HALLOWEEN READS
Editor Paula Guran assembles a Who’s Who of twisted imaginations for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, including Stephen Graham Jones, Laird Barron, Caitlin R. Kiernan and Jeff VanderMeer. For a taste of the current dark side of literature, look no further.

Benjamin Percy brings his brand of literary horror to bear in a post-apocalyptic adventure inspired by Lewis and Clark in The Dead Lands. When a community of survivors runs low on water, a band of brave souls sets out across the harsh outside world for a rumored promised land.

H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t the only writer exploring the possibilities of cosmic horror in the ‘30s. Discover a lost great purveyor of the weird with The Rim of Morning, a reissue of two of William Sloane’s novels, which includes an introduction by Stephen King.

Long considered a master of existential horror, Thomas Ligotti is finally getting some mainstream recognition. Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe contains Ligotti’s first two story collections, which announced a new voice in horror that is equal parts Kafka and Lovecraft.

FICTION
Genre-crossing yarn spinner Joe R. Lansdale’s latest western, Paradise Sky, is shot-through with Lansdale’s trademark blend of colorful characters and Texas verve. This picaresque adventure follows the true story of African-American cowboy Nat Love, aka Deadwood Dick.

The existential crisis of having it all without knowing what you want plagues Alice Pearse in A Window Opens. Elisabeth Egan gets to the nitty gritty heart of bourgeoisie existence while keeping things light and airy.

Translating the charming Enchanted April to a modern setting, Brenda Bowen’s Enchanted August pays homage to a classic. Four unhappy strangers, thrown together in a small cottage in Maine, transform in the small ways that make a large impact on their lives.

A family saga with heart, strife and insight, Ann Packer does it again with The Children’s Crusade. Thrumming with life and brimming with insights, this novel holds up a mirror to American life.

A girl and her dog form the spine of Joseph Monninger’s Whippoorwill. If that doesn’t hook you, wait for the young, springtime love story to knock you off your tuckus.

Almost too enjoyable, Meg Mitchell Moore’s The Admissions skewers just about every detail of upwardly mobile suburban life. You’ll laugh until you cry.

Jonathan Franzen does it again with Purity. By does it again, I mean cements his prominence in American Fiction.

Charming and funny, J. Ryan Stradal’s debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, tells tales of church bake-offs, deer hunting season and other pleasures from the center of the country. With food as a backdrop, comfort and pleasure meld in perfect harmony.

One of our premiere literary fantasists, Stephen Millhauser returns with a new collection of stories, Voices in the Night. The Pulitzer winner’s prose is as sparkling as ever as he mixes uncanny takes on every day life and riffs on everyone from Buddha to Paul Bunyan.

China Miéville returns with his first for-adults work in some time with the story collection Three Moments of an Explosion. Miéville brings his trademark blend of hyper-intelligent, socially relevant and just plain weird visions of a phenomenon involving dead bodies and artifacts imbued with powers by their war-zone origins.

The power of human connection illuminates Leah Stewart’s entrancing The New Neighbor. Surprisingly suspenseful, this novel gets under your skin.

One of the year’s most talked about titles, Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies is the biography of a marriage. But, thrillingly, unlike any marriage you have read about before.

MUSIC
Dylan: Disc by Disc, by Jon Bream, examines the artist’s thirty-six official studio recordings with breathtaking precision. Musicians like, Questlove and Jason Isbell participate in conversations about every aspect of what many consider America’s greatest living songwriter.

CRIME
Fans of Gone Girl and Girl on a Train will love Ruth Ware’s gripping In a Dark, Dark Wood. Amnesia, a bachelorette party and alcohol fuel this twisty, suspense novel.

If you’re looking for a book to get lost in, look no futher than The Murderer’s Daughter. Jonathan Kellerman always delivers.

New to Michael Koryta, I had no idea what to expect. Good thing, because any expectations I would have had would never match up the sparkling, thrilling gem that is Last Words.

FOOD
If food is generally thought of as love, Jessica Fechtor’s Stir takes the adage even further, turning food into her savior. Struck with a brain aneurysm at twenty-eight, the author turns to cooking as therapy and companion, healing herself in the process.

PSYCHOLOGY
One of those books that immediately becomes a reference point, Andrew Solomon’s Far From the Tree “mines the eloquence of ordinary people facing extreme challenges.” With chapters exploring childhood autism, schizophrenia, deafness and much more, this book chronicling human divergence, holds a mirror up to every family.

MEMOIR
You might think, after the Wild juggernaut, that another story of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was unnecessary, you would be wrong. Aspen Matis’s take, Girl in the Woods, while – ahem!- treading much of the same ground, still manages to be moving and thrilling at the same time.

With six volumes in total, Karl Ove Knausgaard’s series of books entitled My Struggle may feel like a big commitment. And it is. But like many good things in life, this piercing set is worth it.

An anachronistic dream, like lighthousekeeping, sheepherding is an unlikely profession in the 21st century. Unlikely but persisting as James Rebanks tells it in The Shepherd’s Life, a true story of a rapidly fading way of living.

Jewel – Never Broken, recounts the pop singer’s interesting and unusual life. From homesteading in Alaska, to living in her car in San Diego, this troubadour often takes the road less traveled.