bisexual barista.

Another text from Bea comes in. IF that’s what you want.

Ramona chews on her bottom lip. What does she want? She wants to enjoy the uncomplicated delight of a sunny spring day. She wants to finish listening to this new record. She wants one more chip.

She also wants the money that could come from merch sales or a reissue of the LP. She wants to make records again, in a real recording booth, with a real budget. She misses the thrill of waking up somewhere new, and stopping at roadside diners for breakfast specials and drowning them in ketchup while Bea and Amelia mock her from the other side of the booth.

It makes her chest hurt to think about. Their friendship, the alchemy between the three of them, was unlike anything Ramona had ever experienced. It still is. When they first met at a goddamn frat party during their first semester at Emerson College, it was like the universe exploded in front of them. Well, technically Ramona met Bea a few hours before that, in a previously agreed-upon park on campus, holding a bottle of screw-top wine in one hand and two paper cups in the other. After conceding there was absolutely no romantic spark between them, they decided to dive headfirst into friendship—and the humid, sticky basement of Phi Delt. Then they met Amelia, who was stranded in the corner of the room, clutching a red Solo cup like it was her only anchor to reality, and Bea told her she looked like Penny Lane in Almost Famous, which led to a whole conversation about the best uses of diegetic music in film.

It was everything. And then it was nothing.

it won’t be like it was, Ramona types. She sees the three dots bubble up.

B: what if it is?

Ramona looks away from her phone.

It wasn’t perfect. But somewhere between the petty squabbles and the writing sessions, the nights spent in the school’s reserve-by-the-hour recording booths and watching the sunrise over the Charles River, they started to approach something sublime.

There’s no way Amelia has loosened her iron grip on her life, which means there’s no way Ramona won’t be tearing her hair out upward of ten times over a multicity tour. Ramona used to think she and Amelia were like Buckingham and Nicks: They fought like hell but made great art. After five years of distance and reflection (if you could call watching interviews and privately seething “reflection”), Ramona has realized that she and Amelia weren’t twin flames that stoked each other’s creative fire. They were actually just a bad idea.

Another text from Bea: plus wouldn’t it be nice to tour with actual accommodations in actual beds instead of a pile of dirty clothes on someone’s floor

Ramona snorts. Bea is right—neither of them has ever toured on a major label’s dime. They’re used to squeezing into a single shitty van packed with equipment and instruments, couch hopping, and taking turns driving. Ramona’s young, but she’s too old to do any of that again. Her back can’t take it.

Ramona sighs, squeezing her eyes shut, relishing the last minute of her beautiful day before doing what she does next. A message to Celeste: fine.

She lies back down in the grass, ignoring the buzzing of her phone, and thinks about what she just agreed to.

And then she hears it: the opening notes of Mia Wells’s latest single, “Emergency Contact.” The same one Patrick practically programmed into her playlist for her. She opens her eyes, searching for the culprit contaminating the public airspace, and sees the art students bobbing their heads to their tiny speaker like it’s their own personal Lollapalooza.

Fucking art school.

Happy Tuesday, mis internet amigxs,

I can't believe this is already our second to last newsletter of July and that AUGUST BEGINS NEXT WEEK!

That means that we'll be winding down discussion of P FKN R and polling when we'll be having our final discussion. In addition that means that we'll be starting The Intrigue by Silvia Moreno-Garcia AND continuing Cuba: An American History in August. It's never too late to join us on Discord.

And now, on to this week's releases...

Paranormal

Take It To Your Grave by Louangie Bou-Montes (Audiobook)

I Didn't Do It by Elle Gonzalez Rose (Audiobook)

A book I didn't include in the early newsletter...

The Past Pursues Us Like Detectives, Debt Collectors, Thieves by Juan Pablo Villalobos and Translated by Daniel Hahn

xo,

Carmen

Aren't Monday's fantastic when you're basically unemployed?! I dig 'em, as I get to go climbin' early in the morning and hopefully distract y'all while you work with an update on what I've been reading. As usual, let me know what you've read and are planning to read in the comments and here's what I'm workin' with..

READING

REVIEW

MEN AT ARMS by TERRY PRATCHETT [City Watch #2, Discworld #8] (satirical fantasy)

Progress: Finished

I had complaints last week about this taking a while to leverage the strong hook from the beginning and am happy to report that the final third did indeed deal with that hook in a satisfying manner. I realized how invested I was in getting to know a certain character when they met some trouble but thankfully I overreacted, so I was pulled in by multiple strands. Doesn't live up to the excellence of Guards! Guards! but did further cement my interest in reading through Discworld.

STREETS OF LAREDO by LARRY MCMURTRY [Lonesome Dove - Pub Order #2/Chronological Order #4] (western fiction)

Progress: 254/538

Lonesome Dove became an instant all-timer for me when I read it in January of last year and I'm finally back in the LD Universe, huzzah! I have mixed feelings on this one so far. McMurtry's character work continues to be elite, but I God I am struggling to get invested in the plot due to a main character I find frustrating for reasons I won't get into here and the marriage of two characters that seems insane even though McMurtry does give them Very Good Reasons. I guess a lot can happen in 15 years. Either way, still enjoying it overall, yeehaw, etc..

