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So what do you get someone that is a fan of D&D, especially if you don’t possess a lot of knowledge on the topic? It can be tricky, because the campaign books can be expensive, and picky players or dungeon masters might not be interested in campaigns that are placed within a specific world or setting. In my experience, it’s best to avoid those kinds of D&D gifts, because although they are a huge amount of fun, they are also a huge amount of work for the dungeon master....

Finna by Nino Cipri What if a wormhole to another dimension opened up in an IKEA-esque big box store? What if two employees had to follow a lost elderly customer through the portal? (Budget cuts and customers come first!) What if the two employees, one queer and one nonbinary, used to be a couple and just broke up? Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott Elliott’s latest epic, the first in a new series, is a deftly weaved space opera with bisexual, gay, and lesbian main characters....

Theatre is a collaborative art, with performers and technicians of every age, race, and gender working on shows. However, diversity in source material is sorely lacking. This list features mostly cis white male authors. Their stories are known, but that doesn’t mean they’re the only way to tell a story. In compiling this list, I also sought out lyricists and composers of color who helped bring these stories to new life....

On the day that Minister Peters boards a train from South Carolina heading north, he has nothing left but ghosts: the ghost of his murdered wife, the ghost of his drowned daughter, the ghosts of his father and his grandmother and the people who disappeared from his town without trace or explanation. In the cramped car, Minister finds himself in close quarters with three passengers also joining the exodus from the South—people seeking a new life, whose motives, declared or otherwise, will change Minister’s life with devastating consequences....

Each and every one of them is powerful. Daylight hours are dwindling and autumn is hitting its stride. What genre could be better for the coming darkness than poetry? These ten recent books by Asian American poets will light up your bookshelf. Want to read more books by Asian American authors? Here are some posts to help you on your way! 21 Must-Read Books for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month 2020 Asian Pacific American Award for Literature Winners Announced 20 Best Asian American YA Books to Read in 2020 5 Great Books for Asian American and Pacific Islander Month

A gorgeously illustrated collection of twelve original stories by the New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood and The Night Country. Journey into the Hinterland, a brutal and beautiful world where a young woman spends a night with Death, brides are wed to a mysterious house in the trees, and an enchantress is killed twice—and still lives. Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans alike, Tales from the Hinterland will include gorgeous illustrations by Jim Tierney, foil stamping, two-color interior printing, and two-color printed endpapers....

You can’t escape the truth. It runs through your veins. New from Rory Power, author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a feverishly twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery–until she decides to return to her mother’s hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself. Start reading Burn Our Bodies Down now! Sounds like a pretty good plan to me!...

Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways. A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion’s biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend’s New York City mansion. This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name....

The acclaimed author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower returns with an epic work of literary horror. Single mother Kate and her son Christopher think they’ve finally found a place to settle down: the small community of Mill Grove. But then Christopher vanishes for six awful days. Finally Christopher emerges from the woods at the edge of town, unharmed but not unchanged. There’s a voice in his head only he can hear, with a mission only he can complete: Build a tree house in the woods by Christmas, or his mother and everyone in the town will never be the same....

But there is still a huge literary tradition in the Southwest region of the United States, and here are the books you should read either about or taking place there. Note: There is, amazingly, no crossover with this list of books about the American West. Unreal City: Las Vegas, Black Mesa, and the Fate of the West by Judith Nies The King and Queen of Comezon by Denise Chávez The Old Man’s Love Story by Rudolfo Anaya Sunland by Don Waters The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge The Guardians by Ana Castillo Changing Light by Nora Gallagher The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X....

So how did I choose this list? Well, it’s certainly not about raw power, though the villains on this list are not without power. For me, it’s about how compelling they are as characters and what they bring out in the heroes they face off against. Any villain can throw a punch or fire a gun, but do they get inside the heads of our heroes? Do they personify the flaws and foibles of our heroic protagonists?...

Beware of reading these books in public, because you might catch some weird looks. Although crying over a book in front of strangers isn’t always a bad thing. I finished A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara on a plane. This book is so emotionally crushing that it’s been called trauma porn, and you better believe I was downright sobbing at 30,000 feet. But the flight attendant either thought I was really going through something or had read A Little Life herself, because she gave me free drinks for the duration of the flight....

Twin sisters Sunshine and Margot are as different as chalk and cheese, but what they do have in common is a complete lack of luck when it comes to love. Emotionally stunted by a mother who dropped everything to follow boyfriend after boyfriend, the sisters have ever only had each other for support and to share a pint of post-heartache ice cream. When Margot, an etiquette specialist, is hired to work with Bianca, an icon from Hollywood’s Golden Age with romantic entanglements of her own, she and Sunshine become the daughters she never had, and their friendship teaches them how to embrace the quirks that make them unique, and how to demand the love they deserve just as they are....

My children, 6 and 8, are scaredy cats. I’m saving Lenore for when they’re older and not freaked out by the existence of a room in people’s houses called a basement. “It’s a scary word, Mom, baaassseeeemeeent” says DS, 8, going all Eastern European Count Dracul on the pronunciation like he’s from Transylvania. They like small thrills. Wacky pumpkins. Silly cats. Dark and stormy nights, and rat-a-tat-tatting on the chamber door, but not too dark and stormy, not too much rat-a-tat-tatting....

What are space horror books? Space horror books are a little subset of sci-fi horror, but where as sci-fi horror can take place here on Mother Earth, space horror takes place out there, beyond the ordinary. If you want to get really picky you could claim that space horror books only count as space horror if they take place in the vacuum of, you guessed it, space. But one of the best parts of space exploration is the possibility of strange new planets, and unknown life forms....

I adventured through many a bookstore, but was frustrated. I hadn’t done as much research as I would have liked to do. I’d only brought one book with me, and I hadn’t thought through what to buy next. I’d read nonfiction before I left, but little fiction. I’d done all my research too late. I tried to find some fiction on the shelves last minute before I left, but couldn’t find the right titles....

It’s gotten to the point where as soon as a married couple is introduced in a book, I immediately start examining their interactions with every other character they come across, wondering who they’re going to eventually wind up cheating with. I get the age-worn fiction maxim that “only trouble is interesting” but seriously, can we be a little more creative with said trouble? I also get that adultery as a theme is as old as fiction itself....

If you look for these elements in your favorite books, this list of the best mystery romance books is a great place to find your next read. Here, I’ve rounded up 15 of the best books that feature both strong mystery and romantic elements. Some of the novels on this list are mystery novels with strong romantic subplots, while others are romance novels with mystery elements. Also included are novels with a mystery hook and romantic subplot that also include elements from other genres like fantasy....

In Daevabad, djinn summon flames with the snap of a finger, blood can be dangerous as any spell, and a clever con artist from Cairo will alter the fate of a kingdom in the thrilling sequel to THE CITY OF BRASS. As Nahri carefully navigates life in the dangerous royal court, Ali has been exiled and must rely on the frightening abilities gifted to him by unpredictable spirits in order to survive....

Lucky for you, if you feel the same, I’ve already done the work of finding them for you. While I can’t exactly promise a list of WLW timeslip romcoms — that would be wild — I have found 15 books like One Last Stop that feature queer romance you won’t want to put down. There are girls kissing girls, queer found families, and lots of laughs in these 15 One Last Stop read-alikes....