Hey all, in no particular order because ain't nobody got time for that, here are all the sapphic books I could find, both trad and indie, releasing in Febrauary. Since you are amazing and are here on the bindery, you get a peek at this calendar a full week before everyone else!

There are literally too many good options to choose from and I'm still wading through the new releases from January. I started Mine, Yours & Ours by Karmen Lee, and after that I'm going to read the book of Blood and Roses by Annie Summerlee!

Oh and I'm currently also listening to For Love and Blood and Fury by JJ Arias! I have downloaded a million books and I have all my devices and backup battery packs charged and if all else fails I can always read my physical books for this ice storm we are allegedly getting. I'm actually mostly terrified that we won't have power and I'll miss my submission date for The Tenth Muse, so I'm going to try and get it up early.

Ifrits & Ink has a fun collaboration but before we dive into it, here is our Story template & Instagram templates and download to use it available to all now! We shared this last week with our paid subscribers (dont forget to join to help us become an imprint if you can for $5 or $12)

Now, onto the collaboration: you guys get to see the early access for the post going out later today! These are some of the books we have included in our Storygraph Challenge (thank you to Val and the lovely Bec, Dija and Meg from Sleepy Readers Club) with a highlight on 41 2026 releases🤭

Before we dive into the links below and the graphics, don't forget to join our discord by accessing it through the membership link and we also have January Spotlights as seen above!

Relevant Links:

• Storygraph Challenge

• GoodReads for 2026 releases

• Pagebound List

AHH so about a week ago, you guys got access to the story and Instagram template on Canva, which if you didnt see your email, you can access it here: Story template & Instagram templates and download to use it!

Now, you guys get to see the early access for the post going out tomorrow! These are some of the books we have included in our Storygraph Challenge (thank you to Val and the lovely Bec, Dija and Meg from Sleepy Readers Club) with a highlight on 41 2026 releases🤭

Before we dive into the links below and the graphics, don't forget to join our discord by accessing it through the membership link and we also have January Spotlights as seen above!

Relevant Links:

• Storygraph Challenge

• GoodReads for 2026 releases

• Pagebound List

Sneak Peaks at the Graphics:

Well, here’s something SPICY af and new (to me) —

Portal to Pleasure by Viano Oniomoh

I have been getting back to reading novellas. I was recommended an ARC this year (involving a leshy?) that was okay but that’s about it. 😅

I never read a book quite like this one but I decided to give it a go, especially since it’s on KU. I always like tontry new genres or even things that are taboo or shocking. I always enter with an open mind bc you never know what gem you could come across.

I really like Viano’s writing style. It was nice to have a glimpse into what Melody was dealing with in her life — that toxic job, family issues, and an ex that always seems to come back around.
I really appreciate CONSENT in this book. It was tastefully done without being over kill.

Very explicit of course but gave an immersive feel and had moments of sweetness that wasn’t corny.

This definitely put this author on my radar so read Viano’s other work.

Would recommend!

This will certainly be one of my top 10 reads of 2026.

“He felt vaguely that he would be leaving something behind, something that might have been precious to him, had he been able to know what it was.”

Picked this up as a university read to build my knowledge around Cormac McCarthy, as Butcher's Crossing apparently set the foundations for Blood Meridian. Dismantling the idea of the American Dream, stripped back prose and characters who go through extreme tribulations but don't say much... definitely sounds like a bit of McCarthy. Also, being published in 1960, this appears to be one of the early novels to turn against the typical ideas of the 'Golden West'.

Butcher's Crossing is masterful. It is about Will Andrews, as he leaves his urban, comfortable life where he feels no purpose to experience the alluring Wild West. He is drawn into funding a buffalo hunt, and sets out with three veterans of the land. He will be gone for a year, and he will never be the same.

“Young people," McDonald said contemptuously. "You always think there's something to find out."

Williams has the quality to seamlessly draw you along a tapestry of a story, one that feels calm and philosophical, yet simultaneously stripped back and personal. The characters are brilliant, even if you feel an aversion to many of them. There are some events here that made me feel sick, yet Williams does not approach them grotesquely or gratuitously. There is a respect in relaying the horrible facts of history, without going into too much detail. It is about a buffalo hunt, and a horrible waste of life that corrupts those engaged in it. It is also about experience, rather than time, stripping away the beautiful ignorance of youth, and the danger of placing your value and purpose in materialism.

