Stacking The Shelves (Reading Reality) and The Sunday Post (Caffeinated Reviewer) are both blog memes about sharing the books we’re adding to the shelves and sharing news of the week ahead.

Two new purchases this week. I had preordered a trade paperback copy of No Life Forsaken, the Second Tale of Witness by Steven Erikson, but with the release date being pushed back to January, I nabbed the e-book this week instead. I also took the plunge on The Second Death of Locke by V. L. Bovalino, finally shifting it from my watchlist, with the paperback arriving early this week.

I’m trying to tread lightly on review titles, given that my review stack has become somewhat towering, but The Bloody Brick Road by Maude Royer was hard to resist. In this wildly creative, horror-soaked reimagining of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, nothing is as it seems in Dorothy’s dystopian nightmare. Fans of Tender Is the Flesh and Maeve Fly will want to follow her twisted journey down the yellow-brick road.

You know the saying, “it never rains, it pours?” Well, the last 2 weeks have seen our daughter-in-law rushed to the hospital (twice) for emergency surgery, my mother rushed to the hospital after a horrendous car accident, and my spouse losing their job due to budget cuts. Between all of that and a busy slate of editing work, I haven’t had much time to read, but I am creeping up on the end of The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson.

Gender Ever After is a sapphic romance (and erotic-romance) anthology celebrating the full, beautiful spectrum of gender expression and identity.

Check out the official Call for Submissions and feel free to submit.