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. 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 the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description. Book cover links are affiliate links to Bookshop, and I earn from qualifying purchases.
There are three books from last week and one from the week before, and I’m highlighting the two books my husband gave me for our anniversary last week. One of these is a book I have not covered here before, and the other is one that did not yet have a cover image when I highlighted it earlier this year.
You can read more about the two books I recently purchased here:
- A War of Swallowed Stars by Sangu Mandanna, one of my most anticipated books of the year
- The Best of World SF: Volume 1 edited by Lavie Tidhar, which was covered here with an excerpt from the editor’s introduction
There have been no new posts since the last one of these features, but there is a review scheduled for tomorrow morning!
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This fantasy romance novel, which was first published in 2017, was re-released earlier this year. The publisher’s website has an excerpt from The Beautiful Ones.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia mentioned that her books tend to cross different genres and have rather different styles on Goodreads. She wrote that The Beautiful Ones is “very much a novel of manners and a romance, much closer in tone to Gods of Jade and Shadow than some of my other work and very far from Mexican Gothic.”
I enjoyed both the creepiness of Mexican Gothic and the Mayan-inspired mythical expedition in Gods of Jade and Shadow, and I’m excited to read this one too!
From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a sweeping romance with a dash of magic.
They are the Beautiful Ones, Loisail’s most notable socialites, and this spring is Nina’s chance to join their ranks, courtesy of her well-connected cousin and his calculating wife. But the Grand Season has just begun, and already Nina’s debut has gone disastrously awry. She has always struggled to control her telekinesis—neighbors call her the Witch of Oldhouse—and the haphazard manifestations of her powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.
When entertainer Hector Auvray arrives to town, Nina is dazzled. A telekinetic like her, he has traveled the world performing his talents for admiring audiences. He sees Nina not as a witch, but ripe with potential to master her power under his tutelage. With Hector’s help, Nina’s talent blossoms, as does her love for him.
But great romances are for fairytales, and Hector is hiding a truth from Nina — and himself—that threatens to end their courtship before it truly begins.
The Beautiful Ones is a charming tale of love and betrayal, and the struggle between conformity and passion, set in a world where scandal is a razor-sharp weapon.
The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid
Ava Reid’s debut novel was just released last month. Tor.com has an excerpt from The Wolf and the Woodsman, and the publisher’s website has both text and audio samples.
For a list of content warnings, see the book’s page on the author’s website.
I’ve been excited about The Wolf and the Woodsman for a while and started reading it last night (and am indeed enjoying it so far!).
In the vein of Naomi Novik’s New York Times bestseller Spinning Silver and Katherine Arden’s national bestseller The Bear and the Nightingale, this unforgettable debut— inspired by Hungarian history and Jewish mythology—follows a young pagan woman with hidden powers and a one-eyed captain of the Woodsmen as they form an unlikely alliance to thwart a tyrant.
In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother.
As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.
