"I think there's really only two things you have to do to be a writer, which is read a lot and write a lot. Breitwieser's parents dropped him off at museums because that's where he felt fulfilled, my parents would drop me off at an independent bookstore. It's the first place in my life where I remember being treated as an equal as opposed to being talked down to. They asked what I read and they suggested new things. I feel that I became a writer because of the suggestions of knowledgeable people in independent bookstores. 

"Being chosen by independent bookstores as the number one pick is shocking to me. It's probably the coolest thing that's ever happened in my career in terms of accolades. To this day, I love Dolly's Bookstore here in Park City, Utah. I love Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana, where I lived before. I was just in Aix-en-Provence, France and I wandered through Book in Bar, the English language bookshop. These places are my sanctuary."

Larry Finlay

Larry Finlay, managing director of U.K. publisher Transworld, is retiring at the end of the year after 40 years with the company, the Bookseller reported. There will be an open recruitment process to find his successor.

Finlay joined the Penguin Random House division in 1983 as copywriter. He became marketing director in 1991, then paperbacks publisher in 1996, deputy publisher in 1999, finally taking the helm as managing director in 2001.  

"This is the moment I hoped would never come--the retirement of one of the true greats of the publishing industry over the last 40 years," said PRH UK CEO Tom Weldon. "There is no one quite like Larry Finlay. His passion for authors and books, his energy and drive, his commercial acumen, and his sheer chutzpah are unique. His enthusiasm is infectious--it is literally impossible to have a meeting with him without having a Transworld book pressed into your hand--and he has helped make more bestsellers than probably anyone else in London. He has led Transworld from the front in such a generous, big-hearted way, and made it an extraordinarily successful and happy company. 

"I feel incredibly fortunate to have worked very closely with Larry over the last decade at Penguin Random House, and I am proud to call him a friend, as well as a colleague. I have benefited in so many ways from his advice, humor, kindness and wisdom."  

Noting that he feels "unbelievably blessed," Finlay commented: "When I first answered that job ad in 1983, no one--least of all me--could possibly have imagined I'd still be at Transworld four decades later--and still loving my job. While so much has changed in the business in that time, the beating heart of Transworld remains the same: passion for our authors, belief in their books, and a hunger for success."

He added: "We often say that 'There's no "I" in Transworld'--it sounds corny but actually it's true: throughout my time, I have been lucky enough to work with an incredible team across editorial, sales, marketing, publicity, design and production. You would be hard-pressed to find a more committed, dedicated, creative and resourceful bunch of people, and I feel so lucky to have been able to work with them for so many years, indeed for decades in the case of several of my closest colleagues. I will miss them enormously."  

Hummingbird Books, a new and used bookstore with a focus on education, will open later this summer in New Milford, Conn., CT Insider reported.

Store founder Lockey Coughlin, who is also the program director and founder of the private school Education Without Walls, has found a space at 27 Main St. in New Milford and plans to have a soft opening on August 1. The shop will sell used and new books along with tea, store-branded merchandise, vinyl records, art supplies, and more. There will also be a tea bar and a mural painted by students and faculty from Education Without Walls.

A big part of Coughlin's plans include offering internships and job training opportunities for students of Education Without Walls. Coughlin told CT Insider that she was initially looking to open a cafe for that purpose, but once she saw the space at 27 Main St., she felt it would work much better as a bookstore.

Coughlin signed the lease at the end of May. She noted that students have already started to sign up as interns and the inventory is being assembled with their feedback. The store's event plans include book clubs for local high school students.

"An educational place and a bookstore, it just seems like a match made in heaven to me," Coughlin remarked.

Ellen Oh, author and CEO of We Need Diverse Books, moderated a panel of authors at the American Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago on June 24 with the aim of arming librarians and educators with resources for combating book-banning efforts. Each author spoke about personal experiences with their books being banned, and offered solutions for speaking with library patrons, local politicians, and their communities about how to lead efforts of "community engagement."

Panelists (l.-r.) Eliot Schrefer, Samira Ahmed, Jerry Craft, Kyle Lukoff, Ashley Hope Peréz, and moderator Ellen Oh.

