In the early 1990s, I was an editor at Wired. It was an exciting time because the internet was new to most people. My colleagues were young, creative, curious, and smart, but two of them stood out: Gary Wolf and June Cohen. — Read the rest
The post Gary Wolf and June Cohen on cold plunges, self-tracking, and the science of ancient practices appeared first on Boing Boing.
JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine are veterans of a string of hard-fought unionization drives at tech workplaces that started with some astounding successes but ran up against ferocious resistance in the second Trump term; their book about tech labor, Against Tech Oligarchy, is a superb analysis of the challenges and potential for tech labor organizing:
https://againsttecholigarchy.com/
For decades, tech workers enjoyed extraordinary power, despite the fact that virtually no tech workers were in unions. That's because tech workers were both extremely valuable to their employers (each engineer hired by a Silicon Valley firm added about $1m to the company's bottom line) and extremely scarce.
This won tech workers very favorable working conditions, high compensation, and a great deal of control over their employers' products (because if a worker refused to work on a project, it was hard to find someone else to do the work). What's more, there has always been a sizable cohort of tech workers whose own lives were profoundly improved by access to digital networks and wanted more than anything to distribute those benefits to everyone else. I call these workers "Tron-pilled," because they fought for the user:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/11/obvious-terrible-ideas/#bayesian-terrorism
During the era of tech worker scarcity, few tech workers saw themselves as workers at all – rather, the tech worker's self-conception was as an entrepreneur in waiting, a temporarily embarrassed founder. Tech bosses played on this perception, promoting the idea of tech workers and managers as peers and/or family members. Tech CEOs affected hoodies and jeans and hosted company-wide meetings where they allowed engineers to pepper them with impertinent questions about the company's technical and commercial direction.
But scarcity-based power only lasts until supply catches up with demand. As the number of workers outstripped the number of jobs, bosses showed their true colors. That's what happened at Kickstarter, when one of the bosses forced out his co-founders and declared himself CEO and proceeded to override the decisions of the company's Trust and Safety team. This sparked one of tech's first unionization drives, and it was a bitter fight, with management pulling out every dirty tactic in the union-busting playbook:
https://kickstarterunited.org/oral-history/
The labor militancy at Kickstarter United wasn't an isolated incident. Workers at much bigger companies like Google and Microsoft had a long tradition of pushing back against management through internal channels, open letters, and, starting in 2018, mass walkouts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Google_walkouts
But post-Trump, bosses at these companies were much less willing to countenance dissent, and waves of vicious retaliation and reprisals radicalized many workers at these companies, driving them to more traditional, organized forms of labor activism. At the same time, workers at smaller, "mission-driven" shops like Bandcamp were inspired by the success of Kickstarter United and they started their own drives. All this attracted the interest of the "internationals" – big, established unions like the Communications Workers of America – who trained union organizers at all kinds of tech shops and started laying the groundwork for traditional union drives.
Most of Against Tech Oligarchy tells the story of these drives in a gripping you-are-there style (it helps that both of the authors are veterans of several of these campaigns). The stakes got much higher during the pandemic, of course, as tech came to play a more central role in the lives of hundreds of millions of locked-down workers, and as the tech companies themselves went on uncontrolled hiring sprees, putting workers on the payroll without any duties or responsibilities, often just to ensure that a rival company couldn't hire them.
The pandemic also prompted many tech bosses to express far more worker-hostile sentiments than they'd ever let slip in public before. Fully remote workforces both frustrated tech bosses and also significantly reduced the opportunities for in-person labor organizing. All of this built to a series of rising crescendos, such as Musk's Twitter takeover and mass layoffs, and Israel's tech-fueled genocide in Gaza. Confrontations between tech workers and bosses grew more bitter and direct, even as solidarity between white-collar tech workers and their blue-collar peers (notably Amazon warehouse workers) increased.
