Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, with your new releases to start the week, and a couple of books that feature awesome moms. We’re coming up on a snow week where I’m at, so I’m looking at warming food and books to curl up with, since Loki the old man cat has taken to yelling at me until I either sit with him or go to bed so he can sleep on my legs. If you also have a cat in your life, if you haven’t tried out the “cat gogurt” (it’s a tube of stinky meat past, Churu is one of the big brands) give it a whirl, though be warned you may turn your little monster into an even bigger monster. Stay safe and warm out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
Are you looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for your bookish boo? Gift Tailored Book Recommendations. Your boo will tell our professional booknerds about what they love and what they don’t, what they’re reading goals are, and what they need more of in their bookish life. Then, they sit back while our Bibliologists go to work selecting books just for them. TBR has plans for every budget. Surprise your bookish boo with Tailored Book Recommendations this Valentine’s and visit mytbr.co/gift.
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here’s somewhere to start: NDN Collective and Jane’s Due Process.
Bookish Goods
Perihelion Crew Patch Sticker by HappyFridayCo
Here’s another bit of cool Murderbot fanart — a design for the crew of the Perihelion, also known as ART. $10
New Releases
Karma of the Sun by Brandon Ying Kit Boey
After six cataclysms that have heralded a nuclear winter, humanity’s few survivors live on the Tibetan plateau, haunted by spirits and terrorized by warlords. The seventh and final cataclysm is prophesied to happen soon, but nonetheless young Karma searches for his father, presumed dead after disappearing ten years earlier. Led by the eerie call of a horn that only he can hear, Karma journeys into the Himalayas and discovers the answer to his father’s disappearance might be a mystical mountain that connects the physical and spirit worlds, which also might be the answer to saving humankind.
The Keeper’s Six by Kate Elliott
Esther, an older mother with adult children, has not spoken to her Hex, her magical traveling party, since they were all banned from the alien space of the Beyond for ten years. But when her grown son’s cry for help wakes her in the middle of the night, her Hex are the only people she can trust to go undercover with her, brave the Beyond, and find him.
For a more comprehensive list, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
With Kate Elliott’s book about a spell-slinging mom coming out this week, here are a couple more awesome moms from fiction!
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
In a world plagued by apocalyptic climate changes called “fifth seasons,” a middle-aged mother searches for her lost daughter as a new and deeply disastrous fifth season begins. Essun harbors many secrets she has passed onto her children, including her orogene magic, which lets her control and influence the very earth around her. But her secrets are as nothing compared to the ancient wrongs she will uncover on her journey.
A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold
I love the Vorkosigan saga in general, but this is one of my favorite books out of it, because it’s funny as heck, and also because it features two extremely badass moms — Ekaterin Vorsoisson and Cordelia Vorkosigan.
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.