Hello my friends, and welcome to Trans Joy Thursday! My sincerest apologies in the radio silence last week. Last week was a bit of a mess for me. BUT, I feel rejuvenated, refreshed, and ready.

Why do I feel that way? Because this past weekend, I got to lead, or be part of, 6 total panels/workshops for Green Bay's UntitledTown's Book And Author Festival return. (They stopped hosting this when the pandemic hit, so this was the first year it was brought back.) I spent the weekend listening to new to me authors share their work, from literally all over the U.S., meet new readers, be in community with likeminded individuals who just get it. I met Danez Smith, the keynote speaker, and their first poem was from their book Homie - a poem dedicated to their late grandmother, who, come to find out, was also named Barbara (my grandmother's name.) I wept. Hard. And they were so gracious and kind. I have been following Danez since they wrote Black Movie for Button Poetry. It was so wonderful to be in the same room as their brilliance. I got to roam around the book fair for two days prior to my own panels/workshops. I got to hear personal stories of others and received so many hugs from audience members. It was a much needed time, no matter how busy I felt leading up to it. Thoughts and ideas can change the world, be it in books, in community, in advocacy.. What a beautiful, beautiful weekend. Here is a collage of some of the very few photos I took over the course of the 3 day event:

I hit the ground running Monday with chores, and grocery shopping, and work, but what remained was the word of the year for 2026, "Intentional." I kept coming back to that word over the weekend. What am I creating? What kind of content am I putting out? Is it to feed the algorithm? Is what I'm creating intentional for me as the creator, or you, friend, as the reader? My desire for this community is to be authentic, to be safe around one another, but also, on a much deeper level, to walk away nourished - whether that's from our books we read as a book club (I'll speak to that in a minute) or our Beyond The Rainbow chats, or how we communicate with one another here or on Discord. My dream, of course, by being here is to become an imprint that is able to bring our LGBTQIA+ stories to the forefront, yes, but also to celebrate our wins along the way and grow together as a community.

Speaking of book club, it is October 1st! Which not only means that it is the start of a new quarter (Hello Quarter 4) but it also means a new Quarterly Book Club Pick - To Our Untamed Core by Sonido Reyes (Released September 22) is our Q4 pick! We will also be speaking with Sonido in November! I'm so stoked to reread this book with you all for Q4. I love it so much!

I also want to take a minute to tell you that if you're not already on Discord, I would highly encourage you join in. I will be more active on there, and will share a lot more there than through social media. You can join Not A Phase Books Discord on either tier - paid or free.

I hope you all have such an amazing week, and I look forward to seeing you all on Discord. Take care of yourselves.

With all my trans joy,

Sawyer Cole

Happy 13th Anniversary & Birthday Month! We are so grateful for your VIP support in The First Editions tier, and to celebrate, we are unlocking +50 AUTOMATIC BONUS ENTRIES for you in this month’s International Giveaway! 🎉📚

🏆 PRIZE TIERS: 6 Winners Total!
🥇 1st Place: 1 Winner: 3 Wishlist Books + $20 Gift Card ☕📖
🥈 2nd Place: 2 Winners: 2 Wishlist Books + $10 Gift Card 🕯️✨
🥉 3rd Place: 3 Winners: 1 Wishlist Book 📚💗

👇 HOW TO CLAIM YOUR 50 AUTOMATIC ENTRIES:
1️⃣ Drop a LIKE on this post!
2️⃣ COMMENT below telling us your favorite bookish memory with us OR what you're currently reading!

That’s it! Your 50 extra entries will automatically be logged. Don't forget to complete the main Instagram and/or Tiktok entries on @ThePageLadies too!

📅 Deadline: October 20th at 11:59 PM EST. Open worldwide! 💗

Welcome to October & our 13th Anniversary Month & Birthday celebration! As part of The Prequels tier on Bindery, you get a special boost in our massive International Birthday & Anniversary Giveaway! 🎁

🏆 PRIZE TIERS: 6 Winners Total!
🥇 1st Place: 1 Winner: 3 Wishlist Books + $20 Gift Card ☕📖
🥈 2nd Place: 2 Winners: 2 Wishlist Books + $10 Gift Card 🕯️✨
🥉 3rd Place: 3 Winners: 1 Wishlist Book 📚💗

👇 HOW TO LOCK IN YOUR +10 EXTRA ENTRIES:
1️⃣ Drop a LIKE on this post!
2️⃣ COMMENT below with your current read OR your top favorite book trope!

