This week’s Fireside Stack is as eclectic as I am. So let’s get into it.
📚 Brigands & Breadknives — Travis Baldree
Status: Want to Read
Return to the cozy fantasy world of the #1 New York Timesbestselling Legends & Lattes series with a new adventure featuring fan-favorite, foul-mouthed bookseller Fern
Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop. What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!
If only things were so simple…
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint.
A drunken and desperate night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an outlaw goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover.
As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty on the goblin’s head, Fern might find the courage to step off the beaten path in order to find her true self.
📚 For Ever More — Sue Lynn Tan
Status: Want to Read
After the explosive events of Never Ever After, Yining flees the Iron Mountains with her unlikely allies, seeking the truth about her newfound powers amid the secrets surrounding her ancestral home. But with a traitorous queen ruling the Three Kingdoms from a stolen throne, nowhere is truly safe, and Yining must decide whom to trust to keep her family—and her heart—from harm.
📚 The Innkeeper’s Intrigue — Deb Marlowe
Status: Want to Read
A Regency set cozy mystery series featuring an intrepid heroine, a charming Cotswold village, a host of quirky characters, a handsome but reserved carpenter, an attractive but suspicious constable, and a baby goat or two!
Miss Lisette Birtwhistle is recovering from all the turmoil of the tragic murder of her former betrothed. Tired of loss, still hoping to find community and fellowship, she is looking forward to settling into village life in Lockstone Hollow. She’s focused now on continuing her village improvement plans. A new public garden, as well as a contest to win the chance to design the plantings, is the latest scheme she and her friends have set into motion.
Until a body is found left in the newly dug flower beds.
Lisette is not acquainted with this new victim, but Mr. Maxwell Sowerby, the local constable, is. In need of an unbiased observer to vouch for the impartiality of his enquiries, he asks Lisette for help. He needs someone who will refuse to pander or defer. Who better to keep him in line than the woman he so recently-and wrongly-accused of murder?
In the end, Lisette agrees. With the constable at her side and the villagers of Lockstone Hollow eager to lend a hand, she dives into the world of a man who wears many faces. The suspects are numerous, but the uncovered secrets are even more plentiful-and Lisette must uncover the killer before he can harm someone who has grown dear to her.
Welcome back to Lockstone Hollow, where you will find cozy village vibes, strong female friendships, two dashing suitors, adorable baby goats--and a hint of murder.
📚 The Heiress of Northanger Abbey — Nancy Bilyeau
Status: Want to Read
Steeped in the atmospheric charm of classic historical fiction, The Heiress of Northanger Abbey weaves a captivating Jane Austen sequel that breathes new life into Catherine Morland’s world.
The story…
Gloucestershire, 1820: Catherine receives a letter that resurrects her darkest fears. Her daughter Phoebe has fallen under the influence of the unscrupulous Thorpe family—the very figures who once nearly destroyed Catherine’s happiness.
Determined to protect her child from dangerous fortune hunters, Catherine follows Phoebe to an isolated manor on Dartmoor. There, she finds a landscape of reckless passions, family secrets, and a dangerously charming aristocratic neighbor. It all feels eerily like the plot of the latest Gothic sensation, The Vampyre—but is Catherine once again letting her imagination run wild?
For Austen fans who adore a high-spirited Regency tale, savor a hint of the Gothic—and long to be transported to the mist-shrouded moors.
📚 The Book Club for Troublesome Women — Marie Bostwick
Status: Want to Read
By 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan is living the American woman’s dream. She has a husband, three children, a station wagon, and a home in Concordia–one of Northern Virginia’s most exclusive and picturesque suburbs. She has a standing invitation to the neighborhood coffee klatch, and now, thanks to her husband, a new subscription to A Woman’s Place–a magazine that tells housewives like Margaret exactly who to be and what to buy. On paper, she has it all. So why doesn’t that feel like enough?
Margaret is thrown for a loop when she first meets Charlotte Gustafson, Concordia’s newest and most intriguing resident. As an excuse to be in the mysterious Charlotte’s orbit, Margaret concocts a book club get-together and invites two other neighborhood women–Bitsy and Viv–to the inaugural meeting. As the women share secrets, cocktails, and their honest reactions to the controversial bestseller The Feminine Mystique, they begin to discover that the American dream they’d been sold isn’t all roses and sunshine–and that their secret longing for more is something they share. Nicknaming themselves the Bettys, after Betty Friedan, these four friends have no idea their impromptu club and the books they read together will become the glue that helps them hold fast through tears, triumphs, angst, and arguments–and what will prove to be the most consequential and freeing year of their lives.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women** is a humorous, thought provoking, and nostalgic romp through one pivotal and tumultuous American year–as well as an ode to self-discovery, persistence, and the power of sisterhood.**
📚 Deathrider — Juliette Cross
Status: ARC Sweepstakes Entered
A witch gladiator known as the Viper Queen, a dragon warrior, dark magic, political intrigue, and ancient Rome.
I came across an ARC sweepstakes for Deathrider this week and entered, so this one is officially in the “waiting to see whether the book gods favor me” category.
She survived the fire…
He commands the flame…
Together they will burn down an empire where dragons rule.
She is known as the Viper Queen, the deadliest gladiator in the arena, a shadow of steel and blood who never loses. But Anya Bihari’s true power is the dark magic that manifested the night dragons burned her village and killed her family: the kiss of death.
When Anya learns of a bloodsinger in the fight against Rome’s emperor, the hope she’d long buried flares to life. Could it be that one of her sisters is still alive?
The Visigoth king, Alaric, is the key to finding this bloodsinger, and Anya will ally herself with the fierce warrior, even when she knows he has a secret agenda of his own. For Alaric is a dragon fueled by vengeance, determined to bring down the emperor, whatever the cost.
Trusting each other is the most dangerous thing they could do, but their attraction sparks an all consuming blaze. Then Caesar himself sets his sights on the Viper Queen, intending to make her his ultimate trophy. Now Anya and Alaric must risk everything as they race against time and a tyrant to ignite a conspiracy that will either liberate their world—or burn Rome to the ground.
Deathrider is an adult romantasy novel that contains dark themes, including slavery in Ancient Rome, which may be uncomfortable for some readers.
📚 Samantha: The Next Chapter — Fiona Davis
Status: Audiobook Maybe / Preorder Maybe
This may have been my biggest surprise of the week. Remember Samantha from American Girls??
It’s 1920, and 25-year-old Samantha Parkington is working hard to educate women in New York about suffrage and encourage them to vote in their first presidential election that fall. But when Samantha’s large inheritance, including her childhood Mount Bedford home, is stolen in a shocking scheme, she goes from socialite to shop girl overnight and experiences a very different side of New York City living in a boarding house. Searching for clues regarding the theft of her inheritance, she infiltrates the business of a notorious criminal in New York City. Determined as ever, Samantha will do whatever it takes to find answers and save her family’s legacy.
I have to be honest. All the books this week had pretty covers, and that’s what stopped me mid-scroll.
