Mailbox Monday is a book blogger meme hosted by the Mailbox Monday blog on a weekly basis. Starting today I’ll be participating on Mondays that aren’t totally overrun by reviews and tour commitments. Since I don’t receive many physical books in the mail, I’ll treat this as my “haul” since the last time I posted to this meme, including digital ARC and review copies and new library loans.
Since this is day 1 I’ll just feature the last week, and this time I’m excluding tour copies in favour of keeping this post to a reasonable length. Cool? Okay, let’s go!
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NetGalley & Edelweiss ARCs
The Centaur’s Wife
by Amanda LeDuc
Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
Release Day: 16 February 2021
Genre: Literary Fiction, SF/F
Page Count: 320
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
Heather is sleeping peacefully after the birth of her twin daughters when the sound of the world ending jolts her awake. Stumbling outside with her babies and her new husband, Brendan, she finds that their city has been destroyed by falling meteors and that her little family are among only a few who survived.
But the mountain that looms over the city is still green–somehow it has been spared the destruction that has brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Heather is one of the few who know the mountain, a place city-dwellers have always been forbidden to go. Her dad took her up the mountain when she was a child on a misguided quest to heal her legs, damaged at birth. The tragedy that resulted has shaped her life, bringing her both great sorrow and an undying connection to the deep magic of the mountain, made real by the beings she and her dad encountered that day: Estajfan, a centaur born of sorrow and of an ancient, impossible love, and his two siblings, marooned between the magical and the human world. Even as those in the city around her–led by Tasha, a charismatic doctor who fled to the city from the coast with her wife and other refugees–struggle to keep everyone alive, Heather constantly looks to the mountain, drawn by love, by fear, by the desire for rescue. She is torn in two by her awareness of what unleashed the meteor shower and what is coming for the few survivors, once the green and living earth makes a final reckoning of the usefulness of human life and finds it wanting.
At times devastating, but ultimately redemptive, Amanda Leduc’s fable for our uncertain times reminds us that the most important things in life aren’t things at all, but rather the people we want by our side at the end of the world.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Pre-Order on Amazon CA (sorry, US & UK listings aren’t up yet!)
The Beast of Bellevue
by Grace Chen
Publisher: Reading Harbor
Release Date: 1 December 2020
Genre: YA Women’s Fiction
Page Count: 232
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
When 17-year-old Dylan Albright mischievously creates a dating website posing as his unsuspecting heartthrob brother, he doesn’t realize what is at risk is his own heart. Locked in Bellevue Sanatorium, 17-year-old Ava Pierce stumbles upon soccer star Alec Albright’s photo and ‘Hire-A-Friend’ dating service. Eager to get out and meet her prince charming, she sets out in search of her own independence. But what happens when the love of her life is not who she thinks he is?
A twist on a tale as old as time, the Beast of Bellevue explores the meaning of friendship, the value of beauty, the boundaries between the virtual world and real world, and the importance of developing one’s self-identity.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Pre-order on Amazon US | CA | UK
NICK
by Michael Farris Smith
Publisher: Oldcastle Books / No Exit Press
Release Date: 25 February 2021
Genre: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Page Count: 304
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Critically acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith pulls Nick Carraway out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this fascinating look into his life before Gatsby.
Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I.
Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Instead, he embarks on a transcontinental redemptive journey that takes him from a whirlwind Paris romance-doomed from the very beginning-to the dizzying frenzy of New Orleans, rife with its own flavor of debauchery and violence.
An epic portrait of a truly singular era and a sweeping, romantic story of self-discovery, this rich and imaginative novel breathes new life into a character that many know but few have pondered deeply. Charged with enough alcohol, heartbreak, and profound yearning to paralyze even the heartiest of golden age scribes, Nick reveals the man behind the narrator who has captivated readers for decades.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Pre-order on Amazon US | CA | UK
How to Pack for the End of the World
by Michelle Falkoff
Publisher: HarperCollins / HarperTeen
Release Date: 10 November 2020
Genre: YA Action Adventure
Page Count: 320
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
If you knew the world was going to end tomorrow, what would you do?
This is the question that haunts Amina as she watches new and horrible stories of discord and crisis flash across the news every day.
But when she starts at prestigious Gardner Academy, Amina finds a group of like-minded peers to join forces with—fast friends who dedicate their year to learning survival skills from each other, before it’s too late.
