I can come to your library, book club meeting, or conference to talk about how to help your readers find their next good read. Click here for more information including RA for All's EDI Statement and info about WHY I LOVE HORROR.
Before I get too caught up in 31 Days of Horror, I wanted to make an addendum to this post I had last week:Getting Ready For Banned Books Week.
If I have not made it clear to you already (and I think I have)-- all library workers should be speeding next week focused on ACTION STEPS. As I said in that post:
Banned Books Week is coming October 5-11, 2025. Now is the time to prepare. Well, every day is the time to prepare because those who want to limit intellectual freedom are busy every single day.
But Banned Books Week is the one week of the year where all media outlets will be paying attention. There will be a blitz everywhere and your patrons will be hearing and reading about it. They will have questions and most will want to help us in our fight.
Kelly Jensen who I mention in that post, put out the latest issue of her newsletter and in it she has an easy and IMPORTANT action step every single one of you can do. She did the work for you and it is FREE. Here is the information from her newsletter:
My (awesome) independent bookstore reached out to me after reading that piece. We have an excellent relationship, and they wanted to know what they could do to better encourage our community to stay on top of what’s going on and be actively involved in pushing back against censorship. We met and built upon something they were already doing: making Banned Books Week about giving banned books back to schools in the community.
This year, I asked if they’d be interested in something else. They already have programming planned around the week to continue raising awareness of what’s really happening, so I thought: what would be an easy way to get some important information across without having to do anything particularly time- or effort- consuming.
The answer was a straightforward and straight-to-the-point bookmark outlining what the average person can do in their own town to protect the right to read.
These bookmarks aren’t meant to be sexy. They’re intended to make acting on behalf of intellectual freedom easy and practical to the average person. These are bookmarks you can print out on whatever paper you’d like and slip inside a bookmark holder at an institution where you might work or that you can hand out wherever it may be appropriate. Making a banned books display in your classroom or library? Print some of these out, too.
There’s no authorship on the bookmarks and that’s intentional–Literary Activism gets noted at the bottom for the practical purpose of keeping tabs on the news in book censorship, but otherwise, the point here is to simply spread the word and spread it far. This isn’t about marketing or ties to a specific institution or organization. It’s about meeting the average reader right where they are.
Click through to read the entire newsletter because there is a lot of useful info there, but I wanted to make sure that the bookmarks and the link to download them were front and center here.
Print these and hand them out, but not just next week...ALL YEAR LONG. The library should be a place for intellectual freedom advocacy all year long. Jensen has made it easy for you to print and stock these bookmarks always. And get them into your online spaces so your supporters have access to them as well.
Just do more than make a display. Act. Speak out. Get your supporters engaged. We are past the time to do something but that doesn't;t mean we should give up.
Thanks again to Jensen for making these bookmarks.
31 Days of Horror will begin this week, I would like to get us ready here with some baby steps today by sharing the conversation between Alma Katsu and myself that People Magazine published yesterday.
In their conversation, the horror-lovers sat down to discuss exactly why horror has made its way onto readers' bookshelves worldwide, and how the genre has evolved over the last decade.
Yes, I was a part of this, but that is not the reason I am sharing it. I am posting it here because having this conversation about horror and its current best authors (not just King and Hill) in a mainstream magazine, with a huge reach, a place that does not only talk about books and reading, a place that is not "literary," all of this means horror is really entering the mainstream conversation. It's not just that more people are reading it, more people are talking about it.
By the way, we talk about Horror for teens and kids as well. So pass this on to your YS staff,
Too often we library workers who help leisure readers get too caught up in the weeds of the book world, only reading and checking the most bookish of resources as we try to stay up to date on the newest books and trends.
But here's the thing we need to remember, our readers are not looking at book specific sites for book info, rather, most of them are identifying titles from the places where they already are visiting and/or reading that also happen to have book coverage.
So listening to NPR, reading their local papers, watching morning news shows, and places like People Magazine-- which just had this list of their Best Books of June 2024.
Actually, People Magazine is the best example of today's reminder post. They have solid book coverage on their site and in their print magazine-- both of which are very popular with a wide swath of American readers.
