The interview hijinks continue! What are our authors’ least favorite questions to be asked, and what was their worst day job? There are eye-openers and laugh-out-loud answers both.
Wish that there was a discussion of your favorite fandom/theme/author at Book Riot Live? Now you can add one! Welcome to The Commons, a meet-up area by and for attendees. Don’t have your tickets yet? Get them right here, and take $20 off your weekend pass with code BOOKNERD!
Happy Tuesday! Halloween is almost upon us, so I thought it would be fun to discuss scary books, in case you haven’t had your fill yet, or you can’t get enough of them. Before I do that, I want to shout out We Show What We Have Learned and Other Stories by Clare Beams, which is out today. SO GOOD. And on this week’s episode of the All the Books! Rebecca and I talked about some of the books coming out today and more, including Am I Alone Here, On Living, and Bruja. (Plus, don’t miss our bonus episode about the Read Harder Challenge!)
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Disruption by Jessica Shirvington.
What if a microchip could identify your perfect match? What if it could be used against you and the ones you love?
Eight years ago, Mercer Corporation’s M-Bands became mandatory. An evolution of the smartphone, the bracelets promised an easier life. Instead, they have come to control it.
Two years ago, Maggie Stevens watched helplessly as one of the people she loved most was taken from her, shattering her world as she knew it. Now, Maggie is ready. And Quentin Mercer – heir to the M-Corp empire – has become key to Maggie’s plan. But as the pieces of her dangerous design fall into place, could Quentin’s involvement destroy everything she’s fought for?
In a world full of broken promises, the ones Maggie must keep could be the most heartbreaking.
Before we get into today’s recommendations, enter for a chance to win a $50 VISA gift card by taking this quick survey.
The Good House by Tananarive Due
A woman in Tacoma learns that the nickname of the house she has inherited – The Good House – is a misnomer. A rich, complex scary novel, and more like Stephen King than anything else I’ve ever read.
HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt
Everything was going fine in the town of Black Spring: birds were singing, the sky was blue, the horrid scary witch that lives in the town was wandering undisturbed – until someone decides to unleash her.
The Other by Thomas Tryon
Holland and Niles Perry, while identical in looks, are about as different in personality as twins can be. And the bad twin is about to make things a whole lot worse. (I highly recommend the NYRB Classics edition with the Dan Chaon introduction!)
Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa (Author), Stephen Snyder (Translator)
Beautifully written tales of the ugliness that lies in the hearts of humans, including a murderous landlady, jealous lovers, and a museum of torture.
I Remember You by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir (Author), Philip Roughton (Translator)
Three friends decide an abandoned home on a hard-to-reach island would be the perfect place to open a bed and breakfast. But secrets old and new come bubbling to the surface shortly after their arrival. This is the spookiest ghost story I’ve read in the last few years! (Also, every time I mention or think of this book, I end up with the Skid Row song stuck in my head.)
Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones
A coming-of-age story about a young boy who may or may not be being raised by werewolves. Gritty, disturbing, and great fun! (Also check out SGJ’s collection After the People Lights Have Gone Off.)
Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey
Nonfiction about some of the most haunted places in America, and a thoughtful look at what it means for a place to be haunted, and how the stories travel and change through the years.
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Four generations of Silver women live together in an old house in a closed off town. But when one of the women dies, her daughter begins experiencing strange symptoms. You can’t go wrong with Oyeyemi.
Wieland; or, the Transformation: An American Tale by Charles Brockden Brown
Historically known as the first published book by an American-born author, and also thought to be one of the first horror books ever published, the ending of Wieland might not scare you now, but it’s still fun to imagine how it must have terrified people back in the day.
Thus Were Their Faces: Selected Stories by Silvina Ocampo (Author), Daniel Balderston (Translator)
When originally published, Ocampo’s stories were considered too disturbing to be worthy of praise. Now she is widely considered one of the great masters of the twentieth century. (I highly recommend the NYRB Classics edition with an introduction by Helen Oyeyemi!)
YAY, BOOKS! That’s it for me today – time to get back to reading! If you want to learn more about books (and see lots of pictures of my cats, Millay and Steinbeck), or tell me about books you’re reading, you can find me on Twitter at MissLiberty, on Instagram at FranzenComesAlive, or Litsy under ‘Liberty’!
Stay rad!
Liberty
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by All The Books! – A weekly podcast about new releases.
Keep up with the most exciting new books coming out each week with our All the Books! Podcast. YA, sci-fi, non-fiction, you name it, we cover it all.
We’ve got 15 bundles of these three University of Iowa books to giveaway to 15 lucky US winners. Go here to enter, or just click the image below!
