TOP PICKS – March 2026
It’s time for this month’s Top Picks!
That right, we’ve reached the end of another month, and now it’s time to share our Top Picks of the month!
Every month, we like to share with you our favourite reads of the month. We’ve rounded up our contributors and asked them each to recommend just one favourite read of the month.
A big thank you to Nils for coming up with this feature, and our contributors for taking part!
Let’s find out what the team has read this month…
Nils: The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty
I only managed to finish two books this month but both were a lot of fun! A Widow’s Charm by Caitlyn Paxson was a fantasy romance in the vein of a Shakespearean comedy of errors and I loved it. A widow has to find a way to save her village from her tyrannical brother in law and seeks the help of a reluctant necromancer. There was banter, innuendos, spice and a very good dog.
However my top pick goes to The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty which was a highly anticipated sequel for me. We once again set sail with Amina into a perilous quest across the Persian Gulf to find a fabled island and retrieve a magical artefact of devastating power. In doing so we enter a tale of myth, the testing of friendships and a rather thrilling shipwreck. I just loved being back with these characters and this richly depicted historical world.
Pre-order here (21st May)
Hil: The Reanimator’s Heart by Kara Jorgensen
I’ve had a busy month reading including The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao (The Faraway Tree but with existential angst [Ed: omg YES! I’ve been struggling to know how to describe this book]), Pagans by James Alistair Henry (solid murder mystery set in an alternative United Kingdom, but 1066 didn’t happen. Very interesting universe, and want to see more), Sister Svangarad and the Not Quite Dead by K J Parker (very post apocalyptic remnants of a Christian society. Think I wanted to like it more than I actually did, but I finished it), and a few other things.
My book of the month is by Kara Jorgensen and it’s The Reanimator’s Heart. The first book in the series and it nicely straddles the line between Charlie Adhara and A.K. Faulkner: due to an accidental set of circumstances, an investigator gets to examine the circumstances of his own death, and his continued existence. Do read the trigger warnings, but it’s the start of a very good series. Read it!
Kat: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
My top pick for March had some fierce competition in The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher and my re-read of A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher, but you can’t beat the chaotic charm of a magical cat rescue so Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett is our winner.
Agnes is the long-suffering owner of a cat shelter that’s constantly on the brink of collapse. When a rogue magician’s spell makes their current lodgings unusable, Agnes is forced to sign a lease for a building with a mysterious landlord and things go well and truly pear-shaped from there. This had all the charm of the Emily Wilde books in a setting riddled with art nouveau architecture, cats engaging in the epitome of catlike behaviour, and grumpy magicians. A delight to read.
Cat: Vile Lady Villans by Danai Christopoulou
March was a month of ups and downs for me. Lots of good books but nothing outstanding… until I sped through Vile Lady Villans by Danai Christopoulou!
Queen Klytemnestra and Lady Macbeth meet up in a strange otherworld and join forces to discover just why two such powerful women would find each other. Their initial clash of personalities gripped me and held on as they hurtle through bizarre landscapes (and Scotland!) on a quest to just figure out what the heck is happening. Intense, clever and gloriously celebrating strong womanhood through beautiful writing – I adored this!
Pre-order here (2nd April)
Gray: There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM
I have been a fan of the SCP project for more or less as long as I’ve known that it existed, and one of the finest outputs from that project was a self-published novel by the name of There Is No Antimemetics Division by QNTM/Sam Hughes.
The book is a conceptual trip, with the protagonists dealing with supernatural event and entities that it is physically impossible to remember, leading to a lot of fascinating logical and logistical issues in dealing with them. I had a minor jump-scare when this niche book I’d read by chance years ago and which had almost faded from my memory suddenly popped up all over the internet recently. It seems to have had the SCP serial number filed off so that it could be traditionally published, but if that is what it takes to get this story in front of more people, I couldn’t be happier.
Emma: Rejected by Jaymin Eve
March’s top pick from me is Rejected (Shadow Beast Shifters) by Jaymin Eve.
If we look past the cliche werewolf romance title, we strike gold. Slow burn romance, great character development, a lil bit of spice and Werewolf Satan, yep you read that right.. The plot is compelling enough to keep you hooked while not being riddled with complications that make you lose track of what’s happening where and to whom and why, making the reading experience smooth and enjoyable. Well written with lovable characters that you don’t want to say goodbye to, so obviously I bought book two immediately after finishing the first.
Vinay: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews
March was bit of a slow month but it was also a month where I made quite a significant dent in my “26 for 26” List.
The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee had a really cool premise and imaginative worldbuilding. Mark Lawrence is back with an outstanding series opener in Daughter of Crows, a book that is searingly angry for most of its run. Nicholas Binge forays into a searing aside of late-stage capitalism by borrowing from Severance, Matrix and Get Out in the creepy, unsettling novella, Abyss (Reviewed here).
Ilona Andrews’ This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is a deliciously clever, fun & entertaining book that is in a way a love letter to fans and fandom. Who among us hasn’t fantasized about being transported to the setting of their book? Ilona Andrews’ latest delivers exactly that kind of a book with a spunky, charming, driven and relatable lead who knows exactly what is going to happen since she has read the books and tries hard to do the right thing while avoiding the law of unintended consequences. This was the book that I have had the most fun reading this year so far and it is my Top Pick for March
Pre-order here (2nd April)
Beth: The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty
March was a very quiet reading month for me!
I started the month with Aicha, the debut novel from Soraya Bouazzaoui. It’s a powerful story, set in Morocco during the Portuguese occupation of the 1700s, and is a retelling of the Moroccan myth of Aicha Kandicha. There’s a devastating romance threaded amongst a lot of violence and heart break.
I ended the month on a new kind of read for me – my first Skandi-noir crime thriller, Snowblind by Ragnar Jonnasson. This was a book club read, and it took me a while to get into it, but once I finished my buddy read with Nils and focused on it more, it hooked me so much so that I started the next one, Blackout. I’m thoroughly enjoying experiencing Iceland through this series!
Between these reads, I read The Tapestry of Fate by Shannon Chakraborty with Nils and it has to be my top pick too! We loved The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi so much, we’d been following news of this sequel with baited breath and were not disappointed! It was wonderful being back on the high seas with Amina!
Pre-order here (21st May)
What was your favourite read of the month? Share with us in the comments!
