Elwin Cotman Wins a Whiting Award

Thu 17 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Elwin Cotman| Posted by: Gavin

Excellent news: Elwin Cotman is one of ten 2025 Whiting Award Winners. There’s a good story on it in Elwin’s hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Elwin has a novel coming from Scribner, The Age of Ignorance, as well as four collections of stories, including Dance on Saturday.

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Kathleen Jennings and Kij Johnson Redux

Wed 16 Apr 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Kathleen Jennings, Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling: Stories has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Award — “Australia’s premier speculative fiction award” — for Best Collection.

The cover for Kathleen’s next novel, Honeyeater, dropped and it is worth clicking on the link.

Also of note, Kathleen did the cover art and half-page pen-and-ink illustrations for Kij Johnson’s forthcoming RiverBank roleplaying game which is being crowdfunded right now on Backerkit and has more than doubled the original goal.

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LCRW Costs, They Go Up

Sun 30 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW, subscriptions| Posted by: Gavin

Damn my eyes. I have seen — and ignored for a year or two too many — spreadsheets such as no zinemaker should see. I have calculated numbers no right-thinking person should know. I have stared at the Sum of all Costs and my very soul trembles before them. In the long dark tea time of the zining afternoon when considering the Fiscal Cliff I run out of Excuses and Pure and Simple Reasons and decide This Must Not Go On. The zine? Yes. Shall I go hiking? No. Shall I hike the zine price? Frustratingly enough, yes.

The USPS costs have Increas’d ($2.31 to mail just 1 zine) and even the Very Paper the zine is printed upon is More Costly in 2025 than in 2024. Or 2023. Or in 2022. Or in 2022. Wait, I am stuck. Please imagine I typed “Or in Year-1” until I hit 1996 when paper was free due to the availability of the photocopier at my temp job. We pay writers but thruppence a word, unincreas’d for Some Years. If that is to increase, and if we are to continue to send out a zine once, maybe even twice in a year, then the Price must rise.

Before The Increase, here are links for those who have the energy to order or — for those with faith the USPS will still be here in a couple of years — subscribe.

 

Chocolate $400
Writers $1,200
Printing $950
Candles $3600
Cover art $100
someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my zine is dying

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Making Karen Russell Blush

Thu 27 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Alaya Dawn Johnson, Karen Russell| Posted by: Gavin

Karen Russell is out on tour with her new novel The Antidote wrote a great list of book recommendations for Elle. They format it so that each book is finishing the sentence “The book that . . .” and for this one the first answer was Kristen Arnett’s forthcoming novel Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One and the second part was Alaya’s story — linked below:

. . . has a sex scene that will make you blush:

Also, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawa’ii” from her stunning collection, Reconstruction, is one of my favorite short stories. It’s about a prison camp where humans are harvested by vampires. (I can imagine some readers might have a lively debate with me here about what qualifies as a sex scene.) “Blush” is too mild a verb for what happens when I reread it. I don’t know what verb to use for a horror-blush. It’s definitely more of a “run for your eternal life” flush than a dewy glow. More meaty red than Maybelline.<

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Nebula Award finalist: Jennifer Hudak’s, The Witch Trap

Wed 26 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Awards, Jennifer Hudak, LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

Sending our congratulations and sharing the joy that Jennifer Hudak’s story “The Witch Trap” from LCRW 48 is one of six fine finalists for the short story Nebula Award.

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Reverting Rights

Tue 25 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Angelica Gorodischer, Sue Burke, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin

This is to note that we’re reverting — by Angélica Gorodischer’s estate’s request — rights on two of the three of her books that we have in print: Kalpa Imperial (translated by Ursula K. Le Guin) and Prodigies (translated by Sue Burke). The contract for Trafalgar (translated by Amalia Gladhart), which I had already extended once, runs until March 2026. At that point I expect the estate will ask for those rights to be reverted, too.

This means our ebook edition will stop being available soon. The print editions will still be available at a few excellent stores — such as Alienated Majesty in Austin, TX, and Moon Palace in Minneapolis, MN — but bookshops will no longer be able to order them. We’ll have copies for the foreseeable future — I don’t like to run out so I have a good amount of stock on hand . . . ) which will be available here and in Book Moon.

