Hi my friends!

I can't wait for book club tomorrow night at 8pm Eastern! Keep an eye on this space for the link sent tomorrow, and I'll also post it in the Discord.

Time to choose our January book! 'The Team' tier members are encouraged to vote on the month's pick, and the winner will be revealed January 2nd.

Maine Characters by Hannah Orenstein

Every summer, Vivian Levy and Lucy Webster spend a month with their father at his lake house — separately. Raised in New York City, Vivian is an ambitious sommelier with a secret that could derail her future. Lucy grew up in a tiny Maine town, where she now teaches high school English while watching her marriage unravel. They’ve never met. While Lucy envied her half-sister from afar, their father kept Vivian in the dark.

When Vivian arrives at the lake to spread his ashes and sell his cabin, she's shocked to find Lucy there, awaiting his return. In an ideal world, they’d help each other through their grief. Instead, forced to spend the summer together, they fight through a storm of suspicion and hostility to untangle the messy truth about their parents’ pasts. While Lucy is desperate to hold onto the house, Vivian is scrambling after a betrayal. After thirty years apart, is it too late for them to be a family?

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. But when Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen

Call it inertia. Call it a quarter-life crisis. Whatever you call it, Cricket Campbell is stuck. Despite working at a zeitgeist-y wellness company, the twenty-six-year-old feels anything but well. Still adrift after a tragedy that upended her world a decade ago, she has entered early adulthood under the weight of a new burden: her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

When Cricket’s older sister Nina announces it is time to move Arthur from his beloved Adirondack lake house into a memory-care facility, Cricket has a better idea. In returning home to become her father’s caretaker, she hopes to repair their strained relationship and shake herself out of her perma-funk. But even deeply familiar places can hold surprises.

As Cricket settles back into the family house at Catwood Pond―a place she once loved, but hasn’t visited since she was a teenager―she discovers that her father possesses a rare gift: as he loses his grasp of the past, he is increasingly able to predict the future. Before long, Arthur cements his reputation as an unlikely oracle, but for Cricket, believing in her father’s prophecies might also mean facing the most painful parts of her history. As she begins to remember who she once was, she uncovers a vital truth: the path forward often starts by going back.

Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. Thoughtful and reserved, Joan is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy at Rice University and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances. That is, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to be one of the few people to go to space.

Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, who are kind and easygoing even when the stakes are highest; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, who is navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer, who can fix any engine and fly any plane.

As the new astronauts become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, it all changes in an instant.

Hi folks,

It’s finally time! Here’s my list of my favourite queer reads this year. I’ll be doing another post soon with my top BIPOC reads!

Seven Recipes for Revolution by Ryan Rose

Food magic, queer normative, angry revolution, eat the rich!!

This is my top pick from the whole year.

The Chromatic Fantasy by H.A.

Runaway nun becomes a transmasc highwayman, meets another transmasc highwayman, shenanigans

A Gentleman’s Gentleman by TJ Alexander

A transmasc Earl who doesn’t want a valet but gets a handsome valet and regrets everything (but not really)

Tradwife by TC Parker

Queer investigator looks into unsolved murders in a Tradwife community, everyone’s a suspect, fictional true crime

Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

Monsters in space, kinda queer AI, more found family!

Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson

A brutal vampire revenge thriller. A man and his basics track down an evil queer vampire. I was shocked and horrified and hooked.

The Prospects by KT Hoffman

An MM baseball romance with a transmasc MC. Do I understand baseball? No. Did it make me happy cry? Yes!

The Saint of Heartbreak by Morgan Dante

Judas x Lucifer love story, very sad bois, slowest of slow burns, literally thousands of years

Self Made Boys by Anne-Marie McLemore

The Great Gatsby but they’re both transmasc, the romance, oh the romance

The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles

A regency MM romance that will make you swoon. They were SO protective of each other!

Do share your favourites in the comments!

Much love,

Disco x

Welcome back to a Director’s Cut Review. Today’s book

under the knife is A Veritable Household Pet by Viggy Parr Hampton.

Title: A Veritable Household Pet

Author: Viggy Parr Hampton

Page Count: 336

Genre: Horror

Subgenre: Domestic, Medical

Themes/Tropes: Lobotomies, Sisterhood, Loss of autonomy, Mental health, medical abuse

Series? No but also 😉

Setting: 1960s/70s

Other Works by this author: A Cold Night for Alligators, Much Too Vulgar, The Rotting Room

Let's talk about this book. As always, I'll do my best to keep this review spoiler free for you all.

The book follows two sisters as they recall their tragic upbringing. Darla developed emetophobia--the fear of vomiting-- at a young age. By age eleven her parents were unable to handle her any more, so her father decided a lobotomy was the next step. This set off the chain of horrible events that follow in the book. Darla nearly died after the lobotomy--which at this point in time were nearly unheard of being practiced by medical professionals anymore. Her sister, Ellie, wound up having to care for Darla often due to the lack of effort her parents applied to the "new" Darla.

The story is told in alternating Povs. Decades later, Darla has asked Ellie to transcribe her life. After the lobotomy, Darla was never able to write again. She wanted a record of what she could remember. Ellie adds in her own thoughts and memories as she transcribes Darla's words.

This story is beautiful yet tragic. The feeling I got while reading this book reminded me of Tiffany McDaniel's The Savage Side. This book is brutal. It doesn't shy away from tragedy.

