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Starred Review

A Little Too Haunted

by Justine Pucella Winans

In the eerie, captivating middle-grade novel A Little Too Haunted by Justine Pucella Winans (The Otherwoods), Luna Catalano--only child and self-described paranormal scholar--faces IBS, her first crush, and the supernatural.

Luna's moms are "influencers" who use their psychic powers and renovation skills to flip "haunted" houses into "warm, modern, ghost-free homes." When the 13-year-old true believer discovers her moms have been faking their footage, she furiously outs them on social media. The trio moves

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Bad Bad Girl

by Gish Jen

Gish Jen's autobiographical Bad Bad Girl is a singular intergenerational novel. Jen's act of imaginative, empathetic storytelling is inspired by the author's complex, frequently antagonistic, relationship with her mother, who immigrated from China in the 1940s. Jen (The ResistersThank You Mr. Nixon) re-creates her mother's childhood as a privileged girl in pre-Revolutionary China, her solitary journey to pursue her graduate studies in the United States, and her subsequent life there. It's

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And I'll Take Out Your Eyes

by A.M. Sosa

A.M. Sosa uses multiple perspectives to explore the legacy of trauma and the role of memory in creating an authentic self in And I'll Take Out Your Eyes, their striking and unforgettable debut novel.

Set in the Mexican American community of 1990s Stockton, Calif., the novel opens with seven-year-old Christian waking up in the family kitchen holding a knife. His mother's attempt to use "good magic" to cure him fails, and the curse continues to manifest as he grows older. His mother's health declines, his relationship

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Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife

by Deston J. Munden

Youth and advanced age combine in Recipes for an Unexpected Afterlife, Deston J. Munden's cozy fantasy novel of second chances and self-forgiveness that's bursting with stunning, satisfying plot twists and characters that steal readers' hearts.

Rottgor Onyx-Ax is a millennia-old undead orc resurrected by the Worm King, the evil tyrant whom Rottgor then helped take down after being forced to commit terrible horrors in his name. Together with five other Death Knights (they're known as the Six Shadows), he founded

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Racebook: A Personal History of the Internet

by Tochi Onyebuchi

The essays in Tochi Onyebuchi's Racebook provide readers with thought-provoking and eclectic cultural criticism. They explore the art and world-building of video games. There are deep insights on the intersection of race and the Internet. Social media, of course, comes into play. With his keen eye for good sentences and impressive knowledge of literature, popular media, and the human condition, Onyebuchi (Harmattan Season; War Girls) pulls together his diverse topics using the thread of how identity exists

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Moonsick

by Tom O'Donnell

Moonsick, Tom O'Donnell's (Hamstersaurus Rex series; Homerooms and Hall Passes) first young adult novel, is a grisly supernatural thriller about a teenager facing senior year amid the horrors of a werewolf pandemic. 

Five years ago, the highly contagious Rabies lupinovirus emerged, turning humans into rampaging werewolves. The militaristic Viral Containment Task Force ("Dogcatchers") fights the virus by forcing infected individuals into lifelong quarantine, hunting down werewolves, and euthanizing dogs.

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Shelf Discovery

Widow's Walk

by Jane Willan

Chef-turned-parish-priest Miranda McCurdy navigates church politics and messy human realities in Jane Willan's thoughtful, engaging novel.

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Things That Disappear

by Jenny Erpenbeck, trans. by Kurt Beals

Wry melancholy permeates Jenny Erpenbeck's incisive prose with keen insights on the ineluctable vanishing point of missing objects, lost social amenities, forgotten desires.

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Spread Me

by Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey's propulsive, erotic horror novella, Spread Me, takes place at a research outpost in the middle of the desert.

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Pluck

by Adam Hughes

The 64 poems in former pastor Adam Hughes's fifth collection can be wryly funny as well as plaintive as they dramatize his crisis of faith.

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The Killing Stones

by Ann Cleeves

In this atmospheric mystery, two detectives in the remote Orkney Islands investigate a series of deaths during the days before Christmas.

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Flip

by Ngozi Ukazu

Ngozi Ukazu remarkably brings The Bluest Eye and Freaky Friday together in this humorous yet weighty graphic novel about two teens--a white boy and a Black girl--switching bodies.

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I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Jenny Bayliss

Jenny Bayliss showcases some of her best Christmas cheer and small-town charm yet in this novel about a woman who returns to a hometown where family, friendship, and love glisten like the snow.

