I tried to pick some different genres, but always feel free to send me suggestions! Choose your top pick by 2/1

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.

As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America

The working homeless. In a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success, there is something scandalous about this phrase. But skyrocketing rents, low wages, and a lack of tenant rights have produced a startling phenomenon: People with full-time jobs cannot keep a roof over their head, especially in America’s booming cities, where rapid growth is leading to catastrophic displacement. These families are being forced into homelessness not by a failing economy but a thriving one.

In this gripping and deeply reported book, Brian Goldstone plunges readers into the lives of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in a gentrifying, increasingly unequal city. Maurice and Natalia make a fresh start in the country’s “Black Mecca” after being priced out of DC. Kara dreams of starting her own cleaning business while mopping floors at a public hospital. Britt scores a coveted housing voucher. Michelle is in school to become a social worker. Celeste toils at her warehouse job while undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer. Each of them aspires to provide a decent life for their children—and each of them, one by one, joins the ranks of the nation’s working homeless.

Through intimate, novelistic portraits, Goldstone reveals the human cost of this crisis, following parents and their kids as they go to sleep in cars, or in squalid extended-stay hotel rooms, and head out to their jobs and schools the next morning. These are the nation’s hidden homeless—omitted from official statistics, and proof that overflowing shelters and street encampments are only the most visible manifestation of a far more pervasive problem.

All the Colors of the Dark

1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Muhammad Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the smalltown of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing.

When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake.

Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another.

Famous

Meet Lance. Thirty-eight years old. Works a meaningless job. Still lives above his parents’ garage. By all accounts, a world-class loser. Save for one glaring exception: He has a million-dollar face.

Lance has been mistaken eighty-seven times for the Oscar-winning movie star James Jansen, and for the last ten years, he’s saved his money and studied Jansen’s films, his moves, his idiosyncrasies—even the way he speaks. Now, after an unceremonious termination from his job, Lance has decided that the time has come to go after his dream of truly becoming Jansen.

From New York’s avant-garde, off-off Broadway scene to the glitter of Los Angeles, Lance embarks on a journey toward becoming James Jansen that will take him closer to the star than even he had dreamed—and to darker lengths than he could’ve possibly imagined.

Artemis

Jasmine Bashara never signed up to be a hero. She just wanted to get rich.

Not crazy, eccentric-billionaire rich, like many of the visitors to her hometown of Artemis, humanity’s first and only lunar colony. Just rich enough to move out of her coffin-sized apartment and eat something better than flavored algae. Rich enough to pay off a debt she’s owed for a long time.

So when a chance at a huge score finally comes her way, Jazz can’t say no. But engineering the perfect crime is just the start of her problems—because her little heist is about to land her in the middle of a conspiracy for control of Artemis herself.

Trapped between competing forces, pursued by a killer and the law alike, she’ll have to hatch a truly spectacular scheme to have a chance at staying alive and saving her city.

Jazz is no hero, but she is a very good criminal.

That’ll have to do.

Hi everyone, hope your Januaries have been good so far! Apologies for the lack of activity on here this month - work has been crazy, but will definitely be trying to post more in the upcoming months!

In book club news, I’ve decided to shift our book club from a monthly rhythm to a quarterly one, with the hope that this slower pace will allow for more intentional book choices and richer discussion, while making it easier for everyone to join in! We’ll continue to center fantasy and science fiction books by authors of Asian descent, with each quarter featuring a blend of backlist favorites and new releases (and for Q1, I also threw in a manga option because why not 😌). 

So without further ado, here are brief blurbs about the selections for Q1!

Immortal Longings (Chloe Gong)
Inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, Chloe Gong’s adult epic fantasy debut is a fiery collision of power plays, spilled blood, and romance amidst a set of deadly games.

The Poet Empress (Shen Tao)
A rice farmer turned concubine must survive the dangers of court, learn to read in secret, and compose the most powerful spell of all to save herself and the nation.

To Bargain with Mortals (R.A. Basu)
A stunning reflection on politics and purpose, blood and allegiance - and what we do with the histories we inherit, following an outcast heiress, a notorious gang leader, and a country on the brink of revolution.

The Promised Neverland (Kaiu Shirai) 
In a manga that blends elements of science fiction, thriller, and dark fantasy, a group of orphans uncover a dark truth and must escape a macabre fate before it’s too late.

My book comes out in a few months, and I am terrified. I am scared that no one will read it. I am afraid that it is not good, but at the same time, I am afraid of what it might mean if it is. I worry people will not want to engage with it because it is poetry, and poetry so often carries the connotation of being confusing, structurally strange, or too intellectual for casual reading.

And I hate that.

