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Orange You Glad for Fiction
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Coffin Moon
by Keith Rosson
A Vietnam veteran and his adopted niece hunt—and are hunted by—the vampire that slaughtered their family.
It’s the winter of 1975, and Portland, Oregon, is all sleet and neon. Duane Minor is back home after a tour in Vietnam, a bartender just trying to stay sober; save his marriage with his wife, Heidi; and connect with his thirteen-year-old niece, Julia. Then a vampire walks into his bar and ruins his life. What’s left of their splintered family is united by only one desire: vengeance.
So begins a furious, frenzied pursuit across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. From grimy alleyways to desolate highways to snow-lashed plains, Minor and Julia are cast into the dark orbit of undead children, silver bullet casters, and the bevy of broken men transfixed by Varley’s ferocity. Everyone’s out for blood.
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Bad Bad Girl
by Gish Jen
An engrossing, blisteringly funny-sad autobiographical novel tracing a tumultuous mother-daughter relationship.
Gish’s mother—Loo Shu-hsin—is born in 1925 to a wealthy Shanghai family where girls are expected to behave and be quiet. Every act of disobedience prompts the same reproach: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” She gets sent to Catholic school, where she is baptized and re-named for St. Agnes (Aggie, for short). Aggie finds solace in books and soon announces her intention to pursue a Ph.D. in America. With the forces of Communist revolution on the horizon, she leaves—never to return.
In America, she and her husband, Chao-Pei set out to make a new life, have a son, and live in a small house in the suburbs. By the time Gish is born, her parents’ marriage is unraveling, and her mother, struggling to understand her strong-willed American daughter, is repeating the refrain that punctuated her own childhood: “Bad bad girl! You don’t know how to talk!” Spanning continents and generations, this is a rich, heartbreaking portrait of two fierce women locked in a complicated lifelong embrace.
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Crazy Spooky Love (Melody Bittersweet #1)
by Josie Silver
A plucky medium, her fame-chasing ex, and an infuriatingly handsome skeptic reporter make for a complicated love triangle—and that's before the ghosts get involved.
In the leafy, charming town of Chapelwick, the Bittersweet family has been a fixture on High Street for as long as anyone can remember. Their rambling black-and-white building houses all three generations of ghost-sensitive Bittersweet women and their business, Blithe Spirits. On her twenty-seventh birthday, Melody Bittersweet converts the disused back storeroom into her office and opens her own business: The Girls’ Ghostbusting Agency. It soon becomes clear that there’s a whole heap of unfinished business between the Scarborough brothers—including murder—and Melody isn’t the only one trying to unravel the mystery. Leo Dark, her rakish ex and business rival, is also on the case, along with the sarcastic and skeptical (and annoyingly good-looking) local reporter Fletcher Gunn.
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The Hitchhikers
by Chevy Stevens
The open road beckons. A chance for them to reconnect. Then they make a fatal mistake.
It’s the summer of 1976 and Alice and Tom set out on the remote Canadian highways in their new RV, hoping to heal their broken hearts after a devastating tragedy. They’ve planned the trip perfectly, taken care of every detail. Then they meet two young hitchhikers down on their luck and offer them a ride. But Simon and Jenny aren’t what they seem. Now Alice and Tom are trapped, prisoners in a deadly game, with nowhere to turn. As the tension builds, the lines blur, and the question becomes: What secrets are Jenny and Simon hiding? And who will live another day?
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Kill the Beast
by Serra Swift
The Witcher meets Howl’s Moving Castle in this debut original faerie tale of revenge, redemption, and friendship.
The night Lyssa Cadogan's brother was murdered by a faerie-made monster known as the Beast, she made a promise: she would find a way to destroy the immortal creature and avenge her brother’s death. For thirteen years, she has been hunting faeries and the abominations they created. But in all that time, the one Beast she is most desperate to find has never resurfaced. Until she meets Alderic Casimir de Laurent, a melodramatic dandy with a coin purse bigger than his brain. Somehow, he has found the monster’s lair, and―even more surprising―retrieved one of its claws. A claw Lyssa needs in order to forge a sword that can kill the Beast.
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The Book of Autumn
by Molly O'sullivan
A spellbinding debut about ambition, privilege, and ancient magic at an enchanted school tucked among the red mesas of the New Mexico desert.
Try as she might, anthropologist Marcella Gibbons can't escape the fact that she's a dimidium, one half of a formidable pair of Magicians, forever tied together to enable the other's powers. After a tumultuous final year at Seinford and Brown College of Agriculture (and Magic) in rural New Mexico, Cella felt more than a little uneasy about returning to the sun-drenched desert campus. She'd cut ties with her other half—the charming and rugged rancher Max Middlemore—and sworn off Magic, academia, and heartache for good. Until Max turns up at her door, grinning under his cowboy hat for one last favor. Something is shifting at her alma mater, something bigger than anyone understands.