If all Against Tech Oligarchy did was lay out the cut-and-thrust of these labor struggles during these momentous years, it would be worth the price of admission. But it's in the final chapters that the book really distinguishes itself, because it's here that the authors embark on a pitiless postmortem of their own failed campaigns and the failures of their peers, and ask themselves what it will take to unionize tech workers.
They start with the observation that most American union organizing is built around maintaining "labor peace" (by swiftly moving to recognition and a contract) but that tech bosses are ready to wage "labor war" (through illegal union-busting and retaliation). A labor peace strategy avoids costly and dangerous risks to established unions, such as decertification of locals and expensive and bruising court battles. But for tech bosses, labor war pays off, because their workforce is transient, fragmented, and skeptical of the very idea that they are workers. They have little to no experience with unions and can barely imagine how a union might improve their working lives.
The traditional labor playbook calls for workers to quietly build their power, taking no overt action while conducting a series of personal, one-to-one conversations that contribute to an eventual quorum of workers that's large enough to win a unionization vote. This strategy is like building a bonfire, where the pieces of fuel are piled one atop the other, but not lit until the pile is done.
But in a tech shop where workers turn over frequently and work in isolated teams, often from home, this strategy fails. Workers who have been won to the union side leave or grow demoralized in their isolation. Reaching new workers is difficult, and since the whole union drive occurs in secret, new workers don't know to reach out to organizers in their shops.
For Tan and Redwine, this fact militates for a strategy that revives some of the pre-labor activism of tech workers, noisy public/private fights whenever product decisions and management conduct violate some mix of worker rights and workers' values. They see this as a way to build momentum within a shop, bringing workers off the sidelines and giving organizers chances to bring those workers into a sustained, structured labor drive.
Tan and Redwine see tech worker organizing as the frontrunners of an age of new labor militancy and labor war, of the sort that pre-dated the labor peace that arose after the passage of the National Labor Relations Act. That labor peace was the result of bosses learning that hardball tactics would be met with equally hardcore responses.
This is especially important for tech workers, whose strikes cannot inflict the same pain on their bosses as earlier industrial workers' strikes did. Digital systems are designed to operate themselves after they are built, so when the workers involved in those systems withdraw their labor, the systems continue to run, often for a very long time, before needing maintenance (this is also the lesson of Musk's mass layoffs at Twitter).
Tech bosses have metabolized this lesson, and they are increasingly willing to wage all-out war at the first sign of labor unrest, with waves of retaliatory firings. These bosses have figured out devilish tactics for constructive dismissal, like the CEO of Mapbox, who retaliated against union supporters by targeting them with "return to office" mandates that forced them to report in person to offices that were in distant states. This prompted many of these workers to quit, which spared Mapbox from even paying them a severance package.
Against this backdrop, strikes need to be seen not as a way to bring the business operations to a halt, but rather as a way to galvanize workers and bring them into the union drive. As New York Times Tech Guild organizer John Cruickshank put it, Action builds capacity for action.
This is the ethos of the Microsoft workers who have campaigned tirelessly to halt the company's participation in the genocide in Gaza. They barricaded themselves in executives' offices, livestreaming the confrontation; they disrupted Microsoft's livecast 50th anniversary celebration; and they paddled a flotilla of protest kayaks outside of top Microsoft executives' waterfront homes. All of this paid off, with Microsoft halting sales of its tools to a particularly notorious unit of the Israeli military who had been using the company's products to conduct surveillance in Gaza and the West Bank.
Tan and Redwine see these novel tactics as a rewilding of the labor movement, a return to the militant roots that led to the labor peace, but only after all-out labor war. They cite the 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers' strike, where workers invented the "flying picket" by swarming scab trucks far from the factory gates, defeating the trucks' police protection, which led to a general strike and a total victory for labor.
