The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description.
Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
It’s been a little while since the last one of these, partially because I got new books when other things were going on (like my birthday-related gifts in April) and there have been a lot of weeks there just hasn’t been anything new. But I added a few books to the TBR over the last couple weeks and thought I’d highlight those that haven’t already been featured this year (like A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo and The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed, which I’ve been hearing such great things about).
Since this is the first of these I’ve done this year, I’m not going to link to every single post since the last one of these features, but here are a few highlights in case you missed any of them:
On to the newest additions to the TBR!
The Salt King by Natasha Pulley
This novel by Natasha Pulley, whose debut The Watchmaker of Filigree Street was a Locus Award finalist for Best First Novel, will be released on August 18 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook).
I’ve not read any of her books before (although I now also have my eye on The Hymn to Dionysus), but this sounded intriguing to me given that it sounds like it blends multiple genres and focuses on some interesting themes, like the power of myth.
An apocalyptic novel about belief, religion, and the power of myth that blends the gripping, end-of-the-world storytelling of The Passage with the biting wit and epic queer romance that makes Natasha Pulley’s books “delightful” (The Washington Post).
Jesuit priest Avelyn Brocken was born into a mining family in Hreodwater, a small, totally isolated salt town in the Fens of England. At age 16, he fled, abandoning his faith in the god of the mine-the Salt King-and the mythology that killed his whole family.
When a fellow priest is miraculously healed only to then be turned to salt after a visit to Hreodwater, Avelyn is sent by the Vatican to investigate. But in Hreodwater, the town’s gentle doctor, Jericho, tells him that the priest is not the only one experiencing strange cures-and may not be the only one in danger from a substance in the mine that the locals call “salt light.”
Avelyn and Jericho team up to protect the world from the salt light-but they may already be too late: strange happenings are occurring at mines all around the world. At an archaeological dig on the Dead Sea, electrical devices froth salt; at another salt mine in Russia, a KGB officer finds the bodies of five tourists who seem to have turned to salt; and at the huge salt works at Wieliczska in Poland, all communication is lost, and rumors circulate of total annihilation.
As salt light spreads, devastating cities around the world, Avelyn must decide what and who to believe-and whether his faith is strong enough to withstand an apocalypse.
The Sourdough Compendium: Dark and Dangerous Fairy Tales by A. G. Slatter
This collection of stories set in the Sourdough universe will be released in trade paperback and ebook. It’s scheduled for publication on June 9 in the US and UK and June 16 in Australia and New Zealand.
This edition is a compilation of three previous collections, starting with the World Fantasy Award–winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, which is then followed by Sourdough and Other Stories and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales. They are in that order instead of publication order since the first of those was a set of prequel stories, according to the author’s note in the beginning of this volume.
I’ve been interested in discovering the Sourdough universe for a while, and although I tend to read more novels than short stories, the short fiction collections felt like the right place to start to me for some reason. (I do have a particular fondness for dark and dangerous fairy tales; after all, one of the very first books I remember reading and loving was a Hans Christian Andersen collection.) Given that the Sourdough collections all seemed to be out of print when I looked for them at one point, I was thrilled to learn they were being rereleased in one volume.
A. G. Slatter was also here shortly after the release of one of her novels set in this universe, The Crimson Road, during Women in SF&F Month 2025 with an essay about writing stories of various lengths titled “The Long and the Short of It.”
Award-winning stories from the world of All the Murmuring Bones and The Briar Book of the Dead, this is a compendium of fantastic tales from the dark gothic heart of the Sourdough universe. Witches, assassins and pirates are brought to life in immersive, sinister and magical prose.
Within these pages, coffin-makers work hard to keep the dead buried and their own murderous urges in check; poison girls are schooled in the art of marital assassination; books carry forth stories and forbidden secrets; a young witch wreaks a terrible revenge on an old lover; the Little Sisters of St Florian devote their lives to knowledge good and bad; a dying forest god is reinvigorated; mermaids and seamstresses make dangerous bargains; changelings bring havoc. Saints slumber, hind-girls dance across the countryside, bears show their true colours, and the fate of the upper and lower worlds rests on the whim of a volatile plague maiden…
Comprised of three collections (Sourdough and Other Stories, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales) these award-winning storms form much of the foundational mythology for Slatter’s dark fairy-tale gothic Sourdough novels. Exquisite, compelling and rich with unforgettable characters, these tales layer and intertwine in the dextrous hands of a master storyteller.
Everybody’s Perfect by Jo Walton
Jo Walton’s next novel, set in a fantasy version of Venice, will be released on June 30 (hardcover, ebook).
The publisher’s website has an excerpt from Everybody’s Perfect, although the formatting is a bit off since all the paragraphs seem to run together. (I tried to find another sample, but that’s the only one I could find!)
This sounds mythical and compelling, and I’ve been meaning to read more by Walton since I very much enjoyed her World Fantasy Award–winning novel Tooth and Claw with its very proper flesh-eating dragons in a Victorian Era setting.
Piranesi meets Swordspoint in an elegant relay race through fantasy Venice from Hugo award-winning author Jo Walton
The Serenissima is built from mist and belief, a mythical shadow sister to Venice and crossroads of the nine worlds.
When a laborer called Tiry has a dream that Serenissima will have a doge, and that they will marry the sea, he tells it to a fortune teller named Khadsha. She tells her apprentice, a gondolier called Taddeo, who tells a cop named Gom, who’s heard it from five people this morning already. And by that point, it’s already settled into the bones of the Serenissima, more than half-fated.
Everybody’s Perfect is a gentle, shifting, structurally inventive narrative of startling beauty that will make you rethink everything you think you know about fantasy.
A Reaper at the Gates (An Ember in the Ashes #3) by Sabaa Tahir
Technically, I recently got both this and A Sky Beyond the Storm, the fourth and last book in this New York Times bestselling YA fantasy series.
It’s been a stressful month or so, and when that first started, I was looking for something fun to read. After scouring my bookshelves, I decided to finally pick up An Ember in the Ashes (which I have had for some time seeing as I got for Christmas 2017).
I’m a mood reader, and this is why I like having so many books I haven’t read to choose from at any time. This was a case of the right book at the right time for me, and it ended up being just what I needed: something entertaining and not too complicated, meaning I could just get lost in it and read. Shortly after that, I bought and read the second book in the series, and I just went ahead and got the last couple of books once I finished that one.
It’s bothering me that it was literally impossible for me to get copies matching my edition of the first book in the series since the cover styles changed after the second book came out, but at least I could still get them all in hardcover… although the newer editions are not even the same size hardcover, which is also annoying me.
BOOK THREE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES • An Entertainment Weekly Summer Reads pick!
“The perfect summer read.” –The Washington Post
The beloved and bestselling fantasy series that “glows, burns, and smolders.” (Huffington Post).
Beyond the Martial Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger.
Helene Aquilla, the Blood Shrike, is desperate to protect her sister’s life and the lives of everyone in the Empire. But she knows that danger lurks on all sides: Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable and violent, while Keris Veturia, the ruthless Commandant, capitalizes on the Emperor’s volatility to grow her own power–regardless of the carnage she leaves in her path.
Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. But in the hunt to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would help her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she’d have to fight.
And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. But in doing so, he has vowed himself to an ancient power that demands his complete surrender–even if that means abandoning the woman he loves.
