Welcome to June.

A little bit late this month due to time constraints. Currently travelling at the moment, and my travels will actually take me into the tail end of July!

So if you send me an e-mail and I take a little bit of time to respond – that’s why.

My reading was affected by this, unfortunately, as May was focused on completing my backlog of work, so I can hopefully relax a little bit on my travels.

I think if I can work about 2 hours every morning, I should be able to keep on top of everything, and I have a great team to help support me.

This is actually the very last thing on my backlog, and I am done! I have a 3-hour bus journey tomorrow, and I already plan to do nothing but zone out and read The Escape Game by Marissa Meyer and Tamar Moss. Really looking forward to that!

The nice thing about it is all the websites are family-run, so my wife and kids understand when I have to pop on my phone for 5 minutes as “someone can’t figure out this author’s chronological order” or “another AI creator masquerading as an author was detected”. It makes life a lot easier. And heck, just really fun being able to talk and share work with them all day.

Let’s just bullet point everything I read/watched in May:

Cold Storage by David Koepp: I read this one back in March, by the screenwriter of Jurassic Park. I loved the book and was finally able to watch the adaptation starring Joe Keery. Really, really good. They captured the essence of the book, and I thought it was a solid adaptation. Highly recommend both reading this and watching the adaptation.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke: The story of a trad wife influencer, who wakes up to find out she is back in the 1800s. This appears to be a polarizing book, and I have to agree – most people, myself included, finish the book and have no idea if they liked the book or not. It definitely sticks with you, and the author is a fantastic writer. I am just very undecided about the story. I’d say it’s worth checking out, but don’t consider it an official recommendation!

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera: I listened to this one, which is about a woman who may have murdered her best friend, but she can’t remember. The listening experience was great, thanks to the podcast elements in the book, but I can’t recommend this. It just fell very flat in the back half and lacked any real good twists or surprises.

Beartooth by Callan Wink: Not a fan of this one. It was an easy enough read, but it just seemed a bit all over the place. You can check the I Care About Books podcast for my full thoughts.

Anatomy of an Alibi by Ashley Elston: I was a big fan of Ashley’s novel First Lie Wins and strongly promoted it here and recommended it. Very happy to say this standalone thriller is also in the same high recommendation category! It’s a story of a woman who becomes an alibi for another woman so she can spy on her husband – but then the husband turns up dead.

The only flaw was that the story would jump around in time to 3 or 4 different spots, but they all featured the same characters, which made it a bit difficult to keep track of. But another win for Ashley!

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson: The second novel in the Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series. I read the first one a few years ago, and I am still angry about the fact that, for no real reason in regard to the plot, Holly killed off a family dog. Spoilers be damned; I’ll always warn people of that sort of thing.

I also just didn’t really enjoy that book. I read it because my daughter was a big fan, and we were going to see Holly Jackson do a semi-private Q&A, so I wanted to read at least one of her books. I just didn’t think it was written very well, though I enjoyed the Season 1 adaptation on Netflix a bit more.

However, this second one? Excellent. What a difference this was. The characters were fleshed out more and stood out more. The plot flowed very well, with just the right amount of twists, etc. And good news – no family dogs brutally murdered in this one! I also watched the adaptation of this and really liked it.

If you’re interested in this series, I’d say struggle through the first book – or even just watch the adaptation – as it does get better. (And of course that’s only my opinion – many people love the first book)

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury: Due to time constraints, I haven’t been able to dedicate time to audiobook listening. This is one of my favourite books of all time, but I’ve actually never listened to it. So I thought that would be perfect – a nice short story collection I’m comfortable enough with, and can listen to off and on.

That might have been a mistake! There was something about listening to it that gave me a brain itch; I didn’t just want to consume it, but also wanted to talk about it, so I’ve started mapping out a new video series for Book Notification, where I discuss one short story a day. Starting with The Martian Chronicles, of course. Despite my time constraints, I’m quite motivated for that one, so I won’t be surprised if you see it popping up on the social media pages before the end of June.

Speaking of, if you want:

* 20x the authors as OrderOfBooks
* Get notified of new books by your favourite authors
* A Personalized Book Release Calendar
* Track Your Reads and TBR
* Clean Printable book lists
* And much, much more….
* …then check out our sister site Book Notification

Each month, we give away 5 $25 Amazon gift certificates to random subscribers.

To win, all you have to do is be a subscriber. Nothing more! When we click “Publish,” we take a list of all our subscribers, put them into a random draw, and those are the winners.

Our winners this month are:

Dan M. from Syracuse, NY
Guy D. from Greenville, SC
LInda F. from Alleyton, TX
Julie M. from Youngstown, OH
Maria E. N. from Alpharetta, GA

All of you have been e-mailed. If you don’t see anything, check your junk folder or contact me.

So it goes.

Graeme
OrderOfBooks.com

Book Recommendations

In this section, I give 3-5 random book recommendations from readers of the newsletter. They can be old books, they can be new. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. Just hit reply. If you wish to add a description for the book around the same size as the ones below that’d be great too! 

36 Streets by T.R. Napper: Altered Carbon and The Wind-Up Girl meet Apocalypse Now in this fast-paced, intelligent, action-driven cyberpunk, recommended by Laurie.

