Friends, I don’t have to remind you that the real world is still a frightening place right now. If you, too, find yourself craving hope and the power of partnership in hard times, let me invite you to pick up one of these books.

The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao. Del Rey, 2026. ISBN 978-0593725023. Read from a library copy.

I really enjoyed Samantha Sotto Yambao’s previous book, Water Moon, last year, so I would have read this one anyway. However, the book design on this is really gorgeous – besides the beautiful cover art, the edges are stenciled with stacks of suitcases, the cover under the dust jacket has alternate art, and even the end papers have coloring pages with alternate views of the train. Inside, train tickets and itneraries are made to look like papers on top of the pages. This was so irresistable that I put it on hold as soon as I saw it on the new book cart at the library, without stopping to consider the fullness of my existing TBR shelf.

As the story opens, we are introduced to two different people who have gone by different names since traumatic losses forced them to look at themselves differently. Hiraya (hee-rah-yah), once a budding teen musician, now goes by Raya and is in med school. Q was once Quentin Jr., and he’s now a painter – though probably not for much longer. Raya is day-dreaming about the other people on her train when she realizes that she’s left the grubby city train she was on and is now on a vintage-looking train car that the conductor, Lily, tells her is the Elsewhere Express, where people without purpose wind up when they drift away from reality. Q soon finds his way there, too. Lily takes them through one impossible door to another, through cars that look more like landscapes than train cars, on a mission to find out where their compartments are and what their roles on the Elsewhere Express should be. It’s dreamily beautiful – but is it the true escape to bliss that Q hopes it is, the dangerous trap that Raya feels it is, or something else altogether? The train gives no true answers, leaving Raya and Q to figure out what they want and where they belong on their own. Along the way, the two of them – the only two in the whole train who have memories of a time before they boarded – grow closer and closer.

At its heart, this is a story of grieving and of making sense of life leading up to and after great loss. Though I wouldn’t say it feels like Patricia McKillip in general, after reading it I have the same kind of feeling that I’m not entirely sure what happened, only that it was beautiful and I cared about the characters and was mostly following it while it happened. The romance here is mostly vibes and developing understanding, without any physical aspects. I shared it with my mother, who also really enjoyed it. I might want to go back to it at some point to try again for deeper understanding.

Masque by W.R. Gingell. W.R. Gingell, 2016. ISBN 978-0994332516. Read from a purchased ebook. Ebook available from Hoopla.

I’ve been going through ebooks I purchased an indefinite amount of time ago on my lunch breaks at work. I have to guess that I bought book five of a series on the recommendation of someone on the Lamplighters Discord during a sale – I no longer remember who, but I am grateful to them nonetheless!

This is a kisses-only Beauty and the Beast retelling that starts out as a period-fantasy mystery, with glittering ballrooms, sparkling dialogue, and shadowy motives. Isabella is the oldest daughter of a diplomat, considering herself firmly an old maid at 28. They are in the capital of a neighboring kingdom trying to secure an important agreement. Then, at a masked ball, a guardsman and friend of Isabella’s is murdered. Naturally, Isabella feels it her duty to figure out the mystery, despite the cause of death clearly being magical. She has just made the acquaintance of Lord Pecus, whose masquerade mask covers another mask enchanted to react like a human face. Lord Pecus is Commander of the Watch, and decidedly does not want Isabella getting involved in a crime that could end with her own death. Also, for a reason that Isabella has yet to deduce and does not wish to get involved in, Lord Pecus has decided that Isabella is the person who might be able to break the curse that he conceals with the magical porcelain mask.

Despite there being more than one quite gory murder, this book is mostly charming and clever. Isabella and Lord Pecus develop a rapport as they spar over the mystery, with Isabella taking a very long time to admit to herself that she might be doing so. There are also a lot of interesting side characters – Isabella’s friends, younger sister, nobility she investigates, and resourceful street urchins she hires to work as her servants and protectors. There might have been some incidental diversity described that I, but the characters read fantasy-white, with perhaps a couple of queer side characters. All in all though, this was so very much fun. I was mostly reading this on break at work, but took it out to finish in the evening at home towards the end because I didn’t want to wait. And while I purchased this ebook, I’m very happy to discover that it and many other of W.R. Gingell’s books are available from hoopla, some in ebook and some in eaudio.

Silver and Blood by Jessie Mihalik. Avon, 2026. ISBN 978-0063411586. Read from a purchased copy. Ebook and audiobook available on Libby.

I had only read one book by Jessie Mihalik before this, her 2024 Books and Broadswords vol 1., two cozy romantasy novellas in one book that I really enjoyed. I bought this one because she was on a panel with Stephanie Burgis and Sangu Mandanna all discussing their books (Enchanting the Fae Queen and A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping respectively) – and since Stephanie asked her fans to buy to the books so that the bookstore would keep hosting these panels, I did.

Riela is the only mage in her tiny village. She saved the village from a flood, so she’s tolerated, but in general, magic users are not well-regarded and expected to go to the capital to train as mages and be put on the front lines of all the frequent wars. This means that Riela is untrained – but also that her situation is tenuous enough that when a villager disappears in the decidedly off-limits Forsaken Forest, she goes into the woods to find the monster that was after him. It takes hardly any time before she’s attacked by multiple monsters – but just before she loses consciousness, she’s rescued by a beautiful man with a large wolf. When she wakes up in his fortress, she starts to learn – about the curse keeping Garrick from his magic, about her own magic, and her family history. She’s also fighting her attraction to him as she wants to go back home, but he insists – truthfully – that it isn’t safe for her to travel through the forest. Things quickly get steamy between them, even as Riela tries to decide what to do long term.

This book did a number of things that I find frustrating – insta-love (or at least insta-lust), a heroine who deliberately puts her life in danger by ignoring the man’s more experienced advice, the fact that it is an ancient fae lord and a young, inexperienced woman, early sexytimes followed by nearly immediate falling out. And yet! Despite all of this, I found myself genuinely caring for the characters, thinking about them when I wasn’t reading, wanting to learn more about the world and how Riela and Garrick could possibly figure out all of their problems. (Spoiler: while the romance ends happily enough, the overall plot arc is not over by the end of the book.) I had to keep reading, and am now impatient for the next book in the series. Garrick and Riela are shown as white on the cover. Riela is described as having dated both men and women in the past, and side characters are intersectionally diverse.

For more Beauty and the Beast retellings, try either or both of Robin McKinley’s Beauty and the Beast retellings, Beauty and Rose Daughter, Rosamund Hodge’s Cruel Beauty , Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, or Cat Hellisen’s Beastkeeper – and do let me know if there are any that I’ve missed that you love.