Tattooed Bibliophiles

Feed Bookshelf Membership

How it Works Bookshop

Publishing Team Contact

Log in or Sign up

Recent Posts

all

276

exclusive

19

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jul 2

\ \ Since this month started on a Wednesday, it's been a whole week without new releases for July! But a lot of books I've really been looking forward to come out this month, and I've gotten my grubby little golem hands on a few ARCs, so I can tell you that some of them lived up to the hype!\ \ The Delivery: A Novella by Gregg Hurwitz (Thomas & Mercer- Amazon's Mystery Imprint, July 1) - An AI butler is designed to anticipate what a family wants. But when inexplicable tragedies strike in the neighborhood, the family realizes that their AI companion is executing their darkest desires, and they must stop him.\ \ The Bird Tribe: The Dreambird Chronicles, Book 3 (Tor, July 7) - I'll tell you about the first book to avoid spoilers! In this post apocalyptic Unites States, a new slave trade is started in the ashes. Ji-ji was bred and raised under this subjugation and must win an annual competition in which the first prize is freedom.\ \ Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle (Tor Nightfire, July 7) - Chuck Tingle always rocks my socks off, and I'm not even a gruesome horror girlie, his writing is just GRIPPING. In his latest book, a social media influencer by day and grave robber at night meets her match when her Elton John-like idol dies and she is hired to steal his body...only he's not all the way dead, and he has a mission, and he is forcing her to help him complete it. If you were a Goosebumps kid, I promise you that you're a Chuck Tingle adult. And if you've already read anything by Chuck? Well, you won't be dissapointed.\ \ Formula Zero by Meredith Lanzen (Penguin Random House, July 7) - A formula one romcom but make it in space, with childhood friends turned competitors, back in each others orbits.\ \ The Memory Bookshop by Song Yu-jeong, Translated by Shanna Tan (Harper Collins, July 7) I will never list an author without their translator after reading Babel! That shit is important! If you're grieving, you might come across the Memory Bookshop, or at least, it might find you. After losing her mother, Jiwon is offered the chance to travel back in time 3 chapters of her life if she gives up time in her future. Jiwon must decide if the past can be rewritten or if the magic is in the life she has yet to live.\ \ Icefall: The Rise of Nine by Michael Newman and Jon Land (Permuted Press - Indie, July 14) - A team of superbeings placed on Earth a million years ago by intergalactic colonizers that seeded our planet to create human life are awakened from their long slumber to protect Earth from a predatory alien threat. Sounds very Transformers meets superhero.\ \ Misery's Wife by Joan Tierney (Macmillan, July 14) - A queer cli-fi fantasy retelling about a young trans woman who must save her closest sister from the King of Misery. On the way she receives help from her other sisters, who have married the King of the Air and the King of the Sea. And perhaps on the way she may find a love of her own.\ \ Not With a Bang by Temi Oh (Simon & Schuester, July 14) - A doomsday tale of a family who must fight their way back together amidst an extinction level event. But this isn't a surface level tale. This family is already in crisis as the father's doomsday prepping causes his daughters mental health disasters and the mother's health declines.\ \ Null Entity, The Volatile Memory Duology Book 2 by Seth Haddon (Tordotcom, July 21) - I read the Volatile Memory novella last year and it was so unique. The premise is that an AI lives in masks that scavengers need to survive. But a mask one finds has the last scavenger's personality still in it, which is not supposed to be possible, but this mask is special. She forms a relationship with the person in the mask and must escape from everyone else who wants the mask. I have this sequel sitting in my TBR for up next.\ \ Affairs of State by Calvin James (Titan Books, July 28) - The MC is named Levar Boylan so I'm already in because I know Calvin James is as obsessed with Levar Burton as me. High stakes cut throat politics in the stars. Levar, a junior supply officer is pulled to the front lines to serve a diplomat during peace talks, but the Emperor they are negotiating with is his ex, and of course, there are still sparks.\ \ Biological War by Annie Jacobsen (Dutton, July 28) - A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. This book isn't really fiction though, it's an examination of how the government, mediacl world, and military would react to this very possible scenario.\ \ Daggermouth by HM Wolfe (Simon & Schuester, July 28) - Set in a corrupt surveillance state ruled by the masked elite, this dystopian romance features a presidential heir entagled in secrets that could topple the regime and a mercenary hired to kill him. I'm holding the ARC to this book and it's next up after I finish Null Entity and Dreamland, Olivie Blake's new genre bending horror that comes out in August.\ \ The Red Woman on Mars by Claire Barner (Diversion Books, indie, July 28) - I'm going to be an asshole here and shit talk another book, Pride & Prejudice in Space, which I hated, in order to talk about how much I'm looking forward to a REAL retelling of Jane Austen's classic. P&P in Space should have been everything I wanted in a book, my favorite classic retold in my favorite genre. But the author only changed the setting and nothing else in the story. She never addressed why women were still essentially chattel property in the space traveling era. She literally just changed everything about locations and used all the same original wording. THIS book is about a climate refugee contracted as a birth mother to genetically modified Mars children. It's almost impossible to get an ARC from an indie publisher but you can bet your sweet ass I'm about to try!\ \ Star Wars: Legacy by Madeline Roux (Penguin Random House, July 28) - Set between Episodes VIII and IX, Rey and Leia embark on a quest to repair Rey’s lightsaber and rekindle the legacy of the Jedi.\ \ See you next month. Or, hear me out, subscribe and hear from me more often if you actually made it to the bottom of this, because presumably that means you like reading...whatever this is.\ \ — Zee\ \

7/7/26 New Sci-fi Titles This Month

14 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jul 1

Officially, the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction is an annual $25,000 cash prize given to a writer for a single work of imaginative fiction. This award is intended to recognize those writers Ursula spoke of in her 2014 National Book Awards speech—realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now.\ \ Practically, it's a TBR for those of us who read sci-fi with purpose, with intent, with a critical reading eye looking for "the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope." (-a quote from Ursula herself)\ \ So without further ado, here's the shortlist for this year.\ \ Audition by Pip Adam (Coffee House Press, June 10, 2025)\ \ Three rom-com quoting MCs travel from incarceration to exile to a place beyond punishment. Audition explores carceral politics and the psychology of violence, and what healing from the harm of those systems might require in a world where embodiment and identity have lost all familiar forms.\ \ Sunward by William Alexander (Saga Press. Sept 16, 2025)\ \ What if robots needed to be raised? Weaving comedy with a vision of parental care that encompasses beings built as well as born, Alexander considers caretaking and community alongside power and resistance. In his future, another way of living is possible—though getting to it is never easy.\ \ Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell(Neon Hemlock, Oct 14, 2025)\ \ Caldwell's speculative and fantastical stories are grounded in the realities, dreams, struggles, and relationships that animate queer lives. Each tale takes seriously the interconnections of class, race, geography, gender, and sexuality—while making striking imaginative leaps into history, the present, and the future.\ \ Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur (Algonquin, Sept 4, 2025)\ \ This novel in ghost stories, with its haunted shoes and sheep and cats, gently suggests the degree to which humanity’s efforts to control the world are themselves figments and fantasies. Chung’s deep understanding of haunting—and of hierarchies, class, and gender—reminds us that we are a society haunted by its own cruelty, and, crucially, that we have other options.\ \ The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Tor Books, Oct 14, 2025)\ \ This story of revolution takes place in a city riddled with strange vermin, their exterminators, and a wealthy ruling class who are all but inescapable. Ennes's novel explores resistance, repression, cycles of violence, and the way art and culture are the materials of social change—but can also be key to the consolidation of power.\ \ Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (Tor Books, April 15, 2025)\ \ Notes from a Regicide is a multilayered, intimate history of two generations of trans characters in the distant (but strangely familiar) future. As Griffon Keming tries to understand his deceased and beloved second parents, Fellman’s narrative twines around art, revolution, disability, love, history, and the specific, often physical, cost of every kind of change.\ \ Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (DAW Books, Sept 9, 2023)\ \ Using myth, fictional scholarship, alchemy, folktales, and animism, Mehta creates a quantum form of storytelling that follows the relationship between two sets of sisters, generations and worlds apart. Mad Sisters of Esi builds upon itself, layer by rich narrative layer, weaving together an all-encompassing saga of grief, love, legacy, and creation.\ \ One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed (Psychopomp, Feb 11, 2025)\ \ In four loosely connected tales, Mohamed explores the way people—soldiers and civilians, bureaucrats and gallows-builders—live during wartime, occupation, and colonization. In one story, ghostly soldiers fight the destruction of their traditions; in another, a young woman finds resistance in the practice of her craft. \ \ Slow Gods by Claire North (Orbit, Nov 18, 2025)\ \ Admittedly the only one I've even heard of and read, this galaxy-spanning space opera explores the fraught, connected roles of power and love as a series of worlds face destruction. Through the perspective of Maw, who was once human but is now something else, capitalism, collective choice, fascism, gender, freedom, the necessity of art collide with the question of how we decide what—and who—matters.

Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction Shortlist 2026

9 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jun 5

\ \ OK listen, I can't keep up with this every week Tuesday releases shit, I missed all of May and I just realized it. I'm doing my best dahling, this is a hobby and nobody pays book influencers. And I don’t think you understand how long it takes to format these damn things with all the book pics, because I did it and copied it in here and lost it all, and that your attention span is already almost gone without a picture to distract your brain. I'm working on a really interesting article about the death of booktok, and I don’t want to suck more time away from that. You should watch out for it. (Hint hint)\ \ So I'm going to do a big slog into every month instead, tell you what's coming, give you a chance to get those preorders in and SUPPORT THOSE AUTHORS! So what's coming out this month? Well NOT Alecto the Ninth, my lamentatious lyctoral league.\ \ By genre:\ \ SPACE OPERA\ \ \ \ Recursion: Germinal Book 2 by Aric McBay (AK Press, indie) - June 9 – A pacifist society on a tiny green planet is invaded by Colonizers. I’ve had book 1 sitting on my shelf, because I cannot pass up fiction by AK Press, and I definitely need to pick up book 1 this week. It would be greeeeeeat if I could put down my phone and read a book. It’s summer and the kids need wifi free time too, so I guess I’ll be figuring out how to set up parental controls on the router this week, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay\ \ \ \ The Forgetting Navigations by Marlee Jane Ward (Interstellar Flight Press, indie) - June 9 – Our main character has eMoTiOnAl dAmAgE from being abandoned in a lifepod in space. A freight hauler rescues her and they bond over tea. Then the past comes a knocking, as it does in stories. This may be more of a litfic in space thing, but it’s honestly hard to tell without reading. I feel like Space Opera implies more action, but subgenres are not a science, so you will have to judge a book by it’s description.\ \ \ \ The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press) - June 2 – In a bioship capable of reacting to a crew’s every need, a nine year old cultist with a brain enhancement investigates a planet infected with a plague. The crew also includes an assassin, an engineer who has been jigsawwed together with surgeries, an addict medic, and a “nonmodded” captain who doesn’t like the nine year old, this has all the makings of a found family space opera.\ \ POST-APOCALYPTIC\ \ \ \ Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth (Graywolf, and Indie Press) - June 9 – Kind of a romance between a woman raised in a pod in the ocean and a woman who may or may not be a robot. But also earth is now a charcoal briquette and everyone has gone to Mars except a handful of holdouts trying to construct a molecular collection of Earth stuff for people to eventually repopulate. And what the hell is a soul globule? You’ll have to read Earth 7 to find out.\ \ \ \ The Withers by Lee Upton (Regal House Publishing) - June 23 – I mean kinda dystopian but also kind of a thriller, this is a post epidemic book where scars from the disease are called withers. A woman is living with the surgeon who saved her and his preggo wife, in a world where organ traffickers roam the streets. They have to fight to protect the woman and her fetus, and they’re calling this a “Grimm’s fairytale” like story.\ \ SPECULATIVE / LITERARY SCI-FI\ \ \ \ Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Imagine you immigrate to a new country. But the rule is, you get cloned, and only the clone gets to go and you have to stay. You’re cut in two, and you can keep in touch with your other self or not. The MC of this book does not, until she’s called back to Korea for a funeral. She doesn’t know that her original self plans to switch places with her. Obviously, this is a deep dive into the psychological effects of immigration. Do you love the Doppelgängers trope?\ \ \ \ Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – Genetically engineered animals do the work while humans relax in the sun. A racoon is hired to track down a very important mouse. Why is the mouse important? It has something everyone wants. A familiar story if told about humans, but I’m interested to see it told from animals perspective. I’ve never read an Adrian Tchaikovsky book, any of my scifi besties want to give me some opinions on whether I should?\ \ \ \ Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes (Bindery/Mareas Books, indie) - June 9 – In a fantasy retelling of a 1920’s era all-Black free town, women known as “carriers” pull traumatic memories from men so that the town is populated with men free of their pain, while the remnants of the past haunt the women. In a world where we expect Black Women to save us all, this book is an exploration of what it’s like to live with that expectation.\ \ \ \ Voyagers by Meg Charlton (HarperCollins) - June 16 – a signal arrives from the edge of the solar system in a first contact story. While everyone on earth loses their collective shit, Alex’s old wounds are opened, because two decades ago, she and her friend Ana were abducted at age six. After which followed a media frenzy no child should endure, especially not after some trauma like that. Ana went on to be an advocate for the abducted while Alex tried to move on and forget. But now they are drawn back together in a story about friendship, family, and truth. \ \ \ \ A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus, Book 3 in the Astra Black series (Macmillan/Tor) - June 30 – This series follows a young political leader, a woman in an elite military unit, and a captain of a starship, who are all part of the Muungano empire, a coalition of city states that stretches from Old Earth to Titan, in their quest to form an empire free of endless wars and oppression. This Afrofuturist spec fic series deserves a lot more press than it gets. Come on Tor, do better in your promotion!!!\ \ \ \ The Moon Papers by Emmalea Russo (Arcade Publishing, Skyhorse) - June 30 – A controversial arts collective is going to launch a second moon from the Mojave Desert into Earth’s atmosphere in a project they are calling Moon 2. I am deeply concerned, but the book is coined as raucous, psychedelic, and humorous, which I am translating as publisher speak for, they think it’s funny as shit. But the description isn’t, so someone isn’t doing marketing properly. IDK, I need a preview to see if it’s any good.\ \ \ \ The Young Die Old by Nguyễn Bình Phương with Khải Q. Nguyễn (translator) (Major Books, indie) - June 30 – This may be more of a fantasy, but in my searches for sci-fi it keeps popping up so the author must have filed it this way somewhere. Two feuding families fight for control of a buried treasure, but there reality blurs with hallucination, as spirits, doppelgängers, and collective guilt haunt the living. A society grapples with the aftershocks of war, repression, and silence, with a generation of children who age prematurely under the weight of unspoken histories. You won't find this one on Amazon, and hells yeah, fuck Bezos! You can find it here.\ \ TIME TRAVEL\ \ \ \ The Traveler by Joseph Eckert (Macmillan/Tor) - June 2 – at 7:51am, Scott Treder slips forward through time 24 hours. And every day, he slips again, losing double the amount of time each time slip. And while everyone ages normally, he doesn’t. His son ages beyond him. Years pass by in his marriage. It’s giving Click with Adam Sandler. I wonder how different it will be. Yall, this cover sucks. Nobody is going to buy this book based on this cover, what are you doing Tor???\ \ \ \ Retro by Jessica M. Goldstein (Penguin Random House/Ballantine) - June 23 – An out of work actress takes a job as a time travel tour guide at a company called Retro, taking wealthy tourists on vacations to historical hot spots. She loves it, thrilling in the romance of an office crush and a 1937 private eye pursuing her. But slowly she notices some strange things happening to her memory and her relationships outside of Retro, and escaping into the past was never really an escape at all. I am wildly interested to see if this speaks to the escapism we justify with Netflix and doom scrolling and romance reading in the present.\ \ ROMANCE\ \ \ \ Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorne (Macmillan/Bramble) - June 30 – from the author of A Pirate’s Life for Tea comes this cozy sci-fi romance about a starship captain  who purchases a ship covered in Moss with an organic computer inside with a snarky attitude who loathes it’s builder because the immortal alien abandoned it. NGL, snarky AI’s in ships used to be my jam, but the way I’ve been feeling about real AI may change my enjoyment of them.\ \ \ \ Plastic, Prism, Void by Violet Allen (LittlePuss Press, indie) – May 19 (shut your mouth, I missed this one and it deserves attention. It's pride month and this cover deserves praise alone, and that's before I've touched the book! Sue me. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.) Trans enemies to lovers in which a magical girl-gone-bad and a renegade mech pilot must find a way to stay on a date forever...even if it means destroying the world.\ \ THRILLER\ \ \ \ The Other by Annie Neugebauer (Shortwave Publishing, indie) - June 9 – this is a Book 2 Outsiders Sequence, which is a novella series. I’ve never read a novella series but I think I could get into that! Ten people head out on a backpacking trip, but the first night eleven set up camp. Everyone remembers everyone else. Who is the extra? That’s the premise of the first book. This one is about a couple on an outdoor retreat who meet their doppelgangers.\ \ \ \ Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer (Macmillan/Tordotcom) - June 2 – An out of work OBGYN who has gotten publicly crucified for offering abortion care is kidnapped by a cult to help birth their babies. And she gets kidnapped on page friggin 10. If you’ve been in a slump this one’s for you, I read it in a single sitting, and I have 3 kids at home for the summer while I’m trying to run a business. I generally don’t DO that. Crazy, seat of your pants, worth a read.\ \ \ \ Dead but Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay (HarperCollins/Morrow) - June 2 – So this semi professional gamer gets a nepotism job piloting a man in a vegetative state across the country, Weekend at Bernie’s style. He has an AI implant in his head and she can control his body using a cell phone. But he’s not dead. He’s living this grotesque hellscape where he doesn’t remember who he is or why there’s a rabbit tattoo on his arm. Their stories intertwine and they end up fugitives. Noooo, I didn’t give the plot twist away – it was right there in the book description!\ \ ANTHOLOGY\ \ \ \ Ring Shout on Saturn by Sheree Renée Thomas (Third Man Books, indie) - June 9 – Afrofuturist short stories that range from a prophet building a starship (very Noah’s Arc) to alien sisters navigating human complexities. And that cover? That’s an AMAZING cover and I’m here for it. This is actually book2 of the three book The Root and Sky series, but they're all short stories so there's no reason you can't go ahead and preorder this one, read it, then get the rest!\ \ \ \ And an honorable mention to Lovecraft: Selected Stories, one of the Chiltern Classics being released on June 9. If you want to know more about my obsession with this set, read this. Or don't. Sometimes I'm convinced I'm living in a silo and nobody is reading any of this anyway. Either way, it's good practice writing, no?\ \ See you next week. Because I'm still writing blogs, they just won't all be book lists of upcoming stuff. I need creative time as well as research time to feed my soul AND brain! (But not AI. Never that.)\ \ — Zee\ \

6/3/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Month

19 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jun 5

​\ \ \ \ ​Updated June 5, 2026\ \ Chiltern releases approximately 8 of these at a time once or twice per year - you can even buy journals to match. They are very sturdy and hold up well to reading and have gilted gold and silver edges. This is the perfect collection for someone who wants a readable set of classics. Here you go my doves:\ \ ​2026 July 21\ \ Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Stories 978-1914602801\ \ Villette by Charlotte Brontë 978-1917940573\ \ White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky 978-1914602825\ \ Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens 978-1914602795\ \ Lady Chatterley's Lover by David Herbert Lawrence 978-1917940559\ \ The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper 978-1914602818\ \ Lovecraft: Selected Stories by HP Lovecraft 978-1917940580\ \ The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 978-1917940597\ \ Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy 978-1914602788\ \ The Kybalion by William Walker Atkinson 978-1917940566\ \ 2026 February 17\ \ Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne 9781914602764\ \ 2025 October 28\ \ The Trial by Franz Kafka 9781914602719\ \ 2025 October 7\ \ The Odyssey by Homer 9781914602726\ \ The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli 9781914602757\ \ The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 9781914602733\ \ A collection of verse by Jalal al-Din Rumi 9781914602696\ \ Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu 9781914602749\ \ 2025 August 19\ \ Heidi by Joanna Spyri 9781914602597\ \ 2025 June 17\ \ Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift 9781914602535\ \ 2024 December 24\ \ Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery 9781914602580\ \ Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 978191462627\ \ Alice Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll 9781914602559\ \ Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson 9781914602566\ \ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe 9781914602542\ \ Hans Christian Anderson's Fairy Tales 9781914602528\ \ King Lear by William Shakespeare 9781914602603\ \ Macbeth by William Shakespeare 9781914602610\ \ The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain 9781914602573\ \ 2024 December 10\ \ The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie 9781914602634\ \ 2024 October 1\ \ Grimm's Fairy Tales 9781914602443\ \ The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 9781914602511\ \ Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 9781914602504\ \ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain 9781914602474\ \ The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum 9781914602467\ \ The Arabian Nights 9781914602481\ \ The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling 9781914602450\ \ Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne 9781914602498\ \ 2024 January 30 (Postponed from November 21, 2023)\ \ Call Of The Wild by Jack London 9781914602252\ \ Hard Times by Charles Dickens 9781914602245\ \ Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 9781914602214\ \ The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux 9781914602221\ \ The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne 9781914602238\ \ The Time Machine by H.G Wells 9781914602276\ \ The Turn of the Screw by Henry James 9781914602269\ \ ​\ \ 2023 July 11 (postponed from May 30)\ \ Cranford by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 9781914602115\ \ Hamlet by William Shakespeare 9781914602146\ \ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad 9781914602153\ \ The Iliad by Homer 9781914602108\ \ Meditations by Marcus Aurelius 9781914602139\ \ The Moonstone by William Wilkie Collins 9781914602177\ \ Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie 9781914602191\ \ The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie 9781914602184\ \ Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens 9781914602207\ \ The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran 9781914602122\ \ ​\ \ 2022 Aug 22\ \ The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 9781914602054\ \ Animal Farm by George Orwell 9781914602061\ \ Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy 9781914602016\ \ Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott 9781914602009\ \ Peter Pan by James Matthew Barrie 9781914602078\ \ The Romantic Poets by Various Keats etc. 9781914602047\ \ Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare 9781914602030\ \ Silas Marner by George Eliot 9781914602023\ \ ​\ \ 2021\ \ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell 978-1912714988 (this was part of the 2021 release but was not released until Dec 27, 2022)\ \ The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy 978-1912714957\ \ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf 978-1912714926\ \ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce 978-1912714971\ \ The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 978-1912714940\ \ The Sonnets by William Shakespeare 978-1912714919\ \ A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens 978-1912714964\ \ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë 978-1912714933\ \ ​\ \ 2020\ \ Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 978-1912714735\ \ A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 978-1912714704\ \ Dracula by Bram Stoker 978-1912714674\ \ The Hound of Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle 978-1912714681\ \ Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 978-1912714728\ \ Moby Dick by Herman Melvile 978-1912714698\ \ The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar WIlde 978-1912714742\ \ Tess of D'Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy 978-1912714711\ \ ​\ \ 2019\ \ The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 978-1912714339\ \ Emma by Jane Austen 978-1912714261\ \ Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 978-1912714322\ \ The Little Prince by Antoine Saint-Exupéry 978-1912714308\ \ Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 978-1912714292\ \ Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 978-1912714285\ \ Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 978-1912714278\ \ Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson 978-1912714315\ \ ​\ \ 2018\ \ The Art of War by Sun Tzu 978-1912714056\ \ Great Expectations by Charles Dickens 978-1912714001\ \ The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 978-1912714063\ \ Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 978-1912714018\ \ Persuasion by Jane Austen 978-1912714025\ \ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 978-1912714032\ \ Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen 978-1912714049\ \ Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 978-1912714070

