This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. It is now being hosted by Budget Tales Book Blog. To participate, choose a random book from your GoodReads TBR and show it off. Which sounds easy enough until you have to decide how to choose that book! I think I will use a different way each week, like picking a color or number of pages. I will let you know each week how I chose the book and then something interesting about it, like how it ended up on the list or why I want to read it. Got it? Okay let’s get started.
I am very excited for this week’s pick even though I have to wait a long time for it. It is the second in a series, maybe duology, I just don’t know. I thought the first book when it came out in 2020 would be a stand alone, but I was hoping that there would be more books because the first one was such a good read, one of my favorites of 2020. You can read my review of the first book, The Left Handed Booksellers of London here.
The Sinister Booksellers of Bath by Garth Nix
Publication Date: March 21, 2023
Summary from Goodreads:
When Merlin vanishes, Susan will battle animated statues of heraldic beasts and use magical maps to rescue him on a hunt that leads to a serial killer who must be stopped before she kills again.
There is often trouble of a mythical sort in Bath. The booksellers who police the Old World keep a careful watch there, particularly on the entity who inhabits the ancient hot spring. Yet this time it is not from Sulis Minerva that trouble starts. It comes from the discovery of a sorcerous map, leading left-handed bookseller Merlin into great danger. A desperate rescue is attempted by his sister the right-handed bookseller Vivien and their friend, art student Susan Arkshaw, who is still struggling to deal with her own recently discovered magical heritage.
The map takes the trio to a place separated from this world, maintained by deadly sorcery performed by an ancient sovereign and guarded by monstrous living statues of Portland Stone. But this is only the beginning, as the booksellers investigate centuries of disappearances and deaths and try to unravel the secrets of the murderous Lady of Stone, a serial killer of awesome powers.
If they do not stop her, she will soon kill again. And this time, her target is not an ordinary mortal.
It has been so long since I read the first one, that I might need to read it again just to remember the characters and the world better before diving into this one. Because the first one felt like a stand alone, I’m not sure it will affect the plot of this one, but you never know.
Confessions of a Serial Reader 