Reading Glasses Ep 456 - Most Anticipated for March and April!
Apr 2, 2026
Two readers sprint through a massive list of spring releases, spotlighting creepy historical horrors, queer literary chills, and imaginative romantasy. They tease haunted houses, locked-room mysteries, tech-gothic memory tales, and monstrous folklore. Short fiction, cozy mysteries, and space-opera previews also make the cut.
43:54
The Photonic Effect Is Mike Chen's Space Opera
- Both hosts shared The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen as an April pick, excited for his first space-opera offering and his strength at character-driven sci-fi.
- Mallory called it 'hot pink' and emphasized Mike Chen will write the type of space opera she wants to read.
The Radiant Dark Links Intimate Life With Alien Messages
- Mallory selected The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva for Brea: an Arrival-like contact story set in the 1980s Adirondacks about a couple receiving decades-long messages from alien intelligence.
- Brea confirmed the pitch 'Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore' matched her tastes.
Honor and Heresy Is A Haunted Library Rivals Romance
- Mallory recommended Honor and Heresy by Max Francis as a gay gothic dark-academia horror-romance about rivals trapped in a haunted library during a snowstorm, facing romance and conspiracies.
- She noted worldbuilding where society prioritizes war over books and the library conceals age-old secrets.
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Intro
00:00 • 54sec
Brea describes Coffin Moon
00:54 • 2min
Mallory on When Two Feathers Fell
02:36 • 2min
Listener tips and Libby novellas
04:30 • 2min
Hosts' wheelhouses and bookmarks
06:18 • 3min
Ad break
09:02 • 3min
Episode theme and show notes
12:25 • 3min
Shared March pick: Wolfworm
14:55 • 57sec
Brea: Trace Elements conversations
15:52 • 55sec
Mallory: Turn Off the Light haunted house
16:47 • 1min
Brea: Python's Kiss by Louise Erdrich
18:03 • 58sec
Mallory: The Keeper by Tana French
19:00 • 2min
Shared: I Love You Don't Die
20:37 • 1min
Brea: Ruby Falls locked-room mystery
21:55 • 2min
Mallory: Wretch tech-gothic grief
23:30 • 2min
Brea: Spoiled Milk boarding-school horror
25:38 • 1min
Brea: The Geomagician romantasy
26:47 • 2min
Shared April pick: The Photonic Effect
29:14 • 59sec
Brea: The Radiant Dark sci-fi
30:13 • 1min
Mallory: Honor and Heresy gothic romance
31:24 • 2min
Brea: Ms. Mebel culinary cozy mystery
32:57 • 1min
Mallory: Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances
34:06 • 2min
Brea: Molka spy-camera thriller
35:50 • 1min
Mallory: Witch Queen Rising romantasy
37:10 • 1min
Brea: Japanese Gothic dual timelines
38:13 • 1min
Mallory: Permanence magical realism
39:13 • 1min
Brea: Death Meets Cute cozy romantasy
40:31 • 1min
Mallory: Big Girl Blitz sports romance
41:50 • 1min
Outro
43:04 • 48sec
#50583
Python's Kiss
Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich's 'Python's Kiss' is a collection of short stories published after a long career of novels and other works; the pieces were written over approximately two decades.
The book includes stories that range in tone and genre, including ghostly tales and speculative or near-future pieces, reflecting Erdrich's interest in the boundaries between the ordinary and the uncanny.
Many stories arose from fragments and notebooks, sometimes taking years to complete, and showcase her characteristic focus on family, memory, Indigenous life, and moral complexity.
The collection demonstrates Erdrich's patience with form and her willingness to let stories evolve outside strict authorial control.
It adds to her body of work that often blends lyrical prose with attention to cultural and historical specificity.
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Death Meets Cute
J Penner
J Penner's 'Death Meets Cute' is a cozy romantic fantasy following a protagonist attempting to cultivate villainy who instead finds companionship with a reanimated large-bodied creature who excels at baking.
The narrative leans into gentle humor, domestic enchantment, and the tender transformation of a guarded protagonist through unexpected care.
Themes include found family, the subversion of villain tropes, and the comforts of food and craft as catalysts for intimacy.
The book balances lighthearted romantic beats with fantastical worldbuilding to provide a feel-good reading experience.
Fans of cozy fantasy, food-centric romance, and tender monster romances will appreciate its warmth and charm.