We’ve loved publishing these books and helping to bring Angélica’s books to Anglophone readers and I am only sorry now not to be able to bring any more into print. But as a reader I’m very happy the estate is focused on getting more of Angélica’s books published here.

I expect I will have more posts along these lines this year as my condition hasn’t changed much since last year.

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Late March Shipping Update

Mon 24 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, limited editions| Posted by: Gavin

We’ve been working (as slowly as I ever do these days) with Maple Press on getting shipping re-started on our limited edition of Kelly’s novel The Book of Love and the good news is that it should begin again next week.

We have two Character Editions available — Maryanne and Caitlyn Hightower — along with the Lettered. The final count of the Numbered edition will end up being less than 500 copies.

Otherwise we’re continuing to ship LCRW from Book Moon and most Small Beer books from our distro, Consortium/Ingram in Jackson, TN. We’re all caught up with everything there — bar one new subscription which came in this morning, ha!

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Ayize @ Harvard

Mon 3 Mar 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, conferences| Posted by: Gavin

Ayize Jama-Everett will be at this Harvard conference on Wednesday and Thursday Psychedelics in Monotheistic Traditions: Sacramental Practice and Legal Recognition.

His film A Table of Our Own  is showing at Harvard Law School Room WCC 2004 on Wed. 3/5 @ 8pm & is free & open to the public.

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Free Sticker Templates

Mon 24 Feb 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Creative Commons, free, stickers| Posted by: Gavin

This Wednesday our newest batch of Read Books Punch Nazis square and bumpers stickers will arrive at Book Moon from Rockin’ Stickers. Also dropped the price of the square stickers from $2 to a single dollar. (Previously I’d ordered from Sticker Mule but I won’t be doing that again.)

We sell quite a lot of these stickers at Book Moon but should you be outside the US or need your own now you can download them.

I’m also adding some pdfs of NO NAZIS labels and stickers which are again free.

Our stickers are licensed under Creative Commons by 4.0 for personal and/or commercial use.

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Sheet of b&w “NO NAZIS” Avery 8164 labels, 6 per sheet:
(Also compatible with these labels: 15264, 32134, 48464, 48864, 5164, 5264, 55164, 5524, 55464, 58164, 6436, 8254, 8464, 8564, 95905, 95940.)

No Nazis Avery 8164 labels/stickers (9123 downloads )

Sheet of b&w “NO NAZIS” Avery 8160 labels, 30 per sheet:
(Also compatible with these labels: 15509, 15660, 15700, 15960, 16460, 16790, 18160, 18260, 18660, 22837, 28660, 38260, 45160, 48160, 48260, 48460, 48860, 48960, 5136, 5160, 5260, 55160, 5520, 55360, 5620, 5630, 5660, 58160, 58660, 5960, 6240, 6521, 6525, 6526, 6585, 80509, 8215, 8250, 8460, 85560, 8620, 8660, 88560, 8860, 8920, 95520, 95915, Presta 94200, Presta 97180.)

No Nazis Avery 8160 labels/stickers (9597 downloads )

Read Books Punch Nazis b&w 3″ square sticker:

Square Read Books Punch Nazis (9521 downloads )

Read Books Punch Nazis b&w bumper sticker:

Read Books Punch Nazis bumper sticker (9996 downloads )

No Nazis b&w square sticker

No Nazis square sticker (9469 downloads )

 

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Meal of Thorns Podcast on Fire Logic

Mon 17 Feb 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Benjamin Rosenbaum, Laurie J. Marks, podcast| Posted by: Gavin

I enjoyed listening to Benjamin Rosenbaum guest on the Ancillary Review of Books podcast with Jake Casella Brookins as they took a deep look at Fire Logic, the first book of Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series.

A Meal of Thorns 17 – FIRE LOGIC with Benjamin Rosenbaum

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NALM 7

Wed 12 Feb 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Nathan Ballingrud, reprinting!| Posted by: Gavin

Just got a notification from the printer that the seventh paperback printing of Nathan Ballingrud’s collection North American Lake Monsters is ready to ship and will be heading over to our distributor and from there out to bookstores all over.

I need to update the international edition list, too, as — happily — we have a couple more to add to this lisst:

Agave, Hungary. Edizioni Hypnos, Italy. MAG, Poland. Russia. Spain. Ithaki, Turkey.