DEFIANCE: A MEMOIR OF AWAKENING, REBELLION, AND SURVIVAL IN SYRIA by LOUBNA MRIE (nonfiction memoir)

Progress: 184/417

We're back to this puppy and it's still just as good as I remember. I tend to read history from a long, long time ago, so it's really interesting to see this rebellion from another country play out with social media playing a big role (including how they navigate the security concerns around it). Mrie's keen observations stand out as she details everything from the mundane to the horrific and I'm very much back on the train with this one.

PREVIEW

Whatever I read next will likely be determined after I see which way the History Sickos/Fiction Sickos Book Club votes go, which will be posted tomorrow. So get yer butt in the Discord if you're not yet so you can make your voice heard.

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Publishing News: I keep teasing this but last week the contract for our imprint's second acquisition was signed and finalized and an announcement plan is being fleshed out (and y'all will hear about it first!). Stay tuned!

• Game of the Week: I'd love for this to be Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced but I'm holding out hope, and holding out unit, they add an FOV slider to console because I can't see a damn thing, which is a shame because when I can see what's happening it friggin' rocks. This week will be fairly busy due to some business commitments but I'm still hoping to rock some Civilization VI. Lately I've been selecting leaders I haven't won with yet just to keep things fresh.

• Show of the Week: The Traitors UK fixes all my issues with the American version, the main one being that they don't use any "reality hoppers", whereas the American version is all hoopleheaded reality show veterans I just refuse to care about. I've been binging the hell out of it and am already on S3E9.

• Movie of the Week: The Odyssey was everything I hoped for and more. Even my wife, who typically couldn't give a fig about Homer, was locked in for every single minute of the three hour runtime. This one will constantly be in the re-watch rotation for years to come. Might be time to read Emily Wilson's translation, hmm...

• Content News: After the poll last week about this type of content, I've decided to keep the written version of the Weekly Checkpoint for Mondays and film the short-form video version of it on Tuesdays. So if you voted "Why Not Both?!", you won.

This pick comes from our administrator Michelle:

I picked up this book in the summer of 2024 as part of a book club and have since been trying to find ways to erase my memory so I can re-live reading it for the first time. The book covers the meltdown of Reactor Number Four at the Chernobyl Atomic Energy Station in Ukraine. It is meticulously researched, giving the HBO miniseries a run for its money. The narrative is compelling and goes to great lengths to acknowledge as many people involved in the disaster as possible. There have been a few redditors who posit that some of the nuclear science in the book is inaccurate, so please, do not try to build a reactor based on this book. Aside from the nuclear faux pas this book is a thrilling recounting of a disaster that still effects the world today.

Let us know what you think of the book in the comments below!

We're excited to announce that our July Book Club author, Tatiana Obey, will be joining us for an exclusive Zoom discussion of her novel, Sistah Samurai: A Champloo Novella!

This intimate conversation is your chance to connect directly with Tatiana, hear more about the inspiration behind the book, and ask any questions you have about the story, her creative process, and her work as a writer.

We're currently planning to host the event on Monday, August 25. To help us choose the best time for everyone, please take a moment to fill out the poll below with your preferred time.

We can't wait to see you there and dive into this incredible story together!

Non-fiction

• "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid

Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay candidly appraises the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up, and makes palpable the impact of European colonization and tourism.

• "My Favorite Plant" edited by Jamaica Kincaid

Kincaid gathers a sparkling selection of new and beloved poetry and prose about each author’s favorite flora.

Short stories

• "Ladies of the Night" by Althea Prince

With women's loves and lives as their focus, the stories contain dramatic twists and some humorous, others shocking and disturbing, all leaving a haunting melody behind.

Fiction

• "My Stories Have No Endings" by Gayle Gonsalves

Kai is a spiritual child who dips her ears into the wind where she hears the voices that tell stories from the forgotten past. Though she grows up in poverty in the Caribbean, her quick mind wins her a scholarship to the island's most prestigious all-girls' school where she's catapulted into a very different world

🗺️If you want to see more book recommendations from all the countries in the world, check out my Reading the World Spreadsheet.

And if you want to support this project, consider becoming a paid member of my Bindery!

So. In addition to reading a lot of books, I also am... writing some. Yes, it's true. I actually started all my social media to prep myself for writing and advertising. However, it turns out I really hate advertising myself and have terrible Imposter Syndrome. I also much prefer to keep it low key until I'm really, truly ready to get something together and publish it.

However, I also really, really need to get over that and let people read my stuff so I can actually improve and write something worth reading. So I decided to get creative and take advantage of what tools I have at my disposal.

Currently, I have two works in progress I am working on that are pretty different and definitely in need of something to motivate me to write while I get over my belief that nobody cares about what I have to write. I love to storytell and it's a thing I think makes all of us painfully, truly human. There is a magic in telling stories that everyone possesses in their own way:

The magic of fantasy tales, the magic of recounting personal stories, the magic of explaining your favorite show, the magic of telling someone about your job... whatever it is, there is something in us all that tells a specific story so well that's unique to us.

