Raybearer

Fans of Sabaa Tahir and Tomi Adeyemi won’t want to miss Raybearer, an instant New York Times bestselling fantasy from breakout YA sensation Jordan Ifueko! Named one of the best books of the year by People magazine, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Chicago Public Library, Kirkus Reviews, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and more! “Dazzling. . . . All hail Raybearer.” —Entertainment Weekly“Brilliantly conceived fantasy.” —People “An exquisitely detailed world.” —PopSugar Nothing is more important than loyalty. But what if you’ve sworn to protect the one you were born to destroy? Tarisai has always longed for the warmth of a family. She was raised in isolation by a mysterious, often absent mother known only as the Lady. The Lady sends her to the capital of the global empire of Aritsar to compete with other children to be chosen as one of the Crown Prince’s Council of 11. If she’s picked, she’ll be joined with the other Council members through the Ray, a bond deeper than blood. That closeness is irresistible to Tarisai, who has always wanted to belong somewhere. But the Lady has other ideas, including a magical wish that Tarisai is compelled to obey: Kill the Crown Prince once she gains his trust. Tarisai won’t stand by and become someone’s pawn—but is she strong enough to choose a different path for herself? With extraordinary world-building and breathtaking prose, Raybearer is the story of loyalty, fate, and the lengths we’re willing to go for the ones we love.

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY HARPER'S BAZAAR, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, BOOKPAGE AND MORE!. "Emezi unspools a web of erotic danger in their entertaining latest...readers in search of a decadent good time will find it here."–Publishers Weekly. A thrilling new novel from the bestselling, award-winning, visionary Akwaeke Emezi   One weekend. The elite underbelly of a Nigerian city. A party that goes awry. A tangled web of sex and lies and corruption that leaves no one unscathed. Aima and Kalu are a longtime couple who have just split. When Kalu, reeling from the breakup, visits an exclusive sex party hosted by his best friend, Ahmed, he makes a decision that will plunge them all into chaos, brutally and suddenly upending their lives. Ola and Souraya, two Nigerian sex workers visiting from Kuala Lumpur, collide into the scene just as everything goes to hell. Sucked into the city’s corrupt and glittering underworld, they’re all looking for a way out, fueled by a desperate need to escape the dangerous threat that looms over them.

Little Rot: A Novel

There will be blood.Ace of Spades meets House of Hollow in this villain origin story.. Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood.. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom.. But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is―monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.. From debut author Jamison Shea comes I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me, a twisted dark fantasy that lifts a veil on the institutions that profit on exclusion and the toll of giving everything to a world that will never love you back.

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

Cemetery Boys

Jonny Appleseed

Octavia E. Butler meets Marvel’s Black Panther in The Deep, a story rich with Afrofuturism, folklore, and the power of memory, inspired by the Hugo Award–nominated song “The Deep” from Daveed Diggs’s rap group Clipping. . Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are. The Deep is “a tour de force reorientation of the storytelling gaze…a superb, multilayered work,” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a vividly original and uniquely affecting story inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping.

The Deep

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!. A blood-soaked and nauseating triumph that cuts like a scalpel and reads like your darkest nightmare.. New York Times bestselling author Andrew Joseph White returns with the transgressive gothic horror of our time!. Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.. London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old trans, autistic Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife.. After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Finishing School and Sanitorium. When the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its guts to the world—so long as the school doesn’t break him first.. Featuring an autistic trans protagonist in a historical setting, Andrew Joseph White’s much-anticipated sophomore novel does not back down from exposing the violence of the patriarchy and the harm inflicted on trans youth who are forced into conformity.. A Chicago Public Library 'Best of the Best' BookA Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the YearA BCCB Blue Ribbon Book!A Booklist Editors’ ChoiceA Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year!A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