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Future Home of the Living God
Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich's "Future Home of the Living God" is a speculative fiction novel exploring themes of environmental collapse, societal upheaval, and the resilience of the human spirit.
The narrative follows Cedar, a pregnant woman navigating a dystopian future where genetic mutations are rampant and societal structures are crumbling.
Erdrich's writing style is characterized by its lyrical prose and powerful exploration of human connection in the face of adversity.
The novel is a powerful commentary on the fragility of the environment and the importance of community in times of crisis.
"Future Home of the Living God" is a significant contribution to contemporary literature and continues to resonate with readers worldwide.
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Big Girl Blitz
Danielle Allen
Danielle Allen's 'Big Girl Blitz' is a contemporary romance centered on a plus-size female protagonist who comes home to care for her ailing aunt and confronts painful memories from adolescence.
The novel explores themes of body image, community, and reclaiming self-worth while delivering a comforting small-town romance anchored in sports culture.
The developing relationship with a local football player challenges the protagonist's assumptions and opens possibilities for healing and belonging.
Allen blends emotional realism with rom-com beats to create an uplifting narrative about second chances and self-acceptance.
Readers seeking inclusive, feel-good sports romance will find this an affirming and sweet read.
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Honor and Heresy
Max Francis
Max Francis' 'Honor and Heresy' blends gothic horror, dark academia, and queer romance in a story of two scholarly rivals isolated in a haunted library during a brutal snowstorm.
As secrets surface and spectral threats intensify, the characters confront personal traumas and a larger conspiracy that threatens their world.
The novel plays with tropes of forbidden knowledge, institutional power, and the intimacy born from confinement and danger.
The haunted library setting offers both claustrophobic tension and romantic heat, facilitating a shift from antagonism to deeper emotional connection.
Readers can expect eerie atmosphere, slow-burn romance, and a plot that ties personal stakes to broader conspiratorial consequences.
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The Geomagician
Jennifer Mandula
Jennifer Mandula's 'The Geomagician' combines Victorian-era paleontology with romantic fantasy, telling the story of a woman who uses fossils as a source of magic and uncovers a newly hatched pterodactyl.
Excluded from an all-male geomagical society, she must navigate social constraints and institutional hostility while protecting the creature.
The novel blends adventure, scholarly rivalry, and a developing partnership with a former fiancé who aids her cause.
Themes include gender exclusion in scientific institutions, the ethics of stewardship, and found family bonds formed through shared purpose.
The book offers a warm, whimsical take on historical fantasy with paleontological charm.
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The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances
Glenn Dixon
Glenn Dixon's 'The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances' imagines a near-future world where household devices possess consciousness and form communities with their own hopes and loyalties.
The narrative centers on a Roomba—self-styled as 'Scout'—who, alongside other appliances, ventures beyond the smart home to prevent the displacement of an elderly resident.
The book explores themes of care, surveillance, and technological governance as the appliances confront an omnipresent 'grid' that threatens households.
While evoking nostalgia for animated-appliance tales like 'The Brave Little Toaster,' it also interrogates modern surveillance capitalism and loneliness.
The tone blends whimsy and poignancy to create a futurist fable about empathy and resistance.
#
Wretch
or, The Unbecoming of Porcelain Khaw
Eric LaRocca
Eric LaRocca's 'Wretch: or, The Unbecoming of Porcelain Khaw' blends gothic horror and near-future technology to examine grief and the longing for reunion with the dead.
Centered on a grieving man who discovers an unsettling support group offering simulated final moments with lost partners, the novel probes ethical and psychological ramifications of memory manipulation.
LaRocca explores addiction, identity, and the commodification of mourning as characters confront the limits of technology and desire.
The narrative balances eerie atmosphere with provocative questions about authenticity and the price of holding onto the past.
It reads as a dark, emotionally charged investigation into how people cope with loss in technologically mediated ways.
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Ruby Falls
Gin Phillips
Gin Phillips' 'Ruby Falls' is a historical mystery set in 1920s Tennessee centered on the discovery of a dramatic underground waterfall and an unthinkable crime within its caves.
The novel uses its subterranean setting as a character, creating claustrophobic atmosphere and heightening the locked-room mystery elements.
The protagonist navigates societal constraints and personal awakenings while investigating the case that splits the local community.