Well. I think I need to stop doubting my ability to tell a damned story. So. I am doing something crazy.

For Tier 1 and beyond members, I am adding some new features and actually putting together projects that will be exclusive to folks who want to be a part of this journey with me. They include:

• Cover art previews

• Draft chapters for each project

• Input opportunities for each project

• Author interview requests

• Early access to author interviews

The goal is to motivate me to stop being so shy and to actually hunker down and finish what I put my nose to. I tell stories because I love to tell stories and I would love to tell those stories to more of you. So. If you want to hear more of them and have a chance to help shape what they look like? You'll be getting that chance!

I've been sitting on this secret for months and I cannot wait for what's coming next. You can listen to my announcement in the Rebel Ever After feed wherever you get your podcasts, or read the transcript below.

Listen on:

• Apple Podcasts

• Spotify

• Castbox

• Libsyn

Transcript

Hi folks. This episode is a little different because I have an exciting announcement to share about the future of Rebel Ever After. 

The too long, didn’t listen version is that the publishing company Bindery invited me to join their tastemaker program! While the Rebel Ever After podcast will remain free and distributed wherever you are listening to this episode, the Rebel Ever After community will live on the Bindery social platform for book lovers — and we have the opportunity to start our very own romance imprint with their publishing arm. How does Rebel Ever After, an imprint of Bindery Books, sound to you?

Now for the long version. As a culture critic and a queer author, I believe that the books we write have the power to change minds and help readers envision a better world. Romance in particular has always been a political genre that mirrors and molds societal norms. On a human level, romance novels can show readers what it feels like to thrive with real love, community, and purpose. I can’t think of anything more powerful than who deserves a happily-ever-after, and the many forms that happily-ever-after can take. 

For a brief, shining moment in the late 2010s and early 2020s, traditional publishers invested in the queer, diverse, and groundbreaking books that brought a new generation of readers like me to romance. Authors like Casey McQuiston, Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, and Rachel Reid showed people that romance has more to offer them than straight, white, monogamous love stories ending with a marriage proposal and an epilogue baby. Many of those new readers were inspired to write their own romance novels, myself included. I can trace a straight line between books like One Last Stop and Beach Read to my debut romance But How Are You, Really. 

So are publishers nurturing this new generation of authors? Or did this industry see diversity as a fad that is no longer in style?

The current progressiveness of publishing is hard to quantify, but the general vibes are bad. When marginalized authors are given book deals, their books are often left dead on arrival without robust marketing investment. Authors who don’t receive the front list treatment are left to fend for themselves, promoting their books on their own with graphics they make on Canva and increasingly desperate email newsletters. They battle social media algorithms that are pay-to-play and hostile to posts that have a whiff of progressive or adult content. Both on the mic and off, I’ve heard from some of my favorite authors that their contracts are not getting renewed.

In the wake of the second election of Donald Trump, as well as the disappointing sales of my first book, I launched this podcast. In my grief and rage, I wanted to talk to other romance authors about what gave them the strength to keep writing as the country and our sphere of the publishing industry lurched backward. Because it is undeniable that we are in the middle of a regressive, conservative swing in culture, and romance is not exempt from that. From book bans at the state and federal level that target underrepresented authors, to corporations and algorithms that prioritize straight, white, and cis voices, it is hard for a progressive author to break through and reach their readers. 

Everyone knows that publishing is a broken system that pushes out underrepresented voices and fresh, bold stories. It does a real disservice to all of those new romance readers who want to read these books but aren’t finding them through the usual discovery channels, if they are published at all. 

Helping authors reach their readers quickly became a central goal of Rebel Ever After. I love talking to authors about the themes they explore on the page, how the regressive swing in the United States has impacted their careers, and what they want to see change within the romance genre. We dig deep into what readers adore about their books, from queer self discovery to the logistics of ghost-fucking.

I started this podcast alone using GarageBand and a microphone I stole from an ex. And it has grown into a wonderful community of romance lovers who share my values and hopes for the genre. I am honored but I’m also not surprised! Authors and readers crave deeper conversations about the books we love and the storytelling trends we swim in. We want respect for the romance genre, and together, we are building a community rooted in that shared goal.

That brings me back to my big two-part announcement:

1) Rebel Ever After is moving to Bindery — a home for book clubs and bookish tastemakers. 

2) If we grow a membership on Bindery, we might be able to start a Rebel Ever After publishing imprint. As a community, we could publish the diverse, queer, progressive romance novels of our dreams.

If you’re not familiar with Bindery, it’s a publishing company founded by industry veterans Matt Kaye and Meghan Harvey in 2023. Essentially, they partner with community leaders, or “tastemakers,” in the book world to create digital book clubs and launch small publishing imprints. Bindery saw the genuine love that influencers have for literature, and the power of our online communities to champion underserved voices. 

