alyssa cole

WAITING ON WEDNESDAY: October-December 2020 Reads

- Meg

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine (though it seems as though it’s been a while since she updated that particular blog, so if you know of the current host, if there is one, please let me know) that highlights upcoming releases that we’re impatiently waiting for. This week I’m featuring October-December 2020 review copies or purchased books that I have either in physical form or digital form that I can’t wait to dive into! But now that it’s the middle of November, I really need to get in gear and get these read! The release dates are listed but are always subject to change.

  • A Golden Fury – Samathan Cohoe :: It’s about a fantasy Oxford with alchemists and curses and the looming French Revolution. I’ve been in the MOOD for historical fantasies of all flavors, and I’m really thinking I’ll enjoy this one. Releases October 13, 2020.
  • Ruinsong – Julia Ember :: Sapphic YA fantasy with kingdoms and queens and underground rebellions?? YES. And that cover?? I love it already. Releases November 24, 2020.
  • The Hollow Places – T. Kingfisher :: Up until this year, I have not been one for much horror, but after reading a few stories and Mexican Gothic, I think I can handle a little bit more. 2020 was originally going to be about broadening my own horizons, especially with different genres, so when I saw this available for download, I thought I’d give it a go. Releases October 6, 2020.
  • The Thirty Names of Night – Zeyn Joukhadar :: I loved their debut title The Map of Salt and Stars and Atria was kind enough to send me a finished copy of the novel! I’m excited to see where this goes, and I have a feeling I’ll be so moved by it. Releases November 24, 2020.
  • White Ivy – Susie Yang :: I’m kind of loving that dark academia is becoming a thing in recent releases, and this one caught my attention when I saw it on the ARC shelf at work. Releases November 3, 2020.
  • Any Rogue Will Do – Bethany Bennett :: To be honest, this is a total cover buy, but LOOK AT IT. It’s so gaussian blurry and beautiful. I don’t think it’s Christmasy, but it looks very Christmasy, so I had to have it. This also looks like it’s the first title by this author? I’m definitely into this era of regency romance, and I like that the names of these characters are pretty traditional sounding for the era in which this book is set. And it’s definitely not a list like this without some romance added to it anymore. Releases October 13, 2020.
  • How to Catch a Queen – Alyssa Cole :: I’m at risk of becoming an Alyssa Cole fanblog but THAT’S OKAY. And you should read her stuff, it’s great. I’m looking forward to this new contemporary series! Releases December 1, 2020.
  • One Writer’s Beginnings – Eudora Welty :: I don’t remember requesting this from Scribner so it came as a complete surprise in my mailbox! But I do enjoy reading about writing because I feel like it helps with so much of my own writing and enjoyment of reading. Releases November 3, 2020.
  • Plain Bad Heroines – Emily M. Danforth :: Gilded Age gothic fiction set in a SCHOOL and it’s got LESBIANS? It sounds like everything I love in a book, and it’s a chonker so I’ve been waiting for a good few days off to start reading this because I have a feeling I won’t want to put it down. Releases October 20, 2020.
  • The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 – ed. John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon :: I love love love anthologies because I get a flavor of a lot of different writers’ abilities and stories and I get to add more books to my TBR after making discoveries of writers I might not have heard of before! I don’t remember if I bought 2019’s (and I need to check because I have the others), but this series (and any anthologies put out by John Joseph Adams) has consistently been great. I also love 2020’s covers across all the Best American series; they’re incredibly striking! Releases November 3, 2020.

Are any of these on your to-read list? What one would you read first?

FIRST LINES FRIDAY: When No One is Watching, by Alyssa Cole

- Meg

Hello, Friday! First Lines Friday is a feature on my blog in which I post the first lines from a book I am interested in reading, either a new release or a backlist title! For the rest of the year, I’m going to feature books by non-white writers, partially because I just did a whole list of classics by a majority of white writers and partially because I am continually focusing on purchasing and reading books by non-white writers for a whole list of reasons. The books featured will range from “classics” to adult fiction to YA/middle grade fiction, and these are all I’ve had on my shelf for a bit that I want to read by the end of this year or within the first few months of 2021! I can’t believe it’s basically the middle of November already, but time flies when you’re in the middle of a stress-bomb called COVID-19. Stay safe, stay home, wear a mask!

History is fucking wild.

Last fall, on a night when my ass was getting well acquainted with the uncomfortable guest chair in Mommy’s hospital room, I’d numbly tapped and swiped my way to an article about a place called Black America. Not the label politicians use to place our concerns into a neat box full of worries they don’t have to attend to immediately or ever, but an actual, tangible place — a slavery theme park that’d opened in Brooklyn at the end of the nineteenth century.

Slavery. Fucking. Theme park.

Black America, the theme park, was billed as “an opportunity to become familiar with plantation life for those of the North who belong to a generation to which the word slavery has but an indefinite and hazy meaning.” This was, like, twenty years after slavery ended, mind you. I mean, I too get nostalgic when an eighties jam starts playing on the radio, but these motherfuckers really needed to reminisce about owning humans?

I am so excited to read this. The back blurb says it’s Rear Window meets Get Out, and I’m so excited to read a thriller by Alyssa Cole because I’ve loved all of the romances I’ve read by her so far. In the last year and a half she’s become one of my autobuy authors with her romance books, and I can’t wait to see what she does with thrillers.