The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration (the latter of which are mainly unsolicited books from publishers). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, […]

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. A Beginning at the End, Mike Chen’s second novel after his Goodreads Science Fiction Choice Award–nominated debut Here and Now and Then, is a post-apocalyptic tale about found family and starting over after the world didn’t exactly end, but rather paused and changed. It’s mainly set in San Francisco in 2025, six years after a worldwide pandemic killed approximately five billion people. Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD) has become common, and nearly everyone lost […]

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration (most of which are unsolicited books from publishers). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on […]

This looks like another amazing year of speculative fiction! As usual, this is by no means a comprehensive list of books coming out this year, but it is a comprehensive list of 2020 releases I know about that sound most compelling to me personally—in some cases, these are new installments in series I love or books by authors whose work I’ve enjoyed, but there are also some books by new-to-me authors that sounded intriguing too. My personal taste tends to […]

Happy New Year! In addition to being the start of a new year, today is the day this blog is officially a teenager: Fantasy Cafe turns 13 years old today! I can hardly believe I’ve been blogging that long. Now that I’ve read everything I will ever read in 2019, it’s time for the favorite books of 2019 list. My main goal for the year was to embrace what I love and ruthlessly cull books that aren’t drawing me in. […]