Five #SmallPressBigStories books to add to your TBR

If you follow us on social media, you'll know that over the course of the month we've been shouting about some of the wonderful books from independent publishers that we've covered on the podcast. Full credit for the idea goes to Womble over at Runalong the Shelves, who proposed that bloggers spend some time at the end of the year talking about books from publishers other than the big five.

We've tagged all of our podcast episodes featuring small press books with the tag #smallpress, so you can find those easily here on our archive.

However, I also wanted to take a minute to recommend some books that we haven't covered on the podcast (although who knows, maybe we will in the future because the books that I'm going to list are all excellent!). So without further ado, here are five books that you should definitely add to your TBR:

Maria is, in no particular order: a concept artist at a videogame studio, the goddess of Mount Makiling in the Philippines, and in love. And when Maria falls in love, tragedy and death follow. It’s going to take everything a goddess, her newly-befriended demon-horse, and Canadian national treasure Margaret Atwood have to break the cycle.

Something strange is happening in Hilo. Noleani Choi’s new show about the life of Jesus Christ told through hula dance has everyone, especially her halau, wondering what she could possibly be thinking. Rumors circulate about a rich guy from the mainland, and the dancers and their friends must reckon with what is really hula, who is Hawaiian enough, and why each of them wants to dance.

On one beautiful island, we discover that loving other people in spite of their flaws might just begin with being true to our own selves.

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again.” A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Nick Prasad has always enjoyed a quiet life in the shadow of his best friend, child prodigy and technological genius Joanna Johnny Chambers.

But all that is about to end. When Johnny invents a clean reactor that could eliminate fossil fuels and change the world, she awakens primal, evil Ancient Ones set on subjugating humanity.

From the oldest library in the world to the ruins of Nineveh, hunted at every turn, they will need to trust each other completely to survive

All the Birds in the Sky meets Lovecraft Country in this whimsical coming-of-age story about two kids in the middle of a war of eldritch horrors from outside spacetime.

American Gods meets The Chronicles of Narnia in this adult fantasy about the Biblical Adam recovering the lost pieces of the Garden of Eden.

Many millennia after the fall of Eden, Adam, the first man in creation, still walks the Earth - exhausted by the endless death and destruction, he is a shadow of his former hope and glory. And he is not the only one. The Garden was deconstructed, its pieces scattered across the world and its inhabitants condemned to live out immortal lives, hiding in plain sight from generations of mankind.

But now pieces of the Garden are turning up on the Earth. After centuries of loneliness, Adam, haunted by the golden time at the beginning of Creation, is determined to save the pieces of his long lost home. With the help of Eden's undying exiles, he must stop Eden becoming the plaything of mankind.

Adam journeys across America and the British Isles with Magpie, Owl, and other animals, gathering the scattered pieces of Paradise. As the country floods once more, Adam must risk it all to rescue his friends and his home - because rebuilding the Garden might be the key to rebuilding his life.