The Spirit Bares Its Teeth

From the National Book Award finalist and author of Pet comes a novel set in a magical West African world, about a teen girl who must save her missing twin while learning to navigate her own terrifying new powers.Somadina and her twin brother, Jayaike, are practically the same person: they finish each other's sentences and make each other whole. When the twins come of age, their magical gifts begin to develop, but while Jayaike's powers enchant, Somadina's cause fear to ripple through her town.Always an outsider, Somadina now faces blatant--and dangerous--hostility. And things go from bad to worse when her brother—the one person she trusted—vanishes. Somadina knows that no matter the dangers, she must track him down. Even if it means entering the Sacred Forest. Even if it means grueling, otherworldly travel she may not survive. Even if it means finding the hidden places where those closest to the spirit world don't dare to go. Does Somadina have the strength --within both her body and her soul -- for the trying journey ahead?National Book Award finalist Akwaeke Emezi masterfully weaves a tale of family, identity, and the power of the past, in a world where the extraordinary is ordinary.

Somadina

Welcome to Rivers Solomon's dark and wondrous Model Home, a new kind of haunted-house novel.. The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things―the strange and the unexplainable―began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.. As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural” death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?. Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.

Model Home: A Novel

For fans of The Princess Bride and Gideon the Ninth: a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change – and simmering class warfare.. He who controls ichorite controls the world. . A malleable metal more durable than steel, ichorite is a toxic natural resource fueling national growth, and ambitious industrialist Yann Chauncey helms production of this miraculous ore. Working his foundry is an underclass of destitute workers, struggling to get better wages and proper medical treatment for those exposed to ichorite’s debilitating effects since birth.. One of those luster-touched victims, the child worker Marney Honeycutt, is picketing with her family and best friend when a bloody tragedy unfolds. Chauncey’s strikebreakers open fire.. Only Marney survives.. A decade later, as Yann Chauncey searches for a suitable political marriage for his ward, Marney sees the perfect opportunity for revenge. With the help of radical bandits and their stolen wealth, she must masquerade as an aristocrat to win over the calculating Gossamer Chauncey and kill the man who slaughtered her family and friends. But she is not the only suitor after Lady Gossamer’s hand, leading her to play twisted elitist games of intrigue. And Marney’s luster-touched connection to the mysterious resource and its foundry might put her in grave danger – or save her from it.. H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal From Heaven is a caustic, dizzying eco-fantasy that addresses labor politics, corporate greed, and the relentless grind of capitalism, while also embodying a visceral lesbian revenge quest against the people and institutions who control and oppress the helpless.. "A riotous phantasmagoria that epitomizes the phrase 'be gay, do crime.'" - Melinda Borie, Collection Development Librarian, Floyd County Library (New Albany, IN)

Metal from Heaven

My Sister, the Serial Killer meets Boy Parts, this literary feminist howl-of-a-debut is going to crawl right under your skin.... Ji-won's life is in disarray. Her father's affair has ripped her family to shreds, leaving her to piece their crappy lives back together.. So, when her mother's obnoxious new white boyfriend enters the scene, bragging about his flawed knowledge of Korean culture and ogling Asian waitresses in restaurants, Ji-won's hold over her emotionsstrains. As he gawks at her and her sister around their claustrophobic apartment, Ji-won becomes more and more obsessed with his brilliant blue eyeballs.. As her fixation and rage grow, Ji-won decides that she must do the one thing that will save her family... and also curb her cravings.

The Eyes are the Best Part

Celestial

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Reading is better in community, and I’m grateful to welcome you to mine! I’ve been a content creator most of my life & an avid reader my entire life. Celestial is our home base to celebrate imaginative stories from galaxy-wide voices. (Think: fantasy, horror, sci-fi, magical realism & beyond.) I love being playful with my recommendations, but I always read with intention – this is a discerning and deliberately diverse space. Join my chaotic community … and let’s have fun while uplifting all voices. 

steph ✨ 📚 ✡︎ (@starrysteph)

Hi! I'm Steph. You can mostly find me on booktok (@starrysteph). I love reading & sharing book reviews and recommendations.

book reviews & recs 📚 • animal lover 🐇 • actor & content creator 🎭