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Daedalus Is Dead

by Seamus Sullivan

In this devastating examination of fatherhood and masculinity, Daedalus spends his time in the underworld reckoning with his son's death and confronting his own failures.

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Writing Creativity and Soul

by Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees didn't come out of nowhere; in her craft-meets-self-help book, Sue Monk Kidd traces her decades-long writing apprenticeship, relaying what she has learned and what it means.

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A Tour to Die For

by Michelle Chouinard

A woman whose grandfather was a convicted serial killer investigates a murder that may have occurred on one of her San Francisco crime-scene tours in this highly entertaining mystery.

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The Ten Year Affair

by Erin Somers

The Ten Year Affair blends fantasy and reality, where the world of a sexy affair runs parallel to the ordinary world of carpool, taking kids to karate, and loving but familiar husbands.

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Spectators

by Brian K. Vaughan, illus. by Niko Henrichon

A mass-shooting victim becomes the ultimate voyeur as the world unravels in Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon's apocalyptic graphic novel.

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Perfect Happiness

by You-Jeong Jeong, trans. by Sean Lin Halbert

You-Jeong Jeong's third psychological thriller chillingly stacks up the corpses before (only) some of the innocent can be saved.

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Folk Remedy

by Jem Yoshioka

Jem Yoshioka introduces lively young Maple, whose disbelief in yōkai gets inventively, entertainingly debunked when she releases Ember from 300 years of entrapment.

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Isn't It Obvious?

by Rachel Runya Katz

Rachel Runya Katz's swoony, smart third rom-com follows a librarian-turned-podcaster and her editor as they fall in love via e-mail and trade barbs in person.

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The Hunger We Pass Down

by Jen Sookfong Lee

Canadian author Jen Sookfong Lee's The Hunger We Pass Down chillingly bears witness to generations of Chinese Canadian women confronting intergenerational trauma.

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Media Heat

Thursday, October 23, 2025

CBS Mornings: Tom Colicchio, author of Think Like a Chef, 25th Anniversary Edition (Clarkson Potter, $38, 9798217034888).

Drew Barrymore Show: Malala Yousafzai, author of Finding My Way: A Memoir (Atria, $30, 9781668054277).

Wednesday, October 22, 2025

CBS Mornings: Malala Yousafzai, author of Finding My Way: A Memoir (Atria, $30, 9781668054277).

The View: John Grisham, author of The Widow (Doubleday, $32, 9780385548984).

Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Good Morning America: Deborah Roberts, co-author of Sisters Loved and Treasured: Stories of Unbreakable Bonds (Hyperion Avenue, $26.99, 9781368115810).

The View: Brie Larson, co-author of Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations (DK, $35, 9780593970027).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert: Michael J. Fox, co-author of Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum (Flatiron, $26.99, 9781250866783).

Tonight Show: Allen Iverson, author of Misunderstood: A Memoir (Gallery/13A, $30, 9781476784397).

Monday, October 20, 2025

CBS Mornings: Senator Bernie Sanders, author of Fight Oligarchy (Crown, $14.99, 9798217089161).

Also on CBS Mornings: Karine Jean-Pierre, author of Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines (Legacy Lit, $29.99, 9781538777084).

Today: Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Partypooper (Amulet, $15.99, 9781419782695).

Fresh Air: Ken Burns, co-author of The American Revolution: An Intimate History (Knopf, $80, 9780525658672), to be published November 11.

Tonight Show: Malala Yousafzai, author of Finding My Way: A Memoir (Atria, $30, 9781668054277). 

Thursday, October 16, 2025

Here & Now: Jake Tapper, author of Race Against Terror: Chasing an Al-Qaeda Killer at the Dawn of the Forever War (Atria, $30, 9781668079447).

Fresh Air: Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of We Survived the Night (Knopf, $29, 9780593320785).

Today: Nick Offerman, co-author of Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop's Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery (Dutton, $35, 9780593475263). 

CBS Mornings: Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, author of We Can Be Brave: How We Learn to Be Brave in Life's Decisive Moments (Dutton Books for Young Readers, $19.99, 9798217113811).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon, authors of Gone Before Goodbye (Grand Central, $32, 9781538774700).

Jimmy Kimmel Live: Roy Wood Jr., author of The Man of Many Fathers: Life Lessons Disguised as a Memoir (Crown, $32, 9780593800072).

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