I don't mean to nitpick, Tom, but is this really your plan?

Ivan Ermakoff, Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications: ( how do democracies die? )

James Tejani, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles and America: ( land grabs )

Henry Jenkins, Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America: ( boyhood, media, and race )

Francis Spufford, Red Plenty: ( Soviet SF? )

Dean Koontz, The Husband: ( Kidnap thriller )

Rosie Danan, Fan Service: ( Romance with a fannish twist )

Rosie Danan, ( duology romance with porn performers )

Django Wexler, Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me: In this sequel, the accidental Dark Lord tries to lead her new people to peace with the humans, against strenuous opposition from parties on both sides. Flippancy and lesbian lust guide her way. If you liked the first book, the second continues perfectly well in that vein.

My tumblr was just deleted. Why? I don't know. Have submitted a support request, but wild how unpersoned I feel.

ETA: Restored! No communication from Tumblr. But I am personed again.

John Scalzi, Constituent Service: Lightweight novella about a human doing civic service in a district made mostly of nonhumans.

Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl: ( I discover litRPG )

Rachel Haimowitz, Anchored : ( m/m romance in slavery )
Xiran Jay Zhao, Heavenly Tyrant: ( lots more bastards to kill )
Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon: Series of short stories set on or around a planet colonized by humans and still struggling with the human relationship with machines and machine intelligences, as well as what happens when you put human minds in nonhuman bodies. Fine, though the short story form makes it hard for me to really bond with characters. I noted that one story was actually published as an Original Work on AO3, which is the first time I’ve seen that particular credit!

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland, ( romances with witches )

James Alan Gardner, They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded: Second in a hoped-for series about newly superpowered university students, this time from the perspective of Jools, the screwup of the bunch, who now knows everything that a human can do and can do anything that the best human can do. When Jools becomes entangled with an attempt to auction off—and then steal—a supervillain weapon, she’ll have to fight her insecurities as well as a bunch of villains and self-styled heroes, including one whose Robin Hood schtick includes a glamor that gets women to want to have sex with him.

A.D. Sui, The Dragonfly Gambit: Novella about sapphic fighter pilots in a collapsing space empire. The protagonist was in a horrific accident that left her without a lover or the ability to fly, and left her a rebel; she’s forced back into service, where she finds her former lover now splitting her affections between the Third Daughter (head of the military) and the intelligence officer who’s forcing the protagonist to work for the empire. But the Third Daughter is really hot, oh no—will that complicate the protagonist’s desire for revenge?

Charles Stross, A Conventional Boy: Going back in time in the Laundry Files, even though I really want to know what’s going on under the New Management. Derek was imprisoned as a fourteen-year-old mildly autistic, somewhat magically talented boy because of a moral panic over D&D and never released. Nearing fifty, he breaks out to attend a gaming convention—that just happens to be where a cult is trying to raise a god. It’s what you’d want from a Laundry Files novel (other than timeline progression); there are also two previously released short stories to make it a bit longer.

Adam Roberts, The This: A bunch of riffs on group consciousness as the next stage of/enemy of individual human consciousness. Wittily enough, it spreads as a social media platform embedded into a person’s skull—hands-free tweeting! There are different riffs on the concept, including Forever War-like interludes, a 1984 pastiche where Eurasia, Eastasia and Oceania are warring group consciousnesses, and weirder stuff. I am not even sure I liked it, but I thought it was interesting.

James Alan Gardner, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault: In a world of superpowers and magic, an accident leaves four grad students with superpowers. Kim, an agender geology student, becomes Zircon, who can become incredibly tiny and super-hard, with some other extra powers as well, but they’re still hung up on their ex-boyfriend, a rich kid who several years previously broke up with them and joined the Dark forces. That’s kind of how it goes—it’s fun and not too serious despite all the explosions.

