It’s spooky season! Time to curl up with a cozy blanket, something warm to drink, and a good book. This October has an embarrassment of riches as far as horror goes, and we have recommendations for whatever poison you’d like to pick. Gothic, slasher, futuristic, slow dread…the list does go on, so take a look …

Imagine a mouth full of teeth that are black instead of white. Are you thinking of tooth decay, of weakness and rot? Are you thinking of darkness, the primal kind that lives in a gaping cavemouth or a leech’s maw? Probably you are. That’s a good place to start when you start Nothing But Blackened …

Did you know that T. Kingfisher, authoress of the phenomenal horror novels The Twisted Ones and Hollow Places, heroine of the pandemic who gave us A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, and the brilliant imaginatrix of fairy-tale reimaginings like Briony and Roses and The Seventh Bride also does high fantasy? Of course she does. She …

I must shamefacedly admit that A Spindle Splintered is the first book by Alix Harrow that I’ve read, but I can at least say that it certainly won’t be the last. This tiny powerhouse of a book made me a believer, and it started with a fairy tale that Harrow herself points out is “no one’s …

This book, friends. THIS BOOK. Do you want to read something you will then have to close and hug to your chest partway through? Do you want to read a book that never flinches from the truth but never gives up on beauty? Do you want a queer loves story, a celebration of so many …

If Charles Dickens had been locked in a room, given only 20th century fantasy to read for five years, and then told to produce a novel, he would have produced Mordew. Alex Pheby is only ostensibly the author; I’m still not entirely convinced that it isn’t an elaborate misdirect, and that Dickens isn’t really scribing …

In the Watchful City is an amazing novella, a stories-within-a-story narrative that unfolds and expands in bright fractals. We were lucky enough to be able to grab some of S. Qiouyi Lu’s time in advance of the book’s release on August 31 and ask her some questions about her work and philosophy What inspired this …

I am not a Hemmingway fan but I have to appreciate his comment on sleep: “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” This feels extremely true sometimes, but in fiction, sleep isn’t always safe from disaster either. Here are 15 stories that feature strange relationships with …

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, the new novella from Becky Chambers, though obviously brief, is a complete meal: it has the rich depth of philosophical reflection, the acid brightness of humor, and the unfamiliar spices of a whole new planet. (Well, moon.) Most of all it is satisfying. This is the kind of book that …

I was on page 27 when I realized I didn’t want this book to end. That’s early even for a particularly great book, and this is truly a particularly great book. From the very first pages to its last, its greatness shines. Elfreda is a low-ranking sister in the ruling theocracy of Aytrium, a small …