This book delivers on all the things I want from a mystery thriller. It’s sexy, intriguing, and keeps you guessing until the end. The vibe of this story feels so real and edgy; it pulls you into a web of secrets and shocking twists, and I enjoyed reading every minute of it.
Boom Town by Nic Stone, (List Price: $28, Simon & Schuster, 9781668056271, October 2025)
Reviewed by Jess Bryant, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
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Catalina Ituralde is a fascinating protagonist; prepare to be hooked by her twisting, turning narrative. Catalinatells the story of an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, who is currently in her senior year at Harvard and hopes to be a writer. As she struggles to find her place in the world, Catalina works through her feelings on gender, desire, relationships, belonging, and family bonds. The book’s stream-of-consciousness prose style emulates authors such as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, while also reflecting the state of Catalina’s jumbled thoughts. If you’re looking for a wry narrative with cheeky dialogue and plenty of literary references, this is the book for you!
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, (List Price: $28, One World, 9780593449097, July 2024)
Reviewed by Catherine Pabalate, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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I love this book so so much! It’s warm and wonderful and filled with beautifully woven sentiments about love and one’s place in the world that I now have saved in a note so I can reference them when I need to believe in magic again. I’m so glad that I live in a world with Julie Leong books in it, and will truly never hesitate to throw them at readers with all of the love in my heart!
The Keeper of Magical Things by Julie Leong, (List Price: $19, Ace, 9780593815946, October 2025)
Reviewed by Lucile Perkins-Wagel, Blinking Owl Books in Fort Myers, Florida
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Somers’s suburban realism is sharp enough to cut glass, with more humor on a single page than most entire novels could ever hope to contain. Here, the marriage plot is replaced by the adultery plot, so innovatively executed that it results in two equally gripping storylines. Not since “Choose Your Own Adventure” has the reader been able to have it both ways! At its heart, this is a book about desire, refreshingly unmoralizing and dauntless at uncovering its sad and funny peculiarities. Smart, sexy, and ferociously readable.
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers, (List Price: $28, Simon & Schuster, 9781668081440, October 2025)
Reviewed by Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
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Anna North has written a tale with mysteries from a body found in the bog, believed to be 2,000 years old, and today’s struggle for the environment and development. Agnes is a young American forensic anthropologist who is hired to help identify a body believed to be buried in the bog from 196,1 and instead dates the remains as from the Druidic order of Celtic Europe, over 2,000 years old but preserved in the bog. Readers meet the young Druid as her mother has declared her, as she travels to Camulodunon and returns with gifts. She dies at a Solstice celebration and is buried in the bog. Readers will also know much of the life of Agnes as she spars with environmentalists and developers as she tries to save the bog. The mystery of the distant past and today’s conflict will haunt all who open these pages.
Bog Queen by Anna North, (List Price: $28.99, Bloomsbury Publishing, 9781635579666, October 2025)
Reviewed by Nancy Pierce, Bookmiser in Marietta, Georgia
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Gotta admit: after reading the Warning on page one, I almost put this one on the back burner. Twenty pages into the main story, however, I was swept away by an incredibly ardent undertow. The paragraph/sentences were in no way as overwhelming as the Warning. If anything, these “sentegraphs” felt more like I was pulling the string of a Mattel “Farmer Says” See-N-Say, bouncing from character to character with such flawless fluidity that I occasionally had to come up for air, take a five-minute break, then dive right back in. Wonderfully exhausting.
Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $29.95, New Directions, 9780811226646, December 2025)
Reviewed by Ian McCord, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia
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An absolutely stunning achievement in fiction. In one meandering, cascading, kaleidoscopic sentence across four hundred pages, Krasznahorkai paints a compelling portrait of the banality, beauty, heartbreak, and absurdity of the current era. We follow Florian Herscht, a gentle giant who works at a graffiti removal service, as he embarks on a one-sided correspondence with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to warn her about the impending end of the world through a reversal of the Big Bang. Meanwhile, he is roped by his boss (a neo-Nazi and inveterate Bach fan) into hunting down a graffiti artist who has been defacing all of the monuments to Johann Sebastian Bach in the city with pictures of wolves. Then real wolves show up, and things go off the rails. Herscht 07769 is weird and sad and truly one of a kind. It invades your mind and spirals outward, demolishing your sense of self and embedding you in the hopelessness and powerlessness of modern life.
Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai, (List Price: $18.95, New Directions, 9780811231534, September 2024)
Reviewed by Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
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I first saw a bog body in the British Museum, and I just thought, How amazing. This is a real person who lived and breathed 1000s of years ago, and I can still see him, and we can learn so much about him and his life, from his body and from studying him. And his people buried him in this place where I think they knew that he would be preserved, and I can imagine them, you know, hoping that maybe we would understand them. One day, I visited the bog where he was found. I really learned so much from that landscape, which today is quite degraded from its former state, but it’s still breathtaking to see, and there are spots of real biodiversity that could come back if protected properly. So I really got obsessed with bogs themselves and with the moss that creates the bogs, and the way it can operate as a colony, not as a single organism. And I really wanted in this book to talk about the non human world. I think that people tend to think that we always drive events on the earth, but there are many other organisms here that have huge impact on us, in our lives, and I really wanted to share that too.
― Anna North, Interview with Scott Simon, NPR Weekend Edition
What booksellers are saying about Bog Queen
In Bog Queen by Anna North, a forensic anthropologist unearths a centuries-old body from a peat bog, unraveling the buried life of a woman whose story echoes across time. Through interwoven narratives of past and present, the novel explores the fragility of civilization, the rise and fall of power, and our fleeting place in Earth’s vast history. A haunting work of climate fiction, Bog Queen invites readers to reflect on land, legacy, and the illusions of permanence.