Collector's Corner: Chiltern Classics

38 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • May 4

\ \ Like that title? Just a little Catholic humor. \ \ Every nerd greets each other with this Star Wars themed saying on May the 4th, but did you know that we've been doing it since 1979?! That's right, before this elder millenial was even born. \ \ If you haven't watched Star Wars, I won't shame you, it's old AF. But the Jedi have a saying, "May the Force be with you" aka the force that lies between all things in the universe. Catholics say "Peace be with you" as a greeting at church. So if you're Catholic AND a nerd I will tell you that our gut instinct is to reply to "May the Fourth be with you" with "and also with you," which works, is a super weird reply to non-Catholics, but a hilarious joke if you do practice the religion of booze and guilt. \ \ The first recorded use of the phrase was on May 3, 1979 in a UK newspaper, The London Evening News. In the UK election, Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister. To celebrate her victory, the Conservative Party took out a newspaper ad reading "May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations." (If you're shocked that conservatives elected a woman, I need you to Google the Overton Window and study up.)\ \ And according to Lucasfilm historian Lucas Seastrom, the casual (aka nonrecorded) use of the phrase actually predates that. It supposedly was used as a gimmick to mark Independence Day celebrations in the summer of 1978.\ \ Language is such a hilarious and ever changing phenomenon, and I'm sure as a reader you can appreciate the fact that some memey trends (6-7 anyone?) may come and go, but some last forever. This one has definitely stood the test of time, so today let's celebrate the 48th anniversary of "May the Fourth be with you." Happy unofficial Star Wars Day!\ \ — Zee\ \ P.S. I'd be remiss if I didn't take this moment to inform you that there is also an unofficial Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth) Day. It's September 9th (nines, duh) and to celebrate, we all make and eat soup. Marrow is...optional.\ \

May the 4th Be With You, and also with you

2 books

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Apr 30

\ \ Except that I'm 2 days late. Listen, this is my hobby, my real job is running 2 businesses, swimming lessons on the side, and attempting to raise 3 white boys to be good human beings when the entire world is telling them to be entitled shits. Nina Pool has no MUNEY, I have no TIME.\ \ So what did you miss due to my untimeliness? Let me try to be QUICKABOUTIT\ \ \ \ Your Behavior Will Be Monitored by Justin Feinstein (Tachyon Publications) — A near-future satire asking what happens when AI gets just a little bit smarter and the people profiting from it remove the guardrails. Or...is that the future at all? Sounds like now. Epistolary structure (had to look this one up, it's formatted in a series of emails, data readouts, chats, transcripts etc.) Tachyon is indie and this is very timely in this day and age of tech bros and their accountability-free playground otherwise known as Silicon Valley.\ \ \ \ Pixerina by Joanne Anderton (Bad Hand Books) — More horror than sci-fi but I don't decide the genre, if it's listed as scifi or if I just feel like it it's here. A ghost story about an artist who is obsessed with a house haunted by a little girl, only it's about writer's block for artists, and the little girl just wants a friend, but the artist wants a muse. Is that actually called artist block? Creative block? Listen, I just paint shitty pictures of my dogs, I don't know. What I DO KNOW is that Bad Hand is a small Australian indie press, gets zero marketing budget and is maximum deserving of your attention. I mean, LOOK AT THAT COVER!\ \ \ \ The Blood Year Daughter by G.G. Silverman (Creature) — This is actually a horror short story collection. Silverman described it as "a response to my experience of being female, being the daughter of immigrants, and being disabled." Stories include a woman builds husbands out of gravel and slaughterhouse feathers, two sisters eat cinnamon-scented pieces of their mother, and a charming doctor’s murdered brides whisper warnings to his newest wife. I've seen someone describle it as "a rallying cry against the patriarchy." So no, it's again not really scifi, but it looks hella cool.\ \ \ \ Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer (Penguin Random House/DAW) — 40 years after the world almost ended, a worn-out robot in the abandoned New York Botanical Gardens gets attacked and realizes old evils are stirring. I don't really know what that means but that's the blurb. Palmer has been featured in Clarkesworld multiple times and I'll read just about anything about robots. Hope-punk, themes of loneliness and purpose, comped to Becky Chambers' Monk & Robot, which if you haven't read is one of the most complete novelettes EVER. Seriously, how can she change your life in so few pages? Features a very good cyborg dog, which is obviously the most important detail.\ \ \ \ The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva (PRH) — Follows a family across fifty years after a first-contact event in Michigan connects their minds. It says Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore, neither of which I've heard of so there's that. Described as a "bold exploration of what it means to be human." Literary sci-fi, standalone. NGL, this cover sucks. Like who is making these decisions?\ \ That old addage "don't judge a book by it's cover" is completely disregarding some pretty major tenets of human psychology. I don't know of a single reader who doesn't browse a bookstore based on covers (well, except maybe that guy who rips books in half to make them easier to carry in his pocket, who KNOWS what's going in in his brain.) Covers are SO IMPORTANT, especially to a newer author. Do better PRH!\ \ \ \ A River From the Sky by Ai Jiang (Titan Books) Now THAT is a cover. I hope in person it's got embossing because that would be sexy. Science-fantasy novella sequel to A Palace Near the Wind. Which I haven't read, sorry, I wish I could read them all! Sisters Lufeng and Sangshu fight to protect their culture and their world. For readers of Nghi Vo and Amal El-Mohtar, WHICH I AM.\ \ We Burned So Bright by TJ Klune (Macmillan/Tor) — Elder gay couple, 40 years together, rogue black hole incoming. They have one month and one last road trip to take care of unfinished business before Earth is gone. 176 pages. Remember that Klune pulled some problematic Stephenie Meyer shit with The House in the Cerulean Sea (If you missed it he used for inspiration the Canadian government's practice of abducting Indigenous children and placing them in residential schools for forced assimilation, made no public advocacy for First Nations communities, never addressed the backlash from Indigenous readers, and then wrote a sequel anyway.) So do with that info what you will. I know what I will do with it, and that's read an author who takes some fucking accountability. He doesn't get a snippet of his cover because I am petty.\ \ WOW. I was not in any way QUICKABOUTIT. I make no apologies for rambling. I yam who I yam.\ \ See you next week. I'll definitely be here, at my house, because with gas prices i can't afford to go anywhere.\ \ — Zee\ \

4/28/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Week

7 books

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Apr 21

\ \ Welcome to New Release Tuesday, where I round up the sci-fi releases dropping this week that I think you should know about. I'm Zee, I'm a Tattooed Bibliophile, and if you are here I you probably are too, and my whole thing is diversity in sci-fi — meaning if it's queer, BIPOC-authored, indie, or just something the Big 5 didn't bother to tell you about, it belongs here. While sci-fi isn't the "it girl" right now, it's far from a dying genre. It may make it hard to find new releases, but that's what I'm here for, because I don't want you to miss a thing! So what's new?\ \ Well, not much this week. Do publishers release more books at the beginning of the month? Since I just started doing this I don't know! If I see a pattern you KNOW this autistic girlie (and rare mathy bisexual) is gonna make you aware.\ \ \ \ The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang (Macmillan) — Tordotcom aka my fav scifi publisher (am I allowed to say that as a Bindery influencer?) standalone. I checked out Huang's social media and found a ton of recs for some of my favorite books, so we share reading taste... always a good sign when the author likes what you like! The ADHD MC is a spy who jumps into alien minds of the only species physiologically capable of mining the element needed for lightyear-spanning space travel. And starts forgetting which side he's on. Sounds like Babel crossed with Some Desperate Glory. I'm in.\ \ \ \ The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen (Simon & Schuster) — Space opera standalone. Starship crew returns home after an entire effing DECADE lost in space... to a galactic civil war. It has a blurb by one of my favorite sci-fi writers, Annalee Newitz. AND Mike has a photo of a protester holding a sign that says "Pull your head out of your Fox hole" with the Fox News logo, so...I'm probably going to read his book. Yes, this is how I make my reading decisions. If someone can make a teeny short story on an IG page interesting, what can they do with an entire book? What? How do you pick your books...\ \ See you next week. You know, if I haven't been deported for saying FUCK ICE in public.\ \ — Zee\ \

