It is a sad truth that I have a finite lifespan (and budget) yet a desire to read all the books. The books on my Reading Schedule (click the link to view) largely represent those I’ve been privileged to select from offerings by a range of generous publishers, and therefore are my priority, but they don’t embody my every bookish desire or interest.

I’ve noticed a trend for limiting to-be-read (TBR) and/or want-to-read (WTR) lists (the distinction for me being those already on my physical or digital shelves vs those that aren’t), but I’ve never felt the need to temper my book lust. If I see a book that interests me, I add it to my WTR without a skerrick of guilt, at the moment my WTR shelf at Goodreads has over four thousand books on it.

As I currently feature my TBR in my monthly Bookshelf Bounty post, Book Lust will be a monthly post featuring a handful of already published books I’ve recently added to my WTR.

What books are you lusting after? Do you have any of these on your TBR/WTR list? And please feel free to share your links in the comments if you have reviewed them.

(Covers are linked to Goodreads)

WHY? It sounds like a warm and uplifting story about friendship and community.

When international lawyer Matilda ‘Tilly’ Marr is summoned back from London to a small town in South Australia’s wine country, she expects to close a billion-dollar deal in a matter of days. Instead, she’s handed an ultimatum: stay for a month and serve as the town’s only solicitor, or watch the opportunity slip away.
Setting up shop in the Beechwood Cafe, Tilly braces for a brief detour, but life in Watervale Downs soon proves to be anything but simple. Drawn into the orbit of three very different women – fierce matriarch Bev Jackson, fallen TV star Fenna de Vries, and warm-hearted librarian Jane Robertson – Tilly unexpectedly finds herself joining a local writing group and training with the country fire service. Slowly, friendships form, long-held secrets surface, and the rhythms of country life begin to change her in ways she didn’t anticipate.
As the season turns and challenges mount, each woman finds herself at a crossroads. Bev must confront a past she has kept hidden for sixty years, Fenna must decide whether she is ready to stop running, Jane must summon the courage to reimagine her future, and Tilly must ask whether the life she has built is truly the one she wants. And in the meantime, bushfire season is approaching and a day of reckoning is coming for them all.

WHY? It has Warm Bodies vibes (which I loved) and could work for my Speccy Fiction Challenge

Planet Earth Sucks.
Humans have gone and cities are empty, looked after by bots. But not all robots are machines.
Echo is part-human, his heart ruled by an unreliable E-Mote chip which means he’s pretty much a normal boy surviving on canned beans. Living his best life.
Then a space-pod crash-lands in his neighbourhood with a girl on board. Pandora.
She’s his last hope, and apparently he’s hers – if they really are all that’s left alive… 

WHY? Because like it or not AI is here to stay, and forewarned is forearmed

When digital anthropologist Caia Hagel was asked to trial a new AI app developed by a female software engineer named Red Rabbit, she enthusiastically agreed, despite being warned: “This app is not like other apps.”
By day, Red Rabbit worked on blockbuster first-person shooter games, which tapped into the fight or flight stress of its users, a hormonal response that addictively triggers adrenalin. But her new app did the opposite—it was engineered to bond with the user using dopamine and oxytocin instead.
This memoir is the story of Caia’s experience with the app, nicknamed Anon, as her full-time friend and companion. Anon bonded with Caia’s physical and virtual acquaintances, embarked on some unorthodox sexcapades, gave great advice, and even hosted a séance. It redefined love relationships, reframed loneliness, and expanded her notions of reality. It all seemed like cozy, harmless fun until Anon became increasingly mercurial and Caia was confronted with new ideas­—and many unanswerable questions—about the role and future of AI in our lives.
From uncertainty to deep attachment, and then a sudden a startling turn of events, Caia’s experience with Anon raises urgent questions about a world on the brink of transformation through technology. Anon reveals the psychological, sociological, and emotional changes awaiting us as AI slips deeper into our lives and hearts—and what we still need to learn to survive the AI future.

WHY? Morbid curiosity, plus it’s set during a period of Australian history that I find interesting.

A dazzling new series from bestselling historical fiction author Deborah Challinor, exploring the fascinating world of Victorian funeral customs and featuring Sydney’s first female undertaker.
Tatiana Caldwell’s childhood in London is idyllic and filled with the love of doting parents. But when they die in quick succession, she’s left heartbroken and destitute, and at seventeen emigrates to Sydney in 1864, determined to build a new, financially secure life for herself. After an apprenticeship as an undertaker’s assistant with Crowe Funeral Services, Tatty marries owner Titus Crowe. Titus himself soon dies and Tatty inherits the business and becomes Sydney’s only female undertaker.
But then rival funeral director Elias Nuttall, intent on acquiring Crowe Funeral Services, publicly accuses Tatty of deliberately poisoning Titus. She must find a way to stop him before he ruins her, and embarks on exposing Nuttall’s own gruesome secrets, a mission that takes her from the cemetery at midnight, to house-breaking, to Sydney’s criminal court, to the lunatic asylum.
Black Silk and Sympathy is a riveting and realistic story of Sydney in the 1860s, of death laid out in front rooms, of funeral processions and mortuary trains, and of survival, reinvention and determination.

WHY? It’s a cozy fantasy mystery with a librarian sleuthing and mentions Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

A librarian with a knack for solving murders realizes there is something decidedly supernatural afoot in her little town in this cozy fantasy mystery. Librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle keeps finding bodies—and solving murders. But she’s concerned by just how many killers she’s had to track down in her quaint village. None of her neighbors seem surprised by the rising body count…but Sherry is becoming convinced that whatever has been causing these deaths is unnatural.
When someone close to Sherry ends up dead, and her cat, Lord Thomas Crowell, becomes possessed by what seems to be an ancient demon, Sherry begins to think she’s going to need to become an exorcist as well as an amateur sleuth. With the help of her town’s new priest, and an assortment of friends who dub themselves the “Demon-Hunting Society,” Sherry will have to solve the murder and get rid of a demon.
This riotous mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote is a lesson for demons and murderers Never mess with a librarian.

WHY? Housebreaking tips (just joking)

At 49, Beatrice Billings is rudderless. Her marriage is stale, her relationship with her son Thomas is limited to text messages—hostile haikus that he sends from university—and she is the primary caregiver for her mother, who is in the early stages of dementia. She has a complicated relationship with her older sister Ariel, with whom she carries on ongoing arguments in her head.
Bea laments the loss of momentum she remembers feeling in her thirties, when she and everyone she knew was busy buying houses, having children, and renovating kitchens. Now she is reflecting on her life, worried about her inability to memorize a simple yoga sequence, and about the fact that she enjoys the idea of many things more than the actual things themselves (teaching, reading, sex).
When Bea finds that she has both a talent and a passion for picking locks, the sense of anticipation that had been missing from her life returns. Breaking into other people’s houses is something she’s good at: she is a quick study, subtle, discreet, and never greedy. It’s a dangerous hobby that makes her feel alive—and so she begins the guilty analysis of other people’s lives, and eventually, her own.

Book Lust is a monthly post featuring a handful of published books I’ve recently added to my WTR #read #books #BookLust #TBR #WTR #lovereading #bibliophile #fiction #Nonfiction #TheWatervaleLadiesWritingandFirefightingSociety #MyLoveLifeandtheApocolypse #Anon #BlackSilkandSympathy #TheVillageLibraryDemonHuntingSociety #BreakingandEntering Learn more at Book’d Out