November 2025

Daughter of Smoke and Bone 

by Laini Taylor

For this month's Book Club pick I wanted to choose something that felt cold, but wasn't strictly seasonal. Personally I think this book is Laini's best work and the story deserves absolute glory! It is undeniably a book you will fall in love with and think of forevermore. I can't wait to share it with you!

- Abby

P.S. This month I have cheekily chosen a book I have already read so I can read stress-free whilst we work long hours to finish and open the bookshop! 

Errand requiring immediate attention. Come. 

The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. 

Karou read the message. ‘He never says please’, she sighed, but she gathered up her things. 

When Brimstone called, she always came.

In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she’s a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in ‘Elsewhere’, she has never understood Brimstone’s dark work – buying teeth from hunters and murderers – nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn’t whole. Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.


About Laini Taylor

The daughter of a Naval officer and an orchid witch, she moved throughout her childhood, living on both US coasts as well as Hawaii, Italy, and Belgium before attending the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, artist Jim Di Bartolo, their daughter Clementine, yeti Melvin, and two cats, Witch and Hazel (while also feeding the neighbourhood crows with the hopes of developing a psychic bond and sending them on stealth missions for the good of the planet).