Annual Book Sale 2026: My Son's Books

The Planned Parenthood Book Sale is held in September every year, and we have attended the sale for many, many years. My son usually spends most of his time in the science fiction and fantasy section, although we both also head for graphic novels after we walk in the door on the first day. He also keeps an eye out for science fiction and fantasy books for me and my husband.

In this post, I am featuring six of the books he bought this year.

The Cartographers (2022) by Peng Shepherd

This book sounds very interesting. Although it is categorized on Goodreads as Fantasy / Mystery Thriller / Magical Realism, I am most attracted to the mystery element.

From the description on the back of the book:

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating.

The Neverending Story (1979) by Michael Ende

Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim

I don't know much about this book, although I have heard of it. My son had seen the movie years ago but had not read the book, so he wanted to read it. I will wait until he does that and see what he thinks before I give it a try.

From the description on the back of the book:

Unicorns, dragons, sprites, will-o'-the-wisps: the inhabitants of an enchanted world. And into this world – through the pages of an old book – ventures Bastian, a lonely boy of ten or twelve. But Fantastica is slowly decaying, its Childlike Empress dying. Only a real human being can set things right by giving the Empress a new name. Bastian takes up the challenge, and finds himself crossing the Swamps of Sadness and the Silver Mountains, meeting sorcerers and giants, bats and night-hobs, gnomes and racing snails, as he journeys bravely toward the Ivory Tower. Bastian's quest is filled with all the wonders of myth and fairy tale. It is a fantasy adventure that will capture your heart – and recapture the magical dreams of childhood.

Legends & Lattes (2022) by Travis Baldtree

I am very glad that my son found a copy of this book, because I have been wanting to read it. The subtitle of the book is: "A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes."

From the description on the back of the book:

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success — not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World (2025) by Mark Waddell

This book has a great title and a clever cover. I like the premise. And in addition, the author is Canadian. Admittedly the book is categorized as Horror / Fantasy, but I am hoping the Humor balances out the Horror. Assuming my son likes it, I will be reading it too.

From the description on the back of the book:

Colin is a low-level employee at Dark Enterprises, a Hell-like multinational corporation solving the world’s most difficult problems in deeply questionable ways. After years of toiling away in a cubicle, he’s ready to climb the corporate ladder and claim the power he’s never had.

The only problem is, he’s pretty sure he’s about to be terminated. Like, terminated. That’s tough, because his BFF has just set him up with a great guy. In fact, maybe he’s a little too great. And he asks a lot of questions ...

When Colin meets a shadowy figure promising his deepest desire in return for a small, unspecified favor, he can’t resist the urge to fast-track his goals. He asks for the one thing that will improve his life: a promotion. But that small favor unleashes an ancient evil. 

The Shambling Guide to New York City (2013) by Mur Lafferty

Another book by Mur Lafferty (Station Eternity) is already on my TBR SOON stack. That one is set in space; this one is set in New York City, a New York City with zombies, vampires and other monsters. 

From the back cover:

Zoe Norris is looking for a fresh start in New York City. She's found a seemingly perfect position as a travel book editor, but there is one thing holding her back—being human.

Zoe isn't going to let anyone—not even her blood-drinking boss or her death goddess coworker put her off from delving deep into the monster underworld. But her job, not to mention her life, might be in peril when the line between monster and human starts to crumble...with Zoe right in the middle.

Roadside Picnic (1972) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Translated from the Russian by Olena Bormashenko

My son bought another book by the Strugatsky brothers at the 2025 book sale. He read that one and liked it, so naturally he bought this book when he saw it this year. It looks like a great edition, with all the extra information. This one sounds more interesting to me, so I will probably read it after he does.

From the back of the book:

Red Schuhart is a stalker, one of those young rebels who are compelled, in spite of extreme danger, to venture illegally into the Zone to collect the mysterious artifacts that the alien visitors left scattered around. His life is dominated by the place and the thriving black market in the alien products. But when he and his friend Kirill go into the Zone together to pick up a “full empty,” something goes wrong. And the news he gets from his girlfriend upon his return makes it inevitable that he’ll keep going back to the Zone, again and again, until he finds the answer to all his problems. 

First published in 1972, Roadside Picnic is still widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels, despite the fact that it has been out of print in the United States for almost thirty years. This authoritative new translation corrects many errors and omissions and has been supplemented with a foreword by Ursula K. Le Guin and a new afterword by Boris Strugatsky explaining the strange history of the novel’s publication in Russia.

Six Degrees of Separation: From Orbital to Station Eternity

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is Orbital by Samantha Harvey. For once, I have actually read the book. It depicts one day in the life of six astronauts on the International Space Station, watching the sunrises and sunsets and monitoring a typhoon threatening inhabited islands. The reader is privy to their thoughts, and watches their activities and their regimen.

Reading Orbital motivated me to read more about life on the International Space Station. I want to know how astronauts are selected for this type of mission and how they train for it.  I don't even like to fly in an airplane (of any size) but I would love to know more about the lives of people who live in the space station.

1st degree:

My first book is from my husband's shelves: Lonely Planet's The Universe. This book has a wealth of information about Earth and the other planets, and other parts of the known universe. Photos on every page. There are smaller sections on the manned space flights and the International Space Station. A lovely book to dip into now and then.

2nd degree:

I am sticking with the space station theme throughout, and my next book is Endurance: My Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly with Margaret Lazarus Dean, a memoir published in 2017. Per his website: "A veteran of four space flights, Kelly commanded the International Space Station (ISS) on three expeditions and was a member of the yearlong mission to the ISS." 

I have purchased a copy of this book to read sometime this year. 

