May 2021: Amber
In the five years since Amber came to Raleigh, she has moved from QRB’s Inventory Manager to Assistant General Manager. A lot has changed in those five years, but the most important things remain the same: She still moderates the store’s Sci-Fi/Fantasy Book Club and is actively obsessed with her cats. When not reading or working, she’s watching her way through the AFI Top 100 films, hunting for random items in used books, or admiring the ducks and turtles at Lake Lynn. She makes lists and spreadsheets for fun, collects fantastical plushies, and still refuses to wear matching socks.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
This atmospheric triumph leaves the reader just as uncertain as the protagonist, while its (very few) characters are all unreliable in some way or another. In fewer than 300 pages, Clarke builds a world that you can feel all around you, that is a character all its own, and is just as unreliable as all the others.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
Linus Baker, caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youths, must determine if the children under the care of one Arthur Parnassus are safe where they are—and whether the world is safe from them. Heartwarming, comforting, beautifully written. In a genre filled with grimdark, we need more cozy fantasies.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Candid and wildly creative, Machado deep dives into her past abusive relationship with another woman, using tropes from fairy tales, horror, and other genres to create a powerful yet accessible memoir.
The Electric State by Simon Stalenhag
This post-apocalyptic nightmare of Blade Runner meets Disney World features Stalenhag’s magnificent science fiction artwork, which juxtaposes a dark, complex world ravaged by war but ignored by a population of virtual reality addicts.
The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
The Broken Earth trilogy changed my entire perception of what science fiction is and can be. Jemisin expertly releases a little worldbuilding at a time. There is a reason she is the first person to win a Hugo Award three times in a row, and the first to win for all three books in a trilogy.
Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramović
If you’ve ever seen footage of Abramović’s performance art, you have a small idea of how bonkers this remarkable woman’s life has been so far.
Circe by Madeline Miller
Greek mythology has been a major interest of mine since childhood, and after the beauty that was The Song of Achilles, I knew I could rely on Miller to deliver another incredible novel.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
Good luck not laughing out loud through this hysterical essay collection, likely confusing those around you. Listening to the audiobook on Libro.fm, I was brought to tears more than once. Samantha Irby is a new personal hero.
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Moreno-Garcia's take on classic Gothic literature tantalizes from page to page as the reader becomes just as desperate as our heroine, Noemí, to uncover the secrets hidden at High Place in 1950s Mexico.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer's book is memoir, science, spirituality, and history, all while reading like poetry. Some books, it doesn't matter if it's in your wheelhouse—you can still count on it to be incredible. Kimmerer's masterpiece brings comfort and hope to a world that feels claustrophobic.
New York Times Bestseller
Winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
World Fantasy Awards Finalist
From the New York Times bestselling author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an intoxicating, hypnotic new novel set in a dreamlike alternative reality.
A NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, and WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER!
A 2021 Alex Award winner!
The 2021 RUSA Reading List: Fantasy Winner!
An Indie Next Pick!
One of Publishers Weekly's "Most Anticipated Books of Spring 2020"
One of Book Riot’s “20 Must-Read Feel-Good Fantasies”
A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties
NPR Best Books of 2018
A teen girl and her robot embark on a cross-country mission in this illustrated science fiction story, perfect for fans of Ready Player One and Black Mirror.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
“I had experienced absolute freedom—I had felt that my body was without boundaries, limitless; that pain didn’t matter, that nothing mattered at all—and it intoxicated me.”
"A bold and subversive retelling of the goddess's story," this #1 New York Times bestseller is "both epic and intimate in its scope, recasting the most infamous female figure from the Odyssey as a hero in her own right" (Alexandra Alter, The New York Times).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • This essay collection from the “bitches gotta eat” blogger, writer on Hulu’s Shrill, and “one of our country’s most fierce and foulmouthed authors” (Amber Tamblyn, Vulture) is sure to make you alternately cackle with glee and cry real tears.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “It’s Lovecraft meets the Brontës in Latin America, and after a slow-burn start Mexican Gothic gets seriously weird.”—The Guardian
A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
Named a Best Essay Collection of the Decade by Literary Hub
Free Media Mail shipping on U.S. orders over $50