I just finished Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay and am currently going on deep deeeep dives. The book was written in the 1960s and takes place at a girl's boarding school in Australia in the year 1900. The girls go on a picnic to, you guessed it, Hanging Rock and three of them disappear without a trace.

The story is slow and odd and unsettling but most importantly, it is unresolved. The book is only about 200 pages and I highly recommend reading it before looking into the ending but the author did in fact write one in her original draft. Her editors told her to leave it out and it left us with an unsettling story I will be thinking about for a long time.

Once you read it and you're curious...you can actually read the unpublished final chapter online or in certain published editions. It's bizarre to say the least.

If you want a sticky slow summer read filled with gorgeous nature, some dark humor, and some haunting scenes, I recommend!

Has anyone else read this classic? Have you read the original ending?

✨ Being an Indian girl, it is refreshing to read a book with lead characters having Indian roots. I could relate to the family dynamics and the character thought process. Hence, firstly, thank you Naina Kumar for the representation.

✨ Reading the book feels like taking a road trip in Scotland. 2 strangers meet each other, thinking the first time they meet might be the last time. But fate has different plans for them. Both Neelu and Jacob have a their own baggage that they needs to overcome to finally be free of the past. I think a lot of thought is put into the character development - especially Neelu's. I would have liked some more light upon James and Jacob's relationship.

✨ But overall despite the books name being "Just a Highland fling", it was quite the romantic relationship for me.

✨ Thank you @booksparks and @nkumarwrites

#TheBookOdyssey
#SRC2026

Hi there book besties,

The wait is over! Here's the link and password to the November Historical Fiction Look Ahead. There aren't as many big names on the list this month, but there are some fun mysteries and fantasies, plus a few names you'll recognize. 😜

I'm super eager to hear from you: which of these books are you adding to your library hold list?

https://shesbecomingbookish.com/new-historical-fiction-books-november-2026/

password: leaves

Happy reading!

xoxo

c

Hello everyone!

Tor Publishing has offered to cohost a giveaway with us for Mathilda Zeller's new book IT LOOKS LIKE YOU IN THE DARK!

The only people who know are the people who have gone. Those people no longer have throats to tell us.

Tapeesa is newly out of high school and working in a fish processing plant in the Inupiat village, Chukchi, where she’s lived her whole life. Maybe that’s why people tend to assume she isn’t that bright―or maybe her mama is right and she does have bad blood. Either way, she knows the legend, and she knows the history. Her Ahna told her that the hungry creature―the kushtuka―appears to us in the form of someone we love. It will try to get us to follow it. Follow it where? Those who have gone no longer have throats to tell us.

The Kobuk River Valley of remote Alaska draws greedy white men time and time again. But whenever they come, death comes too. This time the white men are here for the long term, to create an open pit, a rare earths mine just north of the village. When her sister Esther goes missing, Tapeesa will do anything to get her back. Seeking justice, Tapeesa must track down the kidnapper in the darkening Arctic. What awaits beyond the warmth of her village is more horrible than she could imagine and closer to her than she knows.

In order to enter the giveaway, please follow the rules below. You've already completed one! Submissions close Monday (9/14) night and the winner will be announced on Tuesday (9/15). If you don't win, you can always purchase the book through Bookshop.org or Libro.fm, and you can request it at your local library. Best of luck to everyone!

1. Be following us and Tor Publishing on Instagram

2. Be signed up for any tier on our Bindery (link in bio)

3. In the comments tell us what your favorite horror book is

4. For an extra submission, tag a friend

What new releases in the last 2 months do I want to make sure you don't miss? These are all AT LEAST 4 stars for me and I can't wait to discuss them with others!

Sunrise by Tea Obreht (8/11 release) 5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you like your plot to serve the themes and characters.

The Salt King by Natasha Pulley (8/18 release) 5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you appreciate a slow burn story that explores belief. This is currently my top read for the year.

The Birthing Tree by Amanda Peters (9/1 release) 5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoyed The Berry Pickers or the exploration of reclaiming traditions from colonization.

She's a Doll by Barbara Truelove (9/8 release) 5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy your female rage with laugh and heart.

The Lord of the Wood by EM Anderson (7/28 release) 4.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy a later-in-life queer awakening in a fantasy setting.

Reputation by Amanda Coreishy (8/30 release) 4.5/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy supporting indie authors who explore religion and patriarchy.

Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli (7/28 release) 4.25/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you enjoy stories centering mother-adult daughter relationships.

These Walls Remember by Del Sandeen (8/18 release) 4.25/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you would enjoy a haunted house story that explores grief.

Meet Me in the Garden by Nina LaCour (8/4 release) 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you want a story set in the Great Migration centering familial and queer love.

Plant Lady by Minyoung Kang (8/4 release) 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you think men would make for good fertilizer.