Make sure you've also completed the main giveaway steps over on Instagram and/or Tiktok(@ThePageLadies)!

📅 Deadline: October 20th at 11:59 PM EST. Open worldwide! 🎃

Mention Gothic horror, and most of us immediately know the vibe. A decaying mansion. Terrible weather. A locked room. A family with approximately 400 secrets. Someone wandering down a hallway when they should absolutely be running in the opposite direction.

And yes, give me ALL of that.

But one of the reasons Gothic horror has survived for centuries is that those recognizable elements are only the surface of the genre.

Gothic horror is really good at taking something a character would rather avoid (i.e., grief, guilt, desire, family history, violence, obsession) and making it impossible to ignore.

Sometimes it does that with a ghost. Sometimes it does it with a house. And sometimes there is absolutely nothing supernatural happening.

So let's talk about what actually makes a horror novel Gothic, and why the genre can look completely different today than it did more than 250 years ago.

First: Gothic horror is OLD

The beginning of Gothic fiction is generally traced to Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, published in 1764. From there, writers continued developing what we now recognize as Gothic conventions: isolated locations, threatening environments, secrets, supernatural possibilities, vulnerable characters, psychological instability, and the sense that something isn't quite right.

But here's what I find much more interesting: The genre didn't stay trapped in the castle.

• Mary Shelley used Gothic fiction to explore creation, abandonment, and responsibility in Frankenstein.

• Victorian Gothic gave us stories like Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

• Later writers proved you didn't need an ancient European castle at all.

• Shirley Jackson could make an American house terrifying.

• Daphne du Maurier could make the memory of a dead woman feel almost as present as a ghost.

• Modern Gothic writers have continued adapting those same storytelling tools to entirely different places, cultures, histories, and fears.

The scenery changed and the genre evolved with it.

Why does Gothic horror feel different from other horror?

This is probably the easiest way to understand the genre.

A lot of horror asks: What's going to happen to me? Gothic horror very often asks: What has already happened here?

That difference completely changes the reading experience. Instead of immediately introducing a threat, Gothic stories often make us investigate one.

• Why won't anyone talk about that room?

• Why does this family behave this way?

• What happened to the previous owner?

• Why does everyone in town know something our protagonist doesn't?

• Why does this place feel WRONG?

The tension comes from slowly understanding the significance of things that were already there, which is exactly why Gothic horror and slow burns work so beautifully together.

The setting has a job

This is one of my favorite things about Gothic fiction.

You can remove a random creepy house from plenty of horror novels and replace it with another creepy house without fundamentally changing the story.

That is much harder to do with great Gothic horror. The setting is usually connected to what the book is trying to explore.

This is why you'll often hear people say that the setting in Gothic fiction feels like another character. Place has historically been central to the genre, whether that's a castle, house, wilderness, school, estate, town, or something else entirely. THAT is much more important than simply having a spooky house.

The real Gothic question: What can't these characters escape?

Here's where I think Gothic horror gets especially interesting because the answer doesn't have to be a the haunted house.

A character can be trapped:

• By a marriage.

• By money.

• By social expectations.

• By family loyalty.

• By grief.

• By their own mind.

• By something their parents did.

• By something an entire community refuses to acknowledge.

Physical isolation is one way Gothic fiction creates that suffocating feeling, but psychological and social confinement can accomplish the exact same thing.

That's also one reason the genre has been so adaptable.

Modern writers can take the basic machinery of Gothic fiction and use it to explore entirely different experiences than the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were exploring.

And yes: sometimes the monster is metaphorical

One of my favorite things about Gothic horror is that it can make you question what kind of story you're actually reading. That ambiguity gives Gothic horror an enormous amount of room to explore psychological horror alongside supernatural horror.

It's also why you don't need ghosts, vampires, or monsters for a book to feel Gothic.

Gothic horror has always reflected what people are afraid of

This might be the most interesting part of the genre's evolution. The recognizable pieces of Gothic fiction have remained remarkably durable, but writers keep finding new things to do with them.

Modern Gothic fiction can explore race, class, gender, sexuality, colonialism, family trauma, historical violence, bodily autonomy, cultural identity, and who holds power inside supposedly "safe" spaces.

So when you read something like Mexican Gothic, you're getting recognizable Gothic ingredients (e.g., an isolated house, a disturbing family, secrets, a protagonist increasingly cut off from the outside world), but they're being used to tell a story that belongs to a much more contemporary conversation.

