Stefen Holtrey of Brilliant Books in Traverse City, Mich., has a title for readers who love to be surprised by something experimental and new.

He’s a big fan of Michael Cisco, whose work is generally classified as weird or speculative fiction but whose novels vary wildly in style. A philosophical writer who tends toward a horror lens, his work regularly defies genres in ways Holtrey finds delightful.

“He’s very experimental. Each one of his books are completely different experiences,” says Holtrey.

Cisco’s new novel “Pest” focuses on a man who transforms into a yak.

Before he was turned into a yak, he was an architect, working for a cult trying to build a piece of architecture to welcome some unseen celestial being into the world. The book goes back and forth between the viewpoint of the main character as the yak and as the architect.

“It’s a phantasmagoric ride through this transformation,” says Holtrey. “When he’s embodied in the yak, it’s some of the coolest writing that I’ve ever read that really puts you in an alien body. I was really interested in just the ways he senses and experiences the world.”

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

Darcie Shultz of Books and Burrow in Pittsburgh, Kas., highly recommends Linnea Axelsson’s novel in verse “Aednan: An Epic,” which was translated by Saskia Vogel.

It’s a sweeping saga set across 100 years, three generations and two Sámi families. The story encompasses the forces of colonialism and the importance of language.

Translated from Northern Sámi, the title of the book means “the land, the earth and my mother.”

“It’s the most stunning book,” Shultz says. “It reads so quickly, but it contains so much. The author writes about some of the harshest circumstances in the most eloquent way.”

For Shultz, the story held profoundly personal echoes. She explains why she was drawn to this book:

“I’m a member of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. And I have had two family members who were forced into residential schools. My great-great-great-grandfather was in Carlisle in Pennsylvania and then my grandfather — I didn’t learn until I was an adult — was in Fort Lapwai in Idaho.

He spent most of his developmental years in residential school, and it was never talked about at all. And this book and that history of the Sámi people has so many parallels to North American Indian residential schools. Parts of it were hard for me to read because of that history, but that's one reason why I was drawn to it.

The second [reason] was the language: That loss of language and relearning the language. It’s a process that I’m going through and in the third part the daughter of one of the characters is on that journey. I just felt extremely connected to it on a very personal level.”

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now.

If you love a good cozy romance or fantasy — romantasy, anyone? — then Charlotte Klimek of Hearthside Books in Watertown, Minn., has the perfect book for you.

You get a good sense of the genre from the title alone; it’s “Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea” by Rebecca Thorne.

Kianthe is the world’s most powerful mage, but all she really wants to do is read a book. What she’d really like to do is leave court life behind and open a tea and bookshop with her girlfriend, Reyna, who serves as a private guard to the Queen.

Finally fed up by the self-centered monarch, Reyna agrees, and the two head to a small town to open the cozy shop of their dreams. Yes, this does mean Reyna has committed treason, and, yes, the Queen swears revenge.

Brimming with fireside conversations, witty banter, and memorable fantastical side characters, “Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea” is perfect for fans of Travis Baldree’s “Legends & Lattes” and “Bookshops & Bonedust.”

The book was published in the UK last year but has not been available in print in the U.S. until this week.