People was one of my examples, but the point remains-- using the resources our readers are consulting in their daily lives and noting their books coverage will help you help them.
This is huge for Horror. We are having a conversation about the genre as it is RIGHT NOW. Not the old authors of the past. Not Stephen King. There is a vibrancy in the genre that people like Alma and myself know and we want to share it.
Getting this conversation into a mainstream-- non book specific-- publication means the conversation will spread outside of bookish circles this coming October. My book tour and the national coverage it is receiving (my NYPL event was listed in the NYT last week as well...gift link here) will continue the conversation.
That was always the goal of this book. To spotlight what horror is today and get the authors and the titles and the very best of horror right now out to as many people as possible. It is working. But I need your help. Please use this article to start your Horror displays now. Please use the 18 authors in my book and their 18 readlikes as the base of your displays. DO NOT put out Stephen King. Remember my rules about book displays-- we are here to show people the books they could not find without our help.
Library Journal is celebrating their 150th Birthday and they want all of us to help them celebrate by sharing your sure-bet reads. Form the landing page of the survey:
Library Journal is celebrating its 150th birthday in 2026. We invite you to celebrate with us by thinking about the books you love and helping us create a list of sure-bet titles to share with the LJ community of librarians and readers.
Feel free to share as many books as you like, across as many categories as you like. Just list them as they come to you. Order does not imply a ranking.
If you can only think of five sure-bet mysteries, list those. Got more than 20 romances? Feel free to include them all. Have no opinion about graphic novels? You can skip that category. Listened to it on audio and loved it? That counts too; please list it.
We define a “sure bet” as a book adored by readers of the genre or subject—a title that they think of as “a keeper” or the all-time great work of its kind, one that they might always have in their bag, in their car, or on their phone for reading emergencies. A sure bet is a book that librarians can reliably suggest to patrons looking for something great. It doesn’t matter how old or new the book is, as long as it’s still in print. Series installments are welcome too, no matter where the book falls in the series.
We hope you will have as much fun in completing this exercise as we will have in reading your responses.
Feel free to share this link with your own reading community, book club, and colleagues. We want to invite everyone to celebrate books and the wonderful roles they play in our lives.
My favorite thing about this survey is that they want genre titles. This is not a snobby best books of the last 150 years list. This is a true list of the books that we know work with a wide range of readers, especially genre readers. It is a list of the books we all love. I am obviously going to submit a bunch of horror, but I have books in every category to share. I know you do too.
We need to get on this. All of us. We suggest books to readers every day. We know what titles are beloved. And as they wrote above, share this with your patrons. LJ wants to make their birthday a celebration of books and the role they play in making our lives better.
And then sit back and wait while LJ does the work for you. They will post the sure bets lists by genre on their site later this year. You can turn those into lists on your website for your readers to find sure bets on their own or for you and your staff to use as a resource as you work with readers. You will never be stumped for a suggestion again. Every genre and even formats will be covered. And you will have a bounty of titles to make so many displays. I will be posting about the results at length as LJ releases the lists.
But no matter what you decide to do or not do with the results, just participate. You the readers of this blog are THE target audience here, both to share your insight and get the word out to your bookish community. The more people we ask, the more diverse the results we receive.
Again click here to participate. The survey is open until 9/28. You can go in and do it as many times as you want and add as many books as you want. It is literally a bookish dream come true.
Banned Books Week is coming October 5-11, 2025. Now is the time to prepare. Well, every day is the time to prepare because those who want to limit intellectual freedom are busy every single day.
But Banned Books Week is the one week of the year where all media outlets will be paying attention. There will be a blitz everywhere and your patrons will be hearing and reading about it. They will have questions and most will want to help us in our fight.
I am here to help you get ready with some things you may not know about and some practical advice.
Actually, I am to start with the practical advice and some "real talk" to deal with threats to intellectual freedom all year long. Lila Denning had this extremely helpful post-- How to Navigate Book Displays When You Have To Be Careful.
Please everyone read this. Denning works in Florida. She understands what all of us are dealing with and has still been able to make all of her displays reflect all voices.
You can use her advice for Banned Books Week as well.
Last night was my book release party at the La Grange Public Library. We had a big crowd to watch Cynthia Pelayo and I talk about my book and her essay.