This is important historical context. The genteel business of getting everyone's cards signed and having the NLRB certify your union was the compromise bosses agreed to after they learned that the alternative was far worse for them. Today, it's not just bosses who've forgotten that lesson – many workers have, too. Against Tech Oligarchy aims to rekindle those old boilers and get the unstoppable labor train running again.
Every Past and Tomorrow: The Physical Landscape of AI https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stephenvoss/every-past-and-tomorrow-a-survey-of-virginia-data-centers
Reflecting on Digital Rights Wins and Losses in Sacramento https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/11/reflecting-digital-rights-wins-and-losses-sacramento
Join EFF to Celebrate the Life of Aaron Swartz https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/11/join-eff-celebrate-life-aaron-swartz
Goodbye from Salon https://www.salon.com/2026/11/05/goodbye-from-salon/
#25yrsago EMI will distribute music on Gnutella
#25yrsago Photos from O'Reilly P2P Con https://web.archive.org/web/20011124163254/http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/11/05/monday_photos.html
#20yrsago Aussie Institute of Criminology calls piracy losses “self-serving hyperbole” https://web.archive.org/web/20061208043648/http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,20713160^15306^^nbv^,00.html
#20yrsago UK airport cop: gun-shaped shirt decoration is illegal https://memex.craphound.com/2006/11/07/uk-airport-cop-gun-shaped-shirt-decoration-is-illegal/
#15yrsago Bug report: “Simultaneous cat and external keyboard input causing kernel panic” https://web.archive.org/web/20120112020023/https://lkml.org/lkml/2011/11/3/110
#10yrsago Hong Kong erupts after Beijing refuses to allow dissident lawmakers to re-take oath https://globalvoices.org/2016/11/06/street-protests-as-beijing-preempts-hong-kong-courts-with-new-interpretation-of-basic-law/
#10yrsago “Massive scale” shut-down of polling places in districts known for suppressing Black voters https://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/04/voting-rights-protections-gutted-polling-places-shuttered-massive-scale
#10yrsago Donald Trump’s campaign takes away his right to tweet without supervision https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html?_r=1
#10yrsago National Guard helicopter, 7 cop cars sent to warrantlessly seize a single marijuana plant from an 81-year-old grandmother https://www.loweringthebar.net/2016/11/national-guard-one-plant.html
#5yrsago Bait and Switch https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/07/bait-and-switch/
#1yrago The enshittification of labor https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/07/postwar-social-contract/#a-defense-of-social-contracts
#1yrago The 40-year economic mistake that let Google conquer (and enshittify) the world https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/06/vertical-blinds/#invest-dont-acquire
Courtenay: Enshittification (Sid Williams Theatre Society), Nov 10
https://www.sidwilliamstheatre.com/events/cory-doctorow-talks-enshittification/
Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/
Folkestone Writers Festival, Nov 16
https://www.creativefolkestone.org.uk/whats-on/cory-doctorow-the-internet-is-broken-now-what/
Oxford: Ministry of the Future, Nov 23
https://ministryforthefuture.co.uk/events.html
Sheffield: Reverse Centaur at Juno Books, Nov 25
https://www.outsavvy.com/event/40274/cory-doctorow-in-conversation
Virtual: Enshittification, AI, and the Future of Technology (UBC Master of Educational Technology), Nov 28
https://met.ubc.ca/2026/09/met-speaker-series-cory-doctorow-enshittification-ai-and-the-future-of-technology/
Oxford: Bennett Oxford Symposium on Open Code in Science, Dec 9
https://www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/events/2026-bennett-institute-symposium/
Santa Barbara: UCSB Reads, Apr 29
https://www.library.ucsb.edu/events-exhibitions/ucsb-reads-2027-presents-author-cory-doctorow
Montreal: World Science Fiction Convention, Sep 2-6
https://montreal2027.ca/en
Life After AI (Brain Bar)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPa43-n0vI
Terms of Service with Clare Duffy (CNN)
https://www.cnn.com/audio/podcasts/terms-of-service-with-clare-duffy/episodes/458ce968-af5d-11f0-b539-13ed2afe25f8
AI, Work, and Power (Software Engineering Daily)
AI, Work, and Power https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/podcasts/cory-doctorow-on-ai-work-and-power/
AI, Corporate Power, and the Fight for Worker Control (Plutopia)
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-ai-corporate-power-and-the-fight-for-worker-control/
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
"The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
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Africh, Maurice: Cello’s Gate (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668242834, $32.00, 592pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
SF fantasy novel, first in the Sky Pirates of Imperia series. Captain Grey and his sky pirates are persuaded by an immortal patroness to steal the legendary Stones of Indigo.