Etna by Paul Yoon (8/4 release) 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you want to see the absurdity of war through an animal's eyes.

Jacaranda by Gael Faye (8/25 release) 4/5 stars

Put this on your TBR if you want a story exploring how we tell family stories.

Happy Friday everyone, hope you are all having a great reading week!

As all members know, we completed voting for our last quarter of book club reads for 2026. There were so many great choices, and any combination would have been amazing! That being said, here are our Q4 book club picks, and a short description of each:

• October: Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker

  • In this lyrical, wildly inventive horror novel interwoven with Japanese mythology, two people living centuries apart discover a door between their worlds.

• November: The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon

  • The otherworldly religious conflict of Dune, the cosmic strangeness of Gideon the Ninth, and the heart-pounding action of Red Rising converge in this horror-tinged epic science fantasy debut

• December: Scion by James Islington

  • John Wick meets Ghost in the Shell in this fast-paced cyberpunk thriller by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few.

This is a great mix of authors, styles, and genres, and even a fun spooky book for October! Hopefully you will join us for one or more of these great picks! Also, if you are interested in the in person discussions, you can check out the event calendar on our Discord page for dates and times!

Hope to see you in the club!

Nox is joined by Cynthia Gómez, author of Muñeca, to talk about all things Gothic literature. What makes a novel Gothic? Is it an itemized list of 14 requirements? Do women always have to be victimized in it? How do we get around these Eurocentric conventions? Nox and Cynthia discuss all of this and more in today’s episode.

Listen on Apple Podcasts // Spotify // Deezer // Pocket Casts

Support and follow our guest and host!

Follow Nox: Instagram // Substack // Threads // TikTok // YouTube

Follow Cynthia: Website

This episode was edited and produced by Renee Powers on the ancestral land of the Dakota people.

Original music by Amarissa

Welcome to the Ink & Ether September '26 Dispatch

What's been on my mind

I don't know about you but I am so ready for the -Ber months! This time of year is like the Super Bowl for booksellers. There's just something about the Fall and Winter season that feel like you should always be curled up with a good book. Maybe books and hibernation just go together.

I've been reading ARC's like nobodies business and there's a lot. So buckle up because the book releases over the next few months are a marathon, not a sprint.

Sidenote* it's my birthday month! That's right, Virgo crew where you at! So get it together and don't skim, read all the way through, preferably while taking notes.

What's new on the shelves

The hot Summer months brought a bit of a slow down for business so I'm sure there are plenty of new titles you haven't seen yet.

Flowers For The Sea by Zin E. Rocklyn - A Shirley Jackson Award winning novella. Set on a ship of survivors after the world has flooded, one woman carries a pregnancy that might not be entirely human, along with a rage that's been building long before the water rose. Gothic, visceral, and reads in a single sitting.

Buy from Ink & Ether | Buy from Bookshop.org

Assistant and The Villain Series by Hannah Nicole Maehrer - Evie takes a job as assistant to a genuinely evil villain, expecting paperwork and mayhem — she gets both, plus an entirely unplanned romance. Think Once Upon a Time meets The Office. Four books deep now with Adversary to the Villain, the newest installment, and it only gets more chaotic from here.

Buy it From Ink & Ether | Buy it From Bookshop.org

Verity Guild by Mai Corland - A Rome-inspired slow burn where a priestess hiding a dangerous secret and the investigator sworn to expose her end up snowed in with an actual murderer. Political, tense, and ends on a cliffhanger that will have you counting down to book two.

Buy it From Ink & Ether | Buy it From Bookshop.org

The Library at Hellebore by - A school for the dangerously magical, where graduation day doubles as feeding time. Dark academia if dark academia meant the faculty might actually eat you. Gory, sharp, and not for the faint of heart.

Buy it From Ink & Ether | Buy it From Bookshop.org

Witch Season by Julia Bianco - Magic that costs blood and pain to wield, an enforcer bound to the very coven she's sworn to police, and a rival determined to make her life so much harder. Dark, tense, and deeply atmospheric.

Buy it From Ink & Ether | Buy it From Bookshop.org

From the grimoire

Well you won't believe the card I pulled this month but I 100% did, I promise. This month's card pull is Death. Hand to heart, the Death card came up so let's get to it.

The Death card is probably the most misunderstood but that's what makes it fun. I see Death to represent the inevitable end of a cycle. That cycle might be easy or it might be messy, but be assured it will come to an end one way or another. There is no escaping death. But with the end of the old, comes the birth of something new. So we can read this as a transformation and letting go of an old version to make way for new possibilities.

Two titles that come to mind for this reading examine Death in different ways.