I am drawn to writing that is emotionally deep but simple enough to understand. Work that is not buried under fancy language just to appear complex or sophisticated. I have always said poetry is the only way I know how to take complicated emotions and turn them into something digestible. I do not believe poetry should push people out. It should invite them in and ask them to sit with it. Poetry, to me, should be a bridge between the heart and the reader, not a locked door.

My book, The Apple of Their Throat, is my third collection but my first traditionally published one. My first book, Shelter, was self published in 2018, and looking back, it makes me smile and cringe. It was written in the middle of a breakup and reads like an unfiltered emotional diary. At the time, I was trying to emulate what I would call Instagram poets. I did not understand structure or line breaks, but I knew what I felt and I tried to translate that as honestly as I could.

Then, in 2024, I self published another collection as a small passion project called The Transformation of Fruit. That book was more mature and more intentional, but still messy and still raw.

Over the last six years, I submitted my work for publication and was rejected again and again. I revised, restructured, rewrote, and wrote entirely new poems, all of which eventually led to The Apple of Their Throat. Looking back, I was not ready to be published. I do not think my writing was bad. It was just unstructured, raw, and a bit directionless. With The Apple of Their Throat, I found what I wanted to say, how to say it, and how to do so in a way that respected my ethos of what poetry can be.

The Apple of Their Throat is a love story. To the self. To old religions. To love itself and to heartbreak. I call it a memoir in verse because, in many ways, it is. It is my life and my story, but once it is on the page, it no longer belongs to me. I would not even say it is ours. These words belong to you now.

The poems may be specific to my experience, but the emotion beneath them is universal. That is my hope, that you feel that universality when you read them. My partner, who is not religious, once told me that the poems he connected with most were the religious ones. That surprised me, but it also confirmed what I have always believed. When the emotion is true, the subject does not matter.

This book is about love, heartbreak, family, queerness, selfhood, and the beliefs we internalize to find our place in the world. I fell in love with the symbolism of fruit, how it is considered the birth of sin and how queer people have been called “fruit.” And while these poems can be read in any order, they do tell a story with a full arc from the first page to the last.

I want to explain everything about this book to you, but I think now I have to let it speak for itself.

White Women. Pause Before You Speak.

When conversations about safety, harm, or oppression come up, many white women/femmes feel an immediate pull to respond. The response often feels caring, protective, or helpful. Underneath that urge, white supremacy culture often shapes what feels normal, responsible, or polite and we don't even realize it.

Tema Okun’s work on white supremacy culture names patterns that are baked into institutions and relationships. These patterns are not about individual morality. They are about systems that train white people, especially white women, to center comfort, control, and emotional safety in ways that silence or override Black and Brown women.

Decolonized therapy and healing justice frameworks add an important layer. These are frameworks I use in my own therapeutic practice. They remind us that harm is not only interpersonal. Harm lives in systems, bodies, and histories. Healing is not only about insight. Healing is about changing how power moves in relationships, whose nervous systems are protected, and whose pain is taken seriously.

Pausing is not passive. A pause is an active disruption of systems that reward speed, reassurance, and control.

Why the pause matters.

White supremacy culture often teaches urgency. Urgency pushes fast responses, quick fixes, and immediate reassurance. In conversations about harm or safety, urgency often serves white comfort more than Black and Brown safety.

Urgency sounds like:
I need to respond right now.
I should fix this.
I need to explain myself before I am misunderstood.

Healing justice asks whose nervous system is being prioritized. Decolonized practice centers the people most impacted by harm. A pause creates space to ask who benefits from speed. In many cases, speed protects white emotional comfort and social standing, not the person naming harm.

Reflective journaling:
What emotions come up when someone names harm connected to race or safety?
What do you feel pressure to protect in those moments. Your image. Your relationships. Your sense of being good?
Where did you learn that being quick and calm equals being safe?

Stay tuned because I have a LOT more on this to come.

Also check out the source material https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info

I’m finally back after being gone so many months. I only wanted my break to be for a month or two for mental health reasons, but then in September I sadly lost my father and needed time to grieve and, while I’m still grieving, I'm excited to start posting again on here and growing our community!!

Now one of the things I can’t wait to start is our arch club, which will be diving into Thai Gls and how the industry over there has grown so much, there are so many shows over that we can all watch and talk about.

This will be part of my paid membership on bindery, but the book club will be for everyone!!



There’s a poll below to vote on our first book of the year!!

"Happy" Tuesday, mis internet amigxs,

To say I am horrified by the escalating violence of ICE in the US is an understatement, but as we all know, action is the antidote for hopelessness. I created the flyer on the left and posted it across all my social media platforms supporting Stand With Minnesota a comprehensive list of mutual aid for Immigrants, legal defense funds, individuals and businesses whose lives and livelihoods have been interrupted by ICE in the Twin Cities. This flyer is available for you to download and share on your socials. No need to credit me.