You can view all of the photos here. You can also view my tour schedule with access to photos from past events and info about upcoming events here.
It was an awesome night filled with many friends and family. And so many librarians-- which of course I loved. Multiple former students from when I taught grad school were in the audience, the person who keeps my former book club humming along (and they are doing an awesome job at it), HWA Chicago Chapter members and more. Again, click through for the photos. Thanks to everyone who shared pics.
But that was yesterday. Today is a new day and I have a post that is both book promotion AND RA training. It's The Scares That Shaped Us Podcast, hosted by Matthew Jackson:
Every horror fan has scares that shaped them, those frights which crawled out of our closet or from under our bed and made us fans of things that go bump in the night. It’s a special relationship, and for people who create horror, it’s an often profound connection to imagination, a kickstart to creativity that made them into the weavers of fear we know today.
In each episode of The Scares That Shaped Us, host Matthew Jackson will interview a horror writer about a formative horror story that shaped who they are as creators. It can be a book, a short story, a film, an episode of TV, and everything in between. As long as it’s scary, we’re here to explore the special bond between creative minds and the stories that formed those minds.
Matthew Jackson is a writer and journalist who’s been covering film, books, TV, and beyond for more than 15 years. His work appears regularly on sites like SYFY WIRE, Paste Magazine, The AV Club, Cinapse, Vulture, Mental Floss, and more, and his fiction has appeared in Weird Tales. When he’s not writing he’s usually counting the days until Christmas, or watching a horror movie
While I hope you listen to my episode, I highly recommend you subscribe to this podcast in general because every episode is a 1 hour deep dive into an author with a book that has just come out, talking at length about another piece of horror media that shaped them.
The podcast is all appeal talk. You will learn so much about both the author and their book PLUS you get a long discussion about another book or movie or tv show that someone who writes horror loves.
Use the titles Jackson has already covered to make a display entitled something like "The Scares That Shaped Today's Horror Aurhors." Have a QR code to link people to the podcast. And then have your question to all patrons be-- What is the scary book that shaped you? What a great October display and interactive conversation starter.
Get the whole library community-- staff and patrons-- involved. Most libraries will just put out Horror books all October. But you....you can draw the community into a conversation about the genre and share the results.
Get started with The Scares That Shaped Us to build out the display. The breadth of titles there will inspire your patrons to engage with the question. Again click here to see how to ask everyone to participate online, in the building, and through your holds shelf.
Feel free to leave the scare that shaped you here in the comments to help others build their displays as well.
In the Bermuda Triangle with Sasquatch, Flesh Smoldering by John Langan
What You Can Learn from Horror: Don’t Run From Darkness; It’s Trying to Teach You a Lesson by Alma Katsu
Horror is Life: A Blood-soaked Love Letter by Gabino Iglesias
My Long Road to Horror by Tananarive Due
Monster Girl: How Horror Gave Me a Place to Belong by Jennifer McMahon
On the Amtrak, Heading Home by Josh Malerman
Why Horror? by Paul Tremblay (drawings by Emma Tremblay)
Why I Love Horror by Grady Hendrix
My Mother Was Margaret White by Cynthia Pelayo
Why I Am Horror by Clay McLeod Chapman
A Day in My Psychedelic World by Nuzo Onoh
Permission to Scream by Rachel Harrison
Horror Saved My Life by Victor LaValle
Tales From My Crypt by Mary SanGiovanni
Of Men and Monsters by David Demchuk
Why Horror by Stephen Graham Jones
You can click here for all of the wonderful blurbs by so many horror authors, including Silvia Moreno-Garcia whose words grace the cover and Daniel Kraus whose quote is on the back!
I will be celebrating Rosh Hashanah for most of the day today, but then after sundown we have a big party planned at the La Grange Public Library where I just recently retired as a trustee after 24 years of service to the taxpayers. It is in conversation with Cynthia Pelayo! Anderson's books is handling the sales of Why I Love Horror and will be donating 20% of those sales to the library. There is still room to join us if you are able.