She Who Became The Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

A girl who assumes the identity of her deceased brother and, in doing so, has to let every version of herself that came before quietly die. This is Death in its purest and most devastating form, not interrupted, not resisted, just fully accepted, because the fate on the other side of it is too enormous to turn away from.

Buy it From Ink & Ether | Buy it From Bookshop.org

She's a Doll by Barbara Truelove, out September 8th. Lucy McQuinn is murdered and refuses to accept it. She pours what's left of herself into an antique porcelain doll and goes looking for the man who killed her. This is Death interrupted. A transformation that was supposed to happen quietly instead gets redirected into rage, revenge, and eighteen inches of lacy, furious porcelain. Campy, sharp, and a genuinely fun read if you want your Death card with a little bite.

Buy it From Bookshop.org

There you go! Two very different takes on Death. One girl who refuses to let go. Another who let's go of everything.

The card poses the same question to you: what do you need to end so something new can begin?

Find Ink & Ether this month

Sep. 20th - Silent Reading Group at Communitea Coffee

Sep. 26th - Pop up at Rekindle Coffee

Oct. 2nd - Halloween Night Market at Communitea Coffee

Oct. 7th - Silent Reading Group at Communitea Coffee

Oct. 10-11 - Dragons and Dreams at Autry Museum

The Letter Corner

The Letter Corner is a hit! Thank you to everyone who has already stopped by and left a letter. We've seen letters come in from Singapore, England, and The Netherlands. We are definitely hoping for more Intro Letters to come in. Here's a quick recap of how things work:

1. Visit The Sunday Letter Project website and pick a shop participating in the Letter Keepers network.

2. Write your Introduction Letter and post it to the shop of your choosing. Be sure to include Ink & Ether in the return address.

3. Alternative option, you can find an Introduction Letter at Communitea Coffee to write to.

4. Take a picture of the letter and address, then go home and write.

Leaving the Intro Letters at the Letter Corner allows friends to find multiple penpals. The more the merrier right!

Need a writing suggestion? Why don't you share the best vacation you went on. Or share about something fun you did over the summer.

Before you go

If you made it this far, you have my gratitude! Hope Virgo season treats you well.

Friends,

I have been dying dying DYING to share this news with you!

Who is ready to get cozy?

Well, let me tell you about the book we just signed!!!

This information isn’t public yet, so please keep it here:

Meihan Boey's The Matchmaker of Club Street, a whimsigothic novel set in 1895 Singapore: an illustrious Chinese matchmaker has three days to find a new match for a British official's daughter to escape a betrothal to the wrong (very wrong) man, pitched as Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by way of T. Kingfisher, to Boozhoo Books at Bindery Books, by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis, for publication in spring 2028.

I fell in love with this genre-bending book that is filled with such a memorable cast of characters. It’s a little historical, fantasy, mystery, horror and even a hint of romance. It is the perfect book to cozy up with a nice cup of hot chocolate or tea. It’s delightful and a teensy gory and somehow it really works!

i cannot wait for you all to read this!!!

Hello my friends, and happy Trans Joy Thursday!

I started the day off grocery shopping, but in the midst of that, I had to pause for my weekly grief therapy session and my therapist said something that made me stop and re-collect myself: "Your relationship with your Memaw hasn't ended, it's just changed." And I thought that was just beautifully poetic, and absolutely true. I have struggled finding a balance of my emotions and how to honor her while not completely being destroyed on the inside by my sadness, and that one sentence just kind of made me have a lightbulb moment. Therapy may not be for everyone, but it is for me, and I appreciated that greatly, and wanted to share with all of you.

This week is also my short week of work, meaning I only work 3 days this week, with a 3 day weekend quickly approaching. (Can I get an "Amen"?!) Lots of meetings, though, lol. I say that because my short weeks mean date weekends with Alisha, and I look forward to those immensely. They're also days where I can rest, read, catch up on chores, yes, but do things at a much more leisurely pace.

Can we also discuss that while it may be 80+ degrees outside still, fall decor is EVERYWHERE, and I love it! Football just started back last night, and while I'm still finding my joy in my hobbies again and rediscovering what that looks like for me, I am so geeked as this is my favorite season. (Go Pack Go!)

In addition to these wonderful things, Aiden Thomas' Cemetery Boys: Espiritu released Tuesday, and I am very (im)patiently waiting for my signed/personalized copy to arrive like any time now. I ordered from Always Here Books in Portland, Oregon.

I'm also still chugging away at our Quarter 4 Bookclub pick, Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.

Speaking of books, our Beyond The Rainbow chat with Anita Kelly is TOMORROW Friday, September 11, form 6-7pm CST. I'll drop the zoom information at the end of this newsletter. You can also find it on our Discord server (free to join, always) in the appropriate channel and an event is created as a reminder, as well.