And the Monkey Learned Nothing contains author Tom Lutz’s reports from fifty countries, most describing personal encounters in rarely visited spots, anecdotes from way off the beaten path. Traveling without an itinerary or goal, Lutz falls regularly, into the instant intimacy of the road with random strangers.
Of This New World offers a menagerie of utopias: real, imagined, and lost. Starting with the Garden of Eden and ending in a Mars colony, the stories wrestle with conflicts of idealism and practicality, communal ambition and individual kink.
An unmissable debut, the collection charts the worlds born in our dreams and bred in hope.
Publishers Weekly’s starred review says: “November Storm, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, finds consistent success in its depictions of intimate relationships. Robert Oldshue’s sturdy prose and potent, understated endings will satisfy fans of the classic short story.”
Oh, have we got a good giveaway for you. Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders is one of our most anticipated books of 2017 and we have 5 signed editions to give away.
And that’s not all. Each winner will also receive a complete set of Saunders other books, including:
Tenth of December
Pastoralia
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil
In Persuasion Nation
The Braindead Megaphone
The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip
Congratulations, By the Way.
To enter for your chance to win, sign up for occasional updates from New York Times bestselling author, George Saunders. It’ll keep you up-to-date on George’s latest releases, exclusive giveaways and original content. And keep an eye out for Lincoln in the Bardo, George’s first novel, on sale February 14th.
5 winners will be selected randomly on November 1st, 2016. One entry per email address, U.S. only.
For a chance to win, go here to enter, or just click the button below. Good luck!
One of the (many) reasons you’re coming to Book Riot Live is to meet your bookternet friends in person — so we decided to make it easier! Introducing The Commons, an area at Book Riot Live dedicated to meet-ups arranged by you.
We’re delighted to announce that our first scheduled meet-up in the commons is a Litsy Bookswap. Get the full details and plan your own right here.
The new YA Book Mail box launched earlier this week, and it’s going fast! Now that the wait list has had a crack at it, we’re opening them up to all Book Riot customers. Get yours now!
Looking for adult fiction? The September Book Mail box was magical, and we have some extras still available! Peep the #bookmailbox hashtag on social or check out this unboxing video for a look at the contents.
We’ve also got some awesome additions in our collection of spooky tees. BUNNICULA, y’all!
And keep your toes nice and toasty in our new socks inspired by Sherlock Holmes, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and more.
Hello YA Fans!
This week’s edition of “This Week in YA” is sponsored by Way Down Dark.
Seventeen-year-old Chan’s ancestors left a dying Earth hundreds of years ago, in search of a new home. Generations later, they are still searching . . . Every day aboard the interstellar ship Australia is hell, where no one is safe. The Australia is filled with murderous gangs and twisted cults, vying for supremacy. Fierce and self-sufficient, Chan has learned to avoid the mayhem but then she makes an extraordinary discovery–there may be a way to return to Earth. But doing so will bring her to the attention of the murderers and fanatics, putting her and everyone she loves in danger.
Let’s take a look at the last few weeks in YA news, since there’s been quite a bit worth sharing or thinking about:
And a few links from Book Riot on YA:
Though there will be no edition of “What’s Up in YA?” on Halloween, I couldn’t end this one without talking about how great YA horror is. If you’re itching for a title or two, may I suggest trying out any of these 65 great YA horror reads by women?
Thanks for hanging out for another round of YA news and talk. We’ll be back in early November with more. Until then, grab yourself some candles, flashlights, blankets, and some spine-tingling reads.
Or, you know, whatever it is you want to spend your last days of October curling up with.
Today’s Riot Rundown is sponsored by Unbound Worlds.
Unbound Worlds offers readers insight into books and authors across and between the science fiction and fantasy worlds, including horror, slipstream, pop science, fairy tales and folklore, magical realism, urban fantasy, and anything that’s just a little bit weird.
Today’s The Stack is sponsored by Thrill Me by Benjamin Percy.
In Thrill Me, best-selling author Benjamin Percy dissolves the boundaries between literary and genre fiction. He explores how Cormac McCarthy, Ursula K. Le Guin, Stephen King, and others engage plot, character, dialogue, and suspense. He also makes clear the literary importance of “exploding helicopters, giant sharks, robots with laser eyes, pirates, poltergeists, were-kittens, demons, slow zombies, fast zombies, talking unicorns, probe-wielding martians, sexy vampires, barbarians in hairy underwear…”Percy’s distinctive blend of anecdotes and advice, round out a perfectly thrilling roadmap for writers and readers hoping to understand how and why the best fiction keeps us riveted to the edge of our seats