This story will stay with me for a long time. It is so accessible, with an incredible depth that I am sure will reap rewards on reread upon reread upon reread. Rarely when I am reading a book I consciously think, "I need to cherish this. This is an amazing work of craft." I thought that throughout this read. It lived up to its expectations and exceeded it. Williams is more often praised for his work, Stoner, so I cannot wait to dive into that when I am finished with my university degree this Summer.

5/5 STARS

Hi everyone! It’s that time to vote for our February book picks! All the options except for one of the thriller picks, The Winter People, are available on KU! Voting will end on 1/31. Each member gets two votes, one for fantasy and one for thriller/horror

Hi everyone! I'm slowly coming back to socials after taking a break to grieve and be with my family during this hard time. As if I didn't have enough going on, I also got sick, but I'm feeling much better now. That being said, I'm starting to plan out and film my end of the year content (I hope it's not too late) and I need your help!

For my video where I go over all of my reading stats and recap the year, I want to have a segment where I give superlatives to books. I usually do this by going over a bookish survey, but I wanted to hear your thoughts and most importantly, what you'd like to know most about the books.

All I need you to do is comment on this post with some bookish superlatives I can feature in the video.

Some examples: book that surprised you, favorite cover, book you wish you read sooner... etc.

Thank you! --Alex

AHH so about a week ago, you guys got access to the story and Instagram template on Canva, which if you didnt see your email, you can access it here: Story template & Instagram templates and download to use it!

Now, you guys get to see the early access for the post going out tomorrow! These are some of the books we have included in our Storygraph Challenge (thank you to Val and the lovely Bec, Dija and Meg from Sleepy Readers Club) with a highlight on 41 2026 releases🤭

Before we dive into the links below and the graphics, don't forget to join our discord by accessing it through the membership link and we also have January Spotlights as seen above!

Relevant Links:

• Storygraph Challenge

• GoodReads for 2026 releases

• Pagebound List

Sneak Peaks at the Graphics:

Are we getting excited for book club next week? I'm just getting started on Broken Country, and am really looking forward to an amazing discussion. I hope a lot of you will be able to join!

Wednesday, January 28th

8pm EST

https://meet.google.com/jgu-yhdc-fet

“The farmer is dead. He is dead, and all anyone wants to know is who killed him.”

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

Hey everyone!

You might remember that we did a special edition of To Bargain With Mortals for Fae Crate's October book last year, and I wanted to come in and give y'all a heads up that if you weren't a subscriber or missed the box at the time, this edition is now for sale in their archives/leftover shop!

Book Boxes like Fae Crate always order more books than necessary for their subscriber base to account for damages, lost shipments, various kinds of mailing errors, and then once they wait out the necessary timeline they can put the extras on sale generally. That's what this is. Which means there's a limited stock here, so grab it while you can!

Find it here :)

Hi folks!

I have been having a brilliant reading week, filling my boots with dystopian sci fi and queer horror. Both books I read were utterly brilliant and very different.

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle

How have I not read Chuck Tingle before?? This is a brilliant sci fi horror about a bisexual statistics professor who witnesses the horror of a mass ‘bad luck’ event, where 8 million people die in bizarre, unlikely ways. She withdraws from the world, but when a government agent tells her a Las Vegas casino may have had something to do with it, she tags along.

So fun, so weird, and has so much to (subtly) say about the way people in our world deal with crazy mass events. Loved it.

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

A Moroccan-American woman is sent to a for-profit ‘retention facility’ after an AI algorithm that monitors her dreams flags her as a risk, likely to commit a crime. While imprisoned, she tries to figure out how it could have happened.

This was obviously very reflective of a certain… situation today, and infuriating, but also brilliant and clever and surprising. It’s pretty contemplative, not a whole ton of action, but oh man it really enraged and energised me. Brilliant book.

Happy reading!

Disco x

Hey, hey you, the book club options for February are here! I was going to shoot a video for this but I figured I'd switch it up give you first peek and put up the votes in the Discord server right away.

As some of the folk in the Discord know, I've gone full dictator for the History Sickos Book Club for next month. I was reading Fear & Fury by Heather Ann Thompson, loving it, and stopped a little over halfway through so we could discuss it next month. I'm also setting up an interview with the author for sometime in February so you can submit questions. Mine was an advanced reader copy and the official release date is January 27. In return for being a dictator on this round I'll figure something out for another month where we do something community-based for selecting options like we've done in the past.

For the Fiction Sickos Book Club, here are the options with quick blurbs on what they're about.

THE BLUEST EYE by TONI MORRISON

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.

THE NICKEL BOYS by COLSON WHITEHEAD

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.

