Sandia Sangria & Snake Eater by T. Kingfisher
From the publisher:
With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt's house in the desert town of Quartz Creek. The scorpions and spiders are better than what she left behind.
Because in Quartz Creek, there's a strange beauty to everything, from the landscape to new friends, and more blue sky than Selena's ever seen. But something lurks beneath the surface. Like the desert gods and spirits lingering outside Selena's house at night, keeping watch. Mostly benevolent, says her neighbor Grandma Billy. That doesn't ease the prickly sense that one of them watches too closely and wants something from Selena she can't begin to imagine. And when Selena's search for answers leads her to journal entries that her aunt left behind, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: It's the haunting grounds of an ancient god known simply as "Snake-Eater," who her late aunt made a promise to that remains unfulfilled.
Snake-Eater has taken a liking to Selena, an obsession of sorts that turns sinister. And now that Selena is the new owner of his home, he's hell-bent on collecting everything he's owed.
Our pairing:
Our Sandia Sangria Oolong is a fruity sangria-inspired blend with hints of watermelon, lemon, and orange. This tea is named after New Mexico's Sandia mountains—sandia means "watermelon" in Spanish, which is what these mountains are said to look like when they glow red at sunset. Sandia Sangria is delicious hot and also makes an excellent iced tea!
Sencha Green Tea & Three Simple Lines by Natalie Goldberg
From the publisher:
A haiku is three simple lines. But it is also, as Allen Ginsberg put it, three lines that "make the mind leap." A good one, he said, lets the mind experience "a small sensation of space which is nothing less than God." As many spiritual practices seek to do, the haiku's spare yet acute noticing of the immediate and often ordinary grounds the reader in the pure awareness of now.
Natalie Goldberg is a delightfully companionable tour guide into this world. She highlights the history of the form, dating back to the seventeenth century; shows why masters such as Basho and Issa are so revered; discovers Chiyo-ni, an important woman haiku master; and provides insight into writing and reading haiku. A fellow seeker who travels to Japan to explore the birthplace of haiku, Goldberg revels in everything she encounters, including food and family, painting and fashion, frogs and ponds. She also experiences and allows readers to share in the spontaneous and profound moments of enlightenment and awakening that haiku promises.
Our pairing:
From Shizuoka on the Fujiyama mountain slopes, our Sencha is a classic example of a Japanese green tea. Sencha is one of the most popular green teas in Japan, and for good reason. This tea has a medium body and brews up into a pale green-gold liquor, with citrus and oceanic notes.
Ginger Rose Herbal Tea & Rose/House by Arkady Martine
From the publisher:
Rose/House is a breathtaking and taut sci-fi gothic thriller from Arkady Martine, Hugo Award-winning author of A Memory Called Empire.
“I’m a piece of architecture, Detective. How should I know how humans are like to die?”
All of Basit Deniau’s houses were haunted. Rose House, his final architectural triumph built in the remote Mojave desert, was perhaps the most.
A house embedded with an artificial intelligence is a common thing. But a house that is an artificial intelligence, infused in every crevice and corner with a thinking creature that is not human? That is something else altogether. That is Rose House.
Our pairing:
Ginger Rose is a soothing blend of rose petals, rose buds, ginger, and a small amount of white tea leaves. The rose petals are smooth and floral, while the ginger lends a hint of spice.
Masala Chai Black Tea & My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland
From the publisher:
How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered—an icon and idol—alongside your own? Jenn Shapland’s celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America’s most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.
Shapland is a graduate student when she first uncovers letters written to Carson McCullers by a woman named Annemarie. Though Shapland recognizes herself in the letters, which are intimate and unabashed in their feelings, she does not see McCullers as history has portrayed her. Her curiosity gives way to fixation, not just with this newly discovered side of McCullers’s life, but with how we tell queer love stories. Why, Shapland asks, are the stories of women paved over by others’ narratives? What happens when constant revision is required of queer women trying to navigate and self-actualize in straight spaces? And what might the tracing of McCullers’s life—her history, her secrets, her legacy—reveal to Shapland about herself?
In smart, illuminating prose, Shapland interweaves her own story with McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of our nation’s greatest literary treasures, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.
Read My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
Our pairing:
This traditional chai blend includes cinnamon, cardamom, ginger root, and cloves blended with premium Ceylon tea. Add milk and honey for a classic sweet, milky chai, or try it alone for a spicier cup.
Solstice Spice Black Tea & Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
From the publisher:
In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial even proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world.
Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man’s mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, the passenger, Serapio is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.
Crafted with unforgettable characters, Rebecca Roanhorse has created a “brilliant world that shows the full panoply of human grace and depravity." This epic adventure explores the decadence of power amidst the weight of history and the struggle of individuals swimming against the confines of society and their broken pasts in this “absolutely tremendous” and most original series debut of the decade.
Our pairing:
Solstice Spice blends black tea with apple, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, orange slices, and pink pepper. A classic spiced tea! This naturally sweet, comforting tea is delicious served hot or iced.
Miss Violet Purple Tea & The Dollar Princess Dilemma by Amanda McCabe
From the publisher:
A second chance, high society Gilded Age romance!
His future duchess...
Found in his past?
Inheriting his father's crumbling estate burdens Benedict, Duke of Trent, with an inescapable duty: wed a wealthy American lady. It can only be a convenient match, for he's seen the damage ducal power had on his parents' marriage. Yet, returning to Newport, only one woman is on his mind--Jane O'Neill, the beauty with whom he shared a kiss many years ago!
Seeing Benedict again only reignites their intoxicating connection. But Jane wishes for independence, not marriage. So rather than be his bride, she will help him find one! As long as they can resist the lingering flame that once drew them together...
Read The Dollar Princess Dilemma
Our pairing:
Miss Violet starts with a purple tea base, which is then blended by hand with butterfly pea flower, hibiscus, lemon peel, and lavender blossoms, for a mellow tea that brews into a vibrant violet color. This tea has a light body, with a subtle sweetness and floral and citrus notes.
Cota Herbal Tea & Out There by Sarah Stark
From the publisher:
Out There is the story of a young Army veteran (Jefferson Long Soldier) who returns home safely to New Mexico after two tours of duty in Iraq convinced that the book he carried with him (One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez) saved his life. But when he can't find a way to escape the dark memories of war, he borrows his cousin's motorcycle and rides south across the border to Mexico in search of the famous writer behind the magic of the life-saving classic novel. The adventure that follows is a heart-warming journey of healing and self-discovery.
Our pairing:
Our cota is wild-harvested here in New Mexico. Also known as greenthread, Hopi tea, or Zuni tea, is a medicinal herbal tea native to parts of the Southwest. Used by indigenous peoples for centuries, this tea has a mild, earthy flavor.
Winter Forest Green Tea & A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
From the publisher:
In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the North of Winterfell, sinister and supernatural forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the land they were born to. Sweeping from a land of brutal cold to a distant summertime kingdom of epicurean plenty, here is a tale of lords and ladies, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and bastards, who come together in a time of grim omens. Amid plots and counterplots, tragedy and betrayal, victory and terror, the fate of the Starks, their allies, and their enemies hangs perilously in the balance, as each endeavors to win that deadliest of conflicts: the game of thrones.
Our pairing:
Winter Forest blends Chinese green tea, orange, almond, and pink peppercorn for a light, festive tea blend reminiscent of biscotti. Delicious in winter, but also great year-round!
Chimayo Chai Black Tea & The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade
From the publisher:
It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.
Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby's first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo's mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel's mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn't speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda's uncle and keeper of the family's history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn't think he can live up to.
The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as "legitimate masterpieces" (New York Times). Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.
Our pairing:
When you’re in New Mexico, you quickly learn that chile is part of the culture here. Our Chimayo Chai honors that tradition by including just enough crushed red chile flakes in our chai tea to add the right amount of heat! Enjoy it in the classic way as a sweet, milky chai—or, if you’re brave, try it straight for a fiery cup.
Sing Your Song Herbal Tea & Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin
From the publisher:
Mary Austin's love of the desert is everywhere evident in The Land of Little Rain, a collection of fourteen vignettes about the land and people of the region that today includes Death Valley National Park and the Mojave National Preserve. Part nature essay, personal essay, folk legend, and local history of the California Sierras, this enduring American classic resists classification. Her lyrical observations are infused with a deep understanding of the flora and fauna of the area and an appreciation of the people she encountered and befriended there—Shoshones and Paiutes, Mexican and Chinese immigrants, shepherds, stagecoach drivers, and miners among them. Austin's writings have been compared to the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, but her poetic sensibility is purely original, winsome, and entirely her own.
Our pairing:
Sing Your Song blends peppermint, lemongrass, cardamom pods, dried ginger pieces and licorice root. Minty and bright, with notes of spice and citrus.