Since this month started on a Wednesday, it's been a whole week without new releases for July! But a lot of books I've really been looking forward to come out this month, and I've gotten my grubby little golem hands on a few ARCs, so I can tell you that some of them lived up to the hype!

The Delivery: A Novella by Gregg Hurwitz (Thomas & Mercer- Amazon's Mystery Imprint, July 1) - An AI butler is designed to anticipate what a family wants. But when inexplicable tragedies strike in the neighborhood, the family realizes that their AI companion is executing their darkest desires, and they must stop him.

The Bird Tribe: The Dreambird Chronicles, Book 3 (Tor, July 7) - I'll tell you about the first book to avoid spoilers! In this post apocalyptic Unites States, a new slave trade is started in the ashes. Ji-ji was bred and raised under this subjugation and must win an annual competition in which the first prize is freedom.

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle (Tor Nightfire, July 7) - Chuck Tingle always rocks my socks off, and I'm not even a gruesome horror girlie, his writing is just GRIPPING. In his latest book, a social media influencer by day and grave robber at night meets her match when her Elton John-like idol dies and she is hired to steal his body...only he's not all the way dead, and he has a mission, and he is forcing her to help him complete it. If you were a Goosebumps kid, I promise you that you're a Chuck Tingle adult. And if you've already read anything by Chuck? Well, you won't be dissapointed.

Formula Zero by Meredith Lanzen (Penguin Random House, July 7) - A formula one romcom but make it in space, with childhood friends turned competitors, back in each others orbits.

The Memory Bookshop by Song Yu-jeong, Translated by Shanna Tan (Harper Collins, July 7) I will never list an author without their translator after reading Babel! That shit is important! If you're grieving, you might come across the Memory Bookshop, or at least, it might find you. After losing her mother, Jiwon is offered the chance to travel back in time 3 chapters of her life if she gives up time in her future. Jiwon must decide if the past can be rewritten or if the magic is in the life she has yet to live.

Icefall: The Rise of Nine by Michael Newman and Jon Land (Permuted Press - Indie, July 14) - A team of superbeings placed on Earth a million years ago by intergalactic colonizers that seeded our planet to create human life are awakened from their long slumber to protect Earth from a predatory alien threat. Sounds very Transformers meets superhero.

Misery's Wife by Joan Tierney (Macmillan, July 14) - A queer cli-fi fantasy retelling about a young trans woman who must save her closest sister from the King of Misery. On the way she receives help from her other sisters, who have married the King of the Air and the King of the Sea. And perhaps on the way she may find a love of her own.

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh (Simon & Schuester, July 14) - A doomsday tale of a family who must fight their way back together amidst an extinction level event. But this isn't a surface level tale. This family is already in crisis as the father's doomsday prepping causes his daughters mental health disasters and the mother's health declines.

Null Entity, The Volatile Memory Duology Book 2 by Seth Haddon (Tordotcom, July 21) - I read the Volatile Memory novella last year and it was so unique. The premise is that an AI lives in masks that scavengers need to survive. But a mask one finds has the last scavenger's personality still in it, which is not supposed to be possible, but this mask is special. She forms a relationship with the person in the mask and must escape from everyone else who wants the mask. I have this sequel sitting in my TBR for up next.

Affairs of State by Calvin James (Titan Books, July 28) - The MC is named Levar Boylan so I'm already in because I know Calvin James is as obsessed with Levar Burton as me. High stakes cut throat politics in the stars. Levar, a junior supply officer is pulled to the front lines to serve a diplomat during peace talks, but the Emperor they are negotiating with is his ex, and of course, there are still sparks.

Biological War by Annie Jacobsen (Dutton, July 28) - A lab accident, a bio-attack, a global pandemic, and the collapse of human society. This book isn't really fiction though, it's an examination of how the government, mediacl world, and military would react to this very possible scenario.

Daggermouth by HM Wolfe (Simon & Schuester, July 28) - Set in a corrupt surveillance state ruled by the masked elite, this dystopian romance features a presidential heir entagled in secrets that could topple the regime and a mercenary hired to kill him. I'm holding the ARC to this book and it's next up after I finish Null Entity and Dreamland, Olivie Blake's new genre bending horror that comes out in August.

The Red Woman on Mars by Claire Barner (Diversion Books, indie, July 28) - I'm going to be an asshole here and shit talk another book, Pride & Prejudice in Space, which I hated, in order to talk about how much I'm looking forward to a REAL retelling of Jane Austen's classic. P&P in Space should have been everything I wanted in a book, my favorite classic retold in my favorite genre. But the author only changed the setting and nothing else in the story. She never addressed why women were still essentially chattel property in the space traveling era. She literally just changed everything about locations and used all the same original wording. THIS book is about a climate refugee contracted as a birth mother to genetically modified Mars children. It's almost impossible to get an ARC from an indie publisher but you can bet your sweet ass I'm about to try!

Star Wars: Legacy by Madeline Roux (Penguin Random House, July 28) - Set between Episodes VIII and IX, Rey and Leia embark on a quest to repair Rey’s lightsaber and rekindle the legacy of the Jedi.

See you next month. Or, hear me out, subscribe and hear from me more often if you actually made it to the bottom of this, because presumably that means you like reading...whatever this is.

— Zee

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