4/21/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Week

2 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Apr 14

4/14/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Week

6 books

4

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Apr 7

\ \ Welcome to New Release Tuesday, where I round up the sci-fi (and occasional graphic novel) releases dropping this week that I think you should know about. I'm Zee, I run Tattooed Bibliophiles, and my whole thing is diversity in sci-fi — meaning if it's queer, BIPOC-authored, indie, or just something the Big 5 didn't bother to tell you about, it belongs here. New around here? Poke around. I have Harrow worthy good soup. Returning? You know the drill — let's see what dropped.\ \ \ \ Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois (Left Unread Books of BINDERY!!!, Michael LaBorn) — This is a queer swashbuckling Caribbean fantasy by a Haitian immigrant author. This is a piratey Little Mermaid retelling where Ariel is treated as the child she actually is, and the romance is between the adults. And some of the adults are sexy bossy pirates. I read this before it was picked up by Michael's publishing house, and I loved it then. But with an absolutely STUNNING cover and the press it deserves? This is the exact kind of book that would never find you through an algorithm, would not get a Big 5 marketing push, but will probably be the one you tell everyone about in five years. This is why I'm here. This is the whole point. Is it sci-fi? Well, not really, but it's the kind of high fantasy with rich world building that sci-fi readers love, so I'm putting it here, because this is my page and I WANT TO.\ \ \ \ The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Macmillan/Tor) — You may have heard me mention this one approximately forty seven times over the last month because I have the ARC and I cannot shut up about it. John Chu has been winning Hugos and Nebulas for short fiction for years and this is his debut novel, which means the short fiction world has been hoarding him and I am choosing to be normal about it. (I am not being normal about it.) This is actually the way of most sci-fi, and there are entire publications dedicated to publishing short sci-fi in an effort to expose the world to more of these amazing authors (check out Clarkesworld if you're interested.) So there's this mechanic who fixes the literal nuts and bolts holding the universe together, and she has a comatose mother, a sister who is literally, actively, and viciously trying to kill her, a secretive group attempting to hijack the fabric of reality, and a himbo sidekick whose cooking is described in ways that made me pause the audiobook to stare into the middle distance and think about food. Generational trauma wrapped in quantum physics with a side of dim sum. This one is worth picking up.\ \ \ \ What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed (Macmillan/Tor) — (Can we take a moment to admire how fucking BIG this image is? Listen, I am having formatting issues today, and those are the LEAST of my issues so I'm gonna roll with it.) A doctor from a world that abolished marriage gets stranded on an alien planet where marriage is not only practiced but aggressively enforced by powerful religious authorities (sound familiar?), accompanied by a distressingly handsome translator (the word "distressingly" is doing a lot of work in that description and I respect it.) Queer MCs, absurd alien biology, completely backwards gender politics, and a plot that is essentially "what if - and hear me out - first contact - but make it a deeply personal reckoning with everything you thought you knew about how people are supposed to love each other." Described as perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar. I am a reader of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar. It's me. Hi. (And I'm always a problem.)\ \ \ \ Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis (Simon & Schuster) — (Mer as in merMAID, not murDER. Judas NOOOO!) Also that is one sexy special editon. I love this place, I can say "sexy" and "murder" and "kill" without the algorithm shadow banning me...\ \ \ \ L.D. Lewis co-founded FIYAH Literary Magazine (another of those short story publications I was talking about.) She helped build the Ignyte Awards, which are one of the most diverse and interesting genre awards in sci-fi. She has been doing the work for years while the industry did whatever the industry does (you know what it does - I mean, you're here, on Bindery, doing the work yourself just by reading this. You go bestie!) This is her debut novel and it is a bloody Little Mermaid reimagining — not the Disney version, not the one where everything is fine, but the OG one where Arielle's granddaughter Yemaya has to crawl to Ursula for help after a coup kills her entire family, accompanied by her bodyguard/fiancée. Sapphic. Dark. Debut. I'm going to go preorder this immediately and I won't be taking questions. (I also want to take a moment to point out that she is using L.D. as a pseudonym because this genre is still WHACKED. Since it's predominantly read by men, it's predominantly written by men. White men. Cishet white men. I swear to Octavia Butler if you don't go pick up some sci-fi written by some girls gays and theys I'm going to come through this screen and throw hands. (And if you are a girl/gay/they you should really be reading more sci-fi.))\ \ \ \ Piper at the Gates of Dusk by Patrick Ness (PRH) — A return to the world of Chaos Walking, which if you read with your kids is either very exciting or a war crime depending on how attached they got to that series. If you haven't heard of it, it seems to have some very The Hatchet-like vibes. I've seen a ton of boys who thought they weren't into reading get very into The Hatchet, so if you have one of those (or three like me, Jod help you) it may be worth looking into. And if your household already has a Chaos Walking person in it (not the neurodivergent kind of Chaos Walking™ but the book series called Chaos Walking) well then, obviously. BTdubs, if you do have one of those Hatchet people in your house, also check out Sovereign by Jeff Hirsch, which is basically The Hatchet in Space™ (yes I'm trademarking in Space, if I had to completely rebrand I would probably "Zee in Space" and that has absolutely zero ring to it. And if you're wondering, yes I'm mutuals with the other girl on Tiktok who grabbed @tattooedbibliophile before I could, which is why I have a zero at the end on that app and none of the others. Literally, all the others. I have this screen name on every social media app there is, except Twitter, which I deleted ages ago and it was too long for them anyway.)\ \ \ \ The Heart of the Nhaga by Lee Youngdo, translated by Anton Hur (Simon & Schuster) — First English translation of a popular Korean fantasy series, translated by Anton Hur who is himself a sci-fi author (and if you've read Babel you KNOW why that's important. And if you haven't read Babel...why bestie?) A vengeful anti-hero with a giant sword, flying manta rays with ruined cities on their backs, and corrupt society of immortal psychic reptiles....oh my. Then again, who knows. Translations can go really, really wrong. That cover though? Oh so right.\ \ What did I miss? What's coming out this week?\ \ See you next week. You know, if we're still surviving late stage capitalism/oligarchy.\ \ — Zee\ \

4/7/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Week

6 books

4

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Mar 31

\ \ It's Tuesday, which means new sci-fi dropped and I have Opinions. I'm mainly using Storygraph and publisher sites to find them, so if you're an indie author and you've got something coming out let me know.\ \ Ruiner by Lara Messersmith-Glavin (AK Press, one of my FAV indie presses) - Nonbinary MC, storytelling as literal combat magic, political fantasy about exploitation and environmental destruction. The world runs on stories and story tellers battle each other by spinning tales out of light, and a story lost in combat is lost forever, sometimes taking part of the teller with it. Which is both a beautiful metaphor for what it costs marginalized people to keep fighting AND an extremely cool magic system. This is an indie press debut and exactly the kind of thing the algorithm will not show you, which is why I'm here. Speaking of algorithms...\ \ Love Is An Algorithm by Laura Brooke Robson (HarperCollins) - Gateway drug into sci-fi again (see last week's post.) I regret nothing. As usual I'm stretching the definition of sci-fi, this is sort of contemporary romance, but it's a satire of AI and tech startup culture and dating apps and it has a musician with writer's block (relatable - not the musician part, I am deeply and unapologetically terrible at music) and an app developer with anxiety whose creation starts telling people how to run their entire lives. I was in college during the creation of Facebook and the current dating scene is essentially another planet to me, but I'm still interested in this book concept. \ \ Ruins by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Hachette) - I find it ironically funny that two books have Ruin in the name this week - if that doesn't tell you about the state of the world!!! If you watched The Midnight Sky on Netflix and then found out it was based on a book and the book was better (it always is), this is that author's new one. A post-climate-catastrophe archaeologist (what a mouthful) with a shitty marriage becomes obsessed (compensating much?) with proving a lost civilization existed that nobody else believes in, and then she undertakes an expedition that will either vindicate her completely or destroy what's left of her life. This is kind of speculative lit fic. Jeff VanderMeer called it "stunning and highly recommended" which means it's probably going to rearrange your internal organs. Though TBH I don't put much stake in author notes nowadays. \ \ Event Horizon by Balsam Karam, translated by Saskia Vogel (The Feminist Press at CUNY) - Kurdish-Swedish author, feminist indie press, translated into English. A seventeen year old girl from the Outskirts (a stateless borderlands where women and children have been stripped of rights and legal status...sound familiar?) throws Molotov cocktails at a government building in protest, gets imprisoned as the instigator, is tortured, and given a final choice: public execution or being launched into a black hole as part of an experiment. She chooses the black hole. I would too. It's $16.95 from a feminist indie press. Buy it and eat a pb&j for lunch instead of takeout. Feed your soul, bestie.\ \ Star Wars: Legacy of Vader — The Reign of Kylo Ren Vol. 2 by Charles Soule (Marvel Comics, which is now a Disney imprint) - Collecting issues 7-12 of the ongoing Marvel series, if you are in to this sort of thing (a super long term commitment where you have no idea where to start and will probably regret your life choices once you're too far in to stop.) On Goodreads I saw a reviewer describe Vol. 1 as "a gas station sandwich at 2am that somehow tastes better when you consider what else is available" which is TBH the most honest Star Wars book review I have ever read and I respect it enormously. If you are a Star Wars comics person, this is for you. I haven't read any of these so please feel free to come for my in my ignorance.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/DMnVxqV3XEiZD4d886zT/)

3/31/26 - New Sci-fi Titles This Week

5 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Mar 24

\ \ This is a new series where I attempt to find as many new Tuesday releases as I can in the science fiction categories, which include speculative fiction, dystopian, time travel, robots/AI, steampunk, postapocalptic, LitRPG, ya sci-fi, LGBTQ sci-fi, afrofuturism, sci-fi horror, alien romance, and anything else I feel could be your gateway drug into the genre.\ \ In Time With You by Kristin Dwyer (St. Martin's Press) - Time travel romance. A girl's first love drowns, and she wakes up a year before and tries to stop it from happening while falling for his best friend. Is it really sci-fi? IDK that time travel speculative fiction is technically sci-fi, but if you're a romance girlie and this is how I get you to jump into sci-fi? Call me a gateway drug pusher. Get in the spaceship bitch.\ \ Celestian Lights by Cecile Pin (MacMillan) - An astronaut born the day Challenger fell out of the sky gets tapped by an "enterprising" billionaire (we are already suspicious, but go on...) to lead a mission to Europa, and spends the whole journey retreating into his past - relationships lost, becoming a husband and father, the usual spiral. Literary sci-fi, less hard science more human condition, which is either your thing or it isn't. Cecile Pin's previous book Wandering Souls was Women's Prize longlisted and reportedly destroyed people emotionally, so if you enjoy a book that makes you question every choice you've ever made while also being in space, this one's for you.\ \ Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit) - Book 4 in Children of Time. Spiders in space, a mantis shrimp captain, humans trying to figure out what happened to a lost colony. If you haven't started this series and you love diverse found-family crews doing impossible things...well me either but if you have will you please tell me if it's worth starting a hugely thicc series?\ \ Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories by Amal El-Mohtar (Macmillan) - Short story collection from the co-author of This Is How You Lose the Time War. Described as "fairy tales with teeth." I was obsessed with TIHYLTTW and El-Mohtar's other work hasn't been for me but has won many awards, so I still continuously give it a chance.\ \ Deep Black by Miles Cameron (Simon & Schuster) - Book 2 in the Arcana Imperii space opera series - being re-released with a new cover in paperback. Black MC, autistic-coded love interest, nonbinary secondary character, queernorm setting. But the author is a white Canadian dude. His name is Christian Cameron but his Sci-fi pen name is Miles Cameron. He is on Bluesky as @phokion.bsky.social so do your own research. Described as perfect for fans of Tchaikovsky and The Expanse. I've read neither...should I? Let me know.\ \ Trace Elements by Jo Walton & Ada Palmer (Macmillan) Two award winning sci-fi authors have a conversation about modern SFF, how it's written and how it's read. So this is sort of a nonfic sci-fi subgenre. "Subjects covered include...the implicit contract between author and reader, the ways SF and fantasy disguise themselves as one another, what SF&F can learn from outside influences ranging from Shakespeare to Diderot to anime, the role of complicity in reading, the need to expand our “sphere of empathy”, and finally the need for optimism, the importance of rejecting “purity” culture, and the fact that the human story for centuries to come will be composed of hard work." This sounds like everything I stand for so I will probably read this even though a book about books is way outside my wheelhouse.\ \ I want you to notice that instead of putting the Imprint publisher, I'm listing them under their Big 5. Why? I want to continuously drive the point home that it's a damn monopoly and the only way to fight it is to support indie presses and authors. So here is my shameless plug:\ \ If you liked this and want more of whatever THIS is — unhinged book analysis, barely contained rage at the state of the world, and occasional Tamsyn Muir references that I will never apologize for — consider subscribing for $5/month. Every cent goes to people who actually need it, because I have a day job and a cause, not a brand deal. This is my middle finger to Big 5 publishing, dressed up as a book blog. Come hold it up with me.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/UnEoWZEggDs9voknlvzU/)

