Two years ago today, I announced the launch of my Bindery. 

At that point, I'd spent more than a decade (and now, almost 15 years) in various other Internet spaces sharing my love of books through writing reviews, hosting podcasts, organizing events, and teaching about the importance of representation in media. I poured myself into celebrating critical consumption and building a community that understood that to love stories is to meet them honestly.

It's a position that many people consider contradictory, or at least incompatible with working in publishing. But, truly, I believe that shepherding books from manuscript to finished work requires that same willingness to honestly sit with a story and ask what it's reaching for. Mareas feels like a natural evolution of everything I'd been doing, but also like an open door I never knew to expect.

Over these past years, my Bindery has grown into a space where four very different books have found a home. If you'll allow me some time and a little self-indulgence, this is half update and half love letter dedicated to the stories that have shaped Mareas so far.

The Unmapping by Denise S. Robbins

The Unmapping will always be incredibly special to me as the first book we ever published. But beyond that, and five and a half months post-publication, I'm finding that there is something especially sticky about this story.

I think about it every time I drive through the New River Tunnel. When I'm on the other side of it, home is close enough that the rest of the drive is muscle memory. There’s something comforting in the idea that your body can guide you back home if you just keep moving forward. And then, always, the question that The Unmapping has forever implanted in my brain: what if one day those buildings weren’t there? What happens when home isn’t where you left it?

I think about it whenever I'm caught in the mire of a news cycle. The Unmapping is a story about an imagined natural disaster, but it's also woven with threads of hope. Across a few release-week events, I got to hear Denise talk about that hope and about the way she views advocacy. Her belief that change happens through a collection of effort, and the story she created out of that belief, have become touch points for me when the headlines stack too high. Or when problems feel impossible to hold. Or when I find myself questioning who, exactly, my neighbor is. I let myself breathe in the idea that steady movements, the same as bold gestures, can all move us in the direction we need to go.

Of course, I think about it whenever I'm back in New York, the place where the ground shifts impossibly in The Unmapping. The truth is that New York is always disorienting to me, even without any geographical upheaval, just because of its scale and density. And it's that disorientation that The Unmapping captures so vividly, that it's hard not to carry it with me. To think of this story, then, whenever I feel that internal wobble.

Early in my promotion of this book and Mareas, I often said that, love it or hate it, I wanted readers to think about The Unmapping. And I really believe it's proven to be haunting indeed.

I'm so proud of everything The Unmapping has achieved so far, and what I hope most is that it continues to find its audience. It's a strange book, in the best way, blending both it's literary and speculative elements in a character driven story. It's a patchwork narrative that reflects the chaos of the premise. And it's one that will bury into your brain if only you let it.

Thank you to everyone who took a chance with me on my first-ever acquisition.

If I haven't said this enough, the audiobook is also excellent. Julia Whelan is truly one of the best in the business, and this story lends itself so well to that format, both because of the chorus of voices that compose it and because of Denise's stream of consciousness style. You can listen to it anywhere audiobooks are sold, but Audiobrary also has a fantastic rental feature. For only $8, you can check out The Unmapping for two weeks and also listen to the exclusive interview between Julia, Denise, and me at the end.

Orange Wine by Esperanza Hope Snyder

Orange Wine has now been out for over a month. Almost every day, I get another picture from friends and readers seeing it in bookstores across the country. It's pure joy every time.

This is a book that means so much to me for reasons that have everything to do with inheritance.

My parents celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary yesterday. When I sat down to write this post, I found myself thinking about the things that carried them from the Dominican Republic to the United States in 1976. Separately. They actually met in a church in Washington Heights, and four years later, they were married.

Everything I am, even if in small ways, traces back to their country of origin, to that passage to New York, to that melding of culture: the second language I fumble my way through, the foods that anchor our table, my mother's little sayings that slide into my mouth more and more these days. (She also seems to be staring back at me every time I look in the mirror.)

When we were in New York to celebrate the release of the fall Bindery titles, I listened to Esperanza describe the novel as an act of inheritance. She'd grown up hearing snippets of her grandmother's life through that same long filter of time and retellings. It made her want to imagine the woman behind the family lore. It made her think about what her own children, born outside of Colombia, could know of the place that shaped her. Orange Wine is that story, crafted over a period of 20 years until it found its way to Mareas.

This has made me think about what I had previously described as narrative distance in the story. That distance reminded me of the tales told by my grandmother, who would often drop wild lore with no preamble in the middle of boiling plantains or brewing coffee or while I blow-dried her hair. That all holds, but I do think there is something else here in the gentle distance created by the story: a lack of judgment.

Inés is complicated and human in the ways most of us are. She is a woman who made good choices and bad ones. She fell for the wrong man and then the right man at the wrong time. She loved unwisely and sometimes bravely. She internalized what she was taught about beauty, and bodies, and womanhood, and duty. I think we as readers almost expect the narrative to judge Inés in some way, whether harshly or with forgiveness. But Esperanza gives that character a more loving gift: space to just exist.

This historical fiction with a touch of magical realism might read on the surface as something outside of many readers' comfort zones, but I promise, this story reads so smoothly, you'll find it an easy crossover experience.

I could say this about any one of my titles, but I am immensely proud of this book, and it means everything to me that I, as a Dominican woman in publishing, was able to give this book, set in Colombia and so steeped in culture and time and place, a home.

We are still in the thick of getting the word out about Orange Wine as much as possible. If you haven't given this one a chance yet, the ebook is currently on sale for $3.99.

