Isle in the Silver Sea reads as both a love letter to storytelling and a clear warning about its dangers. The tension between those two truths gives the novel its emotional depth and its political urgency, especially within a sociopolitical moment shaped by propaganda and misinformation, where stories flatten people into symbols and demand obedience rather than truth.

Through a folkloric structure built on stories within stories, Tasha Suri examines how narratives preserve worlds while also trapping those forced to live inside them, revealing how easily repetition hardens into destiny and how often survival requires questioning the version of the story everyone else insists on telling.

The novel follows Simran, the Witch, and Vina, the Knight, the latest reincarnations of an ancient tale known as The Knight and the Witch, a story the Isle depends on for survival, a story meant to be reenacted across lifetimes, a story whose ending demands love followed by mutual death for the supposed good of the land. Both women understand their roles with painful clarity. They know the shape of their future before their story even begins. They know devotion leads to destruction. They know resistance has never worked before.

Yet this time, something fractures. Other incarnates begin dying early, something once thought impossible, and the rules that once felt immutable begin to show seams. As Simran and Vina work together to unravel what has been woven into the Isle itself, the book transforms from mythic tragedy into a meditation on agency, inheritance, and refusal, asking whether preservation without consent deserves to survive at all.

One of the novel’s greatest strengths lies in its worldbuilding, which resists excess while achieving depth. The Isle, a magical and unsettling reimagining of an Arthurian England, feels alive rather than decorative. Magic, witches, fae, monarchs, and knights exist not as spectacle but as consequences of a system sustained through repetition and belief. The land breathes. The land remembers. The land demands performance. Colonialism and racism exist beneath the Isle’s polished myths, acknowledged not as background detail but as structural forces shaping who belongs and who remains “other,” even across lifetimes. The Isle does not feel neutral. It feels invested. It feels hungry.

The characters move through this world with a reverence that feels intentional. No one exists for convenience. No one feels disposable. Every choice carries weight, and when characters leave the narrative or change shape within it, the outcome feels earned rather than imposed. Vina, disciplined and bone deep in her sense of duty, begins as distant and fatalistic. Yet, her vulnerability emerges through family wounds, emotional disconnection, and an almost resigned acceptance of annihilation as purpose. Simran, sharp, protective, and shaped by unkindness, burns with defiance and love in equal measure, carrying both fury and care in every decision she makes. Their dynamic balances yearning with grief, attraction with dread, desire with the knowledge of what desire costs.

The romance refuses cynicism. Love in this book is treated as sacred, whether romantic, platonic, familial, or found, and every expression of it carries tenderness and risk. The yearning between Simran and Vina feels vast and consuming, shaped as much by fate as by longing, and their connection highlights how love becomes both refuge and rebellion within systems built to control. Found family, cultural memory, and reconnection to place weave through the narrative, offering grounding even when biological or historical ties remain complicated or painful. Within a genre where sapphic relationships often absorb harm for narrative effect, this book insists on devotion, care, and mutual recognition as worthy and necessary.

At its core, the novel interrogates narrative authority. The Isle survives by enforcing stories. People survive by obeying them. Identity becomes performance. History becomes script. Those born into incarnations inherit meaning before choice. This framework mirrors lived trauma, where stories assigned by family systems, institutions, and culture shape identity long before consent enters the room. The book understands how repetition trains belief, how silence reinforces harm, and how questioning the story threatens collapse.

This theme resonates deeply with therapeutic work. Clients often arrive carrying stories forged under fear, shame, survival, or control. Those stories feel immovable because they were learned when safety depended on belief—therapy challenges narrative ownership. Therapy asks who wrote the first version. Therapy slows the pace enough for revision. In that space, people rewrite. They rebuild. They reclaim. They move from symbol back into personhood.

Isle in the Silver Sea embodies this process through its structure. It refuses a single authoritative version of events. It honours multiplicity. It treats context as essential rather than optional. It shows how healing restores complexity rather than simplicity, how truth expands once silence loosens its grip.

The novel also interrogates assimilation and preservation, revealing how desperate adherence to tradition risks stagnation and collapse. By reworking foundational British myths, the story exposes the fragile line between honouring history and suffocating beneath it, mainly when survival depends on perfect reenactment rather than growth.