So how do you know if you're reading Gothic horror?

I wouldn't use a trope checklist.

A book doesn't suddenly become Gothic because someone wandered into a mansion during a thunderstorm. Instead, pay attention to the relationship between character + setting + history + fear.

Ask yourself:

• Does the setting create pressure on the characters?

• Is there something hidden that the protagonist is slowly uncovering?

• Does history meaningfully affect what's happening now?

• Are the characters trapped in some way even if the door is technically unlocked?

• Does the story prioritize atmosphere, unease, or psychological tension?

• Is the horror connected to something deeper than simply surviving a threat?

The more of those you're answering YES to, the deeper you're getting into Gothic territory.

Okay, but where should you start?

This is where I DON'T think everyone should automatically be handed The Castle of Otranto just because it came first.

Your best entry point depends on what you already like.

• If you want a classic: Dracula by Bram Stoker

• If you love haunted houses: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

• If you want something lush and modern: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

• If you love psychological tension: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

• If you want historical Gothic horror: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

There isn't one version of Gothic horror. There are haunted houses and Gothic romances. Southern Gothic and psychological Gothic. Historical Gothic and contemporary Gothic. Monsters, ghosts, family secrets, unreliable narrators, isolated communities, and books where you finish the last page still wondering exactly what was real.

That's probably why we're still reading it more than 250 years later. The house was never really the point...it's what the author makes us confront once we're trapped inside.

If you want more recommendations, I have a full Gothic Horror Genre Guide breaking down the genre even further and helping you find the right Gothic read for you.

QOTD: What gets you every time in Gothic horror? Is it the atmosphere, the setting, family secrets, unreliable narrators, or that creeping feeling that something is very, very wrong?

Happy October, friends! It’s finally starting to feel like fall and I am so excited! Autumn colors are my absolute favorite! I’ve always wanted to have my color analysis done professionally, but I’ve had to settle for highly-accurate online quizzes thus far. According to their results, I am a True Autumn. This probably explains why I dread buying clothes in the spring and summer but overhaul my wardrobe when it comes to the cooler months.

I am so thrilled that my Bindery community has grown so much over these past few months! There are almost 50 of you now! Cue: raging imposter syndrome…because how is it that anyone at all cares what I have to say about books? Blows my mind.

A few weeks back, I asked you guys what it was about my Bindery page that you like and what you would like to see more of because as much as I definitely don’t mind screaming into the void, I’d rather spend my time creating content that you’ll enjoy. I learned that a lot of you are excited about book mail opportunities and Bindery exclusive giveaways - if that’s you, keep reading this newsletter 😉 It also sounds like long-form videos/vlogs are of interest, so I will keep that in mind! @backyard_bindings was the winner of the $25 gift card drawing!

Congratulations!!!

You Can Sit with Us Book Club News

• Our October group read is Song of Sunrise by Monica J. Deloy! It is the first book in the Prentice Teller Series and is described as “spicy dystopian fantasy romance.” The audiobook for Song of Sunrise will be available October 6th and I will be sure to share the links for that in Discord/Fable.

• New for October, I am adding the option to discuss our book chapter-by-chapter in the Fable app! We will still have announcements and yaps in Discord, but Fable (for now) seems to be a little more user-friendly in regards to specific, spoiler-free discussions. 

• Did you catch the Endpapers episode with Allie Samberts, author of September’s book, Not a Strong Enough Word? Listen here!

• Lastly, you said you wanted exclusive giveaways, so I’ve got one for you! I’m excited to offer a copy of Not on the Same Page, the sequel to Not a Strong Enough Word, to one of my (US based) Bindery subscribers! Comment “PICK ME” on this post to be considered! 

  

Events & Episodes

I think September has been the busiest month yet in regards to books. I told my husband that there was, at minimum, one bookish event every day in September and if there wasn’t, it was only because there were multiple events on other days.

While I was fortunate enough to tour the Libby app headquarters as well as meet Penn Cole and Jeneva Rose, I still suffered a fair amount of FOMO on account of my work schedule and grad school assignments. 

Endpapers: A Bookish Podcast now has aired five, soon to be six, episodes! I’ve talked to four authors and an indie bookstore owner so far and it has been so much fun! Upcoming guests include an audiobook narrator and a literary agent/PA/PR company owner. I am always looking for bookish industry insiders to chat with, so let me know if there is a role or individual that you’d like to hear from. I plan to record an episode with the author of the monthly You Can Sit with Us book club pick whenever possible! I aim to air episodes every other Thursday, although occasionally life gets in the way of that. I am learning so much about recording and editing! 