Still, as their prepper knowledge multiplies, so do their regular high school problems, from relationship drama to family issues to friend blow-ups. Juggling the two parts of their lives forces Amina to ask another vital question: Is it worth living in the hypothetical future if it’s at the expense of your actual present?
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Pre-Order on Amazon US | CA | UK
Author & Publicist Requests
Subversive
Clandestine Magic Book One
by Colleen Cowley
Publisher: Slender Sky Books
Released: 27 September 2020
Genre: Romantic Fantasy
Page Count: 442
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
In an America controlled by wizards and 100 years behind on women’s rights, Beatrix Harper counts herself among the resistance—the Women’s League for the Prohibition of Magic. Then Peter Blackwell, the only wizard her town has ever produced, unexpectedly returns home and presses her into service as his assistant.
Beatrix fears he wants to undermine the League. His real purpose is far more dangerous for them both.
Subversive is the first novel in the Clandestine Magic trilogy, set in a warped 21st century that will appeal to fans of gaslamp fantasy.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Grab a copy on Amazon! US | CA | UK
Ales, Agents, and Alchemy
Murder by Alchemy Book One
by Jabe Stafford
Publisher: Kyanite Publishing LLC
Release Date: 22 October 2020
Genre: Paranormal Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 375
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
Former bartender Ryne Clayten can’t prove the CEO of America’s favorite pub chain murdered his sister. Alchemy that brews beer and distills liquor isn’t a cause of death the justice system recognizes. CEO Lawrence Grant saved alchemy and wove it into alcohol to keep it alive in today’s skeptical modern age. He’s got every right to ruin Ryne’s life for these accusations of murder.
Ryne seeks out Craft alchemy to turn it against Lawrence. He brews his own ales with it. He finds he loves the alchemy that Grant used to end his sister’s life. Ryne must work with his sister-in-law, an ATF agent, to out-think the alchemist serial killer hot on his heels. They need records proving Grant’s liquor alchemy is poisoning thousands and killing dozens. If he proves Grant’s guilt by the judge’s deadline, he’d risk the alchemy he loves being outlawed. New Prohibition wouldn’t be good for his wallet.
Grant knows his business wouldn’t be the only thing ruined if alchemy became illegal. He’ll make sure Ryne’s death is quieter than his sister’s was. One sip of lethal Craft bourbon is all it would take to win yet another deadly mind game.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Pre-order on Amazon US | CA | UK
Library Loans
A Song Below Water
by Bethany C. Morrow
Publisher: Tor Teen
Released: 2 June 2020
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 288
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Never mind she’s also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers. At least she has her bestie Effie by her side as they tackle high school drama, family secrets, and unrequited crushes.
But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation; the girls’ favorite Internet fashion icon reveals she’s also a siren, and the news rips through their community. Tensions escalate when Effie starts being haunted by demons from her past, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice during a police stop. No secret seems safe anymore—soon Portland won’t be either.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Grab a copy on Amazon! US | CA | UK
I’ve borrowed this as an audiobook and I’m determined to cram it into my week before the loan disappears. Libby found me a “skip the line” copy that’s only available for 1 week instead of 2 and if I don’t finish my actual hold isn’t due until well into next month.
Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Released: 15 September 2020
Genre: Literary Fiction, SF/F
Page Count: 275
Add it to your Goodreads TBR
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.
There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.
Blurb copied from Goodreads.
Grab a copy on Amazon! US | CA | UK
I accepted this one when the hold came up instead of extending the hold before I realized I still have eleven (11!) non-audio reviews due this month. I have no idea if I’ll be able to fit this one in or if I’ll have to put it back on hold. Neither library I have cards for in Libby has an audiobook listing for this one, or I would place a hold on that.
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How about you? What’s new on your TBR this week? Let’s chat in the comments!
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Oh wow, you have quite the variety of books here! I love it! Ales, Agents, and Alchemy instantly caught my attention – it sounds like something that I would really enjoy. I’m definitely adding it to my TBR for the coming months. I’ve been making more time to read, which means I need more books! (Okay, that may just be an excuse to buy new books but shhh)
Any excuse to buy new books, right? Lol. When the review request for Ales, Agents, and Alchemy came in I was like I have sooo much to read… and then I read the synopsis. I can’t say no. This sounds way too unique to pass up!