The Best American Poetry 2014, ed. Terence Hayes: I’m not a huge poetry fan, but I was struck by Tony Hoagland’s viciously witty Write Whiter, (“When I find my books in the ‘White Literature’ section of the bookstore,/dismay is what I feel—I thought I was writing about other, larger things”) and of course Patricia Lockwood’s astonishing Rape Joke.

Asha Greyling, The Vampire of Kings Street: Radhika Dhingra is a lawyer in late nineteenth-century New York, struggling under the dual burdens of her race and sex, when a vampire comes stumbling into her office, begging her to write his will. Then he’s arrested for murder. Vampires can only be sustained by the most wealthy, and his patron family quickly swoops in and tells Radhika her services are no longer needed, but she’s already swept up in the mystery. I would’ve liked this better if Radhika were a better lawyer; she talks about keeping client confidences, but her concept of this is TV-level at best as she spews relevant, privileged information to cops and journalists. Useful for plot advancement, I guess, but horrendously unethical and likely to get actual clients convicted and actual lawyers disbarred. Arguably things would be different in the magical (but still racist and sexist) nineteenth century, but it’s hard to see why they would have been; the basic principles were in place and were likely to have been applied particularly harshly to a legal outsider.

Kage Baker, The Machine’s Child: This seventh novel in Baker’s series about the time-spanning Company and its immortal slaves suffered both from my long delay between books and more from the fact that Mendoza, the most compelling character and the main character most of the way through, is here both amnesiac through most of the book and also actively being gaslit by her rescuers. They did rescue her from horrific torture, but they are also actively concealing that there are three separate entities sharing one body—all three of which are in love with her and having sex with her, which does not come off very well. She spends almost the whole book behaving like a Heinlein heroine, enjoying sex with her man/men as she accepts and aids their plans. They’re plotting to overthrow the Company and setting up for a final battle, but I’m not sure I am invested enough to read the final book in the series. (There are two subsequent standalones in the Company universe and some short stories.)

Kate Wilhelm, Somerset Dreams and Other Stories: Short story collection, some sf and some fantasy-esque or just lives of quiet desperation in which middle-class 70s white American women fantasize about escape from the lives they are expected to live.

David Mitchell, The Bone ClocksLiterary sf done reasonably well (to my somewhat grudging surprise). In a narrative starting in 1984, loosely connected people in England have strange experiences involving psychic powers, missing time, and people appearing and disappearing around them. The men were mainly tedious, though that was clearly on purpose. Most interesting: Mitchell’s choice to extend the story past where a conventional plot about the secret war between good and bad immortals defending/preying on humanity would have ended to show a world that had a seemingly unrelated climate collapse anyway (though still preserving stakes for the individual participants).

MJ Wassmer, Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend: A Very Apocalyptic Vacation: Dan Foster is on a Caribbean vacation with his girlfriend, Mara, when the sun disappears. When the people in the luxury accommodations start hoarding all the resources, things get bleak very quickly. Will class war kill them before the cold does? And is there any chance of survival? The tone is a lot more flippant than the summary, and though there are deaths and serious injuries, many of the people do survive for vaguely-plausible-within-the-framework reasons. I don’t know, don’t think too hard about it, and you might enjoy it.

TJ Klune, The House in the Cerulean Sea: Linus Baker is a mild-mannered, dutiful caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, visiting orphanages to ensure that magical children are not being abused. He takes his job very seriously, although not everyone does, and lives an otherwise gray life. When he’s sent to an isolated orphanage with some very special magical children, he finds them—and their intriguing headmaster, Arthur Parnassus—challenging his determination to stick to the rulebook. It’s a nice YA about embracing difference and magic.

Rivers Solomon, Model Home: Three sisters grew up in an otherwise all-white enclave in Texas, in a home that hated them. The oldest has a dissociative disorder, and believes that she was possessed by the woman with no face who lived in the house—a woman at least one of the other sisters had also seen. What follows is a horror story about racism. The story felt over the top in the way the best horror can be.

Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift, ed. Kristie Frederick Daughtrey.
Look, it’s an obvious money/attention play, but good for them and if they can get more attention to poetry, it’s a win. Radioactive Apology by Subhaga Crystal Bacon has lines that slither around, changing meaning as they go in ways that do feel Swiftian enough that I didn’t notice until I double-checked that there’s really only one actual rhyme in there. Amy King’s Lessons Learning is a poem about how being in love is the only worthwhile thing—again very Swiftian in a puckish way. (available here  (gift link) I found Anti-Sonnet by Mag Gabbert poignant.

Seanan McGuire, Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear: Another Wayward Children novella, set this time mainly in one of the worlds before the return. Nadya is a Russian orphan adopted by well-meaning Americans who think her missing arm is a disability in need of correction; when they force a prosthetic on her, she escapes through a Door, but she doesn't really mean to do so, which causes trouble later despite the life she builds in a Drowned world. I thought it was well done.

W.H. Auden, The English Auden: Poems, Essays and Dramatic Writings, 1927-1939: I’m not sure there are any gems that aren’t already well known, but it was fascinating to read these in concert with a bunch about Churchill to get the literary version of the lamps going out all over Europe—lots of poems about dread. If you want one that hits different now, right before “Musée des Beaux Arts” there’s “Gare du Midi”: A nondescript express in from the South,/Crowds round the ticket barrier, a face/To welcome which the mayor has not contrived/Bugles or braid: something about the mouth/Distracts the stray look with alarm and pity./Snow is falling, Clutching a little case,/He walks out briskly to infect a city/Whose terrible future may have just arrived.”

Katherine Anderson Howell, Disability and Fandom: ( long and somewhat grumpy review )

Ryan North & Chris Fenoglio, Star Trek Lower Decks: Warp Your Own Way: ( coffee or raktajino? )
Robert Jackson Bennett, A Drop of Corruption: ( kings! what a good idea!  )
Susanna Clarke, The Wood at Midwinter: ( short )
Sharon Shinn, Alibi: ( teleportation and creeping fascism )
Sacha Lamb, The Forbidden Book: ( Yiddish fantasy )
Adrian Tchaikovsky, Days of Shattered Faith: ( imperial overreach )

Since these reviews aren't spoilery and I am sad, no cut tags.

Elaine U. Cho, Ocean’s Godori: In a Korean-dominated space culture, a disgraced pilot tries to follow her captain, but her captain’s unwise decisions lead to conflicts with pirates and with people out to kill a scion of an important industrialist—the pilot’s old friend/partial source of her disgrace. Also, a new member of the crew comes from a death-handling caste and may have trouble fitting in. I probably could have done with more time to breathe on the worldbuilding, but if you like not-totally-cohesive crew stories this might suit.

David Ignatius, Phantom Orbit: I thought this would be more sf-y, but it’s basically a thriller about nations interfering with satellites to gain advantage, with much of the action sparked by the invasion of Ukraine.

Genevieve Cogman, Elusive: I liked this more than the first book—Eleanor continues to work for the Scarlet Pimpernel, and returns to France, but she has more agency and doubts about the work of saving aristocrats from the French Revolution. She also learns more about her powers, the mage inhabiting her head, and the relationship between mages and vampires. A cliffhanger ending rounds it out.

Shelly Jay Shore, Rules for Ghosting: Ezra Friedman is a trans man whose problems mainly stem from his complicated Jewish family, its funeral business, and the fact that Ezra can see ghosts. Although he’s been a peacemaker all his life, the stress starts to get to him when a shocking Seder announcement disrupts the family, a main source of income disappears and he has to return to working at the family business, and the hot Jewish guy checking him out turns out to be the widower of a ghost that is behaving very unusually. This is very cozy—ghosts are not evil or tangible—and it reinforced for me that I’m no longer much of a romance reader, because the Jewish specificity wasn’t even doing it for me.