What’s Next?

I’m excited to have a few weeks off from school to focus on relaxing, catching up on some of my TBR, and trying some new content ideas! I’ll be heading into practicums after that short break, so we’ll have to see how I do with keeping up with reading and content with that change in routine.

Do I have any subscribers in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area? Books A Million has generously invited me to attend Ariel Lawhon’s Philadelphia tour stop to celebrate the release of The Pirate Queen and I am over the moon! I loved Frozen River and can’t wait to be surrounded by Ariel’s strong female characters once again. Tickets are available here! Let me know if you can make it so we can meet up!

ICYMI

• There’s still time to join Bindery Bingo for a chance to win a December Aardvark Book Club Box!

• I read a 5 star cozy fantasy (It’s a Bindery title ☺️)

• I read a 5 star small-town romance

• I’m trying horror!

One last thing!

I am in search of suggestions for a fantasy/fantasy romance title for December’s book club pick! If you are an Inner Circle or Producer level subscriber, you get the perk of being able to suggest book club titles. Tell me what you think we should read here!

That’s all for now! Thanks again for being here!

Xo,
Rachael

**Open to entrants aged 18+. Winner will be randomly selected from all entrants on October 14th. Must be willing to provide a US shipping address for prize delivery. Not affiliated with any publisher, PR company, author, or retailer (just me!). Void where prohibited. 

Hi Chanterelles,

First, Happy Autumn and Happy October friends! 🤎

I apologise for taking so long to get back to you guys about the giveaway. It's all sorted now and we have finished our Summer Giveaway. Our next giveaway will be in November and then that's it till January! 🥰

I wanted to get your thoughts on how we should go forward with our Discord notifications. I will be sending this as a message on Discord but wanted to give you guys an early access to vote before everyone else.

Also, I'll be announcing a few changes over the next few weeks so stay tuned to see how we're going to go forward with it all🤎

Join us for our Shogun Part 1 (roughly 50% through) discussion!

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88430214958?pwd=aqJbMwia9cvywEK96svu78t8b65WBT.1&mynotes=on

Looking forward to seeing you all❤️

Chapter 15

Maren slumped down in the chair opposite Icarus with a groan. He lifted his head off his folded arms atop his desk and blinked at her. Everything hurt and he would love to vomit out the window if his legs could carry him to it. He settled instead for a deep breath and a stomach-turning gulp of water from the glass one of them had remembered to pour—Maren, most likely. Icarus was hardly so responsible. 

He sighed and met her eyes—the left more ugly and greenish than it had been in his last hazy memory of her face. He rolled his shoulders and winced at the bruising in his ribs, the back of his head, and effectively everywhere. Between them, they made up one whole and unharmed person. Together, they were each half-dead from drink and a thorough clerical ass-kicking. 

“Right,” he clapped his hands together and Maren winced. “How are we feeling on our first excommunicated morning?”

“Your first excommunicated morning,” Maren croaked. “I renounced.”

“Tomato, tomato.”

“That’s not- you just said tomato twice.”

He rolled his eyes but the door opened before he could retort and Edith poked her head in, “A good morrow to you, Fathers. Coffee’s on and I’m about to- Pale Sons and Daughters, what happened to you?!” She was in the office inspecting Maren’s face without waiting for an invitation, tutting her concern, “I’ll get the medical kit. Neither of you move. Was it a fight? Did Icarus rile those Austrians again?”

It wasn’t a real question, she was working through her own theories as she opened cabinets in the kitchenette. Icarus grumbled to himself, “It was one time and I regretted it immediately, the Black Dog never let me back in. Terribly inconvenient.”

Edith tended to Maren’s eye first with a smear of sweet-smelling ointment and a stinging antiseptic blotted on a cloth pad. She inspected and cleaned the cut at the back of Icarus’s head and he begrudgingly allowed it, too hungover to fight and confident he would lose to the elderly woman if he tried. She confirmed his ribs were merely bruised with an agonizing pres of her fingers and took a long look at his bleary eyes.

“You,” she swatted his arm and he cried out, “should not have been drinking with a head wound! And you,” she thrust an accusing finger to Maren, who shrank under the sharpness of her stare, “should not have let him.”

“Yes, ma’am,” they uttered in unison. 