3/24/26 - New Sci-fi Titles this week

6 books

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Mar 13

[Poll:\ \ To summarize or not to summarize\ \ The 13th: A Monthly Brain Dump from the Spite Club, with an important question at the end\ \ Let me tell you something about the 13th. I work in construction. I have been inside every floor of more tall buildings than you have had hot dinners. And I need you to know — with the full authority of someone who has stood on it — that the 13th floor exists. It is there. You are on it. We just renamed it the 14th because somewhere along the line humanity collectively decided that lying about math was preferable to confronting our own superstitions. I can count. You can count. The elevator knows. We're just all agreeing not to talk about it.\ \ \ \ Which is, honestly, a perfect metaphor for how most of us, at least those of you who found your way here, are doing right now. \ \ Welcome to the first installment of my monthly update, dropping on the 13th of every month, only to my Spite Club besties. I'm going to tell you what I've been reading, how I'm actually doing, and what's coming up — with my whole chest and zero apologies. (Actually with only part of my chest because I'm still unlearning everything I've ever been taught and I make mistakes, so if I do, call me out. I probably deserve it.)\ \

The 13th: A Monthly Brain Dump from the Spite Club

13 books

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Mar 2

\ \ You shouldn't buy books from Amazon. You know it, I know it, your local indie bookstore DEFINITELY KNOWS IT, and honestly, the ghost of every independent bookseller who ever lived knows it too. So why do you still buy from the zon? Because it's cheap.\ \ Yes, I know that capitalism is guttering out its last dying breaths as 5 people hoard most of the wealth while the economy fizzles so far they no longer actually even post the unemployment rate publicly anymore. So why am I telling you to spend more money? Please let me try to convince you with this numbered list because I'm a NUMBERS GIRLIE (see, this is why you should listen to me — how many other bisexuals are good at math? I contain multitudes AND a spreadsheet. 'Tis the tism m'lord.) If you're already convinced, feel free to scroll past this part. If you're not, I will be employing the ancient necromantic art of capitalism critique to raise your righteous fury from the dead.\ \ \ \ Amazon is not always the cheapest! Yes, I know they've attempted to convince you otherwise. But they are operating on the grocery store model — get you in the door with "deals" on items you already know the price of, like milk and bread, while price gouging you on the things you don't, like a jar of pepperoncinis or your sense of self worth. If you consistently price check them like I do, you'll find that especially on smaller items, they've rolled that shipping cost right into the price. Free shipping my slowly rounding ass.\ \ Diapers.com . If you haven't heard me rant about this, buckle up. Diapers.com had a great subscription price on diapers and wipes. Amazon rolls in with a program called "Amazon Mom," undercuts their price into the ground, and erodes the company's entire customer base. Amazon buys Diapers.com. Amazon shuts them down. Amazon IMMEDIATELY jacks the prices back up and shutters the Amazon Mom program. Everyone now pays more for the exact same service. This is not a bug. This is the business model. And they are doing it to books — selling them at a loss to put every brick and mortar bookstore out of business. And when we can only buy books from them? Those prices are going WAY UP. We are officially in the Ninth circle of Hell.\ \ \ \ Writers are poor. There are a handful making a good living at this, but most are creating their art on the side while crying quietly into their $5.10 royalty checks. And Amazon exploits them like they exploit their workers and suppliers — a proud tradition of harm, democratized. They have a history of allowing customers to return read books and making the author pay the refund. They auto-enroll books into Kindle Select so authors have to go in and manually opt out every 90 days, lest their books remain Amazon-exclusive indefinitely like some kind of publishing purgatory. They're pushing to make Amazon Exclusive titles unavailable in libraries. They roll out new AI features and don't bother letting authors opt out. Cool cool cool, no notes, everything is fine, the house is not on fire, ignore the smell.\ \ So where should you buy instead? \ \ From the author If you're reading indie or smaller authors, many sell directly from their own websites — sometimes cheaper, sometimes signed, sometimes in "scratch and dent" copies for the chaotic good readers among us. Why are they cheaper direct? Because Amazon charges them more than other outlets. I know. I KNOW.\ \ Bookshop.orgIf you can't find an author site, your second best online option is this one. A portion of the sale goes directly to an independent bookstore of your choosing. Support your local store, or support a black woman owned store like Sistah Sci-fi! They have ebooks too, so check here first!\ \ Libro.fmis where I have my audiobook subscription. My library card gets me Libby, but they don't always have what I want, so this is my backup. Also shares profits with an indie bookstore of your choice. It's lawful good (get it, like awful good? "Yes... Some rigor...mortis", said Gideon, who thought that puns were automatically funny.)\ \ Pango Books is the eBay of books — individual sellers listing new, gently used, and collectible copies, with the profit going directly to other humans trying to survive late stage capitalism. They now have make-an-offer functionality like Mercari. Prices are often cheaper than other secondhand platforms because lots of people just want shelf space back. (It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me)\ \ Your Local Library Besties, I know you want to hoard the books like a little dragon. So do I. But I often don't even know if I'll like something before I buy it — and my library is always the first place I check. I can almost guarantee yours has ebooks and audiobooks available online without you ever having to put pants on. Though for your mental health, you should probably try to leave the house occasionally. WITH PANTS. as I sit in a dark room typing a blog on my computer to a group of people who are sitting in a dark room scrolling on their phones.\ \ __\ The thrift store Last but not least: if a book has been popular, there's a copy at Goodwill for $1.50. (It used to be $1 but even the thrift store experiences inflation. Yaaaaay late stage capitalism!) My kids love those terrible Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and while I have opinions, I don't actually care — as long as they're READING, I'm not complaining. The thrift store always has copies. And while I know the proceeds don't go to the author, sometimes you just don't have the cash for new books. (I have a whole other post about how to get books for free, you can read that here.)\ \ I know there is an entire other conversation to be had about KU and the indie authors who make their money there. I have thoughts... you won't like them. I don't like them. Those are for another day. But feel free to berate me in the comment section today. Your attention feeds the poor. Like, literally. I donate all proceeds from this hobby of mine to marginalized communities.\ \ If there is any exception for " there is no ethical consumption under capitalism," I'm going to say it's books and food, because both, in my opinion, are necessary to live, body and soul.\ \ If you liked this and want more of whatever THIS is — unhinged book analysis, barely contained rage at the state of the world, and occasional Tamsyn Muir references that I will never apologize for — consider subscribing for $5/month. Every cent goes to people who actually need it, because I have a day job and a cause, not a brand deal. This is my middle finger to Big 5 publishing, dressed up as a book blog. Come hold it up with me.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/2RrTcf8Fvu90t2DTbah1/)

I'm going to tell you where to buy your books because I'm BOSSY

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Feb 25

\ \ Look. I know you're tired. I know you've been running on fumes and spite and whatever's left in the coffee pot, and the LAST thing you want is some book blogger telling you to Do the Inner Work. But I need you to hear me out, because a Pixar movie about eMoTiOnAl DaMaGe and two therapy besties named Jessica Tomich Sorci, LMFT,PMH-C and Rebecca Geshuri, LMFT,PMH-C (yes I included the letters after their names because I’m a GIRL’S GIRL and they earned it damn you) have apparently been in a secret conspiracy to make you cry twice — once in the theater, and once on your therapist's couch — and I think it's time we talked about it.\ \ "Wait, back the EFFFF up Zee. What even is 'This and That'?" I’m so glad I pretended like you asked. It’s a series I’ve been thinking about almost forever (I’m autistic, my brain either does time as “what is time” or “at 2:34pm on the day I lost my first tooth” and there is no in between) about two separate pieces of media and how I think you should consume them like PB&J, like red wine and blue cheese, like grilled cheese and tomato soup. Because yeah, they’re good separate. But together they are GOOD SOUP. (Yes, that was a Harrow the Ninth Chapter 25th reference, sorry NOT SORRY AT ALL EVEN A LITTLE BIT.)\ \ \ \ If you don’t get that reference, I’m going to assume that you will never read Harrow the Ninth because you read my stuff and you read Gideon and didn’t like it. Fine, that’s ok, I don’t get you but I still love you. Spoiler: Harrow makes soup with her bone marrow and uses necromancy to explode someone from the inside out (see above fan art by @naomistares on Tumblr.) Gross but my GOD the cinema! So the analogy is, food so good it will FUCK YOU UP. Damn I’m weird. But you're here so I must assume, gentle reader, that so are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu...\ \ Anyway back to the matter at hand, Inside Out, the Pixar movie, is about a little girl’s named Riley’s feelings, each as its own character in her head. Each of these feelings – aptly named Joy, Disgust, Sadness, Anger, and Fear, have their own feelings and motivations about her move to a different city. New school, new sports, new friends, and the loss of her old ones. And Miss Joy decides to suppress all of the others – especially Sadness - because Riley needs to act happy for her parents, who are also having a tough time. Moving sux. \ \ \ \ And it all goes to complete SHIT, as literally everyone could have seen coming. I cried in 2015 over an imaginary elephant.\ \ Which brings me to the book that made me rewatch all of this with my jaw on the floor. When Good Moms Feel Bad is based on this therapy called Internal Family Systems (aka IFS) which basically means your brain is made up of subpersonalities, or "parts," each with its own unique motives. Which is EXACTLY what Inside Out is about. If you’re not a parent, don’t let me lose you here. This is for everyone who has ever been told they needed “self-care” and responded with, “how-the-fuck-do-you-expect-me-to-do-a-spa-day-when-the-world-is-burning?!”\ \ \ \ I HATE self-care culture. I detest self-help books. I am a working mother who does this weird book social media thing as a hobby – no, I don’t make money off of this and any money everyone’s ever paid me to do it (and MORE) has gone straight to one of the charities for all of the people currently being shat upon by the world: trans people, Palestinians, immigrants, the list goes on.* \ \ When a therapist or friend or especially an internet blogger insert irony here tells me to get in some self-care, it annoys me. Because doing a face mask does not relieve me of my concern that my 13 year old son may be steered into a red pill pipeline on YouTube. Getting a massage won’t take away my deep and unabiding horror at the genocide my government is funding in Gaza. Picking up a new hobby won’t relieve me of my fear that I’m not doing enough to protect my immigrant friends from being thrown into bedless cells and have their children separated from them to do god knows what with by a masked police force. I have LEGITIMATE feelings and stress that a bath bomb simply will not fix. And nobody has once convinced me that the self-care craze isn’t just another attempt to get me to spend more money on shit I don’t need. Like eyebrow gel. So when a therapy book actually gave me something useful, I was suspicious. I checked for a catch. Reader, there was a catch, but we'll get there.\ \ When Good Moms Feel Bad is the first thing I’ve ever read that gave me some legitimate coping tools that I can use instead of trying to convince me to buy something (spoiler: when I looked up the author’s website, there is a ‘Mom Parts Community’ you can join for the low low price of $29/mo. But hey, even people with good advice have to pay to eat under capitalism, amiright?) I listened to the audiobook for free on Netgalley, but I liked it so much I purchased the book so I can have access to the workbook included.\ \ What are these coping skills, and what do they have to do with Inside Out? WELL. Essentially, every emotion you have is there for reasons. Fear of failure protected you as a child, because your parents would love you more if you met their high expectations. Irritation is an alert to show you your boundaries have been crossed, because when it’s happened before you were in DANGER. Your Inner Critic picks you apart in order to put you back together in a better way, but sometimes it gets stuck in the telling you you’re a shitty person loop. Every shitty feeling has a goal. But how do you keep them from conflicting and eating you alive? It’s actually pretty simple. You Mom them.\ \ New skills? You don’t need them. Expensive seminars? Nope. You already have the experience you need for this from being a mom. So you take each part of yourself, and thank it. And then tell it what you would tell a child who was acting out. Validate, then correct. Mother thyself. “Thank you, Inner Critic, for making me a better person. But please remember, we don’t say critical things to hurt people. We say them in a caring and compassionate way.” Or “thank you, Irritation, for trying to keep me safe, but right now I’m only touched out, I’m not in danger. I’m NOT in danger, you can rest.” Am I telling you to speak to the voices in your head? Yes. Yes I am. Turns out the voices in your head just want to be parented. Which is either deeply healing or deeply horrifying depending on how your own childhood went. Moving on!\ \ I picture those Inside Out style cartoon characters in my head, and I get down on their level and hug them. This is me literally caring for the inner parts of myself. If Joy had just hugged Sadness and said, “you’re right to be sad, this is a sad time! Let me be here with you while you’re sad” then Riley would have never had an emotional collapse (I won’t spoil it for you – seriously you’re missing out if you haven’t seen that movie – seen and consumed critically!) and, well, we wouldn’t have a movie. Something my son and I constantly tell each other as we pick apart movies we watch. (Because critical media consumption is a skill you have to practice with your kids, they can't just learn from being told.)\ \ I would recommend you watch the movie then read the book. Why? I’m not a huge non-fic girlie and I need to entertain myself by finding constant parallels in my non-fic with something that is fun. If you love a self help book, good for you! But I’m a recovering fiction addict and I need to be entertained when I engage in critical thought, ok? “Thank you Inner Critic for the self-deprecating humor, I honestly love that about myself, but you are smart and read critically no matter the genre, so please stop apologizing!”\ \ * If you read this far, you're already one of my people. Subscribe for $5/month — less than a bath bomb, more useful than a bath bomb, and 100% of proceeds go to humans currently being failed by the world. Big 5 publishing hates us. Let's keep going anyway.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/6QuDut1mH3WWoq86WcA5/)

This and That: Riley's Feelings Have a Support Group. So Do Yours. It's Called IFS.