To put it simply, Bindery’s model gives creators the opportunity to acquire and publish books with their communities in mind, and Bindery manages the production, distribution, marketing, and publicity of those titles. Bindery is a new name in the industry, but it has already published best-selling novels, GoodReads Choice Awards winners, and Indie Next Picks. They distribute to Barnes & Noble and other big players, as well as indie bookstores and libraries around the world. On a recent trip to Europe, I saw Bindery titles for sale in London and Paris. I think Bindery is here to stay, and I am thrilled that they are pioneering a new publishing model that leans into how book discovery has changed. 

Now if you’ve read my work, you may know I am a big skeptic of startups. I am not inclined to trust industry disrupters or predatory tech bros who parachute into industries they don’t understand to eke out a profit. Romance specifically is vulnerable to outsiders wanting to capitalize on its profitability without investing in its community or quality storytelling. That being said, traditional publishing is in need of an overhaul, and no one company or indie press or zine maker or indie author can fix it alone. 

So I watched Bindery’s development over the years with curiosity and some suspicion. I sniffed around for gossip and looked at how they treat their authors. When my friend Nina Haines started her imprint Sapph-Lit, I had a front-row seat as she acquired and then published Kim Narby’s stunning debut novel Saturn Returning. It’s a propulsive and messy novel about friendship and love among queer women, and I am so happy it is out in the world re-traumatizing millennial readers.

Two years later, I can say that Bindery has won me over. I am impressed by the diversity of their authors, most of whom are debuts, some of whom were unagented; the freshness and transparency of their publishing model; and their commitment to fostering community among readers alongside the rise of micro-influencers. 

Most importantly, the books Bindery has published so far are good. Genuinely very good. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove was one of my favorite books of 2025, and I couldn’t put down their gorgeous re-release of This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers. In May I was the conversation partner for the aforementioned Saturn Returning by Kim Narby. Bindery is publishing wildly talented new and diverse authors who have been overlooked by the Big Five, and we are all better for it.

But you know what their catalogue is lacking so far? A dedicated romance imprint that shares its vision of a more diverse and equitable world of books. That’s why they invited me to become a Bindery tastemaker. If the Rebel Ever After community creates a home on Bindery, that imprint is on the table. 

Up until now I’ve asked folks to support the podcast on Patreon. I basically retrofitted my existing Patreon to include Rebel Ever After content, and frankly it hasn’t worked as a monetization strategy. Because Rebel Ever After is not just a podcast — it’s a community, and this community needs its own space separate from my personal writing. 

What Bindery offers is a platform created for reader communities like ours. With the move to Bindery, listeners can play more of a role in the curation of the show. I also want to host events where members can meet their favorite authors during virtual Q&As and salons. I want to share writing by authors about their creative processes, publishing journeys, historical research, and thoughts on the genre. And I want to springboard diverse, queer, rebellious romance novels into the world — as a podcast, as a community, and hopefully as an imprint.

If you want to see what that looks like, you can go to rebeleverafter.binderybooks.com right now. My hope is that we will build up a big comment culture where we can discuss new episodes and what folks are currently reading. Subscribers will also get access to the Rebel Ever After Discord server, which is my favorite corner of the internet. 

To celebrate launching on Bindery, I’m throwing a big virtual party on August 26th at 8pm eastern. I will be joined by Erin Baldwin, Laura Piper Lee, and Adib Khorram. There will be games. There will be a rowdy group chat. There might even be sneak peaks at upcoming books by your favorite authors. And this event will be FREE for all Rebel Ever After Bindery members. 

So how do you join? You can create an account on Bindery right now for free. You will receive all the essential updates about Rebel Ever After, like new episodes, event announcements, and book recommendations from me. Or you can subscribe starting at $5 a month and become an official Rebel. Rebels will get exclusive content like virtual readings and discussions with REA authors, essays and opinion pieces, maybe some cover reveals and excerpts from new titles. And more to listen to and watch. 

This is a hard time to budget $5/month, and if a Bindery membership isn’t affordable for you right now, that is totally okay. I hope you will sign up as a free member. The main feed of the podcast will also remain free and accessible wherever you like to listen. 

That being said, I need to show Bindery that Rebel Ever After means business as a community in order for us to get our own imprint. If listeners show up and subscribe, we will be able to bring more swoony, progressive romances into the world, on shelves and ereaders, in libraries and brick and mortar bookstores.

That’s why I’m setting a goal of 100 Rebel subscribers by the end of September.

It’s a big goal, but I know we can hit it. Because romance readers love this genre. We are voracious and organized and determined to champion the love stories that we believe in. 

I’ll be honest: becoming a publisher was never a dream of mine because I could not imagine a world where that was possible. 

But the world is changing, and I want to read romance novels that push the boundaries of what a happily-ever-after looks like. From marrying your best friend for health insurance and then falling in love with him, like in Marisa Kanter’s Friends With Benefits. Or opening a cocktail bar with your polycule and queer friends as investors, like in TJ Alexander’s Triple Sec.  

I want to read beloved romance tropes made fresh and new when starring BIPOC characters, like The King’s Pregnancy Proposition by LaQuette and Love Is a War Song by Danica Nava. 