"We as adults need to find our courage for our kids," said Samira Ahmed, author of Love, Hate and Other Filters, as well as the frequently banned book Internment. Ahmed, who was a community organizer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, had practical grassroots ideas for how to get the word out in the effort to fight book-banning. "Know the names of every school board member, every library board member," she said. People who ban books "are not just taking a book from a child, they're erasing an experience," she continued. She urged audience members to make 25 calls to a school board member; send 50 faxes. Start a postcard campaign, she said, and ask the children to send them: "My school needs Queer Ducks because..."; "Let me read New Kid because..." E-mails can be deleted, Ahmed said, but as voicemail fills and letter piles grow, faxes, calls, and postcards are all concrete evidence that cannot be ignored.

Jerry Craft, author of the Newbery Medal-winning New Kid, spoke about efforts in Katy, Tex., to remove his books and a petition to stop his school appearance there, largely engineered by one parent. Craft lauded the efforts of Raven White at Brown Sugar Café and Books in Katy, who stepped up to host an in-person event and led crowdfunding efforts to buy a book for every child who attended Craft's appearance.

Author of the recently published Queer Ducks (and Other Animals), Eliot Schrefer says he's newer to book banning, but "you can't publish a book with 'Queer' in the title" without undergoing some scrutiny. Like Craft, Schrefer's books have been critically acclaimed; his Endangered and Threatened were both National Book Award finalists. "You can't win by arguing by their rules," Schrefer said. "We must start by leading from our values, not letting them run the argument." Schrefer pointed out, "Those in anger use loud voices; those in despair are often silent. If we let the loudest voices represent our communities, we get a false sense of who is in the majority."

A former high school teacher in Houston, Tex., Ashley Hope Peréz said, "I am a YA author because my students told me about the books they wanted to read." Peréz received a Printz Honor for Out of Darkness, her story of a romance, set in a 1937 Texas oil town, between a female Mexican American teenager and a male Black teenager. "The greatest danger is self-censorship; books that don't need to be banned because they weren't on the shelves to begin with," she said. Peréz said it's important to remind folks that "Representation does not mean endorsement." Just because you don't want your child to read a book doesn't mean no child should be able to read a book. "We know who the allies are in the community," she said. "We can come together."

As a former librarian and bookseller, Kyle Lukoff, author of Newbery Honor, National Book Award Finalist, and Stonewall Award winner Too Bright to See, among other titles, had the most intimate counsel for the audience: "I used to have a crush on the First Amendment," he said. He spoke of his struggle to maintain his integrity and his beliefs while also trying to uphold the guidelines of his library. His first challenge was a Robie Harris title; then he examined the books in his collection that depicted the police, all of whom were portrayed as "goodhearted." He said that many libraries' collection policies and reconsideration forms--which are the instruments of defending against book-banning--wind up "blaming the victim," the librarians themselves. Lukoff recommended reading Walkaway by Cory Doctorow: "The moment may have come when you may have to undermine an institution in order to save a library."

Ellen Oh said one can't assume that because they're in a blue state, that everyone will support books in the libraries. People in blue counties can help those in red counties who are experiencing book-banning efforts. Oh asked people to gather in small groups to share ideas, then invited people to approach the microphone. A Nashville, Tenn., librarian said they issued city-wide library cards that say, "I Read Banned Books." Another librarian said they keep an artillery of strong reviews, before a book is challenged. A library trustee in Oak Park, Ill., a blue city just outside Chicago, spoke about a neighboring blue town in her county where conservative-leaning school board candidates got elected and upended the library policies, implementing book removal policies and catching everyone by surprise. She urged people to get to know their Friends of the Library, recruit allies who support your library policies, "Be proactive now, before the elections."

Oh armed the audience with "Addressing Book Challenges"--proactive measures they can take now, ahead of a confrontation--guidelines that can help educators, librarians, and booksellers alike. Under headings such as "Be Aware!" ("Know your selection and reconsideration policies," etc.); "Build Your Case!" ("Consult Reviews for the challenged books," etc.); "Find Your Allies!" ("Keep track of who else is fighting book bans," etc.); "Push Back (Consistently)!" ("Challenge Misinformation"); and "Listen to Experience," which includes links to helpful articles about preparing oneself for book challenges. At a time when all booklovers must unite, these resources brim with ideas for how communities can band together as booksellers, librarians, educators, caregivers, and allies. --Jennifer M. Brown

The Barnes & Noble store in the Lehigh Valley Mall in Whitehall, Pa., will close temporarily while it undergoes renovations, the Morning Call reported.