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The Positive Side of Mail Theft

Mon 10 Feb 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW, Reviews| Posted by: Gavin

Over on Locus, Paula Guran’s column from the January issue of the magazine covers LCRW along with:

Nightmare 10/24
Uncanny 11/12-24
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 9/24
Reactor (10/2/24 – 11/20/24)

and she writes that “Four tales in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet #48 piqued [her] readerly interest.”

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“A wild mixture of Italo Calvino . . . Grace Paley . . . Fay Weldon . . . and Jorge Luis Borges . . . but no. . . . She isn’t like anybody.”

Wed 29 Jan 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller, Strange Horizons, Ursula K. Le Guin| Posted by: Gavin

I was going through Ursula K. Le Guin’s Words Are My Matter the other day and was caught (again) by this lovely dartboard-throwing description of Carol Emshwiller’s writing in Le Guin’s review of Ledoyt:

Most reviewers prefer pigeons that fit in holes and rabbits that redux. Emshwiller’s like a wild mixture of Italo Calvino (intellectual games) and Grace Paley (perfect honesty) and Fay Weldon (outrageous wit) and Jorge Luis Borges (pure luminosity), but no—her voice is perfectly her own. She isn’t like anybody. She’s different.
Before I get to Ledoyt (which is different) I want to talk a little about the other Emshwiller books (which are all different).

I had a half memory that it was online and ta da here it is on Strange Horizons along with a couple of extra footnotes.

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Read Books Punch Nazis

Tue 21 Jan 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Book Moon, T-shirts| Posted by: Gavin

I made a new thing today somewhat along the lines of things I’ve done before but, unlike this sentence, much clearer in what is being done!

For the last few years various bookshops (and many other groups) have run fundraisers and plain just sold t-shirts on Bonfire.com.

The advantages are the shirts are print on demand and include many sizes, colors, and styles. When we order Small Beer or Book Moon shirts, we have to guesstimate how many of each size and color. Sometimes I get it right, sometimes you know how this goes. More advantages: they ship worldwide and have a set up where the proceeds go directly to nonprofits.

The disadvantages are that the prices are high and 2/3+ of the price is just covering cost which leaves $6-10 for the seller and that we don’t get to work with our fab local printer.*

Yesterday while I was not watching TV and staying offline I decided I should try raising money for favorite nonprofits that support all the people who the meh government are going to try and step on.

So today I started a new Read Books Punch Nazis campaign on Bonfire and I’m trying to spread the word. There are new colors, new options (tank, hoodie, sweatshirt) as well as a couple of styles of T-shirts. Many of the options are 100% cotton as we reduce our plastic (including rayon/polyester blends) use. These first 100 shirts support CCATE, a lively and bighearted Philadelphia organization that we’ve supported for years. I’m open to suggestions (in the comments or by email) for more nonprofits to support in the future.

Delighted to be able to add something positive to the world in these cold dark times.

 

* Good news there, Ruth at the store tells me we need to reprint our own RBPNazis shirts, too.

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Shipping News

Thu 16 Jan 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Books are shipping from our distro, Consortium (albeit they are slowed down by winter storms). Zines and so on are going out slowly (due to me!) from Book Moon.

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Who Reads Lit Mags?

Fri 3 Jan 2025 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

tl;dr Jessica Dylan Miele.

Admittedly this is on Substack, which I generally skip due to their Nazi Bar problem, but everyone should see the cover of the Bennington Review. There may indeed be “lit mags that refuse to publish anything but conventional and uninspiring work” which might be an access problem as I’ve found there are lit mags for a wide range of tastes. Ok: Ninth Letter, Greensboro Review, A Public Space, American Short Fiction, Gooseberry Pie, One Story. Without having to think too hard there are half-a-dozen broad-ranging mags. If you want a much wider range, just click this Quimby’s link.

Anyway, love to see LCRW out there being read. Most of the stories in LCRW come in over the transom* and finding Dora Holland’s story and getting to publish it was a treat. Sending it out with chocolate bars is a hassle but, since I’m the chocolate sampler as well as the publisher, I can only blame myself.

* Piled into the overflow mail box at the office that Kelly or I clear out every now and then.