Beautiful and sharp, inevitable yet surprising, this book lingers because it understands something essential. Stories shape worlds. Stories shape people. Stories preserve and destroy. The power lies not in abandoning narrative, but in reclaiming authorship, and in choosing who gets to speak, who gets to live, and who finally gets to decide how the story ends.

Reminder for our book club meeting on 12/30 at 8:00pm EST.

Link will be posted here and on the discord!

We’re voting on our January book club pick a little later than usual because I got distracted during the holidays 🤭 We have three great options lined up! Vote here on Bindery by Sunday, December 28th and check the Discord on the 29th to see who our giveaway winner is this month. Can’t wait to start the new year with you all!

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Genre: Epic Fantasy (Series)

Blurb: An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying.

To Ride Hell’s Chasm by Janny Wurts

Genre: Epic Fantasy (Standalone)

Blurb: When Princess Anja fails to appear at her betrothal banquet, the tiny, peaceful kingdom of Sessalie is plunged into intrigue. Two warriors are charged with recovering the distraught king's beloved daughter.

As the princess's trail vanishes outside the citadel's gates, anxiety and tension escalate. But was the high-spirited princess taken by force, or did she flee the palace to escape a demonic evil?

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

Genre: Sapphic Romantic Fantasy (Standalone)

Blurb: In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.

Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?

Hey y'all,

I know it's been a while. The holiday season and work turned me every way but lose in December so I'd like to show my appreciation for this community by hosting a flash giveaway of the Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife by Deston J. Munden book box.

If you'd like a peek into what's in the box, check out this unboxing I did a little while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgLTjEZVvpc

To enter, all you need to do is comment here what you're most excited to read in 2026!

I'll reach out to the winner on Sunday.

XoXo - Rae

I don’t usually read two horror novels back to back unless I’m actively trying to lose sleep, but Blood Like Ours and The Villa, Once Beloved turned my brain into a haunted buffet terror on one side, creeping dread on the other, and me in the middle, hungrily flipping pages like someone who absolutely should know better.

Stepping into Blood Like Ours felt like being dropped into the desert night with my heartbeat thrumming loud enough to attract predators. Waking up on a morgue table? Already too much. Realizing you now crave blood with the same desperation you feel for your missing daughter? That’s a whole new category of nightmare. Rebecca’s feral love for Moonflower twisted, brutal, and utterly unstoppable had me cheering and recoiling in the same breath. And Moonflower herself? Alone in the wilderness, starving, half-monster, half-child, wandering into danger with the innocence of someone who still hopes to be saved. Every chapter felt like holding a lit match next to gasoline.

Then there’s the FBI chase, the shadowy whispers inside the Bureau, and the two brothers who seem to know far too much. I couldn’t tell if I wanted to hug someone or hide behind the nearest piece of furniture. Maybe both.

And just when I thought I couldn’t handle more tension, I stepped into The Villa, Once Beloved and immediately regretted it in the best possible way. The moment Sophie walked into the decaying grandeur of Villa Sepulveda, I felt that deep, cold “something bad happened here and might still be happening” shiver. The family dynamics alone could power a telenovela, but throw in a possible demon, a matriarch with secrets thick enough to choke on, and a landslide trapping everyone together? Oh, I was thriving.

Sophie’s outsider perspective made the villa feel even more claustrophobic; she's trying to understand her place in this tangled legacy while the house itself seems to breathe around her. Every heirloom felt like it could whisper. Every argument might birth a ghost. And every family revelation made me say, out loud, “Oh no. No no no.”

Reading these two books together was like taking a guided tour through the many ways family can destroy you emotionally, psychologically, occasionally with fangs and folklore. And honestly? I loved every second of it.

⚡️Thank you Erewhon Books, Hell's Hundred, Stuart Neville and Victor Manibo for sharing these books with me!

❔️So now I have to ask: If you found yourself trapped overnight in either A a haunted colonial villa full of generational secrets B the desert with a hungry, half-vampiric stranger who says they know your nickname, which setting are you choosing to survive?

I. Discussion Guide: Second Chances & Gingerbread Lane

Use these questions to spark conversation about the characters, themes, and setting.

The Characters: Lucy & Miles

1. Second Chances: Do you believe in second-chance romance? What was it about Lucy and Miles's original breakup that made it so difficult to overcome, and did their unusual living situation make reconciliation easier or harder?

