Pride Among the Pines Book Club

August 2022

7/15/2022

This month's book club pick is Legends & Lattes: A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes by Travis Baldree. We will be meeting on August 12th at 7:30 pm in an online video chat. You can find the link in the sidebar to the right!

Travis Baldree is a full-time audiobook narrator who has lent his voice to hundreds of stories. Before that, he spent decades designing and building video games like Torchlight, Rebel Galaxy, and Fate. Apparently, he now also writes books. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his very patient family and their small, nervous dog. You can find more info about him on his website.

So, what's the book about?

Come take a load off at Viv's cafe, the first & only coffee shop in Thune. Grand opening!

Worn out after decades of packing steel and raising hell, Viv, the orc barbarian, cashes out of the warrior's life with one final score. A forgotten legend, a fabled artifact, and an unreasonable amount of hope lead her to the streets of Thune, where she plans to open the first coffee shop the city has ever seen.

However, her dreams of a fresh start filling mugs instead of swinging swords are hardly a sure bet. Old frenemies and Thune's shady underbelly may just upset her plans. To finally build something that will last, Viv will need some new partners, and a different kind of resolve.

via GIPHY

If this sounds like something you would like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store for 15% off when you order with us: in store, online, over the phone (828.386.1219), or via email. Our booksellers will be happy to help you get the book in the format that you prefer!

Buy Online:

Paperback
Audiobook

We are open to the public for in-store shopping Mon-Sat from 11am-7pm & you can pickup your orders at the register. However, you can also pickup your book using the pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We offer free media mail shipping for orders $30+ and free local delivery, as well (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us!

Finally, you can RSVP & add this event to your personal calendar--do that here! We hope to see you at our next meeting!

Reviews & Interviews

Legends & Lattes – Cozy Fantasy At Its Finest - The Quill to Live
REVIEW: Legends and Lattes - Ink and Plasma
Interview With Travis Baldree, Author of Legends & Lattes - Word Wilderness
Interview With Author Travis Baldree - Before We Go

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May 2022

4/9/2022

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The book club pick for May is
Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur! We will be meeting on May 13th at 7:30pm EST in an online video chat. You can RSVP & add the event to your calendar here. The meeting link is also in the sidebar of this blog (look to the right)!

Alexandria Bellefleur is a bestselling and award-winning author of swoony contemporary romance often featuring loveable grumps and the sunshine characters who bring them to their knees. A Pacific Northwesterner at heart, Alexandria has a weakness for good coffee, Pike IPA, and Voodoo Doughnuts. Her debut novel, Written in the Stars, was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner and a 2020 winner of The Ripped Bodice Awards for Excellence in Romantic Fiction.

So, what's the book about?

Margot Cooper doesn't do relationships. She tried and it blew up in her face, so she'll stick with casual hookups, thank you very much. But now her entire crew has found the one and she's beginning to feel like a fifth wheel. And then fate (the heartless bitch) intervenes. While touring a wedding venue with her engaged friends, Margot comes face-to-face with Olivia Grant--her childhood friend, her first love, her first... well, everything. It's been ten years, but the moment they lock eyes, Margot's cold, dead heart thumps in her chest.

Olivia must be hallucinating. In the decade since she last saw Margot, her life hasn't gone exactly as planned. At almost thirty, she's been married... and divorced. However, a wedding planner job in Seattle means a fresh start and a chance to follow her dreams. Never in a million years did she expect her important new client's Best Woman would be the one that got away.

When a series of unfortunate events leaves Olivia without a place to stay, Margot offers up her spare room because she's a Very Good Person. Obviously. It has nothing to do with the fact that Olivia is as beautiful as ever and the sparks between them still make Margot tingle. As they spend time in close quarters, Margot starts to question her no-strings stance. Olivia is everything she's ever wanted, but Margot let her in once and it ended in disaster. Will history repeat itself or should she count her lucky stars that she gets a second chance with her first love?

Count Your Lucky Stars is the third installment of the Written in the Stars series, though it can be read as a standalone. For more backstory on the secondary characters in Count Your Lucky Stars, check out Written in the Stars and Hang the Moon!

via GIPHY

Buy Online:

Paperback
Audiobook

Reviews & Interviews

Review: Count Your Lucky Stars - The Alliterates
Count Your Lucky Stars - BookReporter
the time it was about count your lucky stars - eleven thirteen pm
Exclusive Interview: Count Your Lucky Stars - Fresh Fiction

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December 2021

11/16/2021

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This month's book club pick is Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta! We will be meeting on Friday, December 10th at 7:30 pm in an online video chat. You can RSVP and get the link here.

Zoe Hana Mikuta currently attends the University of Washington in Seattle, studying English with a creative writing focus. She grew up in Boulder, Colorado, where she developed a deep love of Muay Thai kickboxing and nurtured a slow and steady infatuation for fictional worlds. When she is not writing, Zoe can be found embroidering runes onto her jean pockets, studying tarot or herbology, or curled up with a cup of caramel coffee and a good, bloody but heartwarming book. She is the author of the Gearbreakers duology (Gearbreakers and Godslayers). You can find her on her website and @ZoeHanaMikuta on twitter.

So, what's the book about?

We went past praying to deities and started to build them instead...