Virginia Black, No Shelter But the Stars: Kyran is the princess of a people who are trying to retake their lost planet after being forced out by a brutal empire; Davia is the emperor’s daughter who has tried to renounce politics in favor of spirituality. After a battle, they crash land and are forced to rely on each other to survive. It’s enemies-to-lovers, with the more experienced Davia teaching Kyran to calm her frantic soul. I thought the description of physical recovery from the serious injuries described was a bit unrealistic, but if you really like enemies-to-lovers, this might work for you.

Garth Nix, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord: In 70s? Australia, the protagonist and his genius little sister are being raised by quirky parents who don’t allow things like TV. When his little sister finds a mysterious sphere that can talk in people’s heads and even change their behavior, he has to turn from his D&D games to saving the world. I think I would have enjoyed it as a middle-grade reader (it naturally seems slighter now).

Madeline Ashby, vN: Conscious, self-replicating Von Neumann machines are a controversial but significant part of the world; they have fail-safes that require them to love and not harm humans. Amy Peterson is a vN whose growth has been carefully constrained by food restriction so that her mother (another vN) and her father (a human) can raise her like a human child. But when she’s five, her grandmother shows up and attacks her mother for being a traitor. Amy reacts immediately—by eating her grandmother. Now she’s a lot larger, has her grandmother living in her consciousness, and lacks the fail-safe. Interesting stuff going on here; warning for sexual abuse of vN (not of Amy) as a motivating factor for several key points.

James S.A. Corey, Livesuit: Humanity’s in a war of extermination with aliens, and so some people sign up to do Forever War journeys, but with a twist: They’re put into exosuits that make them incredibly strong and improve their senses. It seems like a worthy mission. But is something deeply, terribly wrong? Creepy novella.

Holly Jackson, The Reappearance of Rachel Price: Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price disappeared, leaving her toddler in her car. Her family consents to a documentary about the case in order to get money to take care of an elderly relative with dementia. But, while the documentary is being filmed, Rachel Price reappears. Her daughter is suspicious; they were doing fine without her. A rather gothic plot unfolds. I see why people liked it, but I don’t think this is the variety of thriller for me.

Chuck Wendig, The Staircase in the Woods: In 1998, four loser kids and one golden boy were best friends—they called the bond between them the Covenant. But one night, drinking and doing drugs out in the woods, they came across a staircase standing alone in the woods, and the golden boy climbed it and disappeared, along with the staircase. Decades later, the one who stayed in their town calls the rest of them back, and leads them to another staircase. Trapped in an apparently unending house of horrors, can they survive and maybe find out what really happened? Effectively creepy in its use of trauma and the mundane; a few typos in the eARC.

Daryl Gregory, When We Were Real: Gregory seems endlessly inventive; this novel is set in a world with irrefutable proof that we live in a simulation, including Impossibles, which are phenomena that can’t be explained using physics (as well as a weekly text reminder that we are living in a simulation beamed to everyone’s brain—not clear what happens if the recipient can’t read). Some have responded with nihilism, considering everyone else (except perhaps fellow gun-toting, Matrix-loving incels) to be bots. On a tour of seven American Impossibles, a pregnant influencer, a rabbi, a nun (and accompanying novice), two German tourists, a would-be right-wing podcaster and his feckless son, a comic book writer, and his best friend, a retired engineer, join an inexperienced tour guide and seen-everything bus driver. But the trip gets more complicated when a fugitive joins them. Her mission is mysterious but urgent. Each of the characters has a distinctive perspective—the Engineer (“The thing is ridiculously oversized and out of scale, like a Koons Balloon Dog. He also doesn’t know how he feels when he looks at a Koons Balloon Dog.”), the Realist’s Son (“Why was anyone shocked that the world was not in our control, and that nothing we did mattered? The Simulators could hit reset at any time. Or climate change would kill us all. Same difference.”), and so on. I loved it.

