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While we’re well over halfway through the year now, autumn is a popular time to start digging out the horror novels on your TBR. Goodbye beach reads, hello haunting ones! So now is a perfect opportunity to check out the new horror books that are already out, so you can get your hands on them in time for peak horror reading season. Of course, we’re bound to see a lot more come out in the next few months, but that’s just another reason to check these out now....

Welcome to Brackford. Under normal circumstances I, the genial and deceptively doddering parson, would be at the train station to greet you and welcome you personally to our charming town. Alas, in the current climate, this letter will have to suffice. Brackford is a lovely village of 1,500 souls (though that number does have its peculiar little way of changing!). I think you’ll feel right at home among our fastidiously maintained gardens and horticulture, bustling local arts scene, and internationally renowned murder rate....

Except I couldn’t find any that dealt with single motherhood by choice — save one, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt’s In Her Own Sweet Time (the first edition of it, before it was updated). I remember emailing her to let her know how much I loved the book and was thinking about doing the same, and she emailed back with support and encouragement. Years later, we’d connect on Facebook through a mutual friend, shortly before I became a mother myself....

The romance seen in literary fiction also showcases unique love stories that change the way we think of relationships. Relationships are never easy-breezy, nor are they always fulfilling and happiness-inducing. Romance isn’t just the province of the pretty twentysomethings whose days after meeting the loves of their life suddenly become a bed of roses. Just like any other endeavor, romantic relationships take work. Preconceived notions about how relationships are supposed to be are debunked and instead, they are represented as they truly are....

It makes sense. In a world that seems somehow mired in chaos, romance novels provide the assurance of a happy ending while also offering everything from the frothiest gentle love story to epic emotional stakes on the way to that HEA. Being a romance reader is like visiting an amusement park: you might choose the lazy river scenic boat ride or the triple black diamond roller coaster of terror, but either way, the safety bar is securely fastened....

Each doll had her own clothing, accessories, furniture, and book series. Collecting all of it would have been very expensive, but I kept the doll and her items in pristine condition. If I’d been a couple of years younger, I wouldn’t have taken good care of the doll or been interested in the history yet. I had one American Girl doll with a bed and a few outfits, but I read all the books....

Libby Extras from OverDrive are here. It’s a new category of content with resources for continuing education, entertainment and more. Each unique digital experience is designed to immerse your library users and help you reach new audiences. I don’t mind, however, unleashing this stress onto other people. That’s why I created an escape room game for students here in the school library I manage. I use it during library orientations for eleven-year-old students, and I adapt it for older students as part of a library enrichment group....

But, the beauty of any TTRPG is that it can be played almost anywhere, with almost no equipment — or as many TTRPG gaming accessories as you choose. All you really need to play D&D is a book, a pencil, and some dice, and you can even do it all on your phone if you want to. Games can be played in person, over the internet, or even via the mail… although that would certainly make combat go slow!...

I love reading romances, and I enjoy writing them too. When it comes to finding people who actually want to read my writing, I lucked out with the delightful writing critique group I discovered at a Barnes and Noble in my town (shoutout to my writing crew!). We’ve been meeting twice a month for years now, and these fellow writers have become dear friends of mine. When we meet, we read aloud samples of our writing and then the group provides constructive feedback....

Finding books that center lesbian narratives can be difficult. They’re often rendered invisible and sold as something else. For example, I was thoroughly surprised when I picked up The Color Purple, expecting it to be just another book about a husband who beats his wife only to find that The Color Purple is definitely not that. The book is a lesbian love story, a reclamation for Black sisterhood, and an archive of the abuse that follows Black women....

This month I have four brand new small press books and one book published last year. These titles include memoirs and novels by authors from Canada, Argentina, and the U.S., with two books in translation. You’ll find family sagas, meditative accounts of personal experience, explorations of gender and sexuality, and a dive into the dark places of the human mind. I hope you find a book here you love!...

Community literacy is about bringing people together to improve society. According to one such organization, Decoda Literacy Solutions, “Community literacy involves the development of literacy and learning skills for any individual or group of individuals outside of the formal education system. It is learning that happens in the context of home and community, and it happens as a collective approach.” Furthermore, innovative community reading programs benefit everyone. The Georgia governor’s office says that “every dollar invested in literacy programs returns $30 to the community in the form of reduced recidivism, better public health, engaged parents, and knowledgeable workers....

However, teachers are not alone in their efforts to provide supports to students and families. Across the country, library media specialists are finding innovative ways to support virtual learning. From sharing digital resources to collaborating on instruction, school librarians are stepping up to meet this new challenge. According to the School Library Journal, “Librarians have never been more critical to the nation’s schools.” With their expertise, librarians can help teachers and students to navigate the abundance of digital content available....

My college is not a big one. We have a decent-sized library, though, with three floors of sprawling shelves of books. There are a few prominently placed shelves devoted to new “leisure reading.” These books are rotated out after a few months. I realized early on that the books that were rotated didn’t just disappear. But those floors upon floors of books intimidated me. Most of my classmates have abandoned our college library when it comes to finding what they want....

This makes sense—drawing, painting, running, and writing are all relatively low-cost activities that are easily self-directed and can be done with inexpensive materials, making it pretty ideal for kids, particularly those of low- and middle-income families. A musical inclination might be a more expensive hobby—pianos don’t grow on trees—but for authors not writing about the super-wealthy, there are often easy ways around this: an inherited instrument, a borrowed instrument, or a gifted instrument could give the main character the ability to dive into music....

I can’t help it. I’ve always felt like St. George was a bit of a twat. That said, it is time that dragons release themselves from the bonds of fantasy and roam free across genres as the universe intended. I recognize that according to the guidelines of the high fantasy genre, anything with dragons is, by nature, high fantasy. But ignore that for now, and let us imagine for several blissful minutes what it would be like if humankind’s obsession with dragons were to be realized across fiction and what it could do to improve, well....

Rinn has grown up with the Tea Dragons that inhabit their village, but stumbling across a real dragon turns out to be a different matter entirely! Aedhan is a young dragon who was appointed to protect the village but fell asleep in the forest eighty years ago. With the aid of Rinn’s adventuring uncle Erik and his partner Hesekiel, they investigate the mystery of his enchanted sleep, but Rinn’s real challenge is to help Aedhan come to terms with feeling that he cannot get back the time he has lost....

In some cases, I’ve just put my favourite lines and linked to the entire work. I hope you enjoy! I’ve done my best to avoid the more famous Victorian poems, so hopefully you’ll discover a new love. With the time period in mind it must be noted that poets of colour were unfortunately very thin on the ground. Let us know in the comments if you know of any poems by diverse Victorian writers!...

If you’ve ever questioned the logic of basing an entire identity around what you have between your legs, it’s time to embark on a daring escape outside of the binary box… Open your eyes to what it means to be a boy or a girl – and above and beyond! Within these pages, you get to choose which path to forge. Explore over one hundred different scenarios that embrace nearly every definition across the world, over history, and in the ever-widening realms of our imagination!...

I know the multiverse and crossover events can lead to some sticky situations in comics, wherein storylines get way too messy and confusing, but honestly, I love when creators are let loose and given the creative freedom to do what comics do best: imagine the unimaginable and play with form. Stories don’t always have to make sense to be fun. Let all the Spiders out of the Spider-Verse, I say!...