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Witchy Stitching: 25 Patterns to Haunt Your House
by Meg Black
In this spooky guide, The Witchy Stitcher welcomes you to the dark (and sometimes unusual) corner of cross stitch.
Bewitch your home with patterns inspired by gothic art, Halloween curiosities, haunted holidays and witchy oddities. Featuring 25 projects for all abilities, new and seasoned stitchers are welcome here.
- Stitch your own spooky abode, or ghosts and ghouls to adorn your walls.
- Create a garden of carnivorous plants, or a vintage Halloween carnival.
- Build a gingerdead house for Creepmas and skeleton bunnies for Easterween.
With everything you need on how to get started--key material lists, easy-to-follow charts and all of Meg's stitching tricks--this grimoire is your essential stitchcraft companion.
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Women of the Fairy Tale Resistance: The Untold Stories of and By the Writers Behind the First Fairy Tales
by Jane Harrington
Long before The Brothers Grimm, there was a sisterhood of writers who defied the patriarchy and launched a literary craze with their feminist fairy tales.
In 17th century Paris, a group of women who called themselves conteuses (female storytellers) came together to weave the very first fairy tales. One of them, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, actually coined the term ‘fairy tale’ and some of these stories contain many familiar (and well-loved) elements that appear in tales like Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast. Unfortunately, these women, and their tales, have mostly been lost to history. Women of the Fairytale Resistance uncovers seven of these writer’s biographies—which are just as compelling as their fairy tales—and retells 12 of their original stories. Enchantingly designed with stunning full cover illustrations throughout, this unique and entertaining book will have you rethink everything you know about traditional fairy tales.
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To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes
by Rosie Grant
An inspiring collection of recipes preserved on gravestones, with fascinating interviews from the families celebrating the food legacies of their dearly departed.
For so many, food is a touching, nostalgic thing that brings us together. So much so that some families choose to remember their loved ones through the dishes they made by immortalizing their recipes on their gravestones. Rosie Grant, the creator behind @GhostlyArchive, has been searching out and documenting this interesting phenomenon. In To Die For, Rosie collects 40 recipes she’s found across the globe, carved into headstones or associated with a grave that has a story to share. Each recipe is accompanied by an interview with the remaining family, plus photography of the food, the gravestone, and any memorabilia the family wanted to share.
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The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 years of Black Women's Magic
by Lindsey Stewart
The epic story of conjure women, who, through a mix of spiritual beliefs, herbal rituals, and therapeutic remedies gave rise to the rich tapestry of American culture we see today.
Feminist philosopher, Lindsey Stewart, tells the stories of Negro Mammies of slavery; the Voodoo Queens and Blues Women of Reconstruction; and the Granny Midwives and textile weavers of the Jim Crow era. These women, in secrecy and subterfuge, courageously and devotedly continued their practices and worship for centuries and passed down their traditions. They combined ancestral magic and hyperlocal resources to respond to Black struggles in real time, forging a secret well of health and power hidden to their oppressors. As a result, conjure informs our lives in ways remarkable and ordinary—from traditional medicines that informed the creation of Vicks VapoRub, to the original magic of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (2023), and the true origins of the all-American classic blue jean.
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Screaming and Conjuring: The Resurrection and Unstoppable Rise of the Modern Horror Movie
by Clark Collis
Blockbuster box office. Critical acclaim and Oscars recognition. From Get Out and M3GAN to The Substance and Sinners, the horror genre is enjoying a glorious–and gory–golden age.
Screaming and Conjuring details the films and frights that led to this extraordinary renaissance, from the release of the groundbreaking Scream in 1996 to the arrival of 2013’s The Conjuring, which spawned a multi-billion dollar franchise. Written by entertainment journalist Clark Collis, this exhaustively researched book is the first in-depth examination of a remarkably fertile and influential time for big-screen horror. This comprehensive history covers the often difficult and tortuous making of all these films (and many more), giving readers the exclusive look into the productions that were often as intense as the horrifying sights that ended up on screen.
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The Story of Witches: Folklore, History, and Superstition
by Willow Winsham
The witch–malevolent, magical, multi-faceted–has walked among us for centuries.
Demonic and deviant or liberated and revered, in this enchantingly illustrated book, Willow Winsham explores the many guises of the witch across folklore, history and superstition. From Hekate to Baba Yaga, from shape-shifting hares to Macbeth, the book starts with a rich dive into the ideas of the witch in myth, legend and fairytale. Next follows an exploration of popular belief and superstition during the witch trials across Europe and the United States, one of the most tumultuous and bloody of our collective history. The last section brings us to more recent times, exploring how how the image and identity of the witch has been reclaimed and reinvented. Finally and most crucially, we are left with the vital question: what is the best way to approach our often terrible shared history of the witch?
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