2. Miles's Grand Gesture: Miles knows he needs more than tree trimming and house decorating to win Lucy back. What was your reaction to his final, wildly grand romantic gesture? Did you think it was enough to soften her heart, or was there something else that truly changed Lucy's mind?

3. Lucy's Identity: Lucy is juggling being a midwife, a new landlord, a dog owner, and the inheritor of a family tradition: the light competition. How did these pressures affect her ability to open up to Miles? Do you think she defined herself too much by her family's past successes?

Themes & Setting: Gingerbread Lane

1. The Christmas Village: The setting is clearly central to the story. How does the description of Gingerbread Lane and the annual lights competition enhance the themes of the book? Did the setting feel like a character in itself?

2. The Pink House: Lucy's house is the only pink house on Gingerbread Lane. What does this unique detail symbolize about Lucy's family, or Lucy herself, in the context of the community?

3. Family Traditions: The pressure to maintain her parents' winning streak is heavy on Lucy. Have you ever felt pressure to maintain a family tradition especially during the holidays, and how do you think Lucy handled that responsibility?

4. Bella the Bulldog: Bella is Lucy's inheritance. How did the presence of the dog and maybe her protective nature toward Lucy influence the dynamic between Lucy and Miles?

Post-Reading Reflection

1. Satisfying Ending: Did the ending meet your expectations for a holiday romance? What do you imagine Lucy and Miles's next Christmas on Gingerbread Lane looks like?

2. Pacing: The tension builds toward Christmas Eve. Did the holiday timeline midwife duties, decorating, the competition create a satisfying sense of urgency for the romance?

II. Themed Menu: Gingerbread & Cozy Comfort

The menu is inspired by the setting of Gingerbread Lane and the cozy, warm atmosphere of the holiday season.

🍽️ Themed Snack: Pink House Gingerbread Bites

These combine the setting gingerbread with the unique detail of Lucy's house pink.

Ingredients:

• 1 package store-bought or homemade gingerbread cookies

• 1 cup white chocolate chips

• 1/2 tsp coconut oil or butter

• Pink food coloring gel works best

• Optional: Holiday sprinkles

Recipe:

1. Melt the white chocolate chips and coconut oil together in a microwave-safe bowl in 30-second intervals, stirring until smooth.

2. Add a drop or two of pink food coloring until the chocolate reaches your desired shade of Pink House pink.

3. Dip one half of each gingerbread cookie into the pink chocolate.

4. Lay the dipped cookies on parchment paper and immediately decorate the pink side with a few sprinkles, if desired.

5. Allow to set completely for about 30 minutes at room temperature, or 10 minutes in the fridge.

☕ Themed Drink: Midwife's Cozy Cocoa

A rich, warming drink perfect for a cold winter night, fitting for a midwife working hard during the holidays.

Ingredients for 4 servings:

• 4 cups milk dairy or non-dairy

• 1/2 cup heavy cream

• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

• 1/4 cup granulated sugar adjust to taste

• 1/4 tsp salt

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• Optional Topping: Marshmallows, whipped cream, or a candy cane stirring stick.

Recipe:

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, whisk together the milk, cream, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt.

2. Bring the mixture to a gentle simmer, stirring constantly, until the cocoa powder and sugar are fully dissolved and the mixture is hot. Do not boil.

3. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla extract.

4. Pour into mugs and top with your choice of topping.

III. Themed Activity: The Light Competition

Engage your book club members in a miniature version of the Gingerbread Lane lights competition.

💡 Activity: Miniature Gingerbread House Decorating Challenge

Setup:

• Purchase a simple, pre-assembled gingerbread house kit for each participant or one kit per small team.

• Provide a variety of decorating supplies that mimic Christmas lights and decorations multicolored M&Ms, sprinkles, small candy canes, green and red icing tubes.

The Challenge:

• The Goal: Design and decorate your miniature house to best represent the spirit of Gingerbread Lane.

• The Twist: You must incorporate one pink element into your design to represent Lucy's unique house.

• Judging: After a set time, 30–45 minutes, the book club votes on the Best Decorated house, mimicking the lights competition. The winner gets bragging rights or a small prize!

IV. Themed Door Prizes

Award prizes based on key elements of the book.

1. For the Light Competition Winner: A set of miniature Christmas string lights battery-operated or a festive, pink Christmas mug.

