Hope everyone is enjoying their October. I got knocked out last week by being sick but I’m happy to get back to business. How is everyone’s fall going? And what is your favorite part? For me I love the weather and the food. But I also love the release of some great books dealing with spooky plots. Another fall favorite is books dealing with native issues as Indigenous History Month is coming up in November. Here are some of the newest picks that I’m looking ahead to checking out this month and the next
- The Dark Becomes Her by Judy I. Lin
A new book from Rick Riordan Presents imprint. This book follows Ruby Chen. Ruby is a dutiful Taiwanese daughter who is charged with taking care of her sibling and not making waves. She focuses on keeping her younger sister Tina engaged in her extracurricular activities that will be important for college admissions.
Things change but when Ruby is attacked by some dark spirit in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Her life is plunged into darkness, and her being a ‘good daughter’ can’t save her from the trouble she’s unlocked.
The biggest change seems to be from Tina. Once sweet and funny, she has now been replaced by something dark and unnatural. Ruby hears noises coming from Tina’s room at all hours. She must unravel the mystery if she hopes to get her sister back.
Amazon: The Darkness Becomes Her
Judy I. Lin is the New York Times-bestselling author of the Book of Tea duology (A Magic Steeped in Poison and A Venom Dark and Sweet), was born in Taiwan and immigrated to Canada with her family at a young age. She grew up with her nose in a book and loved to escape to imaginary worlds. She now works as an occupational therapist and still spends her nights dreaming up imaginary worlds of her own. She lives on the Canadian prairies with her husband and daughters.
You can find her on instagram and tiktok (judyilinauthor)
2) The Inheritance of Scars by Crystal Seitz
This book is billed as Belladonna meets Norse mythology. This story follows Astrid as she goes into a forbidden forest trying to find her grandmother. While she is there she encounters a Draugr basically a Norse zombie. While Astrid is battling evil spirits she is also battling her own health. Astrid must get to the bottom of an ancient mystery involving a blood oath and her family.
When Astrid awakens the draugr, Soren, he at first mistakes her for her ancestors. An ancestor who happened do be Soren’s ex-lover turned enemy. But now Astrid isn’t sure if Soren is going to kiss her or kill her. However, she knows that she needs his help. Soren knows the forest better than she does. His help might be the trick in rescuing her grandmother.
As Astrid and Soren venture deeper into the forest the mysteries starts to deepen. It soon becomes clear that Astrid must do a ritual by Midwinter to fulfill her family’s blood oath or break it.
Amazon: The Inheritance of Scars
Crystal Seitz- A Viking at heart, Crystal battles Crohn’s disease and raids libraries for all the books on Norse mythology she can find. She works in marketing and web design, but only because she can’t be a professional shield-maiden. She has a penchant for mythology, history, and all things creative. When she isn’t writing, Crystal can be found doing archery, drawing, or rewatching Game of Thrones.
3) The Hollow and the Haunted by Camilla Raines
Sixteen-year-old Miles Warren comes from a long line of psychics. He is resigned, if not happy, about his life which will follow the pattern of the rest of his family. He will be a psychic in the not-especially profitable family business. But there is more to Miles’ life than his family business. Between his secret nights out digging up graves or hiding his sexuality. Miles has got a lot of secrets hidden under the surface.
His comfortable life is interrupted when he has a premonition of a violent supernatural murder. Only to discover the victim is the snooty Gabriel Hawthorne, whose family has been feuding with Miles for decades. Gabriel is everything Miles expected of a Hawthorne, he’s rude and snobbish. He’s also annoyingly good-looking, but despite his faults, Miles isn’t going to sit around and let someone murder him.
The odds are against the two of them though death premonitions are especially hard to alter. It turns out that Miles isn’t the only one with secrets. Gabriel and Miles find out the depth of their families history together as dark magic swirls around them. Will Miles realize too late that he doesn’t hate Gabriel as much as he’s supposed to? Will he realize that he maybe even likes him.
And will he be able to change Gabriel’s fate?
Amazon: The Hollow and the Haunted
Camilla Raines was born and raised in a small town in Northern Washington with lots of Evergreen trees, seaside fog, and rainy days. Her writing career began in elementary school, where she spent years scribbling down stories for friends that were usually just knock-offs of whatever book she was devouring at the time. As a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community and someone who openly struggles with chronic anxiety and depression, the most important things to her as a writer are representation, diversity, identity, and acceptance.
When she’s not writing, Camilla is reading to her heart’s content, running local writer meet-ups, living her best PNW life with two spoiled cats in a tiny house on wheels, and hunting down exciting finds at local thrift stores.
4) Find Her by Ginger Reno
This is an important story about missing Indigenous women. This topic deserves to be highlighted. Especially going into Indigenous People’s Month in November.
Five year, three months and twelve days. That’s how long Wren’s mother has been missing. Wren can still see her in dreams sometimes. In dreams she can remember, her smile her face, her eyes, even her laugh. Yet her mother is one of the hundreds of missing or murdered Indigenous women in Oklahoma.
It seems to Wren that she and her grandmother are the only ones still looking for her mother. What’s more, Wren’s overprotective father won’t even talk about her mother. Wren refuses to give up though. She takes up an opportunity to find lost pets as a way to hone her detective skills. There is a hitch in this plan though when the missing pets are found badly hurt.
Sometime sinister is at play. But with the help of an unlikely friend Wren is going to unmask whoever is behind the animal abuse. She’ll just have to keep a it a secret from her father; who will put an end to all her sleuthing if he finds out.
Amazon: Find Her
Ginger Reno has always been a writer—it just took a while for her to figure that out. (Her first clue should’ve been her family always calling her “the wordy one”). An enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, her desire to learn about Cherokee history and culture has naturally spilled over into her writing. FIND HER, her debut, is part of that journey. Ginger lives in northeast Oklahoma, within the Cherokee Nation, and spends a lot of lakefront porch time with her two favorite people—her husband and their German shepherd.
5) Little Moons by Jen Storm, Ryan How and Alice RL
Another story of missing Indigenous women from the perspective of a thirteen-year-old girl missing her sister.
Things haven’t been the same since Reanna’s sister disappeared on her way home from school last year. Reanna is grieving the loss of her sister. Without any idea what happened to her her family struggles for closure.
As her family struggles to cope Reanna’s mother moves to the city. She is haunted by memories of her missing daughter on the reserve. Reanna and her little brother go to live with their dad.
Reannna is hurt and angry both from her sister disappearing and her mom leaving. But will her family’s traditional Ojibwe ways offer her some comfort. She begins to feel her sister is with her still and is slowly able to process her grief.
Amazon: Little Moons
Jen Storm is an Ojibwe writer from the Couchiching First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Jen completed Deadly Loyalties, her first novel, at age fourteen. Fire Starters was her first graphic novel. She is a contributing author to This Place: 150 Years Retold and the upcoming graphic novel anthology Moonshot Volume 3. Currently, she is working on another graphic novel and is an acquisitions editor for a new Indigenous graphic novel series with HighWater Press. Jen was a 2017 recipient for the CBC Manitoba’s Future 40 Under 40 and in 2019 she served as the Writer-In-Residence for One Book UWinnipeg at the University of Winnipeg.
I hope you will check out some of these books coming out in the next few months. Are there any new releases you are looking forward to? Please share them in the comments or give me suggestions below.
Rose's Book Garden 