The biggest thing I'm thankful for right now? It's definitely space to grow and become. I think we, as a society as a whole, think once we become an adult, that's it.. we're done growing and maturing and learning.. and I don't think that's the case at all. I am super grateful to have been able to explore my gender identity and transness, name change, pronouns, gender affirming-care, all in my mid 30s. And we should never stop learning - I'm just thankful for that. That I have surrounded myself with likeminded people that also never stop learning and evolving - it's truly a beautiful thing!

I also wanted to shout out YOU. Thank YOU for being here, for being in community, and being part of my launch of Not A Phase Books. I hope to one day be an imprint of Bindery to publish even more beautiful trans stories we so desperately need and deserve. And I couldn't do that without you all here with me. So, thank you.

As a reminder, here is the graphic for tomorrow's Beyond The Rainbow chat with Anita Kelly:

I hopefully will see you all tomorrow night with Anita! (I will do my best to record the chat for those of you that cannot attend live for playback.) The zoom information will be posted below!

With all my trans joy,

Sawyer Cole

Sawyer Cole (They/Them) is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Beyond The Rainbow with Anita Kelly
Time: Sep 11, 2026 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87806115120

Meeting chat link
https://us06web.zoom.us/launch/jc/87806115120

Meeting ID: 878 0611 5120

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What would you like to see more of as First Swords and Bright Stars?

What do I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman and Colorado Kid by Stephen King have in common? They are two books that are unsatisfying by design.

Yes, you heard me right, the authors of both books went into it fully intending on never giving you an ending. Both books create a captivating mystery and fail to solve it, leaving you with something worse than a book hangover - a brain worm that will never go away. Why, you ask? Let's dig in.

King was trying to define what mystery was and step outside of that box, because most real mysteries never get solved - and each person lives in their own head, so the motivations of anyone can never be fully understood. Harpman's family fled the Holocaust when she was a child, so she wanted us to ask why? Not just how. It's more about the life lived within the story, not about what caused it.

But I'm not really here to talk about author motivations. I want to talk about it from the reader's perspective in the context of the year I'm writing this - 2026. The year of the release of AI into the world with no guardrails. The birth of the loss of human creativity.

Both of these books leave us with no ending, no solution to the mystery. And yes, the why matters, but the result is that our brains are forced to wonder, forced to continue thinking beyond the story, forced to think critically. Yes, this is another essay about critical reading. Why? Because everything leads back to critical reading. Yes, everything.

*Want me to prove it to you? Ok. Where would you start if you wanted to enslave an entire country - body, mind, and soul? Well, to really get them on board you'd have to start young, wouldn't you? Start when they begin to decipher the world and ask questions. Feed them lies about how this is the good place, all other places are bad and we are just lucky to be here, and anyone who doesn't feel lucky must just be on the bad people's side. Give them constant entertainment so they don't notice, they don't ask, they don't wonder what else their lives could be. Guilt them for disobeying. Start when they begin to understand media. Never teach them to think, watch, read, for themselves. Does this sound familiar? Do you understand?

In the mystery I Who Have Never Known Men (which I think must definitely have inspired the series Silo by Hugh Howey) a girl is in a cell with 39 other women. They don't know why they're there, and can't really remember how they got there. They do know they had lives before, but any attempt to escape, yell, touch each other, or even have big emotions results in the cracking of whips by the men outside the cell, who never interact with the women other than to watch them every day, every minute. I can't say I could spoil anything for you because the book is mainly about how the main character, and the only one who has no memories before the cell, is different from the rest. She's definitely autistic, but the main point is that since she knows no other life, she doesn't fight to get back to something that no longer exists. She fights for the current moment to mean more, to be better, to move forward.

We never do find out why she was in that cell. And I think that the beauty of that is that you will continue thinking, deciphering, imagining, long after you finish. You're not just consuming for the sake of consumption, grinding away at your daily dopamine quota to survive the agony of late stage capitalism and the fall into dystopia. You are feeding your neurons, which take this small story and make it blossom into a million new neural pathways. I bet that if you hooked up an EEG to your brain and compared it to reading a different book, you'd see much more happening after you finished than normal.

In the rise of the age of AI eating everything humans every created that was beautiful and churning out slop for the sole purpose of cheap consumption, most people seem to have forgotten that the beauty is in the journey. That we all can create, simply for the sake of creation. You can be an author without every selling a book. You can be a painter without ever making a dime on a painting. And when we admire someone else's art, we are getting to see a piece of their soul, exposed to the world. What else differentiates a sentient being from a fish, a rat, a tree? I think, therefore I am.

Don't fall for the AI propaganda. Keep thinking babes. You are human, and you have value just for existing, and you are a maker, a creator of art, just because you can. Go make something for the sheer joy of it. And I will love it, because it was you who created it. Not because it's good, but because it's a piece of you.