Hands on her hips, she pursed her lips, “I’ll get you coffees and pop to the shops for a bite. No active work today, paperwork only. I’ll handle dispatching notes to clients. I mean it, Icarus. Rest your head and drink water.”

An hour later, Icarus felt his humanity slowly returning thanks to the balm of bitter black coffee and a well-stuffed pastry full of piping hot eggs and good pork sausage. He patted his stomach, forgetting for a moment he regretted about his bruising, and leaned back. Maren blotted crumbs from her mouth and folded her hands on his desk.

“We should talk about it.”

His sated expression spoiled into a frown. She was right, but he had hoped to avoid it for a little longer, “Aye. I believe we should.”

“What the fuck-”

“What the fuck.”

“Right. That’s out of the way,” Maren eased to her feet with a grimace. “I don’t even know where to start. I suppose… do you want to start?”

He blinked up at her and cocked his head, “Explain.”

She gripped the back of the chair and held him with a hard stare, “We don’t have to look into this anymore. We can let it go. Let the Church handle the Church, we’re not obligated to them now. We can do what we like. If you’d like to drop this and let it go, we can.”

He hadn’t considered that. It was all such a disaster—the Inquisitor held prisoner, his father still alive trapped in some mystical gaol, all the Azure Prince nonsense, a Church keeping its people afraid instead of doing its job. There were so many threads he hardly knew where to start untangling them. 

Maren was right, though. He could just… not. He could put all of it down and let whatever was happening with the Church be the Church’s problem. With a heavy sigh, however, he knew that was never going to happen. For a time, they might pretend not to think about it, but it would never last. Neither of them were wired for it. 

Besides, after fifteen years of lying to him about his father, Icarus would enjoy being the excommunicated priest who tossed a wrench in the Church’s spokes. He shook his head, “No, Mare. I don’t think we can.”

Her shoulders fell in a picture of relief and she nodded, “Agreed. So. Where do we want to tug first?”

“We can tick the Inquisitor off the list. He’s dead, we’ve done what we can, if they replace him with another then so be it. What we can do,” he got to his feet and stared at the pair of file boxes on his sideboard, “is go back through it all and see if we can parse out anything about a gaol.”

They uncapped the boxes and began pouring over the same files they had poured over for days. Icarus sifted through others in their hall closet, Maren pulled in a few from her office, and they sent Edith to the bookseller for anything she could find about the history of faerie gaols. Banned as he was from every Church establishment, Icarus wasn’t keen to try his luck with the college quite yet. 

***

The clouds took on the dull steel of late afternoon by the time Icarus slumped back against the wall and threw a handful of papers across the carpet, “This is useless and stupid.”

“Agreed,” Maren set down a file and leaned back on her hands, “but what else is there? Where else is there to look?”

He thought for a long moment and stared intently at the various case details. It was connected, he could feel it singing in his bones—Eilonwy, the abhartach, the Inquisitor, Daedalus—but he couldn’t see how. Too many pieces were still missing and the only way he would find them was to figure out where this gaol housing his not-dead father was. His father who had adopted an obsession with pulling apart every thread that made up the fae realm, the Veil, all of it in the valiant quest to save humanity from the Rot-inducing netherism and ensure the Pale God became the only god. 

He hated what he was about to suggest. It had been a decade and a half since he’d set foot there, but it was paid in full and he had his own flat long before Daedalus had disappeared. There was never a need to go back unless he wanted to. 

He had never wanted to.

He draped his arm over a bent knee and flexed his hand, tensing into a fist once and again. The bones still carried the residual cold of the Inquisitor’s grip, “There’s his house.”

Maren paused and lifted her head. He never told her he’d kept the place, taken the deed in his name when the estate lawyer dispensed the last will and testament of his father. He wouldn’t meet her face and stared at the blank cover of a haphazard folder. 

“I can go alone,” she offered too gently for his liking. “You don’t need to go back there.”

He shook his head and ran a hand through his unkempt hair with a note to get it trimmed before it tangled beyond repair, “No, I think I do. We’ll go in the morning and see what we find. It’s the only place left.”

He saw her nod in the corner of his eye and bring herself to her feet. She bent backwards in a brutal stretch, “Meet here in the morning after breakfast, then we’ll get on with it.”

She didn’t wait for his answer and turned to leave, he caught the sound of her office door clicking shut and made himself rise. Joints protesting, he ran through a series of stretches to pop everything back to life before dimming the desklamp and heading through reception.

Edith raised her head and smiled, “Off for the evening then?”