For today's post here on the blog, in celebration of the book's release, I wanted to take a moment to go back to the early days of Why I Love Horror. Here is the post from when the book deal was announced back in May of 2024. In that post I write about how the idea began as part of my 31 Days of Horror blog-a-thon:
However, in 2017, I tried something new. I began an invite only series, inviting authors to write me a post with the prompt, “Why I Love Horror.” I give them no further direction other than a word limit (1,500 for the blog) and encouragement for them to share why they love this genre as a fan and creator.
What began very small has turned into a much heralded series with over 125 posts and counting. Authors eagerly await my invitations each year as I send them out in July and August, library workers celebrate the access they have received into the minds of authors, and I have been invited to curate larger conversations around this “Why I Love Horror” framework for libraries and publishers. The number of invited authors and posts has grown exponentially, and by 2023, my 31 Days of Horror blog series became more of a “Why I Love Horror” series that happened to post over the course of 31 Days.
Speaking of 31 Days of Horror, the 2025 version begins next week on the horror blog. And I have all new Why I Love Horror essays from authors you know well, others you have heard of, and some who will be new to you. As well as at least 16 books to give away, including finished copies of my book to end the month.
My book comes out tomorrow and as I get ready to let the world know why some of the genre's most popular authors love Horror, I am also cognizant of the fact that the release of this book is my chance to communicate to a larger audience what we do at our public libraries.
My essay to begin the book is all about what a Readers' Advisor is and how important the work we all do is. And, as expected, one of the questions I received at my first in person event for the book required me to talk about the definition of horror and how to find the right horror book for each reader.
I have been a Public Librarian since the summer of 2000, so a full 25 years, and this will come as no surprise to any of you, while the job has never been easy (or as easy as the general public seemed to think it was), the last 5 years have been beyond hard. We have become the public enemy to many.
There are many library workers fighting the good fight, losing their jobs, getting doxxed, etc... I am not alone in speaking out publicly for public libraries and librarianship. But there are not enough of us speaking out into the general media and communications landscape. We need to all start addressing how messed up it is that being a librarian is one of the US's most controversial jobs.
My contribution to this conversation is both my book and my willingness to start calling out supposed supporters about how little they have actual done to help us in every space I can. Click here for more by me on this topic.
Last week, librarian Katie Walsh, took their own very public stand with this essay in Slate-- "I’m a Librarian, Therapist, Personal Assistant, and First Responder. Moments Like This Make It All Worth It. It’s one of the most controversial jobs in the country, but I’m so glad it’s mine."
Please click through and read this essay. Not only is an excellent example of library workers advocating for themselves and helping to counter the negative images that some are trying to spread about us, but also, it all begins with a great RA conversation, one similar to ones you have had many times.
Use this link to see the landing page for Audio In Depth and access all of the starred audio reviews which have appeared in the magazine since the last "in depth" issue." And, if you scroll down on that page there is not only easy access to the March and June issues that have already been published this year, but also the March, June, September, and December roundups from 2024. It's all in one place.
And finally, to end the week, below are some pictures from my first book tour stop at Parnassus Books in Nashville with Alma Katsu and Rachel Harrison. And I got to introduce Rachel as a newly minted New York Times Best Selling author. PLAY NICE debuted at #12 this week! She is the 5th author in my book to appear on the list THIS YEAR!
Click here to see where else I am appearing this fall. Early 2026 stops are starting to be arranged as well.
Everyone at Parnassus will be allowed to buy (and have signed) Why I Love Horror even though it is not out for the general public until Tuesday. I am so excited that my son will get to be at this event as well, Big shout out to out to Greg Greene for helping to make this event happen and Parnassus events coordinator RJ for being an awesome human who organizes some great events for this store.
Maybe I will see you tonight, or somewhere on the road soon. Now to get back in the car and do the last half of the drive to Nashville. Look for a post tomorrow about audiobooks with bonus photos from tonight's event!
What I love about this list is how it crowd sources dozens of major publications' "Best Lists" from all over and totals them all up to see what the most popular "Best" titles are. It gives you a survey of the entire "Best" landscape in an easy snapshot. If you look at that post or use the LitHub tag for all of their ultimate lists you can get current and backlist lists that look at all the lists. While that is a lot of instances of the word list, you get what I mean. LitHub's "Ultimate Lists" are an excellent resource because by definition they are crowd sourced, but also because LitHub makes it so easy to get the current list and the last few year's of lists with a single tagged link.