2. The Grand Romantic Gesture Prize: A gift certificate for a local bakery for a future grand gesture treat.

3. The Midwife's Comfort Prize: A cozy Christmas-themed scented candle like pine or gingerbread and a warm pair of fuzzy socks.

4. The Bella Bulldog Prize: A small bag of gourmet dog treats to give to their own dog or a local shelter.

➡️Tap link to download the kit!

https://tinyurl.com/3vu8e2ax

❗️Don't forget to come back and tell us how your meeting went and if there anything else you would like us to add to our book club kits!

📚Book Club Review: The Christmas Village by Annie Rains🎄✨

If there’s one thing Annie Rains knows how to deliver, it's a small-town charm wrapped in twinkle lights and emotional second chances, and The Christmas Village proves it.

Lucy Hannigan is maxed out: juggling midwife duties, inheriting her mom's spunky bulldog Bella, the real star, and trying to keep her family’s Christmas-lights crown from slipping. Enter Miles Bruno, the ex fiancé turned new tenant next door. Talk about a holiday plot twist!

The awkward, "we’re totally fine, no really" energy between Lucy and Miles is perfection. Watching Miles quietly earn back her trust is sweeter than a gingerbread latte; he's the ultimate cinnamon-roll hero who still looks at Lucy like she hung every star on Gingerbread Lane. As the lights competition heats up, so do the sparks!🔥

This story is warm, cozy, and tailor-made for readers who love second-chance romance with a festive glow. Perfect for book clubs that want heart, humor, a dash of holiday chaos, and a bulldog with big main-character energy. Add this to your winter TBR now!

❔️If you suddenly inherited a house with a legendary Christmas lights reputation, would you embrace the chaos and go full Griswold, or would you mysteriously lose the extension cords? Let us know below! 👇

❗️If you are in a book club and need a book club kit for this book then come join The First Editions! A discussion guide, themed menu, activities and more!

When we entered Atlantic City, Georgia, we immediately looked up bookstores to visit before going to our hotel.

All The Tropes was our first stop.

About All The Tropes

Nestled in the heart of Kirkwood, All the Tropes is Atlanta’s only bookstore dedicated entirely to the Romance genre. All the Tropes is more than a bookstore; it's a sanctuary for dreamers and romantics, a community space where the timeless allure of Romance literature is celebrated.

You know how you go to a place and the vibes are super cool? This is one of them.

It's a small but well curated romance bookstore with a diverse grouping of genres and beautiful decorations.

They even have a bookstore cat! He was such a good boy and huge. I love large fluffy cats so he checked all of my boxes.

I left with a sticker of him.

Afterwards we stopped for food at the Hard Rock Cafe and I had to snap a shot of this piece of Stevie Nicks artwork. I love the design and stained glass vibe of it.

That night Michelle and I ventured to the Georgia Aquarium. I was most excited to see the Whale Sharks along with the Hammerhead Sharks. I find sharks to be so beautiful. Watching them glide through the water with such precision and grace was amazing. It's such an amazing space and I'm so happy I had the chance to visit.

Hello and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? (wouldn't know. never seen it! Ha!)

I love this time of year because it's a time to reflect on the year and to plan for the next.

I recently picked up The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice For an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad.

The book centers on the art of journaling and 100 different influential people ranging from Kiese Laymon, Jon Baptiste, Lindy West, John Green, Elizabeth Gilbert, Salman Rushdie share essays on what they've learned from journaling, how they've survived, how they've grown, how they've loved, how they've found magic and creativity. At the end of every section is a journal prompt.

I've read the intro by the author (I need to pick up her memoir Between Two Kingdoms immediately). and I'm looking to take this on as a 100 day project done in community (that means WITH YOU, if you're game!) starting January 11.

You can request the book from the library now so it's available, but my recommendation is to pick up a physical copy (I've linked it below). This is going to be one you'll want to revisit.

Let me know if you're a journaler and if you're interested in joining!

(I've created a Discord channel!)

So I heard you're looking for books to pre-order in preparation for 2026?👀

So you may have heard about pre-orders and you may have heard WHY its important but let's get into it a bit more, in a summarised manner! I will attach the resource of why you should pre-order the books, especially by marginalised authors who depend on these numbers to release more books, get a larger marketing budget (or a decent one), and show that there is a readership for their books!

