Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! And audiobooks. Don’t forget audiobooks!
In other words, if you can read it or if it can be read to you – no matter how you got it – it belongs in Stacking the Shelves.
The Stacking the Shelves meme was originally hosted at Team Tynga’s Reviews. It is currently hosted by Reading Reality.
Happy Saturday! I hope that you are all doing well and have recovered from the holidays. Not a lot of books added to my stack this week. Just two library books and two ARCs, although one ARC is an audiobook. But these are books I am excited to read.
Library books I have added to my bedside stack
I just finished the first book in this series, When Christmas Comes, and really enjoyed it. So I had to pick up the second one on my weekly visit to the library. The main character is an ex-spy, who is now an english professor. But he spends some of his time helping people solve crimes. The author’s style is a bit hard to follow at times, at least in the first book, but the overall story is great. A Strange Habit of Mind, is actually what he calls his ability to see what others miss and being able to solve the puzzles. In this book he helps to solve a case involving an old student who has supposedly committed suicide.
The Hearth Witch’s Guide to Magic and Murder was just sitting on the Ready Reads shelf in the library when I arrived yesterday, and it begged me to take it home. I almost didn’t, but then I took a look at the first page and was hooked. It is a cozy, mystery fantasy, and I love that there are footnotes! Most people don’t like footnotes in their fiction books, but I love them. And it has recipes in the back as well, and they look delicious. Hoping to dive into this one soon.
I think this is going to be a series, but it doesn’t look like there is a date for it yet.
ARCs I’ve added to my Netgalley account
A Gift Before Dying by Malcolm Kempt
After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Corporal Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights. With his family having severed all ties, Cole waits out the result of a civil lawsuit alone—the wrong verdict could end what’s left of his flailing career.
His bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. Her death dredges up demons he thought he’d buried along with the scars of a fractured marriage and the aching divide between him and his estranged daughter.
As Cole’s life unravels—and with it, the fragile thread of his investigation, he turns to Pitseolala’s younger brother, Maliktu, a fellow outsider. It’s then that Cole uncovers what binds them—a singular mission to find her killer.
Against fierce backlash, Cole’s overriding desire to redeem just one aspect of his otherwise failed life becomes an obsession—and he’s willing to break every rule in his unyielding pursuit of justice and the smallest shred of redemption.
Sounds like a really great book. I found it while looking for books to add to my challenges for next year. I needed one set in the Arctic Circle, so perfect. This one comes out January 20th.
Audiobooks
After the Fall by Edward Ashton
Would humans really make great pets?
Humans must be silent. Humans must be obedient. Humans must be good.
All his life, John has tried to live by those rules. Most days, it’s not too difficult. A hundred and twenty years after The Fall, and a hundred years after the grays swept in to pick the last dregs of humanity out of the wreckage of a ruined world, John has found himself bonded to Martok Barden nee Black Hand, one of the “good” grays. Sure, Martok is broke, homeless, and borderline manic, but he’s always treated John like an actual person, and sometimes like a friend. It’s a better deal than most humans get.
But when Martok puts John’s bond up as collateral against an abandoned house in the woods that he hopes to turn into a wilderness retreat for wealthy grays, John learns that there are limits to Martok’s friendship. Soon he finds himself caught between an underworld boss who thinks Martok is something that he very much is not, a girl who was raised by feral humans and has nothing but contempt for pets like John, and Martok himself, whose delusions of grandeur seem to be finally catching up with him.
Also, not for nothing, something in the woods has been killing people.
John has sixty days before Martok’s loan comes due to unravel the mystery of how humans wound up holding the wrong end of the domestication stick and find a way to turn Martok’s half-baked plans into profit enough to buy back his life, all while avoiding getting butchered by feral humans or having his head crushed by an angry gray. Easy peasy, right?
Edward Ashton is a must read author for me. I have loved all of his books. I just discovered this one, again while looking for books for my challenges. This one doesn’t come out till February 24th, but I will be picking it up right after I finish my current audiobook.
That is it for this week’s Stacking the Shelves. I am looking forward to reading all of these soon. Until next time….
Confessions of a Serial Reader 
I have The Heart Witch Guide waiting for me but I didn’t know it has footnotes!! I love them in fiction 😍
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