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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....

From the award-winning author of If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo, comes a heart-wrenching and universal story of identity, first love, and fate. Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be—and if they’re meant to be together. We’re a sucker for a love story. All love stories, especially the ones we usually don’t get to hear about....

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....

With so much excellent—and thankfully, if slowly, more diverse—crime fiction to choose from, we want to know which works have kept you turning those pages lately. So tell us: what’s the best recent crime fiction you’ve read? Come share your top picks with us on Facebook and Twitter, then we’ll round up your answers and share a roundup with our Riot readers next week. Remember: we’re looking for recent(ish) releases; our TBRs are long enough as it is!...

Dick Grayson I know, he looks pretty good for 80+ especially considering he’s been fighting crime the majority of that time. I’m going to go into each Robin’s history in a separate post so rather than bore everyone by repeating myself, I’ll skip to saying, for the sake of accuracy, I’m hewing as close to current continuity as is convenient for my amusement and casting Dick as Nightwing. Brenton Thwaites is TV’s current Nightwing and I don’t hate it but I don’t love it either....

I know. Those who don’t like this season are wondering how there are perfect spooky bookmarks for them, but I promise: black cats and cute ghosties are included in this roundup to offer up something sweet and fun and seasonal without getting too scary (and for those who want scares, you know those are here, too). Included are downloadable spooky bookmarks, as well as those which will be mailed. I’ve noted which are immediately accessible for those seeking their seasonal bookmarks ASAP....

I mean, think about it. Every other method of travel has a governing body of some kind to make sure people get where they’re going as safely as they can. There are so many rules for driving, they have whole books full of them! Pilots train and train, laws are enacted, and vessels have regulations before sailing on the high seas. Are these systems perfect? Of course not. But, in concept, they’re there to regulate people’s behavior and try to keep chaos at bay....

Hi mystery fans! I’ve got two very different reads for you this week, but both star women fed up and fighting back. He’s not only already following her and obsessed with her, but after witnessing an act that he filmed, he decides to blackmail Delilah into dating him. Cornered and scared, she feels she has no choice but to lie to her best friend and mom and go along with the charade of dating Logan....

Sarah J. Maas’s #1 New York Times bestselling Crescent City series begins with House of Earth and Blood, introducing half-Fae and half-human Bryce Quinlan as she seeks revenge in a modern fantasy world of magic, danger, and searing romance. With unforgettable characters, sizzling romance, and page-turning suspense, this richly inventive new fantasy series delves into the heartache of loss, the price of freedom—and the power of love. I first remember being swept away by a steamy romantic fantasy series when I read Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey....

Charlaine Harris is back! The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series (the books that inspired HBO’s True Blood) has an all-new series that fans new and old will adore. Perfect for readers of alternate history and weird westerns, A LONGER FALL is set in a world where Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated, and follows gunslinger Lizbeth Rose in the fractured countries and territories that were once the United States of America....

Having said that, as a teacher who used to work with kids age 13–18, I believe that we should assign more contemporary books and fewer classics to our students. For the record: I’m not advocating to eliminate all classics from the school curriculum. Far from it. But I do believe that they should be rationed, and we should be working with contemporary books far more often than we do now....

It’s not yet known in what order the novels will be adapted. There are 41 novels to choose from after all, and the reading order depends on the reader. According to Variety, the adaptations will remain “absolutely faithful” to the source text. After BBC’s The Watch, which received a lot of criticism for how much the story was changed, this is a welcome bit of news. Unlike with The Watch adaptation, Narrativia will have an active hand in creating these stories, so we can breathe easy....

I come from a large family of readers, so it was no surprise when my Nana told me she was cleaning out her bookshelves and needed me to come over and claim a large box of her old books. I was about 12 at the time and had just started reading adult books. My reading tastes were nebulous then, and I didn’t have a preferred genre. I started with my mother’s mystery and horror collection....

When I’m looking for an audiobook, I generally seek something in the fantasy or cozy mystery realm; I am looking for a book I can listen to with most of my attention while I do other things like chores, commute, or paint. I tend to look for fantasy audiobooks in particular, since they often come as a series and I have loved a long, drawn-out story since forever. (Despite neither being a fantasy series, I blame both Sweet Valley High and The Babysitters Club....

Dolly grew up surrounded by music and believing that although they had no money, they could not be poor when they had so much love. She wrote her song “Coat of Many Colors” about that very sentiment, telling the story of the coat her mother sewed for her from rags. Years later the song lyrics were illustrated by Brooke Boynton Hughes as the lovely picture book Coat of Many Colors....

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (freshman year) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (senior year) Oh, and we read a Shakespeare each year. If memory serves correctly, it went Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, and finally Macbeth. Toss in a cursory reading in English class of A Midsummer Night’s Dream because the theatre department produced it that year, and you’ve got an approximate list of the reading required to graduate from my high school....

Some are from the perspective of cats, others are about cats, and they’re all delightful. Most of them are comics because, well, who wouldn’t want to look at cats while reading about cats? Funny Cat Books Cat vs Human Fairy Tails by Yasmine Surovec It’s fairytales, but replace the humans with cats! Sleeping Beauty’s true love’s first kiss comes from a cat, Rapunzel’s prince rescues his cats, etc. Yamine Surovec adds contemporary snark to these classic tales turned furry, and it’s a delight....

The novel skillfully conveys the complexities of relationships, including platonic friendships and unrequited romantic attraction. Some historical fiction books have anachronistic characters that seem progressive enough for the 21st century; others make all their characters equally prejudiced. Perry avoids both extremes. Ransome is inquisitive and less sexist than the other male characters. The town is filled with rumors of a mysterious beast called the Essex Serpent. Whenever animals or people go missing, townspeople suspect that the beast has devoured it....

Dime novels in America began to appear around the early 1860s, and their cheap, booklet-like composition made the act of owning books more accessible to a broader range of people. At a cost of 5–15¢ each, reading wasn’t just for the aristocracy anymore. The price helped the books into the hands of the working class; before this, regular books sold for $1–1.50, which was completely unaffordable for them. Their pages were filled with formulaic-if-enthralling tales of rollicking adventures....

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Which is, sure, a solid statement, I guess. A little grim. But let’s unpack it, because there’s more going on in this line than is obvious at first glance. To pick up on it, you have to know a bit about Russian culture in the 1870s and earlier, and frankly, I wasn’t born yet. For those who haven’t read this 800-plus page whopper, let’s start with a quick recap....