Phillips combines historical detail with suspenseful plotting to explore themes of gender, ambition, and the costs of secrecy.
The result is an evocative, tightly plotted story balancing evocative setting with engaging mystery.
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The Radiant Dark
Alexandra Oliva
Alexandra Oliva's 'The Radiant Dark' imagines an inexplicable flicker in the sky that initiates a decades-long exchange between humans and an alien intelligence, centering on a husband and wife and their family in the Adirondacks.
The novel blends intimate domestic concerns—new parenthood, marriage, and community—with large-scale questions of contact and meaning.
Through the slow arc of communication across years, Oliva examines how extraordinary events reshape ordinary lives and relationships.
The book likely balances contemplative prose with speculative intrigue, reflecting on empathy, the unknowable other, and the costs of witnessing radical change.
Its tone has been likened to 'Arrival' crossed with eerie coastal fiction, promising both cerebral and atmospheric elements.
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I Love You Don't Die
Jade Song
Jade Song's 'I Love You Don't Die' follows a protagonist preoccupied with death who finds herself drawn into an intense throuple involving an artist and a labor organizer.
The novel blends literary sensibilities with horror and magical-realist elements to interrogate themes of mourning, intimacy, and self-destruction.
Song's lyrical voice and psychological acuity create a claustrophobic emotional landscape where obsession and love intertwine.
Supernatural or uncanny aspects complicate relationships, forcing characters to confront mortality and identity.
The book builds on Song's previous work to offer a haunting, thought-provoking exploration of queer desire and the ways people seek meaning in loss.
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Trace Elements
Jo Walton
Ada Palmer
In 'Trace Elements,' Jo Walton and Ada Palmer engage in a wide-ranging conversation about the project of science fiction and fantasy, discussing influences from Le Guin to anime and comics.
The book functions as both craft talk and critical reflection, examining how speculative fiction expands empathy, engages complicity, and addresses sociocultural questions.
Walton and Palmer bring their experience as writers and scholars to unpack narrative strategies, worldbuilding, and the ethical dimensions of genre storytelling.
The format allows for digressions into literary history and contemporary media, making the work accessible to both writers and readers interested in genre theory.
Overall, it aims to illuminate the intellectual and creative underpinnings of speculative fiction through two sharp, informed voices.
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Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block
Jesse Q. Sutanto
Jesse Q. Sutanto's 'Ms.
Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block' follows a woman re-entering culinary school after a long marriage goes awry, only to find herself wrapped up in a mystery when a fellow student disappears.
Sutanto blends humor, domestic stakes, and investigative curiosity as the protagonist navigates new skills, friendships, and sleuthing.
The book offers cozy-mystery pleasures—nosy protagonists, charming settings, and food-focused scenes—while exploring themes of reinvention and agency later in life.
Sutanto's light touch and comedic sensibility keep the tone buoyant even as the protagonist confronts unsettling events.
Fans of witty, food-adjacent mysteries will find this an enjoyable read.
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Japanese Gothic
Kylie Lee Baker
Kylie Lee Baker's 'Japanese Gothic' interweaves two timelines—one in the 1870s involving samurai and monsters, and the other in the present—around a haunted house with shifting boundaries and elusive truths.
The novel blends historical myth, psychological unreliability, and body-horror to create a story where identity and memory fracture under supernatural influence.
Baker explores themes of shame, violence, and the legacies of past acts as they resurface in modern life, complicating responsibility and truth.
The narrative plays with which account is trustworthy, forcing readers to question perception and history.
Its eerie imagery and cultural specificity mark it as a fresh take on gothic tropes transplanted into Japanese settings.
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Turn off the Light
Jacquie Walters
Jacquie Walters' 'Turn Off the Light' juxtaposes two timelines in the same haunting locale, following women across centuries as they face a persistent evil tied to their home.
The novel blends domestic tension, generational trauma, and supernatural dread as each woman uncovers secrets and confronts consequences of past actions.
Walters uses the parallel-structure device to explore how history reverberates and how spaces retain memory, creating layered suspense.
With a focus on atmosphere and emotional stakes, the book leans into both intimate character study and classic haunted-house tropes.
Readers who enjoy multi-timeline ghost stories and slow-building revelations will find this a compelling entry in modern gothic fiction.
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When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky
Margaret Verble
Margaret Verble's novel centers on a Cherokee woman in 1920s Nashville who performs as a horse diver at an amusement park, offering a vivid, language-rich portrayal of the era and Indigenous experience.