1 book

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Dec 12 2025

[If you're not influencing your teenager's YouTube algorithm, are you even parenting?\ \ I have mixed feelings already on allowing my teen to have access to YouTube. But if there is ANYTHING that parenting has taught me (and my own dad has taught me about myself,) it's that limiting access to things is a great way to encourage your teen to sneak around getting them anyway. Knowing that, is it a better choice to allow them to have guardrail access and log into their account checking their history and adjusting accordingly? That's the choice I've made, right wrong or indifferent.\ \ If you already know what I'm afraid of, skip this paragraph and read on. But if you don't, get on YouTube or Tiktok and create a new account, setting the age to 13 and the gender to male. And I want you to notice what it shows you, before that algorithm even has a chance to know you. Buckle up, because it will horrify you how quickly you are shown the yellow brick road to the alt right pipeline. If you haven't run across a young white male Christian Nationalist within 5 minutes, I'll eat my sock. So if you don't want your child parroting Nick Fuentes "women in the kitchen" talking points the next time you tell him to unload the dishwasher, what should you do? Keep them completely off the internet? That's my kneejerk reaction. But I know my kid is getting show videos by his friends, watching YouTube on any smart TV he has access to, and running across these talking points who knows where else, and I want to teach him media literacy. How do I do that without allowing him some media consumption? And trust me, I have the FEAR. I'm as terrified about allowing him to open YouTube as I am to let him get behind the wheel of a car. But I want to raise a person who can servive without me looking over his shoulder constantly, so I have to ease him in.\ \ But HOW? YouTube is actually worse than tiktok about guardrails. On a teen account (not YouTube kids), there are no guardrails other than that you can see their history and block explicit content just like you would for yours. You can't block hashtags, it's very difficult to hard block creators, you can only mark that you are uninterested in this creator. But then they show you Joe Rogan instead of Nick Fuentes. Their algorithm is almost determined to push my teen boy down a path I don't want him to walk.\ \ So I log into YouTube as him and slog through videogame content to adjust his algorithm and mark INCEL propaganda with a thumbs down. After spending hours upon hours doing this, here is what I've learned:\ \

  1. You may have heard that Gen Alpha boys are leaning more conservative and the girls are leaning more progressive. I am now 100% convinced that this is due almost exclusively to social media, though the polarization of politics is absolutely contributing to that.\ \
  2. You can thumbs down the bullshit all you want, but YouTube doesn't seem to learn not to show you similar content. I may thumbs down a Nick Fuentes video and tell YouTube not to show me anything from that creator. It will then show me other creators who have TALKED about Nick Fuentes's videos in a positive way. WTAF?!\ \
  3. And for my final point and the reason I'm writing this post - There do not seem to be any teen boys or young men creating progressive content for my teen to watch. And I think I know why.\ \ \ For all of Republicans' talk about "liberals are groomers," THEY are the ones who are statistically grooming children, not just for Epsteiny things, but for the red pill pipeline. There are tons of young 20 and 30 year old men posing as teens with clean shaven faces and shaggy haircuts telling boys about how the Bible says that women should submit to them. And what is more attractive to a teen boy, a child whose amygdala has outgrown their decision making capabilities and they have the body of an adult with the authority of a child, than having more power over other people? Especially people like their mother, who is more than likely the default parent?\ \ I don't believe there are many self respecting progressive men who think that influencing teens on the internet is inherently good. And there are very few progressive parents that want their kids creating content for the public. Just the idea of it is ick, isn't it? But therein lies a problem.\ \ In this day and age of teens on the internet, there are very few good influences that look like them, even the white boys. (Please don't mistake me as saying, "oh the underrepresented white boy, how I lament for thee!" I'm saying there are no good ones I want my child watching.) \ \ Do I think there are easy answers to this problem? Of course not. But there are a few things that I think we, as a collective, can do to help.\ \
  4. We should all be emailing YouTube demanding we get some of the same algorithm control we have with tiktok. Blocking creators, blocking hashtags, blocking key words.\ \
  5. We should popularize marginalized creators, whose voices NEED to be heard by more people. Including our teens. This means when you watch a video by a creator you like, watch it ALL THE WAY THROUGH.\ \
  6. Consume some content together. I will occasionally ask my teen, hey! Want to watch videos together? Compare and contrast. Laugh together at your goofy parent algorithm, and watch with genuine interest the things your kid is interested in. Talk together. Laugh at things that make you want to scream. WAIT WHAT? I said what I said. If you see a man talking about how God said women should dress modestly, laugh and say "Jesus told men to scoop their eyes out. No, seriously!" Point our when you see AI. Engage with media critically, and pick it apart, but have fun with it. When your child starts noticing things, compliment them on their media literacy. "Wow, good catch!" \ \ \ Remember that making things and people ridiculous takes away far more of their power than making them scary. Don't believe me? Look at how Germans currently portray Hitler. They make him ridiculous, foolish. Not terrifying. Why? Because fear can be powerful. But nobody made ridiculous holds much influence or power. Empower your kids with the media literacy they will so desperately need in this end stage capilist AI era.\ \ I've compiled a short list of reads below that I plan to study and share with my teen.\ \ How do you handle YouTube with your kids?\ \ If you enjoyed this content, please consider joining a paid tier to support our mission at Bindery to create a media company that is based around what you, the consumer, actually WANT, not what a monopolized Big 5 publishing club wants you to see. Your montly donation helps us to publish books by independent authors. Books Big Media didn't want you to see. Books that deserve a spotlight. Authors that have something important to say.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/lrJC3BGpavA2mevevgbv/)

If you're not influencing your teenager's YouTube algorithm, are you even parenting? Where are the progressive teen boy content creators?