― Jamie Southern, Bookmarks,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
I love a bog mystery and read this in one sitting. Story is told through the viewpoint of a present-day forensic anthropologist, a druid from the past, and my favorite part, for the bog moss.
― Heather Giese, Reading Rock Books in Dickson, Tennessee| BUY
About Anna North
Anna North is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Outlawed, America Pacifica, and Lambda Literary Award–winner The Life and Death of Sophie Stark. She is a senior correspondent at Vox. She lives in Brooklyn.
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I’m gonna need a minute after this one. This book has me questioning every motive of every person I’ve ever met. Even if I haven’t met you, you’re included in my scrutiny if I’ve read about you, seen a picture of you or been made aware of your existence. I have more questions than answers right now. WHAT ACTUALLY CAN WE KNOW?!?!
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, (List Price: $30, Knopf, 9780593804728, September 2025)
Reviewed by Amanda Kirkland, G. J. Ford Bookshop in St. Simons Island, Georgia
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This is a heartwrenching story that will bring you to tears. Graciela and Consuelo are two Indigenous sisters who were taken from their homes to serve under a dictator. When genocide strikes their community, they flee in an effort to make new lives for themselves. Both believing each other to be dead, fate brings them back together years later. This story feels like a fresh wound, and waiting for time to let it heal. This story explores the dark colonial past of a nation while still exploring hope, love, and the importance of family in the end.
The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera, (List Price: $28, Pantheon, 9780593317235, August 2025)
Reviewed by Gabriela Warner, Epilogue: Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Cinderella and I had an odd relationship when I was a child. The fairy tale is stuffed full of iconic imagery–those glass slippers! That magical dress! The looming, thrilling deadline of Midnight!
And yet I found Cinderella, the character, left me a little cold. Perhaps because I was not a naturally helpful and easy-going child. I was obstinate and voracious. When plunged into an unfair and isolating situation, Cinderella…stays home. She doesn’t run away. She doesn’t even go out and make friends. (Talking mice, I considered sternly, did not count.)
“Aren’t you bored?” I wanted to yell. “Aren’t you angry? Don’t you ever, as the old internet saying goes, want to go apeshit?” ― Freya Marske, Letter to Readers
What booksellers are saying about Cinder House
Cinderella is one of my favorite fairytales of all, due to how much I connect with Ella, but, it gets harder every year for people to find new ways to retell or reimagine the story. Freya Marske was able to give this story a new polish, and in novella format, which is a feat in and of itself. I was delighted by every turn, and when the end came, it had me swooning! Who would have thought- Cinderella, a ghost story.
― Caitlyn Vanorder, Bookmarks,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina | BUY
queer, gothic, fairytale retelling >>> obsessed
― Ash Spaulding, Writers Block Bookstore, Winter Park, Florida | BUY
About Freya Marske
Freya Marske is a USA Today bestselling author and has been nominated for two Hugo Awards. Her books include Swordcrossed and A Marvellous Light, which was an international bestseller and won the Romantic Novel Award for Fantasy. She lives in Australia.
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What happens when your lover burns your immortal beloved’s art? You go on vacation to rekindle the flame (and hunt, obviously). Join Rebekah and Hugh as they navigate the emotional depths of a queer cruise and realize that they aren’t the only ones hunting. Merbaum’s storytelling perfectly captures the essence of ‘We’re on Vacation’ mode. Full of humor, glamour, and orgies, Vampires at Sea will expose the longevity of being an immortal in love.
Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum, (List Price: $18, Creature Publishing, 9781951971229, October 2025)
Reviewed by Jenny Gilroy, E. Shaver Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia
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Overdue is such a delight to read. Even with Ingrid’s crazy “we’re on a break” plan, I thought the characters were fun, fleshed out, and people I would want to be friends with. Her curmudgeon-y co-worker Macon is adorable – I love everything about him. Plenty of solid tropes in this one … friends to lovers, grumpy/sunshine, workplace romance. Slowburn and lots of good fun. I adored all of the library and bookstore references. A book about books!!!
Overdue by Stephanie Perkins, (List Price: $31, Saturday Books, 9781250313461, October 2025)
Reviewed by Christina Tabereaux, The Snail On the Wall in Huntsville, Alabama
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Fans of the high drama of telenovelas will find plenty to enjoy in this Romeo and Juliet retelling. Julieta is the head chef at her family’s fish taco restaurant in a heavily Latinx area near La Jolla. But when their landlord sells their entire block to the Taco King owners, everyone is infuriated, bit none more than Julieta and her mom. See, when Julieta’s mom was young and living in Mexico, she had her own fish taco stand, and she fell in love with a young Mexican American man. But he stole her recipe and took it back to the US to create his fast food empire, and she never saw him again. But, not knowing who he is, Julieta meets the man’s son during the Day of the Dead celebration and falls for him immediately. But are they doomed to fail?
Ramón and Julieta by Alana Quintana Albertson, (List Price: $16, Berkley, 9780593336229, February 2022)
Reviewed by Jennifer Jones, Bookmiser in Marietta, Georgia
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I inhaled this book! I have loved all of the Dalton series books, and the end to the series did not disappoint. Spending time with the same characters and getting in the heads of the other minor characters from previous books gives you a giant hug that gets you through the day. Shannon has a way in her writing that makes you feel like you are a part of the story. She makes the place in Maine seem like its own character. I am going to miss Tru, Bev, Nate, Rose, and all the town folk who make this story so vivid. The line “With each mouthful of champagne, Trudy feels lighter and fuller at the same time” Is just an example of the beauty of her writing. There is so much more to love in her newest book, and I can’t wait to see what she does next! Amazing
In a Distant Valley by Shannon Bowring, (List Price: $19, Europa Editions, 9798889661405, October 2025)
Reviewed by Suzanne Lucey, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina
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