New this week

The latest additions to The Library's collection

In the stacks

Literary

The Werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn | Daniel W. Davison | Horror, Gothic Horror (N) (I) (F)

A gothic tale of supernatural horror spanning the latter half of the nineteenth century, The Werewolf of Mariahilf am Inn chronicles the story of an Austrian man fleeing a curse that has pursued him from the sleepy foothills of the Tyrolean mountains to the wind-swept canyons of the Sierra Nevada.

Speculative

The Butterfly Koi | A. Sherman Karlsson | Contemporary Fantasy (N) (I) (F)

Magic is here, ready to store your data and keep your cell phone charged... endlessly. What the packaging won’t say is magic doesn’t work for everyone. Eika Fujiwara, heiress to the Fujiwara Heavy Industries mining empire and face of Diet Breakfast Water, is determined to repair the magical damage caused by her family’s ecological misdeeds. Together with her best friend, the brilliant engineer Misora Toyama, she’s paving the way for the next generation of magitech, this time available to all. But when development hits a roadblock, the pressure is on to use any tool, legal or not, to continue. What trade-offs are they willing to make for an invention that might change magic forever? 

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Of Ashes Born | Peter Harrison | High Fantasy (NA) (I) (F)

Toran yearns for a world where his people no longer bring fire, fear, and death to the islands around them—and the time has now come to say a prayer and make his move. Will his revolution bring redemption or only further destruction and despair?

Contemporary

Theories of Haunting | Macey Phillips | Contemporary, Upmarket (N) (I) (F)

Theories of Haunting is a serialized novel about a mother-scientist who is studying the ghost she accidentally picks up at a graveyard in order to establish a theory of haunting and reconnect with her deceased daughter. The book is a mix of baking, graveyards, ghosts, grief, and motherhood. Kind of like Lincoln in the Bardo meets Ghosts, the television show (the BBC version, of course) meets the Great British Bake Off.

Nonfiction

The New Now | Russell Smith | Nonfiction (B) (I) (F)

The New Now offers insights, reflections, and ways we can shift our perspective. During these unbalanced times, this book contains ideas on regaining our balance and moving forward in a joyfully grounded and spirited way.

Historical Fiction

East Germany, 1989: A Political Novel | Pamela Urfer | Historical Fiction | (N) (I) (F)

1989 was the year the Berlin Wall came down, and the Soviet Union fell apart. There was resistance and protest in all the Soviet Bloc countries, but only in East Germany were the protests non-violent. The churches ran those protests, and Peter Hoffmann was the pastor of Nicholas Church in Leipzig, at the forefront of the resistance. His personal frustration with the regime was not so much with the deprivations and lack of freedoms but with the requirement that all citizens profess loyalty to the State, whether they believed it or not. He knew that living a lie in that way, having a two-faced relationship with their community, was damaging to the integrity of the person, a stain on their character that they might never overcome. With the help of his fiancée, Krista, and his old friend, Karl, he encouraged his parishioners, and soon all the citizens of Leipzig, to speak out against the cynicism of the authorities, including his own bishop, and refuse to sell their souls to the GDR.

Short Fiction Collection

Echoes of Havek | Winston Malone | Speculative (S) (I) ($)

An expanding collection of short fiction and poetry set exclusively on a planet known as Havek, where dragons roam the outskirts of civilization, magic is considered a curse or a blessing, solar technology reigns supreme, and the influences of good and evil grow ever stronger in their timeless battle for control over the planet.

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Buy Indie

Literary

For Love Of God | Robin Reardon | Literary, Queer (N)

Book 1 of the Blessed Be series (Book 2, For Love Of Self, is available now. Book 3, the final entry, will be released in 2024)

It’s Manhattan, 1983. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is going strong at the 8th Street Playhouse. HIV/AIDS is still called “the gay plague.” The Twin Towers still stand tall. And Spencer Hill is convinced God has called him to the Episcopal priesthood. There’s just one problem. He’s gay. As he’s struggling with this challenge, he meets Donald Rainey—a playful, flirtations, even salacious actor—playing the part of Puck. Donald captures Spencer’s imagination, and then his desire, and then his heart. Then something else pulls at Donald. Although it’s akin to Spencer’s calling toward God, it’s something that troubles Spencer deeply and challenges the love he and Donald have found for each other. Is this a test of the relationship? Or is God telling Spencer he is on the wrong path?

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For Love Of Self | Robin Reardon | Literary, Queer (N)

Book 2 of the Blessed Be series (Book 3, the final entry, will be released in 2024)

A beautiful young man dancing naked at the edge of a pond is not what Spencer Hill expected to see. It’s 1987, and he has been assigned a ministerial post in a Unitarian Universalist parish in Assisi, Vermont, close to the Canadian border—a far cry from his hometown of New York City. So, a “sky-clad” wood sprite takes him very much by surprise. As Spencer makes friends and enters into a love affair, he begins to explore the fraught relationship he’d had with his late father. And in his efforts to reach out to The Forest, a nearby Pagan community, he uncovers a dark secret the Assisi townsfolk don’t want to talk about.

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From the Archive

Featuring a different, randomly selected book every week

Thriller & Mystery Fiction

Dracula’s Ghost | Travis Blake | Thriller & Mystery, Horror (N) (C) (F)

I am old, Mina.  Old and weary through long years of mourning the dead. By 1933, Dracula has been dead for forty years, and Jonathan Harker is consumed with grief for his dead wife and son.  When Jonathan’s friend is killed in a botched robbery, a sinister agent of Adolf Hitler unearths the Harker family’s darkest secrets and hatches a blackmail plot using the only remaining light in Jonathan’s world – his daughter Sarah. Dracula’s Ghost follows an ensemble cast as they journey from the graveyards of London to a hidden castle in the Carpathian Mountains to discover who – or what – lives behind its walls.

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