Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we're adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.
New Arrivals
Enchanting the Fae Queen by Stephanie Burgis
Queen Lorelei is a notorious fae seductress, with a trail of broken hearts in her wake. But behind her glamorous lifestyle and sparkling mask lurks a dangerously intelligent woman who’d do anything to keep her people safe, including kidnap the empire’s most famous hero.
The virtuous high general Gerard de Moireul represents all that is moral and true. He has to, after his parents were executed for treason. The last thing he needs is the Queen of Balravia, who showers glitter and rainbow-colored sparkles everywhere she goes without the slightest regard for good taste, decorum, or royal dignity.
They’re opposites in every way, but when they're swept up together in a grand--and deadly--fae tournament, they discover all of each other’s most hidden truths--and how perfectly they might be suited for each other after all.
Fire Sword and Sea by Vanessa Riley
The Caribbean Sea, 1675. Jacquotte Delahaye is the mixed-race daughter of a wealthy tavern owner on the island of Tortuga. Instead of marriage, Jacquotte dreams of joining the seafarers and smugglers whose tall-masted ships cluster in the turquoise waters around Tortuga. She falls in love with a pirate, but when he returns to the sea, Jacquotte decides to make her own way. In Haiti she becomes Jacques, a dockworker, earning the respect of those around her while hiding her gender.
Jacquotte discovers that secret identities are fairly common in the chaotic world of seafaring, which is full of outsiders and misfits. She forms a deep bond with Bahati, an African-born woman who has escaped slavery and also disguises herself as a man to navigate the world. They join forces with Dirkje De Wulf, a fearless adventurer who also lives as a man at sea. As Jacques, Jacquotte falls in love with Lizzôa d'Erville, a beautiful courtesan who deals in secrets and sex. While others see their work clothes as a disguise, Lizzôa’s true self is as a woman.
For the next twenty years, Jacquotte raids the Caribbean, making enemies and amassing a fortune in stolen gold. When her fellow pirates decide to increase their profits by entering the slave trade, Jacquotte turns away from piracy and the pursuit of riches. Risking her life in one deadly skirmish after another, she instead begins to plot a war of liberation.
The Lost Cities of El Norte by Peter Stark
In 1540, the grandest exploring expedition ever assembled in the Americas paraded north from the ruins of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, a glittering column of 2,000 men heading into the unknown. Their destination was El Norte Misterioso—The Mysterious North, present-day United States—where fabulous cities of gold were rumored to shine beyond the horizon. Two years later, survivors began stumbling back, half dead. Lost to poisoned arrows, brutal deserts, starvation, cold, desertion, and countless other hardships, 90% of those who left would never return.
Led by Francisco Coronado and backed by the full weight of the Spanish empire, the superpower of its day, they had expected to seize the land, steal its riches, and subjugate its peoples, just as they had so recently done to the mighty Aztec and Inca empires. But instead they encountered the unconquered American West, populated by complex societies of indigenous nations, masters of a vast and unforgiving landscape who fiercely resisted this European “incursion” onto their lands.
Coronado and his people traversed 2,500 miles of unmapped terrain, ranging across the present-day U.S. states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and finally Kansas. They were the first Europeans to gaze upon the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains; made first contact with the Puebloan peoples; crossed the Sonoran Desert and the Great Plains, where they encountered endless herds of bison and the nomadic tribes who followed them. After leading the largest exploring cavalcade ever assembled in the New World, wearing his gilded armor and bobbing plume, Coronado retreated back to Mexico City two years later accompanied only by a hundred or so hangers-on and carried on a litter, a broken man. America’s Southwest and Plains would remain unconquered for the next 300 years.
One Foot in the Grave by Wm. Mark Simmons
Christopher Csejthe doesn't believe in vampires. Not until he becomes one. He doesn't believe in witches or werewolves, either. Not until they make him an offer he can't refuse....
Unknowingly infected with half the combinant viral strain that transforms the living into the undead, Christopher Csejthe is in a state of suspended transition, neither alive nor truly undead, and has caught the attention of vampires, werewolves, and witches, who want to destroy him.
Currently Reading
With 35 submissions still to read for my Gender Ever After anthology, the bookshelves are off-limits until I'm all caught up.
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