The Neurodiversiverse: Alien Encounters, ed. Anthony Francis: I’m not a big poetry fan, so the poems sprinkled throughout didn’t do much for me. Brian Starr’s The Interview engaged with the idea that, just because you’re not like other humans doesn’t mean that you have common interests with another entity who’s not like humans. Power fantasies (of which there were a number, where neurodiversity enables success) are fine and welcome, but I liked the challenge. Stewart C. Baker’s The List-Making Habits of Heartbroken Ships is likely to appeal to Murderbot fans for reasons suggested by the title.

Sung-il Kim, trans. Anton Hur, Blood of the Old Kings: A widow who lost her young child as well determines to rebel against the oppressive conquerors who killed them, and seeks out the defeated dragon that used to protect her country for help. Meanwhile, a young sorcerer determines to escape her fate of being used as an undead power generator for the same empire, and a young man seeks to find the murderer of his friend, no matter who he angers in the process. The widow, Loren, doesn’t spend too much narrative time contemplating what she’s lost, although she does share a few memories; she’s too busy finding out that politics are complicated even in a rebellion against a terrible enemy. Unusually for the fantasies I tend to read, there’s also no romance or really sexual energy at all.

Alan Taylor, American Colonies: The Settling of North America: ( transnational history )
Erin Thompson, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments: ( monuments are instructions )
Jeffrey A. Engel, When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War: ( hegemonic dreams )
Brooke Lindy Blower, Americans in a World at War: Intimate Histories from the Crash of Pan Am's Yankee Clipper: ( snapshot of (white, cosmopolitan) diversity )
Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History: ( two Jews, three opinions )
Andrew J. Bacevich, America's War for the Greater Middle East: ( controlling the oil )
Carolyn Woods Eisenberg, Fire and Rain: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Wars in Southeast Asia: ( bad men )
Eric Klinenberg, 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed: ( a vulnerable nation )

Annette Gordon-Reed & Peter S. Onuf, "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination: ( How Jefferson imagined himself )

Yes, IWTV is great! While waiting for the next season, might you consider Evil? The show follows a hot Catholic priest-in-training, the hot atheist shrink to whom he is desperately attracted, and their hot lapsed Muslim tech guy as they investigate and try to prove/disprove demonic possessions. It is incredibly, delightfully unhinged. Part of it is that the show started on network TV, then moved to streaming in its second season, leading to the absolute best evolution where characters who were reasonably well-behaved start spouting "fuck" at the drop of a hat in S2, including a delightful nearly silent episode that was actually filmed while they still thought they'd be on network, so after filming they replaced the "thought dialogue" onscreen that the actor thought he was filming with a stream of "fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck," to hilarious effect. There's body horror, Catholic guilt, an amazingly toxic mother (Christine Lahti, having the time of her life), four kids who have clearly been instructed to just yammer every time they are on screen together--making them more realistic than 80% of TV kids from the get-go--examination of misogyny and anti-Blackness, critiques of modern internet culture, and the occasional Wallace Shawn. Also, the tech guy is Aasif Mandvi and the hot priest is Mike Colter (Jessica Jones/Luke Cage). And the bad guy is Michael Emerson (Harold Finch), chewing scenery like he only gets paid by how much debris is left when he’s done.

Shorter rec: What if Hannibal and The X-Files had a deeply online baby? My one caveat is that this is a cynical show, which feels a little like watching Cabaret: It's a sick culture and the show is not interested in fixing it, only in displaying it pinned open on a table so we can poke at the nastiest parts.

Chuck Tingle, Bury Your Gays: ( queer joy/horror )
R. A. Sinn, A Second Chance for Yesterday: ( time travel romance )
Joy Demorra, Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites: Fluff and Fangs Edition: ( werewolf/vampire romance )
Stephen King, You Like It Darker: Stories: ( because they can )
Austin Grossman, Fight Me: ( cynical former supervillains )

Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Oracle: ( horror and spycraft )