Verble weaves historical detail—real places, practices, and figures—into intimate character work, exploring identity, community, and resilience.
Midway through, the narrative introduces unsettling and supernatural elements, adding complexity and atmospheric intrigue to the historical canvas.
The book balances meticulous research with lyrical prose, providing readers both immersive period detail and emotional depth in the protagonist's life.
It has been noted for its careful attention to cultural specificity and memorable storytelling.
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Spoiled Milk
Avery Curran
Avery Curran's 'Spoiled Milk' is a gothic horror novel set in the 1920s centered on a girls' boarding school where the untimely death of a student begins a chain of escalating supernatural occurrences.
The story blends dark academia atmosphere, queer relationships, and creeping dread as the school community unravels.
Curran uses period detail and claustrophobic setting to heighten the sense of contagion—both social and supernatural—within the institution.
Themes include repression, desire, and the consequences of secrecy as characters try to understand and contain the threat.
The novel offers a tense, eerie reading experience for fans of historical horror and gothic boarding-school fiction.
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Witch Queen Rising
Savannah Stephens
Savannah Stephens' 'Witch Queen Rising' is a romantic fantasy set in a richly textured New Orleans, where the protagonist returns after a self-imposed exile to confront her bloodline's burdens.
The novel features political machinations among rival magical houses and a cast including vampires and werewolves, blending sensual romance with supernatural intrigue.
Themes include legacy, power, and reclamation as the heroine navigates romantic entanglements and communal expectations.
The setting's cultural and mystical resonances provide an evocative backdrop for courtship, rivalry, and magical conflict.
Readers seeking lush, passionate fantastical romance with urban supernatural elements will find this appealing.
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Molka
Monika Kim
Monika Kim's 'Molka' tackles the pervasive issue of clandestine spy cameras in South Korea—known as 'molka'—through a tense narrative that blends thriller, horror, and social critique.
The protagonist's intimate life is exposed when a voyeuristic recording surfaces online, triggering reputational ruin and a quest for accountability.
As the story unfolds, Kim examines complicity, digital violation, and the mechanics of surveillance culture, while weaving in personal and legal consequences.
The novel also introduces characters such as an IT worker whose own complicities complicate alliances and motives.
'Molka' is both a timely thriller and a moral exploration of privacy, shame, and technological abuse.
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The Photonic Effect
Mike Chen
Mike Chen's 'The Photonic Effect' is a space-opera aiming to marry big-scale interstellar stakes with Chen's knack for character-driven narratives.
The book promises fast pacing, ensemble casts, and the moral and tactical dilemmas typical of the genre, delivered with accessible prose.
Chen is noted for creating relatable characters within high-concept sci-fi settings, and this novel is positioned to engage readers who enjoy both action and interpersonal drama.
The work likely explores themes of communication, technology, and the sociopolitical consequences of contact at cosmic scales.
As an anticipated release, it's expected to appeal to both existing fans and newcomers seeking energetic space opera.
#22150
• Mentioned in 2 episodes
The dam keeper
Robert Kondo
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Permanence
Lisa Broderick and Marshall Goldsmith
Permanence, co-authored by Lisa Broderick and Marshall Goldsmith, examines how our perception of time influences behavior and offers practical methods to make positive changes stick.
The book presents simple daily questions and reflective practices designed to shift habits and foster lasting personal and organizational transformation.
Drawing on research and real-world leadership experience, it shows how brief, consistent self-assessments can alter choices during the day.
The authors combine psychological insights about time perception with actionable routines to help readers become the best versions of themselves.
Overall, the book emphasizes small, repeatable practices as the path to sustainable change.
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Wolf Worm
Wolf Worm
T Kingfisher
In 'Wolfworm', T. Kingfisher returns to atmospheric horror with a late-19th-century setting where an artist-illustrator takes a position at a reclusive entomologist's estate.
As strange animal behavior and grotesque insect phenomena escalate, the protagonist confronts unnerving discoveries tied to the estate's past and the previous illustrator's disappearance.
The novel foregrounds vivid, sometimes visceral descriptions of bugs and nature, blending scientific curiosity with creeping dread.
Kingfisher's background in art and anthropology informs detailed sensory writing and believable depictions of entomological work.