That's a general PSA for all of their "Ultimate Lists," but right now I want to focus of the current 2025 Ultimate Fall Reading List.
Author Emily Temple "processed" 28 Fall reading lists and crunched the numbers. This is THE Fall reading list you need for your patrons because it is comprised of all the lists.
I feel like a broken record, but it bares repeating. Books do not have to be from this exact summer to be great summer reads. Any book can be on that list. There is no summer reading police. Get creative but use the marketing of "Summer Reading" to your advantage and draw readers to you.
This is also a great time to use my conversation starter to display posts (and handout with examples) to ask your staff and readers to share this favorite "Fall Reads." Note, I did not say, favorite Fall Reads out in 2025. Keep it broader. Find out what they have loved the most and you can not only make a display, but get some, in real time, feedback about what your patrons like to read in the Fall. And it makes for an easy, interactive display that SHOWS your patrons that you are listening to them.
Be creative and broad with your "Fall Reading" lists, suggestions, and displays. Include titles from year's past, include other books by the authors on this year's lists, include readalikes for these authors... You get my point. Be as open as possible.
Give people more options that what they see in that one list they saw on that one website. No one is going to "check your math," and be like, "Umm....what list told you this was a "best" Fall read." Of course not. They trust you to help them find the books they wouldn't find without you. They expect to find things at the library they wouldn't see other places. This is where we excel and leave a mark on those we assist with their leisure reading. Embrace it and go for it.
It may still be in the 70s in New York, but autumn, they assure me, approaches. This means it’s time for Literary Hub’s annual Ultimate Fall Reading List, in which (in case you’re new) I read all (or at least many) of the seasonal literary recommendation/anticipation/best of lists on the internet, and then collate them for you in a handy list-of-lists.
This season, I processed 28 lists, which collectively recommended a total of 466 books. 95 of these were included 3 times or more, and these I present to you in descending order of popularity. The list of list surveyed is, as ever, at the bottom. Have fun, and see you in the winter.
Click here to explore the listand don't forget to scroll to the bottom for linked access to each of the lists used to make this ultimate list. That list is a whole other cache of resources as well.
This week, PW released their Freedom to read issue. Please see the letter from Editorial Director John Segura and the ensuing links to the articles included. You can also click here to go directly to the page.
I really, really didn't want to write this letter. And it’s with a certain amount of dread clanging around in my head that I sit down at my desk this morning to do so. Nobody reading this needs to be told yet again that banning and suppressing books is at best unconstitutional and at worst unconscionable. Nobody reading this needs a reminder about the crucial role libraries play in communities large, small, red, blue, urban, and rural. And certainly nobody reading this needs a history lesson on what tends to happen after government censorship is normalized and weaponized.
But I do think it’s worth taking a minute to say thanks to the folks who are out there every day trying to extinguish these fires before they become infernos. So, for our second Freedom to Read Issue, we’re highlighting the amazing work being done in communities across the country, from the Diet Coke–drinking mom who a couple years ago cofounded the Texas Freedom to Read Project to the members of Penguin Random House’s Intellectual Freedom Taskforce, who led PRH to become the first American publisher to sue a school district. Yes, that’s the state of things: the country’s largest publisher has found itself in a spot where it needs to sue schools.
There’s a pervasive nastiness to the organized and well-funded opposition that the people profiled in these pages are up against. What five or six years ago were pockets of parents who mistook their desire to limit what their own kids had access to in schools and libraries as a mandate to dictate what every kid has access to in schools and libraries, now has the blessing and backing of the White House and the extended Project 2025 apparatus. None of this is actually being done to, ahem, protect the children. It’s a campaign to take the country back to the good ol’ days of 1863.
Imagine if they get what they want. Imagine if there’s no government funding for arts or humanities. Imagine if libraries become more or less propaganda depots where the catalogs are determined by sweaty, narrow-minded toads whose picture of how things should be is a whiter shade of Mayberry: Want to check out a copy of Beloved? Sorry, out of circulation. But we do have The Turner Diaries.
