Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process
Happy Friday, shipmates–and it’s Friday the 13th, which is my favorite kind of Friday! (My birthday sometimes gets to be on Friday the 13th… though it’s not this one.) It’s Alex, and I’ve got a couple new releases for you to check out, and another wedge of delicious New Zealand SFF to peruse, courtesy of the Sir Julius Vogel Awards. Have a wonderful weekend and stay safe out there, space pirates! I’ll see you on Tuesday!
Until Darkness Dies Mug
Who doesn’t love a good coffee mug? This one’s inspired by Laura Thalassa’s The Bargainer series. And that’s just a cool slogan on it to begin with… $13
New Releases
Let the Mountains Be My Grave by Francesca Tacchi
In 1944 Italy, a partisan named Veleno’s only goal is to kill as many Nazis as he can before he dies. But Veleno is beloved by the ancient goddess Angitia, and that gives him the strength to try to recover a Nazi weapon, one that will put him into a confrontation with his own mortality that he does not expect.
Star Wars: Brotherhood by Mike Chen
With the Clone Wars begun, the peace protected by the Jedi is being destroyed, bit by bit, with each world that joins the Separatists. When an explosion devastates a supposedly neutral planet, the Republic is immediately blamed, and the Jedi dispatch Obi-Wan Kenobi to investigate. And amidst all this strife, Anakin Skywalker has at last become a Jedi Knight.
Don’t forget you can get three free audiobooks at Audiobooks.com with a free trial!
Riot Recommendations
We’re doing the last round of Sir Julius Vogel Finalists for this year with the rest of the Novella/Novelette category. I also suggest checking out the finalists for best collected work when you get a chance if you’re in a short story mood. (Also, the short story finalists? Excellent.) I will note that this finalist list isn’t as diverse as Book Riot’s lists usually are.
Raven’s Haven for Women of Magic by Anna Kirtlan
Cassandra Frost is a witch who would like to not be involved in any of this magical nonsense; she keeps the few spells she casts under wraps and tries to protect the secrecy of the Wellington witch community while staying well away from them. But when she casts a spell to save a geeky graphic designer named Adrian, her ordinary life and her witching life are suddenly on a collision course.
Heart and Hearth by Anna Klein
When Addie inherits a bed and breakfast in a tiny town, she was already nonplussed–but then she discovers that it’s magical, and she has an entire witch heritage that she’s been trying to ignore this entire time. Worse, there’s a decades old mystery just waiting for her arrival…
The Impossible Resurrection of Grief by Octavia Cade
The Grief is an unstoppable melancholia that has infected the world thanks to the extinctions and ecological collapse; it has only one ending, which is suicide. When Ruby’s friend succumbs to the Grief, what she leaves behind are letters talking of the resurrected dead, such as the Tasmanian tiger. But this scientific rebirth is not necessarily biological… and it comes with a price.
Monsters and Manuscripts by Jamie Sands
Dedicated boyfriends Basil, a library witch, and Sebastian, a paranormal Youtuber, have settled down in a sleepy suburb and all seems well. But then mysterious books start showing up in Sebastian’s library and there’s something making noises in the attic, it’s up to them to investigate…
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.