THE GRAPHICS ARE ALL THE WAY IN THE BOTTOM WITH A BOOKSHOP.ORG UK AND US SHOPS to browse through and HERE is a goodreads list of all the available SWANA books too so you can add it in your TBR!!!!

Why are pre-orders important?

Thank you to authors who continue to educate us readers and the community on why Pre-orders are important! As someone who has been learning this throughout the year and advocating for it,

1. It shows publishers that we, as readers and well buyers, are interested in the books BiPOC authors are publishing

2. The more the book sells (yes, as a pre-order) the more marketing effort goes into it

3. It alerts bookshops, book subs...etc. that the book is doing well and they should stock more of it (this is so important because it shows it'll sell if they do buy it AND this allows more reader to find the book)

4. It helps the authors hit a best seller list (which does wonders for the author and the book)

In a world where SWANA authors make up less than 1% of the trad pub world (thank you to Jananie from Boundless Press for sharing this stats on threads, check her Bindery page out in here and check out Dust Settles North by Deena which was one of the SWANA 2025 releases) we need to continuously share and advocate for the authors who are here now and show that we want more of them!

So, what SWANA books are we pre-ordering in 2026?

Here's a list and attached to this blog post are the books you can click on to pre-order easily if you're in the US or access my bookshop.org list and get clicking! If you're in the UK, here is the bookshop.org list for you guys but some books are missing so I have added the link to get them elsewhere (some are affiliate).
Keep in mind, for some of the books, it is too early as they're not on the list YET but I will update and let you guys know when it is!

Here are the ones missing from bookshop.org:

• Our Ex's Wedding by Taleen Voskuni: Amazon (UK)

• Where No Shadow Stays by Sara Hashem: Amazon (UK), Blackwell's (UK)

• In the Country I Love by Alaa Al-Barkawi: Amazon (UK)

• Everything Comes back to you by Jackie Khalilieh: Amazon (UK)

• Letters from the Last Apothecary by Bita Behzadi: Amazon (UK)

• Ungodly Chaos by Selma Soren: Amazon (UK)

• Bashir Boutros and the Forgotten Realm by George Jreije: Amazon (UK)

AND FINALLY, here are the graphics of the list:

Thank you for subscribing to Chanterelle Solace and Ifrits & Ink! Please do consider joining as a paid member to help us become an imprint and support/uplift marginalised authors in the future for either $5 or $12

Friends, I can’t express how grateful Tatiana and I are for everyone who shared the cover reveal for What Feeds Below! Thanks to you, we earned a Top New Releases banner on Amazon which means people are definitely pre ordering!!! (just FYI, What Feeds Below is cheaper on Bookshop right now if you haven’t pre-ordered yet!)

You’ve seen the outside of the book, now we want to give you this early look at the first page (before we share it publicly!)

Let me know below if you’d sign the waiver and enter the Void.

Happy Holidays folks!

Whatever you celebrate (or don’t) this time of year, I hope you have a happy cosy time.

And for an alternative seasonal option for you monster lovers out there, here are two very short novellas I highly recommend - one spicy, one acespec.

What’s a Girl Gotta Do to Get on the Naughty List? By Kimberley Lemming.

A Black woman is very angry at her cheating spouse and sister, and Krampus might just be the distraction she needs…

This was so funny and so hilariously hot.

Naughty & Nice by Azalea Crowley

I LOVED this adorable queer seasonal novella, a Santa x bigender Krampus acespec romance.

What happens to the human manifestations of Christmas spirits from January to June? They go on a romantic foodie holiday to Portland, of course!

This one is out on 31st Dec.

Much love folks,

Disco x

The closest McKay Used Books is in Manassas, Virginia. On our road trip, we stopped there.

I always love stopping there because I truly never know what I'll find. That makes it super fun. They offer new and used books along with other collectible items like records and video games.

I go for the books (even though if I ever run into a copy of Gallop Racer 2006, I will surely pick it up).

Aisles and aisles of every genre fill the huge store.

I gravitate towards fiction and they often have special editions. My score was the Fairyloot Sleep Like Death by Kalynn Bayron! It's so pretty.

From there we went to Buc-ee's. I'd never been to one before and had no idea what to expect but even what I encountered still wasn't what I imagined. Amazing.