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Happy Friday, shipmates! It’s Alex, and here’s new releases and part two of my promised self-indulgent week. This is also the last newsletter I’ll be writing for you; changes are coming to Book Riot, and they’ve got some exciting plans for a new format for the newsletter, so I decided this was a good time for me to bow out. It’s been a delight and a privilege to work with the awesome editorial staff (love you, Vanessa, Sharifah, and Danika) and to share my love of books with you all out there on the internet. I can’t wait to see where Book Riot goes next (if only as a reader) and I just want to say thank you. Thank you to Book Riot; thank you to you readers out there. It’s been a fun ride, and I hope I’ll see you around. You can still find me as @katsudon on Bluesky, and you can find my books under the author names Alex Acks and Alex Wells.
Stay safe out there, space pirates. I’ll see you out among the stars.
Bookish Goods
500 Piece Halloween Puzzle by wildisbeautifultoo
I love that this picture includes both a black cat and a skeletal cat — and that the witch whose library this is kept her shelf so well organized. $39
New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Releases Out This Week
The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s by Hanna Alkaf
St. Bernadette’s is a school beyond elite, a place girls fight to attend, and, in so doing, prove they are among the best and brightest. Then, one day, a student begins to scream in the middle of class for absolutely no discernible reason. She is only the first; this scream is somehow contagious, and soon sixteen more girls are swept into screaming hysteria. Two girls, Khadijah and Rachel, have their own secrets and scars, but it falls to them to dig into the school’s dark history in a quest for the source of the screams. What they find has been waiting for a long time…and hungering all the while.
The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry
Once, it was words that held back the monsters, that formed borders, that kept ghosts at bay. When the words disappeared, the world descended into frightened chaos. Committees were formed to try to bring order to the world once more, to rebuild boundaries and restrain monsters. An unnamed courier that supports the Names Committee tries to deliver new words to a world that regards her with suspicion because she lacks a name. But when the named begin being attacked by monsters, she must seek out both her sister and the truth of her past.
For a more comprehensive list of new releases, check out our New Books newsletter.
My Favorite SFF Reads of the Year So Far
As promised, here’s another self-indulgent set of recommendations for you: two books that I absolutely devoured this year and want to personally recommend!
A Crane Among Wolves by June Hur
I think June Hur might be the only one writing this particular subgenre of pre-1800s Korean historical mystery-with-a-romance, which means I have read every book she’s written and am watching like a hawk for the next one she releases. In this one, the daughter of a disgraced and executed nobleman is trying to rescue her sister from a tyrannical and evil king, and in the process must solve a murder and get involved a coup being run by a prince who lives under a prophecy of doom. I also unabashedly recommend her book The Red Palace, in which the main female character is a nurse in the royal palace.
The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste
This novel is one-part supernatural thriller, one-part ghost story, and it’s just really stuck with me. Twenty years ago, a block of homes in a seemingly random suburb disappeared, and only three residents survived, though the reason for their escape has been a closely guarded secret that none of them speak of. They’ve all been damaged by the experience of losing their homes and families, and have coped…mostly poorly. Talitha goes back to Velkwood after being offered a pile of money she desperately needs by a researcher, and begins the process of facing the past and finding answers that she may already know but doesn’t want to admit.
See you, space pirates. If you’d like to know more about my secret plans to dominate the seas and skies, you can catch me over at my personal site.
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