The renovations, which will begin in late July, will bring B&N's new store design and a revamped cafe to the Whitehall location. The company expects the renovations to be completed in spring 2024; in the meantime, B&N will open a temporary location in the same mall in October.

“We thank our wonderful Lehigh Valley booksellers for all their hard work and dedication. We know they look forward to welcoming you into their interim store this fall and can’t wait to show off their newly designed Lehigh Valley Mall store next spring,” read a post on the store's Facebook page.

Victoria Amelina

Victoria Amelina, one of Ukraine's best-known young writers, died July 1 from injuries sustained in a Russian missile strike on a crowded restaurant in eastern Ukraine on June 27. She was 37. The New York Times reported that "her death brought to 13 the number of civilians killed in the attack on the Ria Lounge restaurant in the city of Kramatorsk.... Amelina was dining with a Colombian delegation when the missile ripped into the restaurant." Days before the attack, Amelina had attended the Kyiv Book Arsenal, a literary festival in Ukraine's capital.

Born in Lviv, the award-winning author was widely known in Ukraine for her novels, children's books, poems, and essays. In 2021, she won the Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski Literary Prize, given to a Ukrainian writer under 40, and started a small literature festival in the Donetsk region. She published her first novel, The November Syndrome, or Homo Compatiens in 2014. Her other books include the children's book, Somebody, or Waterheart; and the novel Dom's Dream Kingdom (Dim dlya Doma). 

In a statement, PEN Ukraine wrote, in part: "Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Victoria Amelina has expanded her work far beyond literature. In 2022 she joined the human rights organization Truth Hounds. She has been documenting Russian war crimes on de-occupied territories in the Eastern, Southern and Northern parts of Ukraine, in particular in Kapytolivka near Izyum where she found a diary of Volodymyr Vakulenko, a Ukrainian writer killed by the Russians.... During this time Victoria also started working on her first nonfiction book in English. In War and Justice Diary: Looking at Women Looking at War, which should soon be published abroad."

Romana Cacchioli, executive director of PEN International, said: "We are devastated by the killing of our friend and PEN member Victoria Amelina. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and loved ones during these terrible times. Victoria's strength, selflessness, and determination in the face of adversity have been an inspiration to us all. As we grieve her loss, her words, writings, and voice will forever resonate with us. Today is a tragic day for the PEN community, who stands with everyone at PEN Ukraine. Those responsible for her killing must be brought to justice."

Polina Sadovskaya, Eurasia director at PEN America, commented: "Victoria Amelina was a celebrated Ukrainian author who turned her distinct and powerful voice to investigate and expose war crimes after the full scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. She brought a literary sensibility to her work and her elegant prose described, with forensic precision, the devastating impact of these human rights violations on the lives of Ukrainians. Her contribution to this effort underscored her insistence that Russia be held to account for its illegal invasion, which has brutally cut short the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people. We extend our deepest sympathies to her son, her family and friends and her colleagues at PEN Ukraine."

In a Guardian tribute, Ukrainian author Andrey Kurkov observed that Amelina "did not leave the huge literary legacy that she might have done, had she been given more time.... Yet in her short life, Amelina still managed to achieve a great deal.... Over the past year and a half of Russian aggression, Ukraine has lost tens of thousands of its citizens, including about 30 writers, poets and publishers. Amelina now joins this list and enters the history of Ukrainian literature--a tragic history filled with unfinished books."

In a June 7 post pinned to her Twitter account, Amelina wrote: "It's me in this picture. I'm a Ukrainian writer. I have portraits of great Ukrainian poets on my bag. I look like I should be taking pictures of books, art, and my little son. But I document Russia's war crimes and listen to the sound of shelling, not poems. Why? #StopRussiaNow."

2 Dandelions Bookshop, Brighton, Mich., hosted Dianne Freeman for the release of her latest Countess of Harleigh Mystery, A Newlywed’s Guide to Fortune and Murder (Kensington). Freeman (r., in pink), was in conversation with Colleen Cambridge (r., in blue), author of Mastering the Art of French Murder.