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Got Poems? Try Snakeskin

Thu 19 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Jessy Randall, poetry| Posted by: Gavin

Just received a note from frequent LCRW poetry (and sometimes fiction, too) contributor Jessy Randall who asked me to share this with You.

Jessy Randall will guest-edit the February 2025 issue of the long-lived online poetry magazine Snakeskin. The theme is SCIENCE FICTION. Send up to five unpublished poems about robots, other planets, Star Trek, imaginary technologies, utopian and dystopian futures, Octavia Butler, clones, Barbarella, Blade Runner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doctor Who, the singularity, Princess Leia, black holes, the uncanny valley, alien invasions, time travel, soylent green, Zaphod Beeblebrox, sentient microbes, and so on, to jessyrandall at yahoo.com. Put your poems in the body of the email, please – no attachments (unless it’s a visual poem or something that needs special formatting). Simultaneous submissions are fine. Deadline is January 1, 2025 and you can expect a response by mid-January.

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NY Mag: What’s Your Go-to Book to Gift Big Kids?

Wed 18 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Joan Aiken| Posted by: Gavin

Joan Aiken’s The Serial Garden received a lovely lift this week as writer and book editor Lauren LeBlanc chose it for New York Magazine’s feature What’s Your Go-to Book to Gift Big Kids?

“Told in stories, this is an ideal book to read aloud at bedtime for kids who are perhaps reluctant to commit to bigger novels.”

I recommend clicking through as it’s a very handy list of books. There are 2 from the d’Aulaires, a James Herriott(!), and I’d definitely recommend some of the graphic novels such as Cece Bell’s El Deafo among others. I’m very happy to see The Serial Garden still finding new readers.

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2024 Bestsellers So Far

Thu 12 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Bestsellers| Posted by: Gavin

Here are two versions of our 2024 bestsellers so far: the first is from NPD/Bookscan which captures between 50-70% of sales for our books. The second is Combined Net Sold Print Units from our distributor, Consortium — which means books shipped out minus books returned. The two lists are quite different! (Here’s 2023’s list.)

Thanks to all our authors and to every reader, librarian, bookseller, und so weiter who took a chance on some Small Beer fiction, slightly weird this year. We only published two books, Kathleen Jennings’s Kindling and we’re still slowly organizing the limited edition of The Book of Love. We’re also trying to ship out the new issue of LCRW which is directly related to how much time I spend on the couch.

If you’d like to order some books, we’d love to ship them out to you (with a bonus book for luck). Order here.

 

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Late Holiday Shipping Note

Thu 12 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., holidays, shipping| Posted by: Gavin

I forgot to post about holiday mailing dates. Our office is closed and orders are going out from either the Consortium warehouse or the fab people of Book Moon.

Media mail shipping is free. However, if you’d like pre-holiday arrival, please choose Priority Mail.

USPS Ground Advantage™ Service	Dec. 18
First-Class Mail	Dec. 18
Priority Mail	Dec. 19
Priority Mail Express	Dec. 21

And no matter where you are, Weightless Books is always open and has all our DRM-free ebooks.

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North American Lake Monsters hc sale

Mon 9 Dec 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., film, Nathan Ballingrud, sale| Posted by: Gavin

This month we’re celebrating the news of Nathan’s novel The Strange being picked up for film adaptation by taking 25% off the first hardcover edition of North American Lake Monsters — was $100, now $75.

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Limited Edition Now Available

Fri 29 Nov 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link| Posted by: Gavin

Going to have to make a better post about this but The Book of Love limited edition is now available in Character, Lettered, and Numbered editions.

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Book of Love, LCRW 49

Fri 22 Nov 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

If all goes well, we’re going to be picking up LCRW 49 from the printer next week and start shipping it out. Ever so slowly, as ever. I could not resist and spent a bit more for the color cover. There are many issues I’ve been very tempted to print in color but I am usually too stingy/aware of the economics of the zine for this but I see it as a little treat (my home culture!) for everyone concerned.

And, at last, the numbered edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love is now available on Book Moon’s site. Can’t wait for this to go out to people, too.

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Breathtakingly Slow Movement

Mon 18 Nov 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, limited editions| Posted by: Gavin

I’ve just added the somewhat breathtaking pricing on our forthcoming 4-volume limited edition of Kelly’s The Book of Love. At the end of the page I’ve pasted in how to get notified.