I want to publish authors who reach for joy and justice, escapism and resistance. And I know you do too. So let’s fuckin’ do it.

I need to thank every person who has listened to an episode of the Rebel Ever After podcast. I need to thank every author who has given me their time and wisdom and art. I need to thank everyone who has left a review or recommended the show to a friend or shared a quote on Instagram. I am so grateful for this community of readers and authors and listeners, and I cannot wait to start this next chapter of Rebel Ever After. I hope I’ll see you on Bindery soon.

Thank you for listening, and stay safe out there. 

Hello and happy Monday! I'm writing this post earlier than usual because I have been traveling the last few days, so this is really a roundup of books I read up through last Wednesday. I hope you will still trust me after I have woven this web of lies, lol. If this looks like a lot of books read over a shorter than usual time, it's because I finally finished up a few books that had been taking me weeks to finish due to a slight reading slump. Stupid World Cup and Love Island, taking up all my time! Glad those are over! (I'm not, I need more Brinity in my life!) Books marked with a * were gifted to me.

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans* - Yes, everyone is right about this book! It's so lovely! It's heartfelt and funny, and I actually laughed and gasped out loud while listening. If you're an audiobook person, I do recommend that route, as it's done with half a dozen or so narrators, which really helps bring the letters to life. I loved that the main character was older and set in her ways, but not so much that she wasn't willing to listen to others' concerns and opinions. My only knock on it is that the ending veered a little tidy and overly sweet to me.

Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey* - Sadly, this is probably my least favorite Gailey book to date. It's soooo sloowwww. I did like the blending of cults and the supernatural, and it's fine by me if things never get fully explained. But you can't take what's obvious from like page five and try to make it a grand reveal at the end of the book. The main character kept making small discoveries but none of them ever felt like new information, which made it hard for me to want to keep going. Bummer.

Stops Along The Way by Anna Sortino* - Sortino is an author that I think is super underrated. She writes YA featuring disabled characters, mainly teens who are Deaf/hard of hearing. Her books are so great showing what it might be like to live every day with the specific disabilities her characters have. This one is more of that, plus a road trip story and a couple of gaming nerds. The MCs were so sweet. I love watching characters learn to understand each others' quirks so they can better love and take care of each other.

Waiting For The Long Night Moon by Amanda Peters* - This is a collection of short stories featuring Indigenous characters. The settings range from the colonization of this country to recent anti-pipeline protests. Peters delivers a churn of emotions with each story. These characters are losing family and culture, but they are also finding them and building them anew.

This week has mostly been about the fact that Small Town Slasher releases in just over two weeks, which is both exciting and nervewrecking. I hope more preorders come in.

I received another incredible blurb for the book:

“Fast-paced and blood-soaked, this entertaining thrill ride is a must read for slasher fans.”

—Justine Pucella Winans, award-winning author of How to Survive a Slasher

I am incredibly grateful that authors I admire have taken the time to read and support this strange, bloody little book. Every time another person understands what I was trying to do with Small Town Slasher, it makes the long and often ridiculous publishing process feel a little more worthwhile.

A lot of this week was spent preparing for release. I worked on promotional graphics, captions, website updates, event pitches, and all the other pieces involved in ensuring that people are aware of a book's existence when it's released. It's really challenging wearing all of the hats. Thursday is 100 days until Halloween AND the one month anniversary of Twisted Tales to Tell in the Night: Another Halloween Horror Anthology. If you haven't purchase your copy today and please leave a review once you read it. <3

I made some significant changes to my author website, including updates to the homepage, book pages, events section, and contact page. My website has needed attention for a while, but it is difficult to stop working on the books long enough to work on the place where I am supposed to tell people about the books. It is finally doing a much better job of showing who I am, what I write, and what is coming next.

I also started making a more serious attempt at TikTok.

Video content does not come naturally to me, and I am still trying to understand how people find an audio, immediately know what to do with it, film something, edit it, add text, and post it. I did manage to post my first trend-based Small Town Slasher video, though, and I am working on more content for the release.

I Wish I Was a Vampire has been with beta readers and my editor. The beta reading window ended Friday, which means the next stage is my editor and I sorting through the feedback and beginning the final editing process.

The book releases September 15, so there is not much time between finishing Small Town Slasher release work and moving directly into final preparations for my middle grade debut.

I continued reaching out to bookstores and other venues about future events.I would love to do more in-person appearances, but the financial and accessibility side has to make sense. Excitement does not pay for transportation, lodging, or the recovery time that often follows an event.

I have also been exploring programming that goes beyond a standard reading and signing, including conversations about slashers, horror films, nostalgia, disability in horror, and the way movies influence my writing. I want events to feel like something people are genuinely excited to attend, not simply an author sitting behind a table hoping someone stops.

I am preparing for my TBRCon panel, “Problems with the Final Girl Trope.” I am especially interested in discussing final girls who move beyond the narrow version of the trope we have seen so many times, including disabled characters and stories that allow more than one woman to survive.

