I just got home from my first Winter Institute in Pittsburgh, and I brought back two boxes of advance reading copies.
For the uninitiated, advance reading copies (ARCs, or galleys, used fairly interchangeably) are books that publishers produce ahead of the official publication date and distribute to booksellers, librarians, and reviewers. The idea is that by the time a book hits shelves, the people selling it actually know something about it. Reading them is part of the job. It’s how I’ll be able to tell you, confidently, what’s worth your time when Multiversity opens this fall.
I didn’t quite anticipate the volume. Winter Institute has a dedicated Galley Room, which is a massive space with tables piled high with ARCs for attendees to browse and take. I focused specifically on science fiction, fantasy, and genre YA titles that would be right for Multiversity, and still came home with thirty-eight of them. I barely made a dent in what was there.
Truth is, I can’t read all of these cover-to-cover. Not by the time I get more, anyway. There are always more books than hours, and there’s a bookstore to open. What I will do is get deep enough into each one to know whether it belongs on Multiversity’s shelves, who it’s right for, and how to talk about it with confidence when a customer asks. That’s the job. Reading advance reading copies is how a bookseller earns the right to say “trust me on this one.”
A couple already stand out.
The Wicked Sea by Jordan Stephanie Gray (April 2026) opens with a prefatory note that is both funny and ominous, the kind of thing that makes you trust the author completely, even as the narrator is telling you not to trust anyone. It sets the tone perfectly. That cover doesn’t hurt either.
And I’m looking forward to Ellen Poe: The Forgotten Lore by Diana Peterfreund (also April 2026), a YA novel following a descendant of Edgar Allan Poe. A robust YA section is central to what Multiversity will be, and this is exactly the kind of smart, literary genre fiction I want to put in readers’ hands. I’m a longtime Poe fan, and I was sold at the title.
I sat here for a minute just looking at the stacks before I started writing this. There’s something about a pile of new books, especially books few have read yet, that never gets old, even when you know you can’t possibly read them all. Maybe especially then. Working through a stack of advance reading copies might be a little overwhelming, but it’s absolutely worth it.
Multiversity is coming to League City this fall. This is what the groundwork looks like!
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