With us being a few days into Halloween mania, I’m sure you’ve got your reads and rereads all lined up. However, for those that haven’t—we’ve got you covered. Comedy-turned-horror director Jordan Peele co-edited a book of Black Horror, short stories by some of the best writers in contemporary horror, sci-fi, and speculative fiction. Additionally, a newly translated book by Ecuadorian writer Mónica Ojeda releasing near the end of the month puts six roommates under the spell of a controversial video game.
Not feeling horror? This is The Mary Sue Book Club, so of course there are other options too. Reporters Carlos Greaves (known for his humor and satirical writing) and Taylor Lorenz (known for her internet coverage at The Washington Post) penned essays connected to their work and the entertainment industry. Black, queer literary giant Bryan Washington has a new book about family and returning to H-Town. Activist Curtis Chin will release his debut book and memoir about coming into his American-born Chinese identity. Finally, Indian novelist Samit Basu is back with another tale of sci-fiction adventure that explores our multi-faceted anxieties about emerging technology. Well, I guess that can be kind of scary if you reflect on it too long …
Spoilers: Essays That Might Ruin Your Favorite Hollywood Movies by Carlos Greaves
“This book has way more jokes than Schindler’s List.” – an objective statement of fact
Superman tries to apply for a Green Card but doesn’t have the proper documentation from his home planet. The Little Mermaid writes a tell-all book about her struggle to fit in with her new siren-skeptical royal family. And an increasingly unhinged J. Edgar Hoover opens an FBI investigation into a counter-cultural rabble-rouser by the name of Forrest Gump. These are just a few of the scenarios explored in this raucous collection of essays from frequent New Yorker and McSweeney‘s contributor Carlos Greaves. Spoilers will leave you laughing at hitherto unexamined plot points of your favorite films, at the sorry state of the world we live in, and definitely at whoever’s idea it was to open a theme park full of people-eating dinosaurs.
Release date: October 2.
The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu
Shantiport was supposed to be a gateway to the stars. But the city is sinking, and its colonist rulers aren’t helping anyone but themselves.
Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born. Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves—even if they do take him for granted.
When Shantiport’s resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix… none of the city’s powers will know what hit them.
Release date: October 3.
Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet by Taylor Lorenz
By tracing how the internet has changed what we want and how we go about getting it, Lorenz unearths how social platforms’ power users radically altered our expectations of content, connection, purchasing, and power. Lorenz documents how moms who started blogging were among the first to monetize their personal brands online, how bored teens who began posting selfie videos reinvented fame as we know it, and how young creators on TikTok are leveraging opportunities to opt out of the traditional career pipeline. It’s the real social history of the internet.
Emerging seemingly out of nowhere, these shifts in how we use the internet seem easy to dismiss as fads. However, these social and economic transformations have resulted in a digital dynamic so unappreciated and insurgent that it ultimately created new approaches to work, entertainment, fame, and ambition in the 21st century.
Release date: October 3.
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror edited by John Joseph Adams & Jordan Peele
A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele’s anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and—like his spine-chilling films—its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid.
Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.
Release date: October 3.
Family Meal by Bryan Washington
Cam is living in Los Angeles and falling apart after the love of his life has died. Kai’s ghost won’t leave Cam alone; his spectral visits wild, tender, and unexpected. When Cam returns to his hometown of Houston, he crashes back into the orbit of his former best friend, TJ, and TJ’s family bakery. TJ’s not sure how to navigate this changed Cam, impenetrably cool and self-destructing, or their charged estrangement. Can they find a way past all that has been said – and left unsaid – to save each other? Could they find a way back to being okay again, or maybe for the first time?
When secrets and wounds become so insurmountable that they devour us from within, hope and sustenance and friendship can come from the most unlikely source.
Release date: October 10.
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir by Curtis Chin
1980s Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone–from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples–could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where–between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions–he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself.
Release date: October 17.
Nefando by Mónica Ojeda, translated by Sarah Booker
Six young artists share an apartment in Barcelona: Kiki Ortega, a researcher writing a pornographic novel; Iván Herrera, a writer whose prose reveals a deeply conflicted relationship with his body; three siblings, Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia, who quietly search for ways to transcend their abuse as children; and El Cuco Martínez, a video-game designer whose creations push beneath the substrate of the digital world. All of them are connected in different ways to Nefando, a controversial cult video game whose purpose remains a mystery. In the parallel reality of the game, players found relief from the pain of past trauma and present shame, but also a frighteningly elastic sense of self and ethics. Is Nefando a game for horror enthusiasts, a challenge to players’ morals, or a poetic exercise? What happens in a virtual world that admits every taboo?
Release date: October 24.
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Which of these titles are you most excited to read? Let us know in the comments.
(featured image: Tordotcom, Random House, & Little Brown and Company)
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