Azar, Kiera: Sharpest Court (HarperCollins/Storytide 978-0063427846, $19.99, 544pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel, second in the Thorn Season series. In a deadly court of Wielders, Alissa must join forces with Kiel to find out more about the Spellmade compass. A first novel.
Cole, Kennedy: There Used to Be People Here (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217187119, $30.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Historical SF novel. In 1970s Mississippi, Black detective Samuel investigates a murder and a plane crash, only to discover it’s not a plane, and beings from the crash have lingered. A first novel.
Compton, Johnny: Chimera Skin (Shortwave 979-8897320288, £10.00, 264pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
SF horror short novel. Swanson, a mutated man, may be the devastated world’s last hope after a messianic alien’s failed attempt to “uplift” humanity.
Cook, Glen: They Cry (Tor 978-1250405913, $31.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Grimdark fantasy novel. 13th in the Chronicles of the Black Company series, and 2nd in the A Pitiless Rain saga. Arkana and Shukrat return to An Abode of Raven with new powers.
Dara, Maxie: A Grim Reaper’s Guide to Living Twice (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217187454, $20.00, 336pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Contemporary fantasy mystery novel, third in the S.C.Y.T.H.E. series. Thief Jack McCoy, his body dead, lives undercover in the body of reaper Margaret Chen. A first novel.
Duhaime, Zoé: The Lost Spectacular (Profile/Solaris UK 978-1837867011, £18.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/05/2026)
Fantasy novel. Former friends Munro and Noon clash over what to do with the Spectacular, a hidden dimension of lost items and ideas that they learned how to access as children. First UK edition. (US version September 2026)
Evans, Lauren: Just Like a Dream (Penguin Random House/Dell 978-0593873809, $20.00, 368pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy romance novel. At the World Dream Center, dream creator Olivia has to work with her old high school rival Connor to subconsciously influence a key case.
Fuentes, Gabrielle Lucille: Clear Water (Macmillan/Flatiron 978-1250389770, $28.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 11/03/2026)
Horror novel. In a Wisconsin town with a history of disappearances, people start seeing silent girls in white.
Gwynne, John: The Wolves of War (Orbit US 978-0316595001, $30.00, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy novel. Ivan, part of a conquered people in a land headed towards war, has to protect his daughter Halia, who has night visions of roaming the forest.
Hamilton, Amber: Twelve Dark Hours (Bloomsbury USA 978-1547616633, $24.53, 364pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Vesper, claimed by the price as his bloodmate, is entered in a deadly competition and forced to work alongside Lonan, her frustratingly handsome rival. A first novel.
Hamilton, Laurell K.: A Glimmer of Death (Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0593637876, $32.00, 464pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Dark fantasy romance novel, 10th in the Merry Gentry series, first in a two-book finale to the series. Meredith Gentry investigates magical attacks against rising Hollywood starlets, and deals with the curse on Aesling, heir to the Seelie Court.
Helgadóttir, Margrét: Nordic Nightmares: The Best of Nordic Horror (Profile/Solaris UK 978-1837868575, $18.99, 352pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 11/03/2026)
Anthology of 20 stories from contemporary Nordic writers, covering concepts from forests to volcanoes to apocalypse to eerie people on a train.