I also made sure to ask for the panel questions in advance. Virtual events may remove the travel, but that does not mean they are automatically accessible or easy. Knowing what I will be asked gives me time to organize my thoughts and helps me participate without spending the entire panel fighting through anxiety.

Because it is Disability Pride Month, I wrote about what it means to be a disabled author. Disability affects how I write, travel, attend events, meet readers, and run Death by TBR Books. It is also woven into the stories I tell.

I am proud of what I have accomplished, but I do not want to pretend that I accomplish it in the same way or at the same pace as someone who is not dealing with the same limitations. Even virtual events can be challenging. Even good days can require recovery afterward. Both things can be true: I can love this work, and it can be incredibly difficult for me to do it.

When I look at the individual days from this week, it can feel like I spent most of them answering emails, changing website text, fighting with captions, or moving the same tasks from one list to another.

But Small Town Slasher is nearly here.

I Wish I Was a Vampire is moving through beta reading and editing.

My website is substantially better.

I am learning an entirely new platform, preparing for a major panel, pitching events, running a bookstore and press, and continuing to make plans for books that will not be published until next year. My youngest, Sidney, has been keeping me company while I write and edit and work on social media.

BOOKS

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives by Barbara Truelove
The Lake of Lost Girls by Katherine Greene
Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley Winstead

Currently reading: The Creed Falls Massacres by Jon Cohn and starting Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison tonight!

SHOWS AND FILMS

I have mostly been relying on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The X-Files, Law & Order: SVU, and my usual late 1990s and early 2000s comfort rewatches while I work.

For movies watched The Bay (the new shark one) and it was pretty bad. I'm watching Obsession for the second time tonight and I've also started my rewatch of all of the Spiderman's. Also Backrooms was a wild one!

That is all for this week. Please share what you have been reading and watching!

xoxo

Spooky Girl

Welcome back to Goosebumps Bookclub! Today we are wrapping up Return of The Mummy and kicking off Phantom of The Auditorium.

Join us tonight as we watch Return of The Mummy on Roku. Feel free to watch anytime this evening and come chat about it in the discord group chat!

How did everyone like Return of The Mummy? I gotta say the two Mummy books in the Goosebumps series have been really good! Exploring ancient tombs and pyramids is really fun and I can't believe we don't see more of it in horror books!

And Now to kick off Phantom of The Auditorium. We will watch it in two weeks! You can access it here.

Brooke's best friend, Zeke, has just been given the lead role in the school play, The Phantom. Zeke's totally into it. He loves dressing up in the grotesque phantom costume. And scaring the other members of the cast. Brooke thinks Zeke's getting a little too into it.

But then really scary things start happening. A message appears on a piece of scenery: "The Phantom Strikes!" A stage light comes crashing down.

Is someone trying to ruin the play?

Or is there really a phantom living under the stage?

Happy Sunday book buddies!

There was a lot of reading and creating going on this week, so let's cut straight to the chase. But before the books I must say The Odyssey is a MUST watch film. It was SO, SO good.

Alright, let's get to the books. I literally just finished The Parisian Heist on audio and have to say it was a fun summer suspense, especially if you're an art history lover. The dueling timelines married perfectly, complimenting each other in terms of tone and content. It's a bit more open door than I like, but it wasn't smutty. 4⭐️s

I finally finished The Secret Society of Librarians earlier this week and boy was it good! I didn't care for one aspect of the ending so I can't quite give it a 5⭐️ rating, but it was an absolutely terrific WWII story. Full of heart and wonderful characters, this is a must read if you've loved Thompson's previous work or love WWII stories. 4.75⭐️

As part of an ongoing research project (more on that soon) I devoured The Giver of Stars on audio. And, spoiler alert, it was just as good as everyone said it would be. Highly recommend it if you love strong female characters and a fierce group of friends. 4.5⭐️

If you follow me on any of my platforms then you've probably seen the video I shared yesterday claiming Cane River a must read historical fiction. It stole my heart, and it's been so hard to keep it under wraps since finishing last week. I cannot say enough good things about this multi-generational family legacy story. If I read over 500 pages in physical format in less than a week, you know it's good. An absolute banger that everyone should read. 5⭐️

I'm about six chapters into my physical copy of A Founding Mother and really am enjoying it. It's my first Dray/Kamoie, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm really enjoying the period appropriate, yet very approachable language. I know the BBFL book club members are really enjoying this one, and I have a feeling I will, too.

I've started my advanced reader copy of The Intrigue, and, no surprise to anyone, I'm already sucked into this tale. It's very cinematic, which is exactly what I was hoping for from SMG. I will read anything she writes.

My plan is to try to tackle both The Intrigue and A Time of Witches on my Kindle this week, and to listen to The Quarter Queen and Should the Waters Take Us on audio. I'm missing home terribly, so spending some time in Louisiana via a few audiobooks will help.

What are you planning to read this week? What books did you read last week? Any you recommend?

ICYMI:

• get the scoop on September historical fiction releases

• A few things I wanted to get off my chest

• If you liked these, you must read this

• Spy my summer TBR (view on TT or view on Insta)

• Should you read The Calamity Club?