3rd degree:

My next link is a short story, "Stranger Station" by Damon Knight, which I read in Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg. The story is about a race of aliens that were so massive and repulsive to humans that the contact has been sparse and only occasionally do the aliens visit a space station that is set aside especially to enable that visit. When one of the aliens comes, it is for one purpose, to provide a substance for the humans which the humans have come to rely on. The story focuses on the one human who is on the space station to facilitate the exchange with the alien being. He is alone on Stranger Station until the alien arrives, although he can communicate with a computer AI called "Aunt Jane." 

"Stranger Station" was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1956, but has been included in a good number of anthologies since then.

4th degree:

Since reading Orbital, I have been looking for fiction set on a space station, and I found that my son has several books that fit that category. This is one he read: Diving into the Wreck by Kristine Kathlyn Rusch. The heroine of the book explores derelict space vehicles, sometimes for salvage, sometimes as a historian. The book consists of three connected novellas and at least one of them is about The Room of Lost Souls, which is an abandoned space station which most people consider a myth.  It sounds great and I will be reading this book.

5th degree:

The fifth link in my chain is to The Burning Dark by Adam Christopher. From the description on the back of the book:

Back in the day, Captain Abraham Idaho Cleveland had led the Fleet into battle against an implacable machine intelligence capable of devouring entire worlds. But after saving a planet, and getting a bum robot knee in the process, he finds himself relegated to one of the most remote backwaters in Fleetspace to oversee the decommissioning of a semi-deserted space station well past its use-by date.

This one sounds good too, so I will add it to my TBR list.

6th degree:

My sixth book is a genre blend of mystery and science fiction: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty, first published in October 2022. 

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

Unfortunately for Mallory, that doesn't last very long. I love mystery and science fiction mixed, so I will probably read this one too.

My Six Degrees started in space and it stayed mostly in space. It started with a novel about our International Space Station, but took me to science fiction worlds set in the future. It also added four books to my "To Read" list.

The next Six Degrees will be on February 1st, 2025 and the starting book will be a classic – Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos.

Annual Book Sale 2024: My Son's Books

 

At the Planned Parenthood book sale that we attend every year, my son usually concentrates on the science fiction and fantasy books, plus graphic novels. He often finds one or two books for me in that area, by authors I especially like.

This year we only went to the sale in the last few days, because my husband and I had Covid when the sale began. 

Here I am featuring six of the books he purchased this year, and you will notice that a number of them are cross-genre, with a mystery element.

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

First published October 2022

Science Fiction / Mystery

From the back of the book:

From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.

 But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….

The Undetectables by Courtney Smith

First published September 2023

Fantasy / Mystery & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

Be gay, solve crime, take naps—A witty and quirky fantasy murder mystery in a folkloric world of witches, faeries, vampires, trolls and ghosts, for fans of Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey and T. J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door.

A magical serial killer is stalking the Occult town of Wrackton...

Enter the Undetectables, a detective agency run by three witches and a ghost in a cat costume (don’t ask). They are hired to investigate the murders, but with their only case so far left unsolved, will they be up to the task?

 

Catchpenny by Charlie Huston

First published April 2024

Urban Fantasy / Paranormal Fiction / Suspense & Thriller

From the description at Penguin Random House:

A thief who can travel through mirrors, a video game that threatens to spill out of the virtual world, a doomsday cult on a collision course with destiny, and a missing teenager at the center of it all. With the world on the brink of every kind of apocalypse, humanity needs a hero. What it gets is Sid Catchpenny.

“I absolutely loved it. Catchpenny is a brilliant book, full of heart and the language is pitch-perfect. If Elmore Leonard had ever written a fantasy novel, this would be it.” —Stephen King

The Last Smile in Sunder City by Luke Arnold

First published February 2020

Paranormal fantasy / Mystery

From the author's website:

In a world that's lost its magic, a former soldier turned PI solves cases for the fantasy creatures whose lives he ruined in an imaginative debut fantasy by Black Sails actor Luke Arnold.

Walk the streets of Sunder City and meet Fetch, his magical clients, and a darkly imagined world perfect for readers of Ben Aaronovitch and Jim Butcher.

From Kirkus Reviews:

The first installment of an effortlessly readable series that could be the illegitimate love child of Terry Pratchett and Dashiell Hammett.

Southern Gods by John Hornor Jacobs

First published August 2011

Horror / Mystery & Thriller / Supernatural

From the back of the book:

A Memphis DJ hires recent World War II veteran Bull Ingram to find Ramblin' John Hastur, a mysterious bluesman whose dark, driving music — broadcast at ever-shifting frequencies by a phantom radio station — is said to make living men insane and dead men rise.

A bootlegged snippet of Hastur's strange, brooding tune fills Bull with an inexplicably murderous rage. Driven to find the song's mysterious singer, Bull hears rumors that the bluesman sold his soul to the Devil. But as Bull follows Hastur's trail into the eerie backwoods of Arkansas, he'll learn there are forces much more malevolent than the Devil and reckonings more painful than Hell . . .

All Men of Genius by Lev AC Rosen

Published September 2011 by Tor Publishing Group

Steampunk / Young Adult

From the description at Open Road Media:

A comedic Steampunk sensation inspired by both Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, All Men of Genius follows Violet Adams as she disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry to Victorian London's most prestigious scientific academy, and once there, encounters blackmail, mystery, and love.

Violet Adams wants to attend Illyria College, a widely renowned school for the most brilliant up-and-coming scientific minds, founded by the late Duke Illyria, the greatest scientist of the Victorian Age. The school is run by his son, Ernest, who has held to his father's policy that the small, exclusive college remain male-only. Violet sees her opportunity when her father departs for America. She disguises herself as her twin brother, Ashton, and gains entry.