A gangster detective in future Hanoi gets pulled into a dangerous mystery that forces her to choose who she really belongs to.

Laurie wrote: “It is a futuristic cyberpunk novel. It can be raw, but I was fascinated with the protagonist and the question of “Who are we if we don’t have our memories?”

Keith is actually responsible for the next four recommendations. Thanks, Keith! He listened to all of them, and he had a great listening month both in quantity and quality, so I thought I would share it verbatim.

Dissolution by Nicholas Binge: Read by Charlotte Stevens. A mind-bending mashup of time travel and lost memories wrapped around a decades-long feud whose fallout could impact all of humanity. Maggie has spent the last decade caring for her elderly husband Stanley as memory loss gradually erases his knowledge of their lives together. Then, a stranger reveals that Stan’s memories are actively being deleted by an unknown entity.

The stranger also says that there is a way to unlock Stan’s memories, and he has the tools to do so, but Maggie will have to break into her husband’s mind to find the key to the problem. The deeper she dives, the more complicated the mystery becomes. Excellent! 8.5/10

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden: Read by Robert Fass. The ad for this book said that it was a Sci-Fi / Horror novel. That was half right. This is a straight-up horror story.

An “Independent” TV producer and his cameraman are recording a semi-documentary series on the Kolyma Highway, a Siberian road that is haunted because it is built over the bodies of prisoners of Stalin’s gulags.

Really creepy, but very well written and expertly narrated – just not my usual area of interest. 8/10

The Electric Church by Jeff Somers: First in the Avery Cates series by Jeff Somers, read by Todd McLaren. Avery is a Grade B hired killer living in a dystopian future where robots do all the work. Except for a few wealthy elites, the only jobs available to humans are cop or criminal. The cops are corrupt bullies, and the criminals do whatever they must to survive.

The rest of the population consists of poor people who barely survive on welfare and “monks” (members of The Electric Church) who proselytize by promising eternal life without fear or hunger. The catch is that the promise is achieved by harvesting the new convert’s living brain and installing it into a cyborg body. Also, the brain’s higher functions are co-opted by the Church’s leaders, leaving the convert’s mind a passive observer of a body it no longer controls. 8/10

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik: Read by Vivienne Leheny. Valerie (Val) is a young professor who is an expert in dead Nordic languages but is crippled by anxiety. When her twin brother is found dead outside his Arctic research station, Val can’t accept that it was suicide. Then, a young girl is found frozen in solid ice near the station. When thawed, she revives and begins speaking a language unlike any scientists have heard before.

Val is called to go to the station and help unlock the girl’s words and maybe find the secret of her survival. Given the chance to investigate her brother’s death and help a child who is isolated and afraid, Val confronts her fears and travels to the Arctic to try to unravel both mysteries. 8/10

June Book Of The Month

Chokepoint by Brad Thor: I’ve written about this before – but Brad Thor is indirectly responsible for you reading this right now, so I’ll always make his books our ‘Book of the Month’ in appreciation.

Long story short, I launched OOB way back in like 2010. It didn’t get much traffic or make any money despite the work put into it. It was essentially a fun hobby site.

Which was fine, but Brad went on Larry King Live one night, and there he promoted his book. Everyone googled his book – and we just happened to be #1 for the search terms. We went from about 3-5 visitors per day to 20,000 overnight.

It eventually settled down to about 1500-2000 people per day and then grew from there. It was all quite incredible, and I owe this site and the past 16 years of my life making a living talking about and working on books to Brad Thor.

Oh yeah, the book itself. It’s a Scot Harvath novel. It’s the 25th novel in the series. If you haven’t read this series yet, please do. The first novel is The Lions of Lucerne, an excellent one I read about 15 years ago and still remember clearly to this day. If you’re a fan of Rapp, Reacher, Bourne, etc., this is well worth reading.

10 More Notable Books Releasing in June

Brought to you by BookNotification.com where you can get updated on all the upcoming books by your favourite authors with your own personalized calendar!

Pictures of the Month

Thanks to Carla for all of those!

Send in your own to site@orderofbooks.com or by replying!

Images, jokes, etc. We’ll take it all!

Your Thoughts!

Last month, I asked if characters should age in books. The answers are later in the newsletter.

This month I am asking:

Are there any secondary characters you’d like to see given their own spin-off series?

It does happen. After playing second fiddle to Myron for so long, Harlan Coben finally gave Win his own series.

Others include Virgil Flowers, Holly Gibney and Joe Pike.

Off the top of my head, I think of the Spider Shepherd series by Stephen Leather. One of my favourite series, and he has created multiple secondary characters I’d like to see given their own series, such as Jimmy Sharpe or Richard Yokely.

What about you? Any secondary characters you’d like to see given their own spin-off series?

E-mail us your feedback to site@OrderOfBooks.com or just reply to this e-mail, and we’ll pick the best comments and feature it in next month’s newsletter. Five people will also randomly win a $25 gift certificate to Amazon.

Reader Mailbag!

Click here to read.

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Order of Books » Newsletter » OrderOfBooks June 2026 Newsletter

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