Bookshops & Bonedust
Before she opened her coffee shop, Viv was a young orc barbarian sidelined by a leg injury and dropped off in the seaside town of Murk to convalesce. The town is small, the rain is constant, and the only place that interests her is a struggling bookshop run by a rattkin named Fern. Viv takes a part-time job, reorganizes the shelves, develops a tentative crush on a town baker named Maylee, and finds herself caught up in a low-key necromancer plot that threatens the bookshop and the town. Baldree builds the prequel as a single-summer chamber piece set years before Legends and Lattes.
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What you might want to know about Bookshops & Bonedust
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A young orc barbarian recovers from a leg injury in a seaside town, takes a job at a struggling bookshop, and falls into a sapphic romance and a necromancer plot.
Bookshops and Bonedust is a prequel to Legends and Lattes, set decades earlier when Viv was still a young adventurer. Either reading order works, though publication order (Legends and Lattes first) preserves the discovery of Viv as an older character.
Yes. Bookshops and Bonedust is part of the cozy fantasy wave Travis Baldree helped launch with Legends and Lattes. The setting and tone are gentle, with a focus on community and small pleasures alongside fantasy elements.
Bookshops & Bonedust was written by Travis Baldree, published in 2023 by Doherty Associates, LLC.
Bookshops & Bonedust is 352 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Bookshops & Bonedust takes most readers 5 to 8 hours to finish.
Bookshops & Bonedust is a standalone novel by Travis Baldree, not part of a series.
Bookshops & Bonedust is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