In case you'd just like to amplify my social media posts instead, you can find them on all my channels, particularly Instagram and Tik Tok (if it's even working at the time of this post going live).

Our communities are being terrorized by roving gangs of untrained, violent, masked individuals and if they haven't come for your community yet, count yourself lucky. LibroFM has made the audiobook of one of the most important books I've read on Mutual Aid available for free this week: Mutual Aid by Dean Spade. Don't just pick it up and read it, share it with your friends and make a plan with your COMMUNITY. American exceptionalism will have you believing you're single-handedly the hero of the story, when the only way we can defeat authoritarianism is through community. I encourage you to find your way in your IRL community in whatever capacity you can to make this country a better and safer place for ALL OF US.

I fear I must once again apologize to Libritos and Lectores members. I was sidetracked last week in getting the spreadsheet uploaded online and with this weekend's event, I was sidelined with grief and anger. It's been hard for me to keep working down my to-do list while also dealing with the Tik Tok change and managing how to be front-facing on social media during this time of political unrest. I hope you can allow me some grace as I navigate all my feelings and my accounts during this time. I so appreciate your support.

However, I DID want to show you how cute the spreadsheet is going to be--LOOK AT THE COLORS AND THE LOGO!!

This spreadsheet will be up and available to view soon for Libritos and Lectores members. Not only will the list contain all the weeks Latine releases, eliminating the double newsletter scenario. I'll also be populating with all previous Latine releases to create a searchable list for those seeking Latine book recommendations, along with buy links and short descriptions. This is an ambitous project, but it's one created with a tremendous amount of amor and passion. I can not wait to share with you. If you've been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber here on Bindery, now is your chance.

Speaking of paid subscribers, I wanted to also make you aware that while I am failing my 31 days of posting in January on YouTube, I have posted 12 videos, including my latest on Indigenous history recommendations. One of the benefits of being a paid Bindery subscriber is that I read your name out in the credits as a thank you, so I wanted to point those that didn't know that I'd begun my journey on YouTube.

Before I share this week's releases with you, I wanted to remind you of a few things going on on our Bien Leidos Discord over the next few weeks:

• We're finishing up reading Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder for January and have 2 upcoming events:

  • On February 4th, we'll be doing an all day rolling spoilery chat to get all our thoughts about the book out in the open on Discord. If you've been wanting to chat Orange Wine, save the date!

  • On February 10th at 8PM EST, we'll be chatting on Zoom with Esperanza (the Zoom link to register will be going out later this week)

• Our February Book is Sparks Fly by Zakiya N. Jamal AND we'll be continuing our nonfiction side quest reading of Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias and the Struggle for Equality by Tanya Kateri -Hernandez

• Our March-April nonfiction side quest book is Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer. I have opened up discussion early in case anyone wants to begin early, seeing as this is a very in-depth look at US immigration policy and the founding of ICE.

• We're currently voting on April's fiction pick and the Discord poll has landed us on fantasy and science fiction. I'll be putting up options to vote on in Discord later this week.

• Speaking of side quests, we have a BIG journaling presence on Discord and we're scheduling a zoom to share some of our favorite stickers either this weekend or early next week--poll closes later today, so please go vote if you're interested in participating.

And, finally, because no matter how scared they want to make us, I refuse for our stories to be invisible and I'll never not celebrate Latine books...

NONFICTION

P Fkn R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance by Vanessa Díaz & Petra R Rivera-Rideau (Audiobook releases February 24th) Available in both English AND Spanish today!

The Flowers of Good: The Science and the History of Marijuana Liberation by Sidarta Ribeiro and translated by Daniel Hahn (Audiobook)

GRAPHIC NOVEL

The Demon of Beausoleil by Mari Costa

Run Home by Alyssa Bermudez

The Snips: Enter the Wigmaster! by Raul the Third & Elaine Bay and Illustrated by Raul the Third

POETRY

Trilce by César Vallejo and Translated by William Rowe & Helen Dimos

YOUNG ADULT

Tell Me in Secret by Mercedes Ron (Audiobook)

CHILDREN’S

The Beasts of Winter: A Daggers of Ire Novel by J. C. Cervantes (Audiobook)

Aaniin: I See Your Light by Dawn Quigley and Illustrated by Nanibah Chacon

xoxo,

Carmen

OMFG. This is what we have so far. What do you think!?

Hi friends! Time to start wrapping up the 117 days that was January (at least parts of it felt that way!) and plan for February.

First, let's talk Book Club:

• For our Book Club read of Lies of Locke Lamora, we are going to have a wrap up discussion this Saturday, January 31 at 8 PM EST (New York City time) on Discord. If you are interested, swing on by. Pop in, pop out, whatever. I can also see about recording it for anyone who misses it, but can't guarantee that at this point given this will be my first attempt at setting one of these up on Discord, and would need to make sure participants are cool with that.

