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Woodworking
Emily St. James
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“Big-hearted and hilarious, an ode to authenticity and a must-read in our current times.”
—Shelby Van Pelt, New York Times bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures
One of Them’s 10 Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One of Book Riot’s and The Mary Sue’s 15 Most Anticipated Queer Books of 2025 • One of The Millions’, Kirkus’s, and The AV Club's Most Anticipated Books of 2025
An unforgettable and heartwarming book-club debut following a trans high school teacher from a small town in South Dakota who befriends the only other trans woman she knows: one of her students.
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.
Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.
As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community. And soon, both women—and those closest to them—are forced to ask: Who are we if we choose to hide ourselves? What happens once we disappear into the woodwork?
Detransition Baby meets Fleishman is in Trouble in this remarkable debut novel from an incisive contemporary voice. A story about the awkwardness of growing up and the greatest love story of all, that between us and our friends, Woodworking is a tonic for the moment and a celebration of womanhood in all its multifaceted joy.
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Posts about this title from Sapph-Lit
Sapph-Lit\
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Nina\
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• Dec 19 2025
All the books grotto & Sapph-Lit gave away at last week's annual Holiday Book Fair 📚☃️🎄
thank you to everyone who came to scoop up some queer literature and celebrate with us, to our fabulous and supportive publishers & @threads, to @kimnarby for her sneak peek reading of Saturn Returning, and to @thestandardhighline for hosting us! We hope you’re all REALLY 👀 enjoying the goodies we stuffed into your totes from our friends at @dameproducts @getmaude @flybyjing @cheerielane 🫶🏽 these book parties really fill our cup and we already can’t wait for the next! Follow us to stay tuned! ✨🌈
46 books
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Posts about this book from across Bindery
Laura Rae Says\
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Laura\
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• Apr 3
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This month we will be reading Woodworking by Emily St. James!\
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As a reminder, we will be meeting on April 29th at 8pm ET. Hope to see you there!
April Book Pick
1 book
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Laura Rae Says\
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Laura\
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• Mar 25
Join for free
Poll:\
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April Pick\
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Hi all! Great to chat tonight. Next month's meeting will be on April 29th at 8pm eastern. I threw Woodworking into the mix again for our pick, since it seemed like one that peaked some interest :)\
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Woodworking by Emily St.James\
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Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.\
\
Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.\
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As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.\
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Ten years ago, Lila Devlin was an A-list actress with a movie star husband and a beautiful baby girl, Josie. When Josie was kidnapped out of her home and never seen again, Lila’s previously pristine public image twisted into that of an Unfit Mother. Driven mad by the hungry press, incompetent cops, and relentless true crime–obsessed “fans,” she disappeared into anonymity. \
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Now, Lila Devlin returns to LA with a grand vision for a radical new skincare brand to reinvent herself and honor Josie’s legacy. She's prepared to move into the next chapter of her life with forgiveness in her heart, when an encounter with a parasitic blogger ends with him dead. Lila suddenly discovers forgiveness isn’t nearly as satisfying as a body hitting the floor.\
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With the help of her devoted publicist Sylvie, Lila begins a relentless, blood-soaked hunt through LA. Giving her skincare the edge it needs, they introduce a secret ingredient—revenge-sourced—from the bodies piling up. But as the company’s success skyrockets and Lila begins unraveling the truth behind her daughter’s kidnapping, her murderous side hustle threatens the life she’s painstakingly rebuilt.\
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Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Atlanta at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute mother as a child, and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, and culminate in a battle for her life.\
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Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell\
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One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served his time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.\
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Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.\
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Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down.
April Book
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Alex (Pucksandpaperbacks)\
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Alex (he/him/his)\
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• Mar 22
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Join for free or login](https://pucksandpaperbacks.binderybooks.com/item/LZAKsOb4KgcO3ZhY2Tr8/)
The Paperback Post | Week of 3/22/2026
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Alex (Pucksandpaperbacks)\
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• Mar 22
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The Paperback Post + | Week of 3/22/2025
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Alex (he/him/his)\
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• Mar 1
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Join for free or login](https://pucksandpaperbacks.binderybooks.com/item/TxPM5fHl7KeZUjn0Bwnf/)
March Content Plans and Hopefuls
5 books
Laura Rae Says\
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Laura\
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• Feb 27
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Poll:\
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March Book\
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I had such a great time talking about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store this week! Time to vote on the March pick 👏🏻 \
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As a reminder, we will be meeting 3/25 at 8pm eastern.\
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The Correspondent by Virginia Adams\
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Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.\
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Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.\
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Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.\
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These Heathens by Mia McKenzie\
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Where do you get an abortion in 1960 Georgia, especially if your small town’s midwife goes to the same church as your parents? For seventeen-year-old Doris Steele, the answer is Atlanta, where her favorite teacher, Mrs. Lucas, calls upon her brash, wealthy childhood best friend, Sylvia, for help. While waiting to hear from the doctor who has agreed to do the procedure, Doris spends the weekend scandalized by, but drawn to, the people who move in and out of Sylvia’s orbit: celebrities whom Doris has seen in the pages of Jet and Ebony, civil rights leaders such as Coretta Scott King and Diane Nash, women who dance close together, boys who flirt too hard and talk too much, atheists! And even more shocking? Mrs. Lucas seems right at home.\
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From the guests at a queer kickback to the student activists at a SNCC conference, Doris suddenly finds herself surrounded by so many people who seem to know exactly who or what they want. Doris knows she doesn’t want a baby, but what does she want? Will this trip help her find out?\
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Woodworking by Emily St.James\
\
Erica Skyberg is thirty-five years old, recently divorced—and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit.\
\
Abigail is seventeen, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty—and loneliness—that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations.\
\
As their unlikely friendship evolves under the increasing scrutiny of their community, both women—and those closest to them—will come to realize that sometimes there is nothing more radical than letting the world see who you really are.\
\
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Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer’s day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod. But beneath this superficial veneer, Ning is a woman of rigorous intellect and profound complexity. A woman enthralled by the intricacy and rhythms of her work, but also haunted by memories of paths not taken and opportunities lost. A woman navigating the complex power dynamics among her fellow Susans, whose greatest fears and desires lie just behind the gossip they exchange.\
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As the day’s work grinds on, the friction between Ning’s two identities—as anonymous manicurist and brilliant observer of her own circumstances—will gather electric and crackling force, and at last demand a reckoning with the way the world of privilege looks at a woman like Ning.\
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Spark of the Everflame by Penn Cole\
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In a mortal world colonized by the gods and ruled over by the Descended, their cruel offspring, Diem Bellator yearns to escape the insular life of her poor village.\
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Her mother’s sudden disappearance—and the discovery of a dangerous secret about her past—offer Diem an unexpected opportunity to enter the dark world of Descended royalty and unlock the web of mysteries her mother left behind.\
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With the dying King’s handsome, mysterious heir watching her every move, and a ruthless mortal alliance recruiting her to join the growing civil war, Diem will have to navigate the unwritten rules of love, power, and politics in order to save her family—and all of mortalkind.
March Book Club Voting
5 books
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Sapph-Lit\
\
Nina\
\
• Dec 19 2025
All the books grotto & Sapph-Lit gave away at last week's annual Holiday Book Fair 📚☃️🎄
46 books
2