Gilbert Hernandez, owner of Búho bookstore, Brownsville, Tex., delivered a 4th of July Facebook message in full costume yesterday:

"Happy 4th of July! As you can imagine, I often get asked 'What's your favorite book?' It's a difficult question to answer, but the ones that have most influenced me to do what I've accomplished are the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin & Walter Isaacson's biography on him. Ben is my historical hero because he added value to his community and country simply by being his kooky, authentic self. While our store's self-help books will usually recommend to focus your time and energy on improving the ONE thing you're best at, Ben was a master of many hats: writer, inventor, scientist, diplomat, entrepreneur, humorist, civic activist, philanthropist, Freemason, politician, and Founding Father--all approached with his trademark sense of humor.

"Looking at him now, he PERFECTLY embodies Búho's three core values: Curiosity, Community, and Creativity. His never-ending thirst to figure out how to improve Early America led him to create ingenious writings, gadgets, and discoveries. I aspire to add value to Brownsville by building Búho with the same mentality!

"Ben may not necessarily inspire you as much as another famous or familiar hero. That's why whenever I answer the 'favorite book' question, I recommend searching the biography and memoir shelves for someone that YOU think you'll look up to in a way that resonates with you; they're the true stories of those who have made a name for themselves on the world stage! May we adopt the habits that make our heroes great so that we too can add value for ourselves and our neighbors. Take Care + Stay Curious. --Gilbert."

"WE HAD TOOOOOOO," A Room of One's Own bookstore, Madison, Wis., noted in an Instagram post suggesting what the characters on FX/Hulu's hit series The Bear would read, including:

Carmy: How Al-Anon Works: For Families & Friends of Alcoholics; Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner; Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview; Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig; Eat a Peach by David Chang; and On Vegetables by Jeremy Fox.

Sydney: Blood Bones & Butter by Grabrielle Hamilton; Black White & the Grey by Mashama Bailey; A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain; Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson; the Noma, Eleven Madison Park, and Alinea cookbooks.

Marcus: The Last Course by Claudia Fleming; Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi; Atelier Crenn cookbook; New World Sourdough; Tartine; the French Laundry, Per Se Cookbook.

Barnes & Noble has chosen Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster) as its July national book club selection. In a live, virtual event on Tuesday, August 8, at 4 p.m. Eastern, Brodeur will be in conversation with Shannon DeVito, senior director of books at B&N, and Miwa Messer, executive producer of Poured Over, the B&N Podcast.

B&N described the book this way: "Cape Cod, with a natural grandeur that oscillates between tempest and tranquility, provides the vivid setting for this nuanced, lyrical and emotionally satisfying novel. It's the summer of 2016--the political landscape is incendiary, and as the world around them seems just a spark away from ignition, siblings Ken and Abby return to the family home. Their aging father, a once brilliant scientist who feels his genius fading, is furtively endangering himself in pursuit of one last breakthrough. Ken and Abby each bear heavy secrets of their own, and for each other. Adrienne Brodeur brings the Cape, and a complicated family, to life in this story of secrets, lies, trauma and forgiveness."

DeVito said, "Little Monsters is a tale of the earliest treachery: sibling rivalry. Envy and power dynamics threaten to destroy everything that siblings Abby and Ken have built. The expansive cracks that form under their veneer of familial harmony are what make this novel so propulsive--and the insight from Adam, the bipolar father of the two lead siblings, is charismatically crafted. I know this novel will spark a lot of visceral emotions and reactions from our readers, which is exactly what you want from a book club discussion."

For more information and to register, click here.

In the Night Garden by Carin Berger (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty (S&S Books for Young Readers, $11.99, 9781665922074).

Today Show: Natasha Pickowicz, author of More Than Cake: 100 Baking Recipes Built for Pleasure and Community (Artisan, $40, 9781648290541).

Carmen Machi (Piggy, 30 Coins) will play legendary Barcelona agent Carmen Balcells, "prime architect of the Latin American Boom and a key figure in the break out of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa to worldwide renown," in the TV series Boom Agency (La Agencia del Boom), Variety reported.

Chile's Invercine, producer of News of a Kidnapping, is teaming with Spain's Abacus, Pausoka, and Grupo Lavinia to develop and produce Boom Agency, which "also turns on Balcells's worst nightmare, the rupture of the deep friendship between her star writers, Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García-Marquez, whose rift broke the back of the Boom," Variety noted. 

Spain's Oscar Pedraza, co-director of HBO España's Patria, is directing, with Colombians Verónica Triana (News of a Kidnapping) and Alvaro Perea (Cuando Colombia se volvió Macondo) writing the scripts. 

