I'm A Voracious Reader

Monday, October 26, 2026

BBNYA2026 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: Clipped by KQ Watson

Heaven was perfect, until they came for his son.

When angel engineer Zak's infant son is cast down for being born without wings, he faces Heaven's cruel mandate: forget, or fall. Clipped, Zak plummets to a broken Earth, where false prophets exploit the faithful, drug lords rule dead cities, and every truth comes with a price.

Pursued by ruthless angel hunters through decaying urban wastelands and corrupted mega-churches, Zak uncovers a conspiracy that reaches from Earth's grimmest gutters to Heaven's highest chambers. What begins as a father's desperate search becomes a brutal quest for vengeance that will expose Heaven's most devastating lies - and make them remember his son's name.

AVR Weekly News ~ 670th Edition

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BBNYA2026 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: Child of the Dragon by Ashley N.Y. Sheesley

Our only hope is the hope we forge ourselves.

Kat always thought her grandma's stories of Rhaegynne—shapeshifting dragons—were just fairytales. But that all changes when her grandma is killed, and she learns that not only are they real, but she is one.

A prophecy and a curse set in motion ages ago, have now turned Kat’s quiet senior year into chaos. What was supposed to be a gift becomes a tool for breaking a curse that forces others to serve tyrannical kings who will use them to wage war and destruction across Earth.

But hope . . . is more stubborn than a curse.

Fighting alongside friends new and old, Kat must learn to harness the heart of the dragon in order to break the curse, destroy the kings, and save the dragons. All before succumbing to the curse herself.

Honestly? It'll be a breeze compared to calculus.

Between the Birches trilogy is a romantic, suspenseful journey of friendship, love, and magic. A cautionary fictional folk tale about how easily we can be lost in the darkness without the ties that bind, and of monsters who are hungry for chaos, and who devour human souls.

Deep beneath the hills of the Appalachian mountains, an ancient evil stirs. For a millennium, Ja'azul has delved into our dreams and fed off the souls of innocents. Soon, he will finally be freed from the magical prison the Goddess, Circe, trapped him inside. What he didn't expect was how resilient the human race could be.

Beth Harper-Newman can't wait to spend her 25th birthday on a weekend hike on the Appalachian Trail with her two favorite guys: Tom (her husband) and Grady (their best friend). To her surprise, a couple of estranged friends are waiting when they arrive, and day one seems to go downhill the further into the mountains they go. After the sun sets, the woods where Beth used to find peace turn sinister with talks of death cultists, witches, and cosmic horrors not native to this planet. Truths worm their way to the surface, lifting the veil covering Beth's life until she's stuck deciding what to believe or who to trust in an unfamiliar part of the forest. And, just when Beth thinks her weekend couldn't get worse, she learns her role in this messed up hike.

BBNYA2026 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: An Absence of Artificers by Emma Bradley

Workshop owner by day and spy for the Menagerie by night, Molly dreams of swapping the Faerie citadel for the wider realms of Faerie.

The citadel isn't safe and escaping it is rare, so when one of the recently missing Fae from the Artificers' Guild turns up dead, Molly is determined to dig right to the core of the rot infesting her home.

But in a self-contained city where the enemy knows all the same routes she does, it won't be long before they're hunting her in return.

BBNYA2026 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: A Second Life Worth Living by Karen Lucia

Bennet Smith has already died once. He has no interest in a repeat act.

Caught in the crossfire of an increasingly violent revolution, Ben's first death doesn't stick. His bones ache. His body still feels phantom pains. Wrongfully killed, he should return ready to fight alongside the revolutionaries striving for change. Instead, he wants no part of it.

Bennet Smith is no hero. He has never been a hero. He has never wanted to be a hero. All Ben has ever wanted is to keep his head down, fly under the radar, and pass completely unnoticed. Death didn't change that.

BBNYA2026 Semi-Finalist Spotlight: A Life in Too Many Margins by S.E. Thomson

David is dying, or maybe he isn’t. Hard to say, really, because no one ever gives you a timetable when you’re disabled, autistic, queer, and stuck improvising your way through existence. What he does know is this: if life is going to keep punching him in the gut, he might as well write it all down first.

A Life in Too Many Margins is the story of a man looking backward while time keeps nudging him forward. From childhood misunderstandings to medical disasters, David is collecting the fragments of a life shaped by truths he didn’t discover until far too late: that he’s neurodivergent, that his body will never play by the rules, and that gender was never the box people insisted it had to be.

If you’ve ever felt like the world wasn’t built with you in mind, or if you just enjoy a dark laugh in the middle of disaster, David’s story will remind you that sometimes the only place where real life happens is in the margins.

AVR Weekly News ~ 669th Edition

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by
Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer.
~ Recap the past week ~
~ Show what's upcoming ~
~ Share news ~
~ Display book hauls ~