The Book of Love was just included in Time’s 100 Books of the Year and Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 of 2024. I’d planned on getting the book out earlier but it should be out soon. Everything Small Beer (or if it’s for me to do, then Book Moon, too) is slow now as I just run out of energy all the time. Publishing this book has been both fun and challenging. I doubt we’d have published it if I were well as we’d be too busy with other title. But this way at least we published two books this year and for this, unlike a regular trade edition, my molassesesque movements mattered less.

(We also have a few unsigned/numbered copies of the limited edition of Magic for Beginners. These are not part of the original edition and will not be signed on shipping.)

The books will be priced at $1,000 (Character), $600 (Lettered), and $225 (Numbered). The prices will rise to $1,200 (Character), $700 (Lettered), and $250 (Numbered) on January 1, 2025.

We ship within the USA. Canadian friends recommend Shippsy.

We will open up orders in two steps. First: the Character and Limited Editions to a password protected page on this website. Second: the Numbered Edition on the Book Moon website.

The order of sending out information/access will be:

1. Book of Love Ltd Ed Expression of Interest List
2. LCRW Subscribers
3. Small Beer newsletter
4. This and BKMN websites

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Newsletter and a request

Mon 4 Nov 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin

Sent out one of our infrequent newsletters with a few Small Beer updates but also this pre-US election request:

If you are eligible to vote in the USA, I hope you have already voted for Harris/Walz or have a plan to do so tomorrow.

If you are voting, please vote the whole ballot.

Sister District reported that Republican voters are more likely to vote the whole ballot than voters choosing the Democratic candidate.

If all the voters who chose Biden in 2020 had voted the whole ballot, the House and the Senate results would have been different(!).

Vote like your life and your friends’ lives and family’s lives and complete strangers lives depend on it.

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New LCRW on the Horizon

Mon 28 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., LCRW| Posted by: Gavin

LCRW 49 is nearing completion, although Kelly’s in Seattle today, so, no, it won’t be quite ready for a bit yet.

In the meantime, I’m emailing 10.1 million subscribers to see if they’ll renew — with a note that, hey, we appreciated that past subscription! Also of interest, we send a backlist title out with new or re-subscriptions.

Must admit it is kind of weird not to have any new books — not counting the limited edition of The Book of Love — since Kathleen’s collection, Kindling. What am I going to do next year? Monthly issues of the zine? (Ha. No.)

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1 Year of New Kij

Thu 24 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kij Johnson| Posted by: Gavin

It’s a dozen years since we published our first Kij Johnson collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, and I’m delighted to say that last month we received copies of the sixth printing.

Today is the one-year anniversary of Kij’s wide-ranging second collection, The Privilege of the Happy Ending. At the start of this month, she was at the Kansas Book Festival at Washburn University in Topeka where she was quoted as saying, “Sometimes you’re reading for story and sometimes you’re reading for art,” which is an especially good thought to hold while reading the new book.

Also, Phoebe Cramer, Publishers Weekly’s SFF, horror, and romance reviews editor chose it for PW Picks, a newsletter whose “best feature is its most personal: each week, our reviews editors single out the titles they’re most passionate about and excited for you to read.”

The Privilege of the Happy Ending
Kij Johnson. Small Beer, $18 trade paper (302p) ISBN 978-1-61873-211-8
Formal experimentation and fairy tale elements are like catnip to me, so Johnson’s latest collection was hard to resist. Featuring squirrel ghosts, squid girls, and sphinxes, these wild speculative shorts take the form of classic fables, modern bestiaries, and riddles told by crows.

Besides Kij’s Patreon, if you’d like to keep up you can now subscribe to her newsletter.

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Scary Books

Thu 17 Oct 2024 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Elizabeth Hand, horror, Isabel Yap, Jeffrey Ford, Mary Rickert, Nathan Ballingrud, October Country, Zen Cho| Posted by: Gavin

Every October I think, Darn it, should have posted about our scary books so instead of occasionally thinking that for the next two weeks here’s a skeleton’s handful of scary books all pretty much guaranteed to be a mistake to start reading after 10 p.m. (Although maybe I should have included Claire G. Coleman’s Terra Nullius which is terrifying in a completely different way.)

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