“Going for a walk to clear my head. Head home anytime you like,” he nodded his farewell, too distracted to catch whatever she murmured when he descended the steps. 

He shrugged on his heavy coat and headed out into the bitter cold of an evening coming on too soon. Icarus walked without purpose, meandering the city and taking none of it in. He’d hoped he would think and reason and logic through some of it, but pain and hangover still stuffed his head like cotton. A persistent buzzing at the back of his mind droned over any half-formed thoughts and

Dearest Inner Circle and Producer level subscribers, did you know that one of the perks of your subscription is that you can suggest titles for the You Can Sit with Us Book Club?!?

It's true!

I've picked the first few month's titles myself as membership has been building, but it's time to reach out and see what YOU want to read.

The book club will be alternating between contemporary romance and fantasy/fantasy romance. We'll be reading a fantasy title in December and contemporary romance in January.

Leave your suggestions in the comments of this post!

Thanks for your support as a paid subscriber!

We are well and truly into fall, friends. This month's reading was, unfortunately, mostly mid with a couple of all time greats sprinkled in. My favorites are starred. Books marked with a * were gifted to me, and books marked with a ^ I was paid to read.

What You Learn Learning Music^

The True Confessions Of First Lady Freeman by Deesha Philyaw*

Broken Healer by David M. Berry^

More Like Enemigas by Stephanie Hope*

⭐ Coffeeshop In An Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee*

⭐ The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook by Matt Dinniman (reread)

One Of His by Alina Bellchambers^

If I Could Go Back by Briana Johnson*

⭐ Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Wisdom On The Rocks by Michael Penn^

She's A Doll by Barbara Truelove*

The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism And The War On Democracy by Gil Durán*

⭐ Long Division by Kiese Laymon

A Few Rules For Predicting The Future: An Essay by Octavia E. Butler

⭐ Redshirts: A Novel With Three Codas by John Scalzi

Cold In Mississippi: A Memoir Of The Human Soul In Medicine by Dwaine Rieves^

Now, what's on deck for October? Truthfully, a lot of carryovers I didn't get to in September (summaries via The Storygraph):

Punished by Ann-Helén Laestadius* - A harrowing story inspired by true events of five Indigenous children forced to attend a government-run boarding school in 1950s Sweden, revealing the emotional scars they carry thirty years later.

One Word, Six Letters by Adib Khorram* - Two teen boys grapple with identity and accountability and set off a ripple effect within their community after a school assembly is disrupted by a shouted slur.

The Four Wives And Five Deaths Of Richard Milford by Nafissa Thompson-Spires* - A sly, spry, literary debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself.

There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm* - Humanity is under assault by malevolent "antimemes"—ideas that attack memory, identity, and the fabric of reality itself—in this wickedly brainbending tale of science-fiction horror, an entirely reimagined and expanded version of the beloved online novel.

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford* - In this heart-wrenching and unique spin on the zombie mythos, a brilliant scientist desperately searches for a cure after a devastating epidemic while also hiding a monumental secret—her undead husband.

Now, you know I can't help myself and am compelled to build impossible TBRs. So why don't we add two more to that stack?

Honey by Imani Thompson* - A dark, provocative, adrenaline-rush of a novel about a graduate student who murders bad men and justifies it in the name of feminism, by a bold new voice in fiction.

Someone You Can Build A Nest In by John Wiswell - Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by impolite monster hunters, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals. Shesheshen’s nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human. Just as Shesheshen’s about to confess her identity, Homily reveals something else: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

I'm taking several current reads into October with me: Lost Boi by Sassafras Lowrey (October's Spicy Book Club pick), Westward Women by Alice Martin*, City of Others by Jared Poon*, and The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman (reread).

To be perfectlyyyy honest though, The Disappearers by Marlon James is calling to me, so a lot of this might get swept aside for that brick of a novel. Who knows? Not me! Stay tuned to find out!

I can't believe I'm saying this but tomorrow bookstore ordering opens for 2027 Indie Bookstore Day exclusive and free items.

I can't do preorders for the items but I can at least gauge interest in certain items.

Please email me: info@deathbytbrbooks.com ASAP and I'll email you the catalog.

They always do this right before the holiday season when sales are low and only sent it to me a few days ago. <3

You win some you lose some. I found this hilarious. I've tried with baking powder and coffee creamer and neither have worked. Enjoy the fails. 😭

https://youtube.com/shorts/6rVx2nA9nWg?si=ub1pIC1Gicn4QUUu