ALLEGEDLY by TIFFANY D. JACKSON

Mary B. Addison killed a baby.

Allegedly. She didn’t say much in that first interview with detectives, and the media filled in the only blanks that mattered: A white baby had died while under the care of a churchgoing black woman and her nine-year-old daughter. The public convicted Mary and the jury made it official. But did she do it?

There wasn’t a point to setting the record straight before, but now she’s got Ted—and their unborn child—to think about. When the state threatens to take her baby, Mary’s fate now lies in the hands of the one person she distrusts the most: her Momma. No one knows the real Momma. But does anyone know the real Mary?

CROOKED PLOW by ITAMAR VIEIRA JUNIOR

Deep in Brazil's neglected Bahia hinterland, two sisters find an ancient knife beneath their grandmother's bed and, momentarily mystified by its power, decide to taste its metal. The shuddering violence that follows marks their lives and binds them together forever.

I'm putting this vote up in the Discord right now! Also, if you're struggling to find access to these on Spotify/Libby or whatever you use, Audible has a deal going on right now for new/lapsed members (super full flag waving disclosure: I am an Amazon affiliate and I do earn commissions).

Also a reminder that our imprints first book release, A Complement of Scoundrels by S.V. Lockwood is available for pre-order! A lot of people have asked what if there's a Best Place to pre-order it from, and while it's available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and others, I know a good deal of people prefer pre-ordering it from Bookshop dot org because it supports independent bookstores. but ultimately you do you boo. And marking it as "Want to Read" (and maybe leaving a sneaky 5 star rating/review re: your excitement level if you so choose to do so) on Goodreads is a great signal for retailers.

Book summary

This book takes a look at the myth that the United States is founded by and for immigrants and shows a more honest look at the history of this country.

My review

If you want to learn an incredible amount of information, read this timely book.

It explores American imperialism and how immigration in the U.S. is a war story with refugees having to move to the country thay killed them.

My only feedback for this book is that it felt a bit disorganized at times, often jumping from one topic or point in history to another.

Everything I learned

• While history likes to portray Alexander Hamilton as an abolitionist, he married into a wealthy slave-trading family (Schuyler family) and even participated in the slave trade for his in-laws.

• No country has been bombed so heavily for so long (relative to the country's population) than Laos during the "Secret" war. Taking place at the same time as the Vietnam War, the Laotian Civil War was kept secret (not acknowledged by the CIA until 1994) because the involvement of the CIA and other foreign powers. (photo from Getty Images)
  
  Duing this bombardment, more bombs were dropped on the small country of Laos than all of the bombs dropped in WWII (2 million tons of cluster bombs).

• In the span of three days during the Korean War, the U.S. launched a mass killing spree in the village of Noguen-ri killing between 250-300 women and children. This massacre wasn't known to the American public until 1999 thanks to an Associated Press article. Documents proved that the U.S.commanders ordered their troops to shoot and "fire on" civilians.

Further learning

• "Researcher finds evidence Alexander Hamilton owned slaves"

• America's Secret War: The CIA's Hidden Campaign in Laos | History Documentary

• "Other incidents of refugees killed by GIs during Korea retreat"

Whatever you’re reading today, the history behind the pages is wilder than the fiction! 📚✨

Whether you're a lover of dark hallways, dragons, or heart-stopping twists, there is a secret history behind every shelf. Check out these 4 quick facts from across the bookish world:

• 🏛️ Dark Academia: Did you know Mary Shelley was only 18 when she wrote Frankenstein? Even darker: after her husband passed, she famously kept his calcified heart in her desk drawer. Talk about a "memento mori" aesthetic!

• 🐉 Sci-Fi & Fantasy: J.R.R. Tolkien didn’t write The Lord of the Rings and then invent Elvish. It was the opposite! He invented the languages first and wrote the books just so his languages would have a world to live in.

• 💖 Romance: Ever heard the term "Purple Prose"? It actually dates back to the Roman poet Horace. He used it to describe flowery writing that felt like purple patches sewn onto plain clothing to make it look fancier than it was.

• 🔪 Thriller: The "Queen of Crime," Agatha Christie, once became a real-life mystery. In 1926, she vanished for 11 days, sparking a massive nationwide manhunt before being found at a spa with "no memory" of how she got there.

The big question is: which "vibe" are you currently reading?

1. Dark & Moody 🕯️

2. Otherworldly & Epic 🪐

3. Sweet & Flowery 💐

4. Tense & Mysterious 🕵️‍♀️

Drop your current read in the comments! 👇