Make Me Better

Welcome to the Stone Soup Digest! This is where I share what I'm up to and some of my favorite things from around the internet. Subscribe to Stone Soup to get this in your inbox every week.

Hey friends! I’ve got some news to share!

Announcing Make Me Better, my next novel from Tor Books, hitting shelves everywhere in May 2026.

This one features a cover from the incredible Will Staehle, the artist responsible for the covers of Just Like Home, Magic For Liars, The Echo Wife, and Upright Women Wanted, among many other pieces in his rich and phenomenal portfolio. Staehle created a cover that, when I first saw it, made me viscerally recoil. I was on the phone with my literary agent and said, “This makes me feel so bad inside.” About ten seconds later, I said, “I think I’m obsessed with it.” This art perfectly encapsulates the book it’s attached to. Staehle simply never fucking misses.

You were pure once. You can be made pure again.
Celia is so tired of being alone. All she wants is to have a family—to belong to someone. That's why she's going to Kindred Cove for the annual Salt Festival held by the secluded community that lives there. They promise that healing is possible. They promise that transformation is inevitable. There is no grief at Kindred Cove, because there is no suffering. Nothing is ever lost. 
Celia knows that, at that mysterious island surrounded by that impossible, ever-growing reef – she will find herself.
She’s ready to be healed. She’s ready to be transformed.
She's ready to believe.

In Make Me Better, every person is a problem that can be fixed by the steady guidance of the right community. This is the book I’ve been working on for the past five years. It’s my most ambitious work to date. And now, at long last, you can preorder it.

I can’t wait to share it with you all.

-gailey

Spread Me is a bestseller??

Somehow, nearly a full month prior to release, Spread Me hit #8 on Amazon’s list of bestselling psychological horror books! I have no idea how this happened, especially because my wonderful readers (that’s you) love supporting independent booksellers and libraries so much that I often forget they might also shop elsewhere!! Thank you so much for all the support you’re showing this book as we ramp up for release day in September. And if you haven’t pre-ordered your copy yet, don’t worry! There’s still plenty of time.

Bookshop.org | Barnes & Noble | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

One Month To Go

Speaking of Spread Me - this week marked one month until release day! The countdown has truly begun, and personally, I am on the edge of my seat waiting for this thing to be out in the world. Keep your eyes on this newsletter and social media for information about the book tour next month!

The Last Fifteen Minutes

The utterly talented Shing Yin Khor is kickstarting a new short film! The Last Fifteen Minutes is a marionette opera and short film about having dinner together before a giant kaiju steps on you.

In Case You Missed It

Don’t forget to check out this excerpt from What A Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker, and this Love Letter to a Little Clay Bowl. 

Featured New Release Triple Header: 

Automatic Noodle  by Annalee Newitz

You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food―the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around―for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.

But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other―and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper

A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who holds pages to a strange play, The King in Yellow. Read too much, and you’ll fall into madness. But read just a little and pull back, and it gives you the adrenaline rush of survivor’s euphoria, leading Carmen to fall into a game of lust at a nightmare’s edge.

As the line blurs between the world Carmen knows and the one that she visits after reading from the play, she begins to desire more time in this other world no matter what horrors she brings back with her.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

Jamie is the average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, generational trauma, and an esoteric dissertation proposal. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.

Barnes & Noble | Bad River Website | Local Library | Find an Indie Bookstore

If you’re a paying subscriber, come by the Stone Soup Supper Club for our weekly chat! I can’t wait to find out how you’re doing.

—Gailey