“I guess even merfolk shed tears of water when they cry.” Servaine Noxirel grew up hearing stories from her great-grandfather―tales of the grandeur their noble house once enjoyed and the madness and obsession that ran through the bloodline. But the strangest of them all was the story of his niece, a sickly young girl who…
Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama by Alexis Okeowo
“In Alabama, we exist at the border of blessing and disaster….” Alexis Okeowo grew up in Montgomery, Alabama—the former seat of the Confederacy—as the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. Here, she weaves her family’s story with her state’s, from Alabama’s forced removal of the Creek Nation, making room for enslaved West Africans, to present-day legislative battles…
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
“He discovered that if he said something often enough, no matter how untrue, people would believe it. Small lies were for the timid. The key to telling a big lie was to do it with conviction.” The Roaring Twenties–the Jazz Age–has been characterized as a time of Gatsby frivolity. But it was also the height…
She Made Herself a Monster by Anna Kovatcheva
“They’re an odd company all around the table, she realizes. Young, and old, and ageless. Women from far away, and girls who have never been anywhere. The others are skilled with herbs, with cooker, with birth and death. What does Anka offer but a problem?” In nineteenth-century Bulgaria, Yana rides from one desolate town to…
The Trident and the Pearl by Sarah K. L. Wilson
“Grief is its own vast sea, and none of us can cross it by the same path.” Queen Coralys rules the Kingdom of the Five Isles, but when disaster strikes, killing her husband and destroying half her nation, she pleads with the gods for salvation. And they do save her, turning back the terrible winds…
The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula
“Would you stop? I am trying to tell you that I love you.” Mary Anning wants to be a geomagician—a paleontologist who uses fossils to wield magic—but since the Geomagical Society of London refuses to admit women, she’s stuck selling her discoveries to tourists instead. When an ancient egg hatches in her hands, revealing a…
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
“The Trump years amazed a certain kind of white person; they had no reference for national vulgarity, for such broad corruption and venality, until it was too late. The least reflective of them say, “This is not America.” But some of them suspect that it is America, and there is great pain in understanding that,…
2026 Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag
My reading slump from last year has never really lifted. So I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do this tag, but I think I would feel weird because I’ve done it almost every year since I started. Anyways, here’s what is going on with me. Best Books I’ve Read: It’s been pretty slim…
Africa: A Biography of the Continent by John Reader
“Were it not for the importunities of Europe, Africa might have enlarged upon its indigenous talents and found an independent route to the present – one that was inspired by resolutions from within rather than examples from without. The moment passed, however, during the fifteenth century and cannot be retrieved. Since then the history of…
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire
“Doors are magical things. Always. It doesn’t matter whether they connect two familiar, well-known rooms or two entirely undiscovered spaces: to travel from one distinct location into another simply by passing through a portal, whether bound in wood or carved from stone, is a magical act.” After Nancy was cast out of the Halls of…
The Great Book Wyrm 