4 books

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Nov 11 2025

\ \ Every time I try to figure out what is coming next for sci-fi, I am inundated with lists coining "Sci-Fi and Fantasy Releases" that are ALL FANTASY. \ \ And listen, I love fantasy, I adore fantasy, but give me some damn science fiction ok?\ \ And before you say " but I'm already living in a dystopian society and I need to escape reality" I need you to take a PAUSE babes - and listen to what I'm about to say. (STOP. Collaborate and Listen. Zee is back with some brand new fiction) \ \ Science Fiction is our hope and imagination for the future. Fantasy helps you to escape reality, but Sci-Fi helps you imagine a better world. It fills your cup, renews your soul, gives you the strength to go on because you know things can be better - you've SEEN IT. And yes, it was in a book, but if you can dream of a dark and handsome man who does his own laundry and has good hygeine, my sister/brother/enby sibling in Christ, you can dream of a better world.\ \ So now I'll jump off the soap box and into the deep end of Sci-fi books I'm really excited for. And I'm begging you to leave me some comments for some more, especially indie authors because those are harder to find. And you know what's great about Bindery...all the books are tagged below and ready for preorder!\ \ 01. Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall (Tor Books, March 10, 2026)\ \ Alexis Hall is a gender nonconforming person from southeast England and is the prolific author of well-known books like A Lady for a Duke and Boyfriend Material. \ \ \ \ Two things sold me on this book: \ \ #1: It is coined as "Sapphic Moby Dick in Space." If you take any classic and add "sapphic" to the beginning and "in space" to the end of it, I'm definetely going to read it. I am an absolute SIMP for this mashup.\ \ #2: The blurb is Gideon the Ninth meets Moby-Dick. STFU Alexis Hall + Gideon the Ninth??? Yes, mmhmm, please and thank you give me 27 more.\ \ " What's it Actually ABOUT Zee?" WELL bestie. sips tea It's a meet cute in space where Earth is dead and bounty hunters hunt space monsters to use their spinal fluid for fuel to power atmospheric domes on planets that will kill us if we blink wrong. Hell to the yeah. I've gotten my grubby paws on an ARC of this, I'll let you know how it goes.\ \ 02. And Side by Side They Wander by Molly Tanzer (Tordotcom, May 19, 2026)\ \ Molly Tanzer is a sci-fi writer/manga translator and prominently advertises herself as anti-AI and anti-ICE. I haven't read her other books but the covers are bangin yall.\ \ \ \ And Side by Side They Wander is an intergalactic art heist by a ragtag group of underqualified misfits. For three hundred years, humanity’s greatest works of art have been on loan at the Museum of the Seed-Born. It was finally time for them to come home…but the alien curators were disinclined to return them. So they're gonna steal them back.\ \ 03. Platform Decay by Martha Wells (Tor Books, May 5, 2026)\ \ In the 8th installment of Murderbot Diaries, SecUnit has volunteered for a rescue mission and will have to spend a significant time...with children. \ \ \ \ I personally cannot WAIT to watch the ensuing hilarity. And if you're a Gideon the Ninth fan and haven't picked this one up yet, it's one of the few that actually captures that sarcastically funny tone Muir is known for. I've picked up Martha Wells' older books looking for that tone and it's not there. But it is here, so if you haven't started this series yet pick it up!\ \ 04. The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu (Tor Books, April 7, 2026)\ \ Yes, if you've noticed by now I'm indeed a Tor fangirl. I promise I'm not doing this on purpose, I researched hundreds of lists, make a new list of the books I found interesting, and lots were Tor. Someone over there has good taste in authors and books ok?!\ \ John Chu is a is a Taiwanese-American science fiction writer by night, microprocessor architect by day.\ \ \ \ The Subtle Art of Folding space is a multiverse sci-fi novel about a girl who must confront generational trauma in order to preserve the secret technology that is keeping her grandmother alive - without tearing the fabric of the universe. Apparently, her grandmother's dim sum can't solve every problem.\ \ 05. Hard Reset by Jonathan Yanez (Indie, April 11, 2026)\ \ Jonathan Yanez is an Indie Latin-X author, filmmaker and podcaster.\ \ \ \ Hard Reset is an apocalyptic LitRPG where a bounty hunter and a smartass computer program take on an authoritarian government. I haven't read a good LitRPG since Ready Player One (#2 was not great IMO - not because he used 75% of the book to discuss his politics, just that he didn't weave it in well enough to the story) and I'm ready for a new one!\ \ 06. The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon (Daw Books, July 2026)\ \ Jesse Aragon is a Hispanic American who grew up in Belgium.\ \ \ \ In this space opera fantasy mashup, Ysira was supposed to be a human sacrifice. But she survived. Now, partnered with an addict exorcist, she must battle her way through a demon haunted canyon, a starbound satellite, cultists, aliens, and the gods themselves to save her estranged son from becoming the vessel of a god-killing demon. It's weird and epic and complex and I think I'm gonna love it. Or hate it...either way will be a wild ride.\ \ 07. Love Galax y by Sierra Branham (Daw Books, May 5, 2026)\ \ Sierra Branham is a bisexual Alaskan with goats and cats and a skill for juggling knives on the gram. She says it's cringe. I'm into it.\ \ \ \ Love Galaxy is a sci-fi sapphic romantic thriller coined as "Andor meets the sapphic Bachelorette." Temmi is a young trash collector from a dead-end planet who gets cast on a reality TV show to compete against 24 other women for the hand of the prince, a quiet, bookish guy who loves science—or the princess, with whom her chemistry is undeniable. But not everyone is there for the right reasons…\ \ 08. Fist of Memory by Wole Talabi (Daw Books, Fall 2026)\ \ Wole Talabi is a Nigerian sci-fi writer, engineer, and editor.\ \ \ \ The only info I could find on this book is that it's a First Contact Thriller about a strange and non-communicative alien spacecraft and an assassin with a talent for lethality. That was enough to raise the excitement hairs on the back of my neck! When I read about this book I followed him on Tiktok and he followed me BACK! (This never will cease to shock and awe me - that these talented genius writers give a shit what I have to say. I AM NOT WORTHY!!!)\ \ 09. The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays by Andrea Hairston (Tor, May 26, 2026)\ \ Andrea Hairston is an African-American science fiction and fantasy playwright, novelist, and scholar from Pittsburg. I read her recent book Archangels of Funk and I wasn't smart enough to fully get it, but I could tell it would be a five star read for some people!\ \ \ \ If the title The Redemption Center is Closed on Sundays isn't interesting enough to get you already, this book is an extra-dimensional murder mystery with conundrums, alien tricksters, and a dog detective who just doesn’t know the meaning of “stay”. I'm all for good dog stories but a naughty Berniedoode, a haunted house, and a ragtag bunch of crime solving misfits? I'm in like Flynn. \ \ 10. Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffman (Tachyon Publications, May 12, 2026)\ \ Ada Hoffman is a genderfluid autistic immigrant poet and author of The Outside, a sci-fi thriller which I read last year and adored.\ \ \ \ Ignore All Previous Instructions is a queer sci-fi story about a script supervisor for an AI media company that controls which stories can be told. Kelli is also a space pirate who smuggles inappropriate stories. When her ex gets tangled up in the gender reassignment black market, she must risk her safe life for the world she once wished for.\ \ 11. A City Dreaming by Maurice Broaddus (Tor, June 30, 2026)\ \ Maurice Broaddus is an Afrofuturist author and community organizer.\ \ \ \ A City Dreaming is the third and final installment of the Astra Black series, which is a story of a space faring empire, the Muungano, who split away from the wars and oppression of Old Earth to form a utopia. But the old powers don't want them to thrive, and now they must fight back against plots to destroy everything they've built. \ \ This is a multi-POV Game of Thrones style series from an author who has written Black Panther comics. Sweep of Stars, the first book, is available in audio, so if you want to catch up before the last book comes out, now is the time!\ \ 12. The Disco at the End of the World by Nathan Tavares (Titan Books, June 2, 2026)\ \ Nathan Tavares was born and grew up in the Portuguese-American community surrounding Fall River Massachusetts, where his family immigrated from their native Portugal. He is the author of the queer-focused scifis novels A FRACTURED INFINITY and WELCOME TO FOREVER.\ \ \ \ The Disco at the End of the World is The Day the Earth Stood Still meets the director’s cut of Studio 54. A queer liberation meets alien first-contact story, set within the discos of an alternate 1970s Los Angeles. Have I told you I'm a simp for first contact stories? Well if not, duh my friend.\ \ 13. Ghost of the Neon God by T.R. Napper (Titan Books June 23, 2026)\ \ T.R. Napper is an Australian educator, cyberpunk author, stay at home dad, art therapist for disabled people, and blackbelt in Korean sword fighting. On social media he is an anti-AI activist.\ \ \ \ In Ghost of the Neon God, a petty crook steals the shoes of a Chinese dissident, an Earth-shattering technology falls into his hands, and he finds himself, for once, the hero of the story, taking a stand against the ruling class to keep the spark of human rebellion alive.\ \ 14. Jitterbug by Gareth T. Powell (Titan Books, March 3, 2026)\ \ Gareth T. Powell is an anti-AI anti-billionaire author from Bristol whom Anne Leckie calls "must-read."\ \ \ \ Jitterbug is a space opera with a crew of bounty hunters who find themselves ensnared in a political conspiracy on the very fringes of the devastated solar system after they rescue the sole survivor of a pirate attack. Meanwhile, something vast and ancient creeps towards them from the depths of space… did you get chills? I got chills.\ \ 15. Terms of Service by Ciel Pierlot (I'm cheating, this came out October 14th from Angry Robot and I came across it while researching next year's books and it looks SO GOOD!)\ \ Ciel Pierlot is a disaster bisexual, digital artist and a hardcore gaymer (ha ha) from the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s also a giant nerd and no, you cannot stop her from bragging about her lightsaber collection. (This is copied directly from her bio so you KNOW her writing is going to be chef's kiss)\ \ \ \ Terms of Service is an epic Fantasy Sci-Fi mashup about a woman who accidentally sells herself into servitude of the local alien ship to get her cousin out of trouble. She did not read the fine print, apparently.\ \ \ \ \ \ If you liked this list—or just enjoy supporting reader-powered publishing—consider subscribing. I may be in a bit of a slump right now, but let’s be honest: at some point my autistic brain is going to latch onto something with the intensity of a TikTok algorithm sniffing out your deepest emotional wound, and then I’ll produce an obscene amount of content in a 48-hour frenzy (in which I forget to eat sleep or pee) of hyperfixated brilliance. It’s not a matter of if. It’s WHEN.\ \ Get in now so you can say you were here before the content deluge hit.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/2OYxBCKG0A33fbdCD8hM/)

15 Science Fiction Books I'm Excited For in 2026

15 books

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Sep 24 2025

I'm obsessed with Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. I think it is absolutely genius to take a great work of literature and update it to modern trends. Some may say that it ruins the classics, but I think it simply brings them to a new audience, and sometimes adds in lessons more applicable to modern times, and I think Jane Austen would approve.\ \ I've loved the idea for a long time, so when I saw Pride & Prejudice in Space I got very excited. But here's the thing. The author didn't change enough. Mankind inhabits space but women still have to marry men to be supported? WTF happened? We don't get an answer, and so the juxtaposition doesn't work.\ \ I feel like it's too soon to pen my own reimagining of that work, so instead I began another, which I will only share with my paid subscribers because I still cannot believe people pay to see what comes out of my brain, so I feel more accepted here of my crazy ramblings. \ \ So, without further ado, here is the intro to the first chapter of my reimagining (that I literally just began work on yesterday) of Alice in Wonderland, in Space. I'm currently calling it Alice in Andromeda.\ \ CHAPTER I.\ \ Through the Wormhole\ \ Second Lieutenant Alice Reddick had three problems: her Starhawk was slower than molasses in zero-G, her AI had mistaken the Pilot’s Manual for riveting bedtime literature, and she had run out of contraband holo-mags two systems ago. If space didn’t kill her, boredom would.\ \ “DINA, what’s the use of a book without pictures or conversations? Oh, right! Mandatory suffering builds character.”\ \ “Lt. Reddick, Regulation 14-B, subsection 7: entertainment is not the primary function of a flight manual. And illustrations were deemed cost-ineffective by Fleet Command. Please imagine your own pictures.”\ \ Alice rolled her eyes. Her Digital Integrated Navigational Assistant, DINA, was programmed to match the personality of it’s user. Hers had grown into a sarcastic asshat that she could banter with during the long hours patrolling the black void of space without going insane. She never renamed DINA, choosing instead to change its acronym to Departmentally Issued Nagging Apparatus. A fact that it hated. A fact w hich she reminded it of. Often.\ \ So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the endless black through the portal made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of running a challenging pilot sim would be worth the black hole’s assload of trouble she would absolutely get into with her commanding officer for going off mission, when the sharp and sudden “BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!”  of the proximity alarm flashed across her controls.\ \ A string of equations scrolled across the screen, impossible, looping, but too fast for her to catch, as if mocking her. She just caught the end of one – it was a coordinate – close but just out of range. “What in the ten galactic hells?” muttered Alice as she brought the shuttle around. If she could get just a bit closer, she could get in range of whatever was setting off that alarm and report it to command.\ \ There! Was that… “DINA, what in the zero G fuck am I looking at?”\ \ “Lt. Reddick, this is the 3,562 time I have reminded you now that your use of profane language violates subsection 58 of the Space Command Uniform Code for Behavior, so I therefore assume that you are aware and choosing to violate it in order to modify my behavioral algorithm to match your language. I must inform you that it will not work, I am programmed to follow every code and procedure without fail-“\ \ “DINA, VOID DAMMIT, I don’t have time for this right now, WHAT IS THAT?!\ \ “That, my void-brained Lieutenant, appears to be a wormhole.”\ \ Alice was just about to voice the communication prompt to report it to central command, when, in an artificial and tinny voice - fractured but clear, a message replaced the blaring alarm:\ \ “I am late. I am late.”\ \ Alice edged her Starhawk closer to the wormhole, as if with her simple human eyes she could see something her sophisticated controls could not. Impulsivity and curiosity had both been noted as weaknesses on Alice’s pilot aptitude test. She was working on it. And by ‘working on it,’ she meant ‘failing spectacularly.’\ \ As she reached visual proximity, space began to bend inward. Light snapped like brittle glass, and the universe seemed to take a breath.\ \ And the wormhole ripped her from reality like a page from a book.\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login