Huff, Tanya: Saved by the Spell (Astra House/DAW 978-0756420611, $29.00, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Cozy fantasy novel. At the High School for Magical Arts, the overworked teachers recognize one of their students is a Hero — brave, powerful, with nerdy friends — which means a Villain can’t be far behind.
Jensen, Danielle L.: Defy the Dusk (Penguin Random House/Del Rey 978-0593975121, $36.00, 672pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Post-apocalyptic fantasy romance novel. In a world overrun by nocturnal creatures unleashed by her magic, Lirian lives on the Dawnrider, a high-speed train, until she’s abducted. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK/Del Rey UK edition.
Künsken, Derek: The Quantum Dawn (Profile/Solaris UK 978-1837862207, $18.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 11/03/2026)
SF novel, fourth in the Quantum Evolution series. With Belisarius in a wormhole, priestess Rosalie is having dreams, which Cassandra and AI Saint Matthew determine are signals from an 11-dimensional space.
McCarthy, Wil: Orbital Bombardment Victory Road (Baen 978-1668073544, $28.00, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
SF novel. In 22nd-century America, three strangers take the iconic road trip across the country on the Orbital Bombardment Victory Road, avoiding craters and road warriors.
Modesitt, L.E.: Premier (Tor 978-1250427144, $34.99, 512pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Political fantasy novel, fifth in the Grand Illusion series. Dekkard, chairman of the Security Committee in the Craft Party, faces angry corporations, murder, and corruption.
Muñoz, Gloria: They Called Us Wicked (Holiday House 978-0823458370, $19.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Young-adult fantasy novel. In a world where magic is forbidden, a coven of four best friends meet in-person at Fletcher University, where one of their roommates disappears.
Peckham, Caroline & Valenti, Susanne: Lightwing (King’s Hollow UK 978-1916926868, $32.99, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy romance novel, second in the Crown of Hearts and Chaos duology. Ferris, after losing her sister again, must escape the castle of Hendrix Bane.
Rainach, A.T.: The Art of Living Forever (Orbit Works 978-0316609517, $25.99, 350pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy romance novel, first in the Sundered Gods series. The God of War falls in love with Grace, a woman in Napoleonic Europe.
Rambo, Cat: All the Pretty Little Mermaids (Hydra House 978-1957898117, $29.95, 306pp, formats: hardcover, 11/03/2026)
Collection of 31 of Rambo’s stories, two new, including the award-nominees “Red in Tooth & Cog” and “Crazy Beautiful.”
Ringo, John & Moores, Casey: Tides of Ruin (Baen 978-1668073537, $28.00, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 11/03/2026)
Superhero fantasy novel, third in the Shadow’s Path series. Teen hero Mike Edwards must contend with a horde of enormous sea monsters attacking humanity across the world’s coasts.
Russell, Caskey: The Eagle in the Mountain (Profile/Solaris UK 978-1837867400, $26.99, 446pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy novel, second in The Raven and the Eagle series. After his first quest, Elān won’t touch his weapon, even as the Koosh invasion draws nearer.
Scalzi, John: Monsters of Ohio (Tor 978-0765389039, $29.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
SF novel. Mike returns to his hometown of Richland, Ohio, only for him and his friends to get mixed up in local politics, a shuttering economy, weird events with a cow, and tentacles. Simultaneous with the Macmillan/Tor UK edition.
Scholte, Astrid: Fallen Beauty (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 978-1250394804, $21.00, 402pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Young-adult romantic fantasy. Imprisoned and forced to paint dead animals, Thorelea is thrust into a deadly court of immortals when one of her subjects mysteriously comes back to life.
Sim, Tara: The Meridian Forge (Orbit US 978-0316601726, $20.99, 480pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy novel, fourth in the Dark Gods series. The heirs discover they must kill not only the gods’ bodies but their power sources on each world. Simultaneous with the Hodder & Stoughton UK/Hodderscape edition.