• read my Elizabeth & Marilyn review

• check out the short-form May & June reading wrap-up

• hear all about my July TBR

• The full Cane River reading vlog + meet my new series exclusive to Bindery

• 14 Emancipation stories you should read

• another book & film pairing perfect for WWII fiction fans

Hear it Here First:

My hope is to share two Youtube videos this week starting with my May & June reading wrapup and my Top reads of 2026 (so far). I might debut one early on Bindery so watch for updates!

FYI, the BBFL will be reading The Shadow of the Wind in August, so get your library holds ready. Not a member yet? Join here!

Lastly, I've opened my Pango store again and listed a few new things there. I need help finding new homes for books, so I plan to sell any finished copies I don't plan to keep and giveaway ARCs I've read already. Stay tuned for a big ARC giveaway announcement soon!

P.S. I don't talk about it often, but I love Butcher Box. I save so much $$ on high quality meats all delivered straight to my door in recyclable packaging. I'm thrilled to share this special referral link for a FREE signature box (valued at $179) + FREE ground beef for life! It's only good for the first 5 subscribers, so act fast!

Have a great week, friends!

xoxo

c

The Letter Corner

Happy Sunday Book Friends,

Something I have wanted to bring to Ink & Ether since I discovered it, is finally happening.

I believe that books and letters live in the same world. They are both acts of reaching toward a story, toward another person, toward some part of yourself you haven't met yet. So when I discovered the Sunday Letter Project, it felt less like finding something new and more like recognizing something I had always been moving toward.

Ink & Ether will become an official Letter Keeper.

Here is what that means. Beginning in August at Communitea Coffee in Brea, there will be a letter basket. Inside that basket are letters written by real people who are looking for a pen pal — someone to write to, someone to be written back to. You can come in any time the shop is open, choose an intro letter that speaks to you, take a photo of it, and write back. No home addresses are ever exchanged. Everything goes through the Letter Keeper network safely and privately.

Send Locally or Abroad

You can also add your own intro letter to the basket to connect with pen-pals locally. Write a little about yourself, what you love, what you are reading, what you are looking for and leave it in the basket.

To connect with pen-pals abroad, you need to find a shop to send your intro letter to. You can find a shop in the Letter Keeper Network. Be sure to include us as the return address (see below) on the back of your letter and you're all set. Send it off and wait for a response. Easy!

This is community that does not require an algorithm. It is slow and intentional and a little bit magic, which feels very Ink & Ether to me. I hope you like the way that sounds.

To get you started, here is this week's letter writing prompt:

Write to a stranger about the book that changed something in you. Not your favorite book necessarily — the one that left you different than it found you. Tell them what it was, what it did, and whether you have ever recovered.

The basket will live at Communitea Coffee year round, even between pop-ups. So if you can never quite make it to an event, this is another way to find your way into the Ink & Ether community.

Return Address:

Ink & Ether
c/o Communitea Coffee
1015 E Imperial Hwy, Unit C1
Brea, CA 92821

Pages & Pour: Silent Reading Group

Last but not least, come join us for Silent Reading at Communitea Coffee today at 1pm.

This is for the introverts who want to do book club things without the book club socializing. Instead we each can choose our own book, and read at our own pace, in quiet community while enjoying an iced latte.

This may or may not be a ploy to give me more time to get some reading in but who isn't looking for a good excuse to read more. Right?

Hope you can join me today. But if you can't make it, look for the next one on Wednesday August 5th.

With gratitude,

The Keeper

Every Sunday after Link and I finish our walk, I sit down and think about what all of my books had in common. Sometimes there's an obvious theme. Other weeks, I don't notice it until I'm writing this post.

This week, every story was about what happens after life refuses to go according to plan. Not one of these characters ends up where they expected to be. Instead, they're forced to ask a difficult question: Who do I become now?

In The Sea Hides Its Dead, that question is wrapped in eldritch horror. Caroline enters an underwater cave expecting an academic expedition and instead finds herself trapped in a nightmare. But beneath the cults and cosmic horror is a story about breaking free from manipulation and learning to trust your own instincts again. The monsters are terrifying, but Caroline's greatest battle is reclaiming herself.

Brighter Than Before asks the same question in a much quieter way. Claire's marriage ends, the future she imagined disappears overnight, and she has to build a new life from scratch. I loved that the novel doesn't offer one grand, life-changing moment. Instead, it reminds us that healing often looks like a series of small, brave decisions that slowly become a new beginning.

Then there's Yes, Chef, which proves reinvention doesn't have to be dramatic to be meaningful. Jack is grieving both the loss of his mentor and the career he thought he'd have. Poppy is desperate to prove she's more than the image everyone has created for her. Together, they rebuild their confidence, their purpose, and eventually a future neither of them expected.

Not That Kind of Proposal surprised me for a similar reason. Underneath the witty banter and romantic tension is a story about letting go of the life you thought you wanted. Gracie spends so much of the novel believing her happily-ever-after looks one particular way, only to discover that the future she'd been mourning was never actually the one she needed. Sometimes the best endings are the ones we couldn't have imagined.

