Hellooo!!

I on a week off and a Monday without having to do anything was wonderful!!! This week is about taking it easy. I’ve a lovely stack of books and season 2 of Lucifer to get through. In the UK summer appears to be ending early so as the autumn approaches next month I should be back to Week in Womble and readalong mood but I think I’ll keep this feature going as it is good to tempt.

Fair warning - next week I talk about September and there is a lot incoming!

You Again by Debra Jo Immergut - Out Now from Titan Books - £8.99 paperback £5.99 Kindle eBook

Abigail Willard first spots her from the back of a New York cab: the spitting image of Abby herself at age 22 - right down to the silver platforms and raspberry coat she wore as a young artist with a taste for wildness. But the real Abby is now 46, married with a corporate job and two kids. As the girl vanishes into a rainy night, Abby is left shaken. Was this merely a hallucinatory side-effect of working-mom stress? A message of sorts, sent to remind her of passions and dreams tossed aside? Or something more dangerous?

As weeks go by, Abby continues to spot her double around her old New York haunts - and soon, despite her better instincts, Abby finds herself tailing her lookalike. She is dogged by a nagging suspicion that there is a deeper mystery to figure out, one rooted far in her past. All the while, Abby's life starts to slip from her control: her marriage hits major turbulence, her teenage son drifts into a radical movement that portends a dark coming era. When her elusive double presents her with a dangerous proposition, Abby must decide how much she values the life she's built, and how deeply she knows herself.

You Again is an audaciously constructed novel, an unboxing of memory, desire, and regret - and an electrifying portrait of a woman hurtling toward the key crossroads of her life, where a secret lies buried like an undetonated bomb.

Kindly sent this by the lovely Titan and the description is pretty intriguing a thriller or another genre? I don’t know. I plan to get to this very very soon!

Ink & Sigil by Kevin Hearne - Out 27/8 from Orbit Books - £8.99 paperback

Al MacBharrais is both blessed and cursed. He is blessed with an extraordinary white moustache, an appreciation for craft cocktails - and a most unique magical talent. He can cast spells with magically enchanted ink and he uses his gifts to protect our world from rogue minions of various pantheons, especially the Fae. 

But he is also cursed. Anyone who hears his voice will begin to feel an inexplicable hatred for Al, so he can only communicate through the written word or speech apps. And his apprentices keep dying in peculiar freak accidents. As his personal life crumbles around him, he devotes his life to his work, all the while trying to crack the secret of his curse. 

But when his latest apprentice, Gordie, turns up dead in his Glasgow flat, Al discovers evidence that Gordie was living a secret life of crime. Now Al is forced to play detective - while avoiding actual detectives who are wondering why death seems to always follow Al. Investigating his apprentice's death will take him through Scotland's magical underworld, and he'll need the help of a mischievous hobgoblin if he's to survive.

I confess I’ve not read the Iron Druid series but this is apparently a new series set in the same world with new characters. It sounds light so as I’ve a number of darker reads to read this week that may be a welcome diversion

Sisters by Daisy Johnson - Out Now from Vintage - £14.99 hardback £9.99 Kindle eBook

Something unspeakable has happened to sisters July and September.

Desperate for a fresh start, their mother Sheela moves them across the country to an old family house that has a troubled life of its own. Noises come from behind the walls. Lights flicker of their own accord. Sleep feels impossible, dreams are endless.

In their new, unsettling surroundings, July finds that the fierce bond she's always had with September - forged with a blood promise when they were children - is beginning to change in ways she cannot understand.

Taut, transfixing and profoundly moving, Sistersexplodes with the fury and joy of adolescence. It is a story of sibling love and sibling envy that fans of Shirley Jackson and Stephen King will devour.

I’ve been meaning to read something by Daisy Johnson for a while and I do enjoy eerie sibling tales and gothic thrillers. So keen to see how this fits together.

Echoes - the Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories edited by Ellen Datlow - Out Now - Import

Everyone loves a good ghost story, especially Ellen Datlow--the most lauded editor in short works of supernatural suspense and dark fantasy. The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories is her definitive collection of ghost stories.

These twenty-nine stories, including all new works fromNew York Times bestselling authors Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Seanan McGuire, and Paul Tremblay, span from the traditional to the eclectic, from the mainstream to the literary, from pure fantasy to the bizarrely supernatural. Whether you're reading alone under the covers with a flashlight, or around a campfire with a circle of friends, there's something here to please--and spook--everyone.

Contributors include: Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, Vincent J. Masterson, A.C. Wise, M. Rickert, Seanan McGuire, Lee Thomas, Alison Littlewood, M.L. Siemienowicz, Richard Kadrey, Indrapramit Das, Richard Bowes, Nick Mamatas, Terry Dowling, Aliette de Bodard, Carole Johnstone, Dale Bailey, Stephen Graham Jones, Bracken MacLeod, Garth Nix, Brian Evenson, Jeffrey Ford, Gemma Files, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Pat Cadigan, John Langan.

Heard about this on a Coode Street Podcast and it’s got a delicious list of authors attached from Paul Tremblay, Alison Littlewood, Seanan McGuire and Indrapramit Das. Feels suitable for incoming dark nights to get my spook on.