Our Sister's Keeper by Jasmine Holmes

At some point between Orange Wine and Our Sister's Keeper, I lost a manuscript to a competing offer. Sure, I knew it would happen eventually, but it wasn't what I'd call a fun experience. It did, however, remind me of a valuable lesson: I need to trust my instincts. This is true for lots of areas of my life, but I'm someone who often feels a decision first, but then needs to think a decision from every direction. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I do think that losing that manuscript reminded me that my instincts are there for a reason. That first yes can often be so valuable.

But also, who am I to question the way things worked out? I know with full certainty that Our Sister's Keeper was meant to be a Mareas book. I received it in my inbox just a few days before my deadline to make a decision for Spring 2026, and I felt that first yes viscerally.

Our Sister's Keeper is a psychological horror, ghosts and all, but the true horror is more insidious. It's the trauma women learn to carry and the ways humans can justify violence under the guise of progress. It's the haunting of memory, how we lose things often against our will, and the things we wish we could lose that we never can.

Even with all that heft, Jasmine writes with such tenderness. Her prose holds your hand when it needs to, and leaves you in its horrors when it wants to. Every character, no matter how long they are on our stage, is handled with care. The final scene of this book, one that I admittedly cried over as I read it, is seared into my brain. I don't know that I've ever felt that an ending fit a book so perfectly, even as my heart broke for the way it had to end.

There are lines in this work that linger, and in ways that have me anxious for you all to hurry up and read it so that we can discuss exactly how.

“Tilly didn’t mean to be strong.
She would have given anything to be as soft as the herbs that wilted in her little garden when she didn’t water them, to be as pliant and moldy as the carrots she flung onto the hard earth to rot in the sun. She wanted to die like everything else around her.
But Tilly kept on living.”

I'm telling you now, I'm so confident that Our Sister's Keeper is going to be one of the books of 2026. Early reviews are overwhelmingly positive and nothing hits quite like seeing a work land for others the way it landed for you.

Our Sister's Keeper comes out on June 9, 2026. The ARC is live on NetGalley, and we're waiting for blurbs to come in as well. Audiobook news is forthcoming, and we are putting the final touches on the VIP ARC box, which is shaping up to be as beautiful as Bindery boxes always are.

And because early support matters more than most people realize, let me remind you that the best way to champion Our Sister's Keeper is to pre-order it, whether from your favorite indie, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.org.

And if you want a simple, ten-second way to help, please add it to your Goodreads Want To Read shelf. I'd love to get it up to 1,000 adds before the end of the year.

Have I mentioned that I can't wait for you all to read it?

Headspace by Jill Tew

If you missed the announcement (which was a nice little birthday treat for me back in September), my fourth publication is Headspace by Jill Tew.

The Unmapping and Orange Wine arrived around the same time in that very first batch of submissions. Our Sister's Keeper came to me sudden and unexpected. And Jill? Well, Jill, I hunted down at an event.

Seriously.

Jill had previously submitted a manuscript to Mareas, and I remember looking her up at that time and thinking it would be amazing to work with her. So, when I found out she would be at Imaginarium, I made it my mission to track her down. (I'd actually love to hear her side of this story, because in my memory, it was as aggressive as I'm making it sound.)

At her table in the middle of an expo hall, I told her that I would love to work with her and asked if she, by chance, had an adult manuscript she was working on. And wouldn't you know it? She was in the middle of submitting a sci-fi second-chance romance about an estranged husband and wife forced into sharing the same body.

If I did not jump up and down right in front of her, trust me, that it was happening on the inside.

Headspace was in my inbox within the next week, along with the news that if I wanted it, I needed to act fast as it already had other offers. I buckled on down that weekend to read my way through it, and almost forgot that it was work because it was a delight.

And listen, I hear you: second-chance romance is difficult to get right. Both characters have to be fully understood. Both of their choices have to be understood, even if we find them frustrating. You can't want to knock them upside the head more than you want to root for them together, and reading through Headspace, I can confirm that my primary feeling was JUST KISS ALREADY.

Which is to say (with more grace), Jill pulls it off and layers it over an adventure reminiscent of the best of Firefly. I'm an absolute sucker for a highly specialized crew, and I want a front row seat anytime we have the pleasure of seeing a Black woman having adventures in space. I think you'll love this one and enjoy (once again) a different flavor of story from Mareas, but one that has all the hallmarks you can expect from my titles: well-written, thematically rich, thoughtful, and memorable.

We are just about to officially launch this project, which means that members will be getting more consistent updates about Headspace starting in the new year. Solaris will be publishing in the UK, so the editorial process will look a little different for this one as they're taking point on the edits, and I'm so excited to get another new experience in my publishing journey.

And now, because it wouldn’t be a birthday without gifts, a giveaway! I’m giving away 3 copies of The Unmapping, 3 copies of Orange Wine, 3 ARCs of Our Sister’s Keeper, and 3 three-month Mareas memberships, for a total of 12 different winners. To enter, just comment below with the prize you’d like. I’ll choose winners at random. The memberships are open to international readers; the books are US-only. And please only enter if you’re comfortable sharing a mailing address for shipping.

If there’s a thread that runs through these past two years, it’s this: stories, and perhaps people, have a way of finding exactly where they’re meant to be. Two years ago, I opened this Bindery with nothing but a deep love for stories and the hope that others would care about the books I would find as much as I did.

Now, four titles in, I can say with full confidence and gratitude, that none of this would exist without your enthusiasm, your feedback, your advice, your pre-orders, your social media posts, or your encouragement.

Thank you. For everything.

I’m so excited for the books still making their way toward us. And I’m beyond honored to get to share them with you.

♥️

Marines