Happy Tuesday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and I’ve got your first real round of actual new releases for 2024 coming — a double, actually, since we had a couple of sequel releases that I wanted to highlight as well. I hope the year is off to a good start for everyone. Stay safe out there, space pirates, and I’ll see you on Friday!
2024 is the tenth year of the Read Harder Challenge! Join us as we make our way through 24 tasks meant to expand our reading horizons and diversify our TBRs. To get book recommendations for each task, sign up for the Read Harder newsletter. We’ll also keep you informed about other cool reading challenges, readathons, and more across the bookish internet. If you become a paid subscriber, you get even more recommendations plus community features, where you can connect with a community of passionate, like-minded readers in a cozy and supportive corner of the internet. Sign up today!
Let’s make the world a better place, together. Here are two places to start: Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund, which provides medical and humanitarian relief to children in the Middle East regardless of nationality, religion, or political affiliation; and Ernesto’s Sanctuary, a cat sanctuary and animal rescue in Syria that is near and dear to my heart.
Bookish Goods
2024 Reading Tracker by NovellyYours
New year, new attack at the TBR pile. I’ve not tried tracking my reading before, but I’m thinking I should maybe give it a whirl this year, since I did pretty poorly in 2023. $32
New Releases
The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan
The ruined mansion of Akbar Manzil is a place people go specifically to disappear…except for Sana, who enters its doors looking to unravel its secrets. What she finds is a 100-year-old mystery watched over by an invisible, grieving djinn.
The Glass Box by J. Michael Straczynski
Riley Diaz has been incarcerated under extremely shady circumstances, thanks to a new “defense act” that’s established reeducation facilities charmingly called American Renewal Centers. She faces the choice to give in and be freed, or resist and be punished…and declares a one-woman war on the system. But she needs allies, and it’s hard to gain trust in an environment like this…
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
Riot Recommendations
Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White by Amélie Wen Zhao
Sequel to Song of Silver, Flame Like Night
With the Demon Gods risen, Lan and Zen have chosen opposite sides. Lan thinks the only way to free the Last Kingdom is the destruction of the Demon Gods with the power of the Silver Dragon. And Zen sees the Demon Gods as the only path to freedom.
Mislaid in Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children, book 9; start with Every Heart a Doorway
I love these books!! In this one, Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children gets its newest student, Antsy, who has a preternatural talent for finding things. When the school’s mean girl realizes that this might extend to doors, Antsy has to go on the run with friends, looking for a way back to the Shop Where Lost Things Go.
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.