The shadow of Godolia's tyrannical rule is spreading, aided by their giant mechanized weapons known as Windups. War and oppression are everyday constants for the people of the Badlands, who live under the thumb of their cruel Godolia overlords.

Eris Shindanai is a Gearbreaker, a brash young rebel who specializes in taking down Windups from the inside. When one of her missions goes awry and she finds herself in a Godolia prison, Eris meets Sona Steelcrest, a cybernetically enhanced Windup pilot. At first Eris sees Sona as her mortal enemy, but Sona has a secret: She has intentionally infiltrated the Windup program to destroy Godolia from within.

As the clock ticks down to their deadliest mission yet, a direct attack to end Godolia's reign once and for all, Eris and Sona grow closer--as comrades, friends, and perhaps something more...

via GIPHY

Buy Online

Hardback
Audiobook
E-book

We are open to the public again (Mon-Sat from 11am-7pm) so you can pickup orders at the register. However, you can also pickup your book using our pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We offer free media mail shipping for orders $30+ and free local delivery (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us!

Finally, you can RSVP on the Facebook event to get reminders & updates about any changes to the event! Do that here! You can also add it to your personal calendar--check out the event page to see our Google event calendar where you can RSVP!

Reviews & Interviews

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta - The Quiet Pond
Sapphic Dystopian Excellence in Zoe Hana Mikuta's Gearbreakers - TOR
On the World Through the Eyes of a Young Writer, Mecha Sci-Fi, and 'Quiet' Romances - The Quiet Pond
Zoe Hana Mikuta on Her Queer Mech Novel - Nerdist

We hope you can join us for this month's Pride Among the Pines book club on December 10th at 7:30 pm online! Happy Reading!

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Welcome & Intro

8/3/2021

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Welcome to Foggy Pine Books newest book club: Pride Among the Pines! We are so excited to feature books by queer authors with queer characters to our community. Keep reading to find out more!

Grace (she/they) and Mary (they/them) are both lovers of queer literature, and as a queer-owned book store we thought it was about time we started a book club for it! Mary is the owner of the store and a long-time reader of queer lit; they love queer fantasy and memoirs the most, and started out with Oscar Wilde's works. That said, they'll read almost anything if you tell them there's a great queer character! Grace started working at Foggy Pine as a bookseller at the end of February. They were sucked into the world of queer lit through Nina Varela’s duology Crier’s War, a sapphic fantasy. She enjoys queer fantasy and history over anything else! We hope you will join us in this very, very gay book club! We will start out meeting online via Google Meet only with the intention & hope to be able to meet in person later this year. This book club is not limited to queer people - we hope our allies in the community will join us as well!

We will be meeting the second Friday of every month at 7:30pm, starting on September 10th!

Our very first book is going to be Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers. It’s a contemporary sapphic romance!

Morgan Rogers is a queer millennial from Baltimore writing about queer millennials. She has a dog and a cat and dreams about one day owning a farm with horses and goats and chickens. Music is her biggest creative inspiration and Honey Girl is her first novel. Morgan's twitter is @garnetmorgue.

So, what's the book about?

With her newly completed PhD in astronomy in hand, twenty-eight-year-old Grace Porter goes on a girls’ trip to Vegas to celebrate. She is not the kind of person who goes to Vegas and gets drunkenly married to a woman whose name she doesn’t know…until she does exactly that.

This one moment of departure from her stern ex-military father’s plans for her life has Grace wondering why she doesn’t feel more fulfilled from completing her degree. Staggering under the weight of her father’s expectations, a struggling job market and feelings of burnout, Grace flees her home in Portland for a summer in New York with the wife she barely knows.

When reality comes crashing in, Grace must face what she’s been running from all along—the fears that make us human, the family scars that need to heal and the longing for connection, especially when navigating the messiness of adulthood.

via GIPHY

If this sounds like something you would like to read, you can get your copy of the book from the store for 15% off when you order with us: online, over the phone (828.386.1219), or via email. If you're looking for an audiobook, our partners at Libro.fm have it available for easy access on our affiliate website. You can get it here. You can also get it in e-book format, as well! We have a new e-book partner called My Must Reads & you can buy the e-book here.

We are open to the public again (Mon-Sat from 11am-7pm) so you can pickup orders at the register. However, you can also pickup your book using our pickup basket at the front door or the drive thru window. We offer free media mail shipping for orders $30+ & local delivery (within Boone town limits). Getting your book to you as conveniently as possible is important to us! Please let us know how we can help you get your copy of our book club book this month!

Finally, you can RSVP on the Facebook event to get reminders & updates about any changes. Do that here! We will announce each month's book here on our dedicated blog which will include interviews with the author of each month's book and reviews to help you decide. This blog will also be a space where we make book club related announcements & share them with our club members. We encourage you to leave comments to let us know what you think of the book we've chosen each month or to make suggestions for future titles!

We hope to see you for our very fist Pride Among the Pines meeting on Friday, September 10th at 7:30pm!

Reviews & Interviews
Honey Girl - Kirkus Reviews
Morgan Rogers' debut novel 'Honey Girl' is the type of coming-of-age story we need - Seattle Times
Chatting with Morgan Rogers on Honey Girl - SheReads
In 'Honey Girl,' Morgan Rogers Mines Queer Love and Mental Burnout - ShondaLand

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