Slippery slope? Maybe. But think about what this country looked like just nine months ago. We are less than a year into this nightmare of an administration, and its war on empathy, education, and intelligence has notched a frightening number of victories.
Which is why resisting this creeping authoritarianism is absolutely vital today and will be tomorrow and, unfortunately, for years to come. At PW, we cover these stories every day, and I want to tip my hat to our news team, who have more than risen to the occasion. PW is also, once again, donating a portion of this issue’s proceeds to a right-to-read organization. This year we’ve chosen Unite Against Book Bans, an American Library Association initiative that mobilizes grassroots support across the country against government censorship efforts.
Like I said, I wish I didn’t have to write this letter. I wish we didn’t have to do this issue. But I am, if nothing else, glad we can put a spotlight on the people who could have just as easily not shown up at school board meetings, or not gone through the expense and ordeal of going to court to protect their constitutional rights. They chose, at no small peril, to not sit it out.
It’s great to see the publishing community is right there with them.
Librarians Without Borders: PW Talks with Kim A. Snyder The Librarians, Snyder’s documentary on combating book bans that is already a Sundance festival hit, will tour libraries, campuses, and cinemas across the U.S. and around the globe this fall.
It's LibraryReads day and that means four things here on RA for All
I post the list and tag it “Library Reads” so that you can easily pull up every single list with one click.
I can remind you that even though the newest list is always fun to see, it isthe older listswhere you can find AWESOME, sure bet suggestions for patrons that will be on your shelf to actually hand to them right now. The best thing about LibraryReads is the compound interest it is earning. We now have hundreds and hundreds of titles worth suggesting right at our fingertips throughthis archiveORthe sortable master list allowing you to mix and match however you want.
You have no excuse not to hand sell any LibraryReads titles because there is a book talk right there in the list in the form of the annotation one of your colleagues wrote for you. All you have to say to your patron is, “such and such library worker in blank state thought this was a great read,” and then you read what he or she said.
Every upcoming book now has at least 1 readalike that is available to hand out RIGHT NOW. Book talk the upcoming book, place a hold for it, and then hand out that readalike title for while they wait. If they need more titles before their hold comes in, use the readalike title to identify more readalike titles. And then keep repeating. Seriously, it is that easy to have happy, satisfied readers.
So get out there and suggest a good read to someone today. I don’t care what list or resource you use to find the suggestion, just start suggesting books.
Please rememberto click here for everything you need to know about how to participate.
Ingrid, a librarian in a cozy mountain town, has dated her boyfriend for eleven years. When her sister gets engaged, Ingrid's at an impasse. She and her boyfriend have nevermdated anyone else, so they decide to take a break and see other people. Ingrid hopes to finally get over her crush, Macon, but things get interesting in this slow-burn romance.
—Anna Louise Kallas, Durham County East Regional Library, NC
Ruth makes a big mistake by shoplifting from the religious craft store in her small town. Things quickly get messy and she's trapped and fighting for her life. The rest is a scary bloodbath with clever uses for craft supplies. The zealots are after Ruth and others they deem sinners (gay, atheists or just non-conforming). This quick read is very scary and super gory.
—Kimberly McGee, Lake Travis Community Library, Austin TX
NoveList read-alike: Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
The Keeper of Magical Things
Julie Leong
(Ace)
When a new depository is needed for minor magical objects, two seemingly very different women are chosen to lead the mission. Sent to a small depressed village, they develop an unexpected relationship and magic starts to happen. This was an easy read romance that will keep readers captivated.
—Ron Haislip-Hansberry, Springfield City Library, MA
NoveList read-alike: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
Red City
Marie Lu
(Tor Books)
Lu’s tale follows two young outsiders with a powerful connection who are brought up to wield both power and magic on opposing sides of a gang war. Both deeply emotional and electrifying, this will remind readers of Fonda Lee and Erin Morgenstern.
—Gregg Winsor, Johnson County Library, MO
NoveList read-alike: Silvercloak by L.K. Steven
The Women of Wild Hill
Kirsten Miller
(William Morrow)
Generations of women in the Duncan family have an important and magical legacy. Three of the latest generation are going to turn the tide against patriarchal men, reclaiming the planet for the Old One, and restoring Earth’s balance. Readers will find it hard to put down this magical and fascinating story.
