My CONjuration Panels! let me show you them! https://www.katherinevillyard.com/2025/11/05/my-conjuration-panels-let-me-show-you-them/ #fantasy #bookstodon @bookstodon
bookstodon
4.25/5 @thestorygraph for "This Little Measure" the 6th Dean Street Press Sara Woods reprint and book 7/10 for my #DeanStreetDecember This Little Measure is two: the number of characters I liked.
#Mystery #Bookstodon #Reading
@bookstodon
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/862eddd1-a950-4847-a4ff-d962a57b5c82
New on my #blog: "Books reviewed: October 2025."
https://itinerantlibrarian.wordpress.com/2025/11/05/books-reviewed-october-2025/
My monthly wrap up of #reviews.
#BookReview #books #reading #AlchemicalThoughts #Bookstodon
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Five stars:
Furever After by Sofie Kelly and Cassandra Campbell (Narrator) (2024) is the 14th book in the Magical Cats mystery series. Kathleen discovers the body of the murderer from the first volume in the series, Curiosity Thrilled the Cat (2011). The discovery of his body leads to the realization that a painting stolen years before is somehow on display in the library!
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_11/furever_after.html
I first read Murder on the Orient Express in junior high. It's literally the 5th thing on my list of books / stories read that I started in June 1987. So I finished it mid July 1987. I rated it 2 stars. I remember being annoyed by the monogramed handkerchief — probably because of my neighbor Vladimir. I was annoyed that I, a 13 year old going on 14 knew more about the clue than a private detective with "little grey cells" and enough success to choose his own cases.
BUT... a few years later PBS started showing the Hercule Poirot mysteries on TV. I watched them while I painted. David Suchet brought the annoying little Belgian man to life in a way to make him lovable and understandable.
1/?
I've finished: The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
Narrated by the wonderful Bahni Turpin
I thought I was getting a new angle on the vampire trope, I got so much more.
The Southern Book Club's Guide isn't a fantasy where the protagonists are gifted the tools they need to beat the evil power.
It is about a group of housewives, with the their talents, background and idiosyncrasies facing a malevolent supernatural force while hampered by their marginalized position in society.
The Southern Book Club's Guide placed most other fantasy I've read in perspective. The fantasy isn't just about the worlds the stories take place in. It is that these worlds also contain the special powers necessary to win the day.
This isn't escapism, it's realism and it hit me hard. Most of the horror is about existing as a woman in a white man's world.
Oh, the gaSsliGhting, SO MUCH GASSLIGHTING!
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/fd616997-43d2-4170-8eba-05c09578a5a1
@bookstodon @audiobooks #fantasy #vampires #feminism #amReading #bookstodon #AudioBooks
Book Review: A Mouthful of Dust by Nghi Vo
A deeply unsettling addition to the series, bringing the connecting thread of food up to the forefront of the story.
@chloroform_tea has our review at the NOAF blog
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/book-review-mouthful-of-dust-by-nghi-vo.html
@bookstodon #bookstodon #fantasy #books #review
Book Review: God's Junk Drawer by Peter Clines
A story of expectations, the hazy memories of youth, and… oh yes, a plot and setting inspired by a famous TV show
@Princejvstin has our review at the NOAF blog
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2025/11/book-review-gods-junk-drawer-by-peter.html
#books #bookstodon #sciencefiction #review @bookstodon
I've finished: Bang Bang Bodhisattva by Aubrey Wood
Kiera is such a wonderful character, capable but totally in over her head. Thrust in to the middle of the action against her better judgment, she is a true reluctant heroine.
Bang Bang Bodhisattva manages to explore the trans experience, body modification, polyamory vs monogamy, police, crime and inequality via a fun sci-fi thriller that is both deadly serious and self deprecating.
https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/7300b0fa-3f05-4e74-8eec-3c219fdd6f19
@bookstodon @audiobooks #ScienceFiction #noir #lgbtqia #bookstodon #Audiobooks
Four stars:
Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell Jr (1938) is the short story that inspired The Thing. It also feels like an influence for T. Kingfisher's third Sworn Soldier novella, What Stalks the Deep (2025), although it isn't mentioned in her afterword (while At the Mountains of Madness is).