The result is a tense, unsettling tale that balances character-driven interior anxieties with body-horror elements.
#69795
The Sentence
Louise Erdrich
The novel follows Tookie, an Ojibwe woman who, after being released from prison, works at a small independent bookstore haunted by the ghost of Flora, the store's most annoying customer.
The story spans from November 2019 to November 2020, incorporating the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of George Floyd's murder.
It delves into issues of race, colonialism, the prison system, and the power of literature, while maintaining a balance of humor, warmth, and profound emotional depth.
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Westward Women
Alice Martin
Alice Martin's Westward Women is a literary speculative novel set in the early 1970s that imagines an ‘infection’ prompting young women to abandon their lives and travel toward the Pacific.
The story centers on three narrators—Amy, Teenie, and Eve—whose intersecting perspectives reveal personal motives, social context, and the collective nature of the phenomenon.
Martin blends road-novel tropes, feminist themes, and historical detail to explore desire, agency, and the limits of escape.
The novel emphasizes social contagion over biological explanation, using the itch metaphor to probe psychological and cultural forces driving movement.
Ultimately, the book interrogates the Western frontier myth and the cost of seeking reinvention through physical flight rather than confronting entrenched relationships and structures.
#89692
Coffin Moon
Keith Rosson
Brea and Mallory talk about their most anticipated books for the start of spring. Email us at readingglassespodcast at gmail dot com!
THE BIG GIANT LIST OF ANTICIPATED BOOKS IS HERE!!
Sponsors -
GreenChef
www.greenchef.com/50GLASSES
CODE: 50GLASSES
Links -
Reading Glasses Facebook Group
Reading Glasses Goodreads Group
To join our Discord channel, email us proof of your Reading-Glasses-supporting Maximum Fun membership!
www.maximumfun.org/join
Books Mentioned -
Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson
When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky by Margaret Verble
MARCH PICKS:
Shared: Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher
Horror, historical 1899 North Carolina woods, monstrous maggots!!!
Brea: Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer
Mallory: Turn Off the Light by Jacquie Walters
Horror, haunted house, two women centuries apart bound by the same secret
Brea: Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich
Short stories, fantasy, indigenous stories
Mallory: The Keeper by Tana French
New Tana fuckin French!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brea: I Love You Don’t Die by Jade Song
Literary, horror, fantasy, queer, death-obsessed young woman with depression gets drawn into a throuple
Mallory: Ruby Falls by Gin Phillips
Historical mystery, 1920s Tennessee, locked room murder mystery set entirely in an underground waterfall
Brea: Wretch: or, The Unbecoming of Porcelain Khaw by Eric LaRocca
Horror, tech-Gothic about memory technology, gay
Mallory: Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran
Horror, queer, historical, dark academia, 1920s boarding school
Brea: Westward Women by Alice Martin
Sci fi where women 18-35 slow down and are drawn towards the Pacific Ocean until they reach it and disappear
Mallory: The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula
Historical romantasy, a Victorian fossil hunter discovers a baby pterodactyl and vows to protect him with the help of a fellow scholar and former fiancé
APRIL PICKS
Shared: The Photonic Effect by Mike Chen
Sci fi, space opera
Brea: The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva
Sci fi, Arrival meets Wild Dark Shore
Mallory: Honor and Heresy by Max Francis
Horromance, gothic, dark academia, rivals to lovers, queer, haunted library
Brea: Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Cozy mystery, almost divorced woman goes to culinary school to win back her husband and everything is suspicious when she arrives
Mallory: The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by Glenn Dixon
Cozy sci fi, near future where all appliances are sentient
Brea: Molka by Monika Kim
Horror, thriller, spy cameras, revenge, technology
Mallory: Witch Queen Rising by Savannah Stephens
Romantasy, witches, vampires, New Orleans
Brea: Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
Horror, historical, parallel timelines, Japan, 1870s, mythology, ghosts
Mallory: Permanence by Sophie Mackintosh
Magical realism, sapphic, two women having an affair find a secret world where adulterers can live as couples
Brea: Death Meets Cute by J Penner
Cozy romantasy, witches, baked goods, necromancy
Mallory: Big Girl Blitz by Danielle Allen
Contemporary romance, football, sports romance, plus size FMC, coming home to a small town
GO HERE FOR THE ENTIRE GIANT LIST MALLORY SPENT A WHOLE DAY PUTTING TOGETHER!!