The only book that didn't fully land for me was The Last to Drown, but even it explored this same idea. Kaia joins the rafting trip hoping it will help her process profound loss. While the mystery didn't surprise me the way I'd hoped, I appreciated that the emotional journey centered on moving forward after tragedy rather than remaining defined by it.

I think that's why this week's reading resonated with me.

It's easy to think of books as escapes, but the stories that stay with me rarely encourage us to run away from our lives. Instead, they remind us that none of us get the life we planned.

• Careers change.

• Relationships end.

• Dreams evolve.

• The people we thought we'd become aren't always the people we're meant to be.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to stories like these. Whether they're filled with sea monsters, wedding cakes, restaurant kitchens, or whitewater rapids, they all whisper the same truth: Starting over isn't failure.

The sea wall has broken during one of the worst hurricanes in known history, destroying New York City and the northeastern coast. Climate change ravages the world with power outages, water shortages, and the slow erosion of society inland.

So mudlarks are born.

People who can enter the ravaged city and scavenge for things the government needs that live under the brackish water of the city. Neko and Iggy, two seasoned mudlarks with their own license and crew, take their apprentices Harriet and Jules on a job that's a little legal a little illegal that changes everything.

Neko finds a master CD of her vanished mother's old band The Nightjars. This request from a mysterious client makes her ask something that's plagued her for the last twenty years: is Jenny Sweet still alive somehow?

I finished Mudlark and had dreams about it. Moving, emotional, sometimes a little too busy, but man it stuck to me so badly. This wasn't about the apocalypse or survival or high-octane action. This was about the struggle of mothers and daughters, the meaning of motherhood, love and purpose and how they don't always intersect, and what it means to let go.

Heavy on the musical themes, a lot of that is lost on me. I am not a big music person, but it didn't detract from the meaning of the story at all. I got to watch the present-day and past-day perspectives of Jenny and her interactions with her daughter, Neko, as the girl grows up and as her relationship with Neko's father - Max - deteriorates. We see Jenny's perspective on herself and interactions with Neko, then present-day Neko's interpretation of those moments.

Neko idealizes her father, then slowly becomes disillusioned with him. She also repeats her mother's patterns in a different, subtler way despite not having her around after the age of 13 when the hurricane hit. She carries immense guilt with her over her mother's disappearance, a childhood acting-out gone awry meant her mother was in their apartment. Right where the blast zone of the breaking sea walls were.

We follow Neko's life and her complicated relationship with the ghost of her mother and her own guilt. When she gets the chance to uncover the mystery of Jenny Sweet and kindles the hope she might be alive, she jumps on the opportunity and becomes singular to it. Iggy, her partner of twenty years, struggles to understand or reconcile this dogged pursuit of a mother who's been out of her life more than in it and it causes them to expose their feelings about their relationship, each other, the futures they want, and how a relationship can slowly fray over time no matter how strong.

As someone with a strained relationship with her mother because I felt alien to her my whole life, this hit so many chords for me (pun!). I also watched my dad descend into the cruel abyss of dementia until I lost him and have had many relationships face the question of whether or not the futures we want are irreconcilable. I was very touched by a lot of themes in this book and a lot of parts it explored. It broke my heart so badly, but I also welcomed it because it was about the tragedy of change and acceptance. There's a certain kind of complexity to being a misunderstood daughter with a mother who can't comprehend you, but likewise it changes as you grow and understand the truth: your parents are, in the end, just people. Specht captures that layered experience from both angles - the mother doing her best and the daughter who feels like she's the problem.

I loved watching Neko piece together her mother and learn how to lay down the specter of her. She had unknowingly shaped her life around this understanding of Jenny and the weight of her sense of responsibility for everything that happened. her subtle mirror to her mother and Max's relationship, her unknowing reticence at motherhood that echoed Jenny's, her desire to help without grand dreams of heroism... there are parts of our parents that make their ways into ourselves whether we want it or not. We become echoes of them - less strong and faded, but the same song. Neko and Jenny shared so much across time that they never got the chance to see in one another, but I got to see it as the reader. It was so bittersweet and I just wanted to yell at Neko that Jenny loves her and tell Jenny she's a good mom.

The ending, I felt, gutted a part of me. So much upheaval and change that I was dizzy about it. Things I thought would be immutable truths of human connection broke and reforged, changing the entire trajectory of lives beyond just Neko and Iggy. But that's always how it works, right? We stagnate and get comfortable for a while until something in us chafes for change as we grow without noticing. We become archons of change and growth and it means we need a bigger cage or a wider enclosure. Neko and Iggy show us how there are ways we change that are too much to hold onto - perpendicular winds that take us in all sorts of directions where we can't follow each other not matter how hard we try.

Mudlark was bitter and warm and hopeful and lost at the same time. In the vein of Station Eleven or Shark Heart, Specht takes an experiment with a setting and uses it to share an intimate story of mothers and daughters and how to forgive ourselves. I loved this a lot more than I expected to and I hope, when it releases on the 21st, you do the same.