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_11/who_goes_there.html
New on my #blog: "My 5 Warhammer 40,000 Starter Books"
https://itinerantlibrarian.blogspot.com/2025/11/my-5-warhammer-40000-starter-books.html
#books #reading #WH40K #ItinerantLibrarian #writing #bookstodon #Warhammer40K
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Do you love multi-narrator audiobooks? I have one of those! Artistic Whispers Productions did an AMAZING job with Immortal Gifts!
You can, of course, wait three months (or more) for this audiobook to show up on your favorite retailer... or you can back me here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villyard/immortal-gifts-hardcover-paperback-and-audiobook
#bookstodon #vampirebooks #kickstarter #audiobooks @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
"Read all about it: What to know ahead of the 2025 Portland Book Festival"
"Hosted by nonprofit Literary Arts, the festival covers all things literary..."
Saturday, November 8, 10 am to 6 pm
If you’ve been holding off on backing to see if we get the ribbon bookmark…
We’re $31 away. So if you back for the hardcover, it’ll have the ribbon bookmark!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villyard/immortal-gifts-hardcover-paperback-and-audiobook
#bookstodon #vampirebooks @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
"Avrana Kern has only limited and artificial emotional responses, being dead and a computer composed at least partially of ants."
#AdrianTchaikovsky 's Children of Time was one of my favourite reads this year. The sequel took a little bit longer to grow on me, but the alien life in this first contact story is memorably, wonderfully creepy, and overall this is another excellent book. Looking forward to getting started on the third! #Bookstodon @bookstodon
Four stars:
Moby Duck by Sara Goetter and Natalie Riess (2025) is the second book in the Cryptid Kids graphic novel series. It's another summer and this time everyone is hanging with K and her dad at her great-aunt's beach home. But even before they can get there things are going wrong.
https://pussreboots.com/blog/2025/comments_11/moby_duck.html
Neville says, “Back my Meowmie’s Kickstarter!”
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villyard/immortal-gifts-hardcover-paperback-and-audiobook
#bookstodon #vampirebooks #kickstarter @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
"From sweeping historical novels to tragicomic romps to speculative dystopias, Elese's Eleven will submerge you in the way only very special fiction can." Check out Elese of Flyleaf Books 2025 Gift Guide (which includes The Expert of Subtle Revisions!)
#books #writing #writersofmastodon #WritingCommunity #bookstodon @bookstodon
JUST IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN (😭), my latest review went up at Grimdark Magazine. Joe R. Lansdale totally is your favorite horror writer’s favorite horror writer, and this is a solid retrospective.
(As always, boosts are appreciated!)
https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/review-the-essential-horror-of-joe-r-lansdale-by-joe-r-lansdale/
Would I read this crossover, hell yes I would! 😂
@bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop @bookstodon
#Hemingway #Vs #MontyPython
#Book #Books #BookMemes #Memes #Humor #Humour
#Novel #Novels #Bookshelf #Mastobooks #BooksofMastodon #Bookstodon #Bookworm #Bookwyrm #Bookstodon #BookLove
Did you ever want a Jewish Gilda Stories?
If you don't know The Gilda Stories, run! don't walk! to your favorite bookseller and grab a copy of this story of sympathetic and ethical sapphic vampires of color!
Immortal Gifts might not be about sapphic vampires of color, but it IS about marginalized vampires trying to lead an ethical life. Neither book ever questions whether a vampire can be an ethical being.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/villyard/immortal-gifts-hardcover-paperback-and-audiobook
Hey hey fellow #LegendsAndLattes fans, Brigands & Breadknives comes out tomorrow! 🎉🎉🎉
Travis Baldree is such a great narrator that I'm getting my copy on audio at libro.fm.
#BrigandsAndBreadknives #TravisBaldree #Books #Bookstodon @bookstodon
Edited 124d ago
NOW WITH NEW THUMBNAILS! Free short stories! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhQiWBjDWW3YFpjxqYO8F_WKtlRBCCvee
#bookstodon #sciencefiction #fantasy #shortstory #audio @books @Books@mstdn.social @bookstodon
I wish old books were properly digitised and available as ePubs.
My brain suddenly had a hankering to read "The Intergalactic Omniglot".
It seems there's only a 2nd hand paper-version for sale 😢
Also - isn't it cool how the kid on the cover has a foldable device? Pretty cool for 1988.
Five stars:
The House With No Keys by Lindsay Currie (2025) is the sequel to The Mystery of Locked Rooms (2024). The Deltas are tricked into participating in the opening day of a competing fun house / locked room by a promise of a $10,000 prize.