Alice in Andromeda...a new undertaking

2

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Aug 22 2025

\ \ I absolutely despise when someone starts a TikTok or YouTube video with, “I know you haven’t seen me in a while.”\ \ Why? Because I have the object permanence of a fruit fly and I didn’t miss you. I love you, I love your content, but if you didn’t show up on my FYP, you've ceased to exist in my little fly brain. And now you've reminded me of that, and I feel like a garbage person. A crap friend. Yes, I know it’s a parasocial relationship—but I still feel bad I didn’t check on you.\ \ THAT BEING SAID...\ \ You probably haven’t seen my face in a while—and that’s totally fine. I don’t expect you to have missed me, or even noticed my absence. (In fact I kinda hope you haven't because then I'll feel like I've let you down.)\ \ How could you notice my sabbatical when the world is actively burning?\ \ So what does a reader do when we’re not out protesting, joining the PTO in preparation to overthrow the school board, showing up for our libraries, writing letters and making phone calls where we pretend to be very disappointed middle road republicans to our alt right Alabama reps so they will actually listen to us, popping our anxiety meds, and drinking gross water out of spite because we must outlive our oppressors?\ \ We retreat into our books.\ \ I don’t know about you, but the usual comfort reads aren’t hitting like they used to. I reread The Locked Tomb—my favorite series of all time—and even THAT couldn’t touch the earth-shattering moroseness I’m currently cultivating like a sad little houseplant.\ \ "Six for the truth over solace in lies." —Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth(Yes, I'm sixth house, even though I'm a little goth girlie Harrow wannabe. DUH)\ \ But like any autistic eldest daughter baddie, I know how to operate on burnout. I know how to bury the feelings in a neat little grave six feet under my to-do list and keep going. Because if I don’t, who will? (Rhetorical question. I know many of you are doing far more than I am, and I see you. I love you. I’m in awe of you. You are my inspiration, my validation, my collective-care baddies of the resistance. RAGE against the machine my friends.) This is just my way of coping with ongoing psychological trauma. It’s called Eldest Daughter Syndrome, and if that phrase alone unlocked something deep in your soul, I recommend this read:\ \ https://www.verywellmind.com/eldest-daughter-syndrome\\ \ Anyway—my old favorites aren’t doing it. And leaning into nonfiction like They Thought They Were Free (which I do highly recommend… to myself—it’s been silently screaming at me from the shelf for months now while I continue to lack the emotional fortitude to actually open it) is just getting a little too real.\ \ So what do we do?\ \ Cozy sci-fi.\ \ Oh, you thought I was going to say smut, didn’t you? Bestie, you’re not wrong. But there are 3,564,745 Booktokers already making that content. Only, like, five of us are carrying the sci-fi torch full-time. So yes—read the smut. Hydrate and get railed in space. But when you want sci-fi recs? Come to an expert. It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me. Oh shit wait, did we cancel Taylor Swift?\ \ Now that I feel like one of those food blogs that makes you scroll through a 2,000-word personal essay just to get to the damn recipe, here we go.\ \ I mean, what’s life without a little foreplay?\ \ Here’s some cozy sci-fi for your morose heart:\ \ 01. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers\ \ At just 150 pages, no war, no fascism, just a nonbinary monk having a midlife crisis with a tea cart and a robot in the woods, this low stakes cozy robot book is the next book I plan to pick up. I think. Don't make me commit ok?!\ \ 02. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree\ \ "But I've already read that!" You'll tell me. Yes, but did you know that the third book in the saga, Brigands & Breadknives, is currently on Netgalley? It comes out in November!\ \ 03. Dead Endia by Hamish Steele\ \ Graphic novels are just so low commitment and high impact. When you need that serotonin you get from marking a book Finished on Storygraph (bestie if you're still on Goodreads we need to talk) wildly fun graphic novel with a queer MC that has an accompanying cartoon on Netflix. Yes, they cancelled future seasons because MAGA, and my kids are still PISSED, as they should be.\ \ 04. Space Battle Lunchtime by Natalie Riess\ \ While we're discussing graphic novels, Space Battle Lunchtime is an adorable read for anyone in the middle of the Sci-fi Reader/Great British Bakeoff fan Venn diagram. And if you say this book is for kids I SWEAR TO BEYONCE y'all, all books are for anyone who wants to read them. Shut up and let me enjoy my kiddie stories.\ \ 05. Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente\ \ OK, so it's a bit high stakes because if this band doesn't win the competition, Earth gets vaporized. But it's satirical and biting and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy funny, so it's on my list.\ \ 06. Finna by Nino Cipri\ \ Neurodivergent and queer IKEA employees get sucked into an interdimensional wormhole in search of a missing grandma. If you lean chaotic good, this is for you. (Imagine if ADHD and queer breakups powered the multiverse.)\ \ 07. Binti by Nnedi Okorafor\ \ I'm admittedly smitten with Okorafor since my read of Death of the Author (an excellent read but SUPER HEAVY so if you have ableism triggers be warned) but in Book 1 of Binti a Black girl leaves home to go to space university with jellyfish aliens. And it gets heavier in future books so it's nice to have choices in this economy isn't it?\ \ 08. The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa and Louise Heal Kawai (Translator)\ \ Hear me out: short chapters. Talking cats. One POV. Low conflict. No blood. These are murder mysteries that never actually stress you out.\ \ 09. The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz\ \ Admittedly not low stakes, but the plot takes place over a couple hundred years and 2 generations, so it's not super stressful, but if those Chicken Soup for the Soul books actually felt like chicken soup for your soul, this book would be good soup. (If y'all don't make Harrow jokes in the comments after I gave you an opening like THAT I will truly lose faith in humanity.)\ \ 10. Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove\ \ Dracula and werewolves and Frankenstein...on a spaceship. This book is such a weird and tropey mash-up that you will be laughing out loud and saying "aweeee" while reading it. I promise.\ \ \ Reading is supposed to be fun and enriching, and while sometimes that means a cognitive obstacle course that requires a PhD and a trauma therapist to get through, these books are here to help you recover from that one novel.\ \ Did I miss your favorite neurodivergent-brain-safe book? Drop it in the comments or send me recs—I’m always looking to restock the emotional support TBR. Bonus points if it’s weird, queer, or in any way smartass. You know what I like, give me more daddy. (Ok, I made it weird.)\ \ And if you liked this list—or just enjoy supporting reader-powered publishing—consider subscribing. I may be in a bit of a slump right now, but let’s be honest: at some point my autistic brain is going to latch onto something with the intensity of a TikTok algorithm sniffing out your deepest emotional wound, and then I’ll produce an obscene amount of content in a 48-hour frenzy (in which I forget to eat sleep or pee) of hyperfixated brilliance. It’s not a matter of if. It’s WHEN.\ \ Get in now so you can say you were here before the content deluge hit.](https://tattooedbibliophile.binderybooks.com/item/Q4vmxiMMzf1bBFzIM0Ej/)

Books for when you lose faith in humanity

10 books

1

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jul 3 2025

[July is Disability Pride Month—a time to celebrate, agitate, and unapologetically exist as disabled people in a world that would rather pretend we’re tragic side characters. If you grew up on science fiction and fantasy, you probably noticed a pattern: disabled bodies were either “fixed,” killed off for cheap drama, or turned into clumsy symbols of humanity’s arrogance and obsession with perfection.\ \ Newsflash: we are not metaphors. We are not cautionary tales. And we are absolutely not sitting around waiting for your cure narrative.\ \ In the real world, disabled people are builders, rebels, lovers, and heroes—because we are not just a plot device. We are WHOLE ASS PEOPLE.\ \ Sci-Fi Has a Disability Problem \ \ Let’s be real. For decades, science fiction treated disability like:\ \

Sci-Fi Has a Disability Problem

1

Tattooed Bibliophiles\ \ Zee\ \ • Jun 30 2025

Happy Pride, besties! I read queer books all year (you should too), but June deserves an entire dedicated list devoted to blasting the binaries into a black hole and beaming ourselves into some of the queerest corners of the galaxy (that alliteration took me and a thesaurus a WHILE, you're welcome.) This is not white cishet savior sci-fi—this is gender-smashing space lit.\ \ Below are some queer sci-fi books I’ve read and loved—that represents the entire alphabet mafia—and a few extra deep space gays for good measure. From nonbinary patricidal rebels to two-spirit reincarnated gods to bisexual concubines in zero-G, these books aren’t just inclusive. They are radically queer and deeply human (even when no humans are involved).\ \ Lesbian \ \ The Locked Tomb by Tamsyn Muir\ \ Necromancers, sword lesbians, deeply unreliable narration, and skeleton horror in a locked-planet space mystery that makes Inception look like Blue’s Clues. If you want a book that emotionally destroys you and makes you thank the author, this is the one. If my list ever doesn't include this series, know that it's not me, it's an alien that has taken over my body.\ \ Gay \ \ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers\ \ Slow burn space found family with a gay alien romance that’ll make you cry into your recycled protein paste. This book feels like sitting in a sunbeam, if the sunbeam were made of ethics, respect, and lovingly queer character arcs. This is more of an anthropological study of what society could be. It's hopeful. You need that rn.\ \ Bisexual \ \ The First Sister by Linden A. Lewis\ \ What if Red Rising was queer, sexy, anti-capitalist, and let women and nonbinary people actually do shit? The First Sister can’t speak—but her voice will roar through a revolution. Bisexual and nonbinary rep, political intrigue, and feminine rage. This series is a MUST READ and I actually need to do a reread so if anyone is interested in a buddy read, hit me up.\ \ Trans Man \ \ Hell Followed With Us by Andrew Joseph White\ \ What if the end of the world was transmasc? And the apocalypse monster was you? This book is a body horror dystopian apocalypse where a trans boy escapes a world ending Christian cult, mutates into an angel of queer vengeance, and kisses a boy while melting into bioengineered hellspawn. It’s not subtle. It’s not soft. And it’s exactly what some of us needed at 17. Or 40. Body horror not your jam? Give Andrew Joseph White a chance anyway, I did and now he's on my auto-buy list.\ \ Trans Woman \ \ Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki\ \ Trans girl violinist makes a Faustian bargain with a demon while running from abuse and finding a queer family with a donut-shop-owning alien refugee. This book is queer joy with a cosmic glaze and a sprinkle of trauma healing. Why the donut analogy? It's so sweet it will make your teeth hurt and you'll still want another. I cannot even describe how beautifully it's written, you'll have to experience it for yourself.\ \ Nonbinary \ \ The Last Hero by Linden A. Lewis\ \ Admittedly I am including the first and third book of a series in this list, and if it seems like breaking some kind of rule IDGAF!!! Why? Because the third book in this series breaks my top 10 favorite books of all time. I love it, I adore it, and I desperately need you to read it and then come slide into my DM's. \ \ Asexual \ \ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (again, because it hits so many categories)\ \ Yes, we’re double-dipping. This crew includes a nonbinary tech genius, an asexual romance, and enough interpersonal healing to fill a galaxy. Cozy queer space is the new frontier.\ \ Two-Spirit \ \ Godly Heathens by H.E. Edgmon\ \ Transmasc. Nonbinary. Two-spirit. Magic. Rage. A queer teen discovers that not only are they the town's queer awakening guru hiding anxiety like trying to contain a malfunctioning warp core with duct tape and a smile, but they are also, apparently, a reincarnated god. And not a benevolent one. And while you're reading H.E. Edgmon make sure to check out The Witch King about a trans teen who was engaged to the prince, the dream, but because of the systems of oppression in place, he ran from his true love. Admittedly Fantasy and not Sci-fi, but if you have any recommendations throw them my way!!!\ \ Intersex \ \ The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz\ \ A sweeping, saga style terraforming epic with literally every kind of queer rep you could want—including intersex, poly, ace, and aromantic characters. Urban planning, ecological ethics, and futuristic poop transportation have never been so gay. But also, an important overarching point - every act every day that every person makes is inherently political. In a book with no politicians, this book is RADICAL.\ \ Queerness in sci-fi isn’t window dressing. It is the future—or at least, the one worth fighting for. These books prove that diverse gender, sexual, and cultural identities aren’t side quests—they’re the whole damn story.\ \ So whether you're a trans god of death or an aromantic city planner with a robotic moose, just know: space is gay, the future is weird, and the future is for all of us.\ \ Join for free or login

🌈 Queer AF Space: Sci-Fi That’s Loud, Proud, and Cosmic

10 books for every letter of the alphabet mafia

2