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Poisoned Pen Press: 6:40 to Montreal by Eva Jurczyk
Shelf Awareness for Readers
October 31, 2025
The Sylvan Hotel
A Gallery of Cats
Bigger: Essays
See All of This Week's Reviews
See all starred reviews

This week we invite you to wander A Gallery of Cats, Ruth Brown's "immersive and whimsical" museum in which fuzzy felines pay homage to famous artworks. Or, perhaps, traverse essayist Ren Cedar Fuller's family history with the "perceptive... openhearted" perspective of Bigger. Maybe you'd rather reminisce about Seattle's grunge roots through the "captivating whirlwind" of a '90s-era clerk's coming of age in Frannie James's The Sylvan Hotel. Or reflect with Cameron Crowe on the "remarkable and moving" journey he made as a young, gawky teen to become a critically acclaimed music journalist and filmmaker in his memoir, The Uncool. All that and so much more is just one click away!

--Dave Wheeler, senior editor, Shelf Awareness
Read the full issue

Bloom Books: The Defender by Ana Huang

The Writer's Life

Lana Lin is a writer, artist, and filmmaker living in New York and Connecticut. Combining memoir, social criticism, and conceptual art, The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam is her literary debut and was longlisted for the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction. Find out which book she has to carry in a bag to keep its pieces together and which one she was drawn to because of what had been sliced from its cover with an X-Acto knife.... (continued)

The Best Books This Week
Venetian Vespers
Fiction
What a Way to Go
Mystery & Thriller
Cinder House
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Cover Story
Romance
Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance
Graphic Books
The Bakery Dragon and the Fairy Cake
Children's & Young Adult
See All of This Week's Reviews
See This Week's Book Reviews
Book Candy

The Public Domain Review featured "a devilish dive into our archives to unearth some supernatural treats" with its Halloween Reader.

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"Spooky season, but make it cozy: 13 newly-published reads" were recommended by the New York Public Library.

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The Morgan Library's Facebook page showcased an 1845 letter from Edgar Allan Poe to John Augustus Shea containing the earliest surviving portion of "The Raven" and the only manuscript intended for a printer. And Open Culture exhumed 19 theories on what caused Poe's death.

Tundra Books: The Little Ghost Quilt's Winter Surprise (A Little Ghost Quilt Book) by Riel Nason, illustrated by Byron Eggenschwiler

October Stars
Pick a Color
Saltcrop
Hekate: The Witch
Lullaby for the Grieving
See All of This Week's Reviews
See all books
Rediscover

Baek Sehee, the bestselling South Korean author "whose frank conversations about therapy and mental health helped her become a cultural phenomenon in her home country and beyond," died October 16, the New York Times reported. She was 35. Baek was best known for her memoir, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, "a deeply personal account of her struggles with depression and anxiety. (Tteokbokki is a popular Korean dish of rice cakes in a spicy sauce.)."... (continued)

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(continued)

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Comments on a review? Please contact Dave Wheeler for adult books and Siân Gaetano for children's and YA titles.

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