• For the February read of Project Hail Mary, discussion channels are all set up on the Discord server, so head on over once you get reading! We had some amazing discussion for LoLL, and the format seemed to work really well. Remember if you want to order any of our book club books, you can click them on one of my bookshelves here on Bindery and order through Amazon or Bookshop, or you can check out my bookshop.org affiliate page (link on the main page here).

Next, let's talk Monthly Challenges:

• For our January "Find the Time" challenge, we've done our time audits, came up with a plan to read more, picked a book, and now we're implementing our plan. I'll be putting a post up in Discord for folks to chat about issues or how it went!

• If you want to be eligible for the monthly $25 bookshop.org gift card prize for January, you need to comment on this post or the Discord post with your overall impressions from your time audit, what you read in January, and what your plan was to incorporate more reading in your life!

• For February, the challenge is "read every day." I'm going to run that in StoryGrapgh. It does not matter how much you read or listen, as long as you log a minute of listening or a page of reading each day, that counts! I am going to run it out of StoryGrapgh, and you can sign up here! As with the January challenge, participants will be entered for a random drawing for a $25 bookshop.org gift card at the end of the month. All the details will be on the page through the link.

Hope everyone has a great week!

I have really gotten into Stationery. Here is my weekly spread! It's not perfect but it is mine <3

If Wearing the Lion had you rethinking heroism, grief, and what it truly means to heal, this one’s for you. 🦁✨

The Wearing the Lion Book Club Kit is now live, created to help your discussion move beyond myth and into meaning. Inside you’ll find a thoughtful, trauma-informed discussion guide, a themed menu with comforting Greek-inspired recipes, reflective activities, and door prize ideas that honor compassion, chosen family, and healing without violence.

👉 Tap the link for access and let us handle the planning so you can focus on the conversation, the care, and the connections this story sparks. https://tinyurl.com/ymb48p3e

❗️And don’t forget to come back and tell us all about your book club meeting!

📚Some books spark a discussion. Others crack something open and invite everyone at the table to step inside from a different angle. Wearing the Lion did exactly that for our book club.

1️⃣Jess: I came for the mythology and I stayed for the healing.

I love a good Greek myth retelling, but I wasn’t prepared for how emotionally intimate this one would be. This isn’t a story about conquest; it’s about survival after unimaginable loss. Watching Heracles refuse violence and instead choose care felt radical in a genre built on bloodshed. It made me rethink what heroism really means.

2️⃣Alisha: I didn’t expect to feel sympathy for Hera and yet here we are.

Hera has always been a villain in my mental mythology catalog, but Wiswell complicates her in the most human way. Her guilt, denial, and desperate attempts to fix what can’t be undone felt painfully real. I didn’t excuse her actions but I understood her, and that made the story so much richer.

3️⃣Kaci: I was undone by the monsters.

The way Heracles connects with the Nemean lion, the hydra, and the bull absolutely wrecked me in the best way. These scenes were gentle, quiet, and deeply moving. I found myself tearing up over creatures I’d only ever seen as obstacles in other retellings. This book made me ask who we label as monsters and why.

4️⃣Stacey: I saw trauma represented with rare care.

As someone who pays close attention to how trauma is written, I was blown away. Heracles’ avoidance of violence, his emotional shutdown, his slow, uneven healing all of it rang true. This book doesn’t rush recovery or glamorize pain. It lets healing be slow, relational, and imperfect.

5️⃣Lisa: I loved how this story redefines power.

What struck me most was how power shifts throughout the book. Physical strength matters less than emotional honesty, accountability, and connection. Heracles amassing an army not through fear, but through kindness, felt like a quiet revolution against traditional epic narratives.

6️⃣Ashley: I closed the book and immediately wanted to talk about it.

This is a perfect book club pick. The moral gray areas, the reimagining of gods, the question of responsibility versus intention there’s so much here to unpack. I finished the final page feeling tender, thoughtful, and eager to hear how everyone else experienced it.

📬Final Book Club Thoughts! Wearing the Lion is a myth retelling that doesn’t just change how we see Heracles it changes how we think about strength, guilt, healing, and what it means to live with the aftermath of harm. John Wiswell brings a deeply human touch to divine figures and legendary monsters, creating a story that feels both ancient and urgently modern.

If your book club loves character-driven fantasy, emotionally intelligent storytelling, and conversations that linger long after the meeting ends, this one belongs on your list.

✨Bonus for book clubs: A themed Wearing the Lion book club kit is available in The First Editions membership,  complete with discussion prompts and extras designed to deepen your reading experience.

❔️Bookish question to leave you with: Do you think a hero can still be heroic if they refuse violence and what does that say about the stories we’ve been telling all along?🦁📚