—Judy G. Sebastian, Eastham Public Library, MA
NoveList read-alike: Strange Folk by Alli Dyer
Wreck
Catherine Newman
(Harper)
Rocky is a mom who feels everything to the maximum degree. Her grown children and her dad still occupy most of her waking life and when tragedy strikes she has to find a balance that will allow her to just breathe and be thankful for the life they have. Written with real emotions and much humor, many moms will relate to this followup to Sandwich.
—Linda Quinn, LibraryReads Ambassador, MA
NoveList read-alike: Small World by Laura Zigman
Bog Queen
Anna North
(Bloomsbury)
The body of a woman is unearthed in Northern Britain, in this intricate and engaging atmospheric thriller. Offering three female perspectives, that reveal to readers the inner-thoughts of a contemporary newly trained forensic anthropologist, a young druid healer from centuries past, and a voice from the wild peat moss bog. For lovers of People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks.
—Shirley Braunlich, Lawrence Public Library, KS
NoveList read-alike: Daughter of Black Lak e by Cathy Marie Buchanan
The Missing Pages
Alyson Richman
(Union Square & Co.)
Harry is tragically lost when the Titanic sinks, having gone back to his cabin to retrieve a treasured book. Devastated, his mother has the Harry Widener Memorial Library built at Harvard to honor his memory and to house his book collection. Years later, a young woman working at the library while dealing with her own devastating loss starts to notice strange ghostly events in and around the library. A hauntingly beautiful story.
—Beth Mills, New Rochelle Public Library, NY
NoveList read-alike: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by R.A. Dick
Remain: A Supernatural Love Story
Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan
(Random House)
Part romance, part ghost story, part murder mystery, this novel's chilling, yet heartfelt exploration of the bonds of family is written in the emotionally resonant style of Sparks and infused with Shyamalan’s signature suspense. This is a seemingly familiar tale with a haunting twist.
—Cathleen Clifford, Groton Public Library, CT
NoveList read-alike: The Shape of Night by Tess Gerritsen
Conform: A Novel
Ariel Sullivan
(Ballantine Books)
This debut is a fascinating look at a dystopian future based on a strict caste system that relies on fear and heavy indoctrination to maintain peace. Emmaline is being used as a pawn by both sides of a simmering rebellion but will she settle for this fate? Emmaline is a relatable protagonist and readers will eagerly await a sequel.
—Sara Pietrzak, Frederick County Public Library, MD
NoveList read-alike: Silver Elite by Dani Francis
Board Bonus picks:
Vampires at Sea
Lindsay Merbaum
(Creature Publishing)
Editors Note: Creature Publishing is going to be featured on RA for All: Horror this October including Merbaum and a giveaway of this book (and more).
Notable Nonfiction:
F*cked Up Fairy Tales: Sinful Cinderellas, Prince Alarmings, and Other Timeless Classics
The LibraryReads Hall of Fame designation honors authors who have had multiple titles appear on the monthly LibraryReads list since 2013. When their third title places on the list via library staff votes, the author moves into the Hall of Fame. Click here to see the Hall of Fame authors organized in alpha order. Please note, the current year's Hall of Fame lists are pulled out at the top of the page.
Becky Spratford [MLIS] is a Librarian in Illinois specializing in serving patrons ages 13 and up. She trains library staff all over the world on how to match books with readers through the local public library. She runs the critically acclaimed RA training blog RA for All. She writes reviews for Booklist and a Horror review column for Library Journal. Becky was a 24 year locally elected Library Trustee and a former Board member for both the Reaching Across Illinois Library System and the Illinois Library Association. Known for her work with Horror readers, Becky is the author of three text books for library workers, most recently, The Reader’s Advisory Guide to Horror, Third Edition [ALA Editions, 2021] and the recently released Why I Love Horror [Saga Press, 2025]. She is on the Shirley Jackson Award Advisory Board and is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, currently serving as the Association’s Secretary and Co-Chair of their Library Committee. You can follow Becky on Bluesky @raforall.bsky.social