"This co-production is a great strategic alliance with an incredible synergy in all the creative processes where we have mixed talent from different countries which has strengthened the story and made it more attractive when looking for finance, and creating different business models, while choosing the best strategy," said Invercine's Macarena Cardone. 

"Vargas Llosa, García Márquez, Donoso, Vázquez Montalbán.... Spanish-language literature's Golden Age cannot be understood without the incredible contribution of Carmen Balcells, a woman ahead of her time who was visionary and passionate. As producers we believe the story is well-worth telling: the lives of its protagonists are on a par with their fantastic work," said Zabaleta.

Finalists have been named for the Forward Prizes for Poetry, which include the £10,000 (about $12,720) Forward Prize for Best Collection, the £5,000 (about $6,360) Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection, and the £1,000 (about $1,270) Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. This year, a new category has been added: Best Single Poem--Performed, which also carries a £1,000 award. The winners will be named October 16. This year's book finalists are:

Best collection
Self Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant 
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan 
A Change in the Air by Jane Clarke 
The Ink Cloud Reader by Kit Fan 
My Name Is Abilene by Elisabeth Sennitt Clough 

First collection
ISDAL by Susannah Dickey 
A Method, A Path by Rowan Evans 
Cane, Corn & Gully by Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa 
Bad Diaspora Poems by Momtaza Mehri 
Cowboy by Kandace Siobhan Walker 

photo: Nina Subin

Sarah Weinman is the author of Scoundrel--named a Best Book of 2022 by Time, Esquire, and NPR--and The Real Lolita. She is also the editor of several anthologies, including Unspeakable Acts: True Tales of Crime, Murder, Deceit, and Obsession, an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, New York, the Wall Street Journal, and Vanity Fair, and she writes the "Crime" column for the New York Times Book Review. She is the editor of Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning (Ecco, July 4, 2023), which collects 14 pieces that combine brilliant storytelling with incisive cultural examinations. Weinman lives in New York City and Northampton, Mass.

Handsell readers your book in approximately 25 words or less:

An anthology of true crime writing that shows how crime is a byproduct of America's systemic harms and inequalities, and the genre, a catalyst for social change.

On your nightstand now:

Also a Poet by Ada Calhoun; The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow; Crime Novels of the 1960s, edited by Geoffrey O'Brien (out in September); G-Man by Beverly Gage.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I never hear about this book anywhere, and when I tell people about it, they have never heard of it, but I was utterly obsessed as a kid with Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (translated by Dorothy Britton). When I reread it a couple of years ago, I fell in love with the book all over again. It's a paean to childhood education and an examination of stigmatized culture, but really it's about a child's wonder at the everyday world.

Your top five authors:

This is a dangerous question to ask a book critic, but right now my answers are: Dorothy B. Hughes, Janet Malcolm, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, James Baldwin.

Book you've faked reading:

Mostly, I don't finish books I don't want to read and tell people when I haven't read a book.

Book you're an evangelist for:

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart. Everything I said is in this 2010 Wall Street Journal essay, but it's a magnificent prose poem about ecstatic love that also happens to be darkly funny.

Book you've bought for the cover:

All of them and none of them.

Book you hid from your parents:

I didn't really do that sort of thing? But then my parents were the kind of people who didn't blink when I told them, as a 16-year-old, that I was going to read a bunch of books by Philip Roth for a high school project. (Let's just say that Sabbath's Theater is a book for middle age, and I appreciated it so much more when I reread it a couple of years ago.)

Book that changed your life:

I'll go with two:

Crime and Science by Jurgen Thorwald, a gift from my roommate when I was a freshman in college, which helped convince me to pursue a master's degree in forensic science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The first day of class, my professor, Peter De Forest, asked if anyone had heard of the book. I was the only one to raise my hand. Even though I am not a forensic scientist--turns out I wasn't cut out to work in a lab--one of the greatest compliments I ever received for The Real Lolita was from Dr. De Forest: "In addition to the superb writing, it was a true criminal investigation."

And In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes, which I first read in 2004 and have reread annually ever since. It's my favorite crime novel, and I am glad that my efforts helped get it reissued by NYRB Classics and ensconced in the Library of America series.

Favorite line from a book:

"Why do you write? To keep from dying." --Moi, Pauline! by Janine Boissard.