I can see some people not wanting to label this as horror. But to that I say this: Horror is subjective. We all perceive things differently. What scares me may not scare you. This book focuses on "real" horror. People had lobotomies done against their will. Many were never the same after the procedure. This book shows the tragedy of this horrible procedure that was once labeled a cure for neurosis. I'm a firm believer in the scariest kind of horror is the kind that happens everyday.

In this book we see parental negligence. We see medical professionals abuse their power. We see a young girl lose her autonomy. We see a girl have to make sacrifices and help raise her sister--a job her parents should be doing.

I'll drop a few content warnings here: Rape, Murder, Suicide.

I gave this book 4.5 stars.

Be sure to check it out when it releases on 1.28.26.

You can preorder the book down below. Be sure to check out more of Hampton's work! She is a fantastic writer.

Hi everyone! Here are the books I’m thinking of reading in January! Per usual, we will pick one fantasy and one thriller. Each member can vote twice, one for each genre! Voting will end on the 31st

Hey y'all,

The Children of Diaspora Book Club is BACK! I've decided to choose the books for January and February so we can show some Bindery releases the love they deserve.

Our January read will be Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder. Esperanza Hope Snyder was born in Columbia and immigrated to the United States. The novel takes place in 20th century Columbia.

Our February read will be Dust Settles North by Deena ElGenaidi. Deena ElGenaidi is Egyptian-American and the novel takes place in Cairo during Arab Spring.

Check out the links below for a full synopsis. If you choose to purchase through these links, I may also receive a small commission.

XoXo - Rae

I finally had a chance to sit down & pull together my reviews for the books I read in November, so let's jump right in! I read 6 books by and about Black, Latine, and Indigenous queer folks. I was really in my anthology bag this past month, which means I have plenty of new to me authors to check out! Here are the books I read and my reviews of each:

This horror anthology has a lot of fantastic stories within! One of my faves is "The Brides of Devil's Bayou" by Desiree S. Evans which is about a girl named Aja who returns to her family home in Louisiana for her 19th birthday despite the alleged curse on her family.

All of the stories are captivating and perfectly creepy! Some have sci-fi elements or magical realism, while others feed on modern experiences like "Black Girl Nature Group" and "Queeniums for Greenium!"

This is a great book to add to any collection.

Scout's Honor is a dark yet playful paranormal story that is great for folks who have ever wondered what it would be like to have a girl scout-esque organization in which girls take down monsters feeding on human emotions. The plot was original and I loved the way Prudence thought about her role as a former ladybird scout as she trained the newbies. Her compassion and instinct to hold onto humanity made her a worthy MC.

There were just a couple of things that made this book a bit hard for me to enjoy sometimes: the pacing and repetitiveness. It felt like the story spent a bit too much time on world-building and not much on the chemistry between Prudence and her boyfriend. There were also times when I sped up the audiobook to get through the slower/repetitive dialogue.

I recommend this book to teens (and anyone else) who is intrigued by this review!

We Belong is a beautiful addition to my (small, but mighty) collection of graphic novels! Many of the stories are filled with community, love, and joy. I love that there are plenty of stories that don't center around hardship and take place in queer-normative worlds or spaces. More of this, please!

Although a few of the stories were hard to follow, I think this is a solid anthology. Each story/piece includes a brief artist/author bio, which is great for those of us who like to follow artist's work online.

I recommend this book to folks who love visual arts and/or need to see Black queer folks thriving.

Love After The End is a fantastic anthology that should be a must-read for lovers of Speculative Fiction!

I absolutely loved almost every story in this book, which is impressive because I usually don't favor anthologies as they tend to lack the space to explore their themes as much as full-length novels.

It felt so good to read queer-normative stories that center resistance and community.

My fave stories are How to Survive the Apocalypse for Native Girls by Kai Minosh Pyle and Seed Children by Mari Kurisato.

Skyn by Nikki Payne is a humorous and sexy take on dystopian sci-fi!

Fawl is a regular degular woman who spent her life living in the Underground while dreaming of feeling the real sun on her skin. When her ex leaves her for her stepsister, Fawl is devastated & angry. They’d been working to get the money/upgrades to leave the Underground together for years & suddenly her future is ripped away. Not one to give up so easily, Fawl agrees to spy on an Elite family of emotionless cyborgs to finally touch some grass. In a twist of events, she ends up married to one of the sons, who happens to have an obsession with her skin.

I love Nikki Payne's writing because her characters always have hella funny & relatable internal monologues. There's jokes, philosophical questions, super sexy scenes, & a revolutionary heart. I think this is one of my fave stories from the After The End project.

Taken is a wild ride from the start!

Rhen is an artist who was recruited to be a part of a project to re-establish/repopulate the Earth after the devastating fall of civilization. Each of the participants were placed in pods programmed to wake them after 11,000 years. Our MC wakes up early thanks to a malfunction in the system. She faced w/ a couple of choices: Live out her life alone in the bunker or take a risk by leaving. Rhen decides to leave & finds out that there are some humanoid creatures who take her w/ them. She has an undeniable attraction to one of them & they're bound to one another, but she can't quite leave her old life behind just yet...

This novella was very entertaining to me! I think Rhen is funny & the storyline is clever. Spice-wise, I'd say this is about 3.5 out of 5 chili peppers. If you're looking for a fun, short, and steamy monster romance, you should pick this one up!