Boissard's L'Esprit de famille books were also among my teenage reading canon, though I have since learned the English translations were bowdlerized and cut down significantly. I'd love to see new translations of these books for the American market.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe. Another on my "reread annually" list, it is still one of the greatest novels about book publishing, being young, dealing with predatory men, and making it in New York City.

Doubleday Crime Club Compendium, 1928-1991, edited by Ellen Nehr. I paid $120 for a good-condition used copy of this reference book, which lists every title published by Doubleday Crime Club, one of the most important imprints of American crime fiction. (I wish someone would do a similar thing for Fawcett Gold Medal, the greatest paperback crime imprint of the mid-20th century.)

Murder One by Dorothy Kilgallen. She was covering murder trials in her early 20s, went around the world not long after, and had extraordinary influence as a columnist.

The Big Con by David W. Maurer. Published in 1940, and yet it explains almost everything about contemporary America, which is something he never would have foreseen.

Spooks, Spies, and Private Eyes, edited by Paula L. Woods. A groundbreaking anthology, published in 1995, of Black crime writers, and a reminder that the genre has improved with respect to inclusivity and diversity--but still has so much further to go.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Divorcing by Susan Taubes. I'd heard little of her until this novel was reissued in 2020 and it became, in short order, one of my all-time favorites. The voice, the cadence, the raw power! A lot of that is there in Lament for Julia, which was also recently unearthed/republished.

Shelly Page and Alex Brown make their editorial debut by bringing together an impressive roster of BIPOC queer authors in this gratifyingly frightening and humorous YA short story anthology centering BIPOC queer characters.

The pure enjoyability of Night of the Living Queers: 13 Tales of Terror & Delight lies in its brilliant blend of tenderly serious and lighthearted stories that feature sinister supernatural and undeniably real fears--as well as one misunderstood pizza-stealing specter. Maya Gittelman, in a stunning entry, builds a metaphor for gender diversity via a feared, outcast wizard: "This is who your town deemed monstrous? When they're the ones who trap you, as if their misconceptions of you are somehow truer than your own... understanding of yourself?" Grief is explored via an eerie father-daughter tradition in "The Visitor" by Kalynn Bayron (Cinderella Is Dead) and via an "if you stop watching this video, you will die" plotline in Trang Thanh Tran's (She Is a Haunting) "Nine Stops." A babysitter battling a ghost recognizes in it the "bone-deep loneliness that comes with being abandoned" in Page's "Anna," and characters give in to vengeance in creepy fashion. Love and its simulacra are found, too--near-death kisses, post-rescue kisses, kisses that curse or start fires.

Each story takes place on Halloween, spectacularly enhanced by a blue moon "bearing down like a watchful eye." Late-night outings and parties abound, every setting visceral: Vanessa Montalban describes an abandoned hotel as "a season away from growing teeth" in "Welcome to the Hotel Paranoia"; a mall food court is known for its spectral resident in "The Three Phases of Ghost-Hunting" by Brown; and a drive-in theater hosts a ghost car from the 1950s in "A Brief Intermission" by Sara Farizan (Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel). Ouija boards spit out spirits, ominous noises herald hauntings, and invisible forces impose their will. Comedic moments burst through the scares. "AAAHHHHH!" a character in Ryan Douglass's (The Taking of Jake Livingston) "Knickknack" screams in a dead clown's dark bedroom before deadpanning, "Oh. It's just bowling pins. Not giant dildos." A demon asks a teen his pronouns--and then begs to be taken to a house party in Tara Sim's "Hey There, Demons." Cultural lore inspires various stories: in a nod to Nezha of Chinese mythology, a girl holds within her the power of a dragon (Em X. Liu's "In You to Burn"); a teen in New Orleans fastens a dime around her neck, fearful of the Rougarou of her Maw's Cajun folktales (Page's "Anna"); and a teen beseeches help from Kali Maa, "primordial goddess of death and rebirth," during the Kali Pujo Festival (Ayida Shonibar's "Save Me from Myself").

Here there be vampires that must be invited in, one solid Ghostbusters joke, swoony queer love, and enticingly chilling Halloween fun to revel in while huddled beneath a blanket any time of the year. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer.

Shelf Talker: Night of the Living Queers is a highly entertaining and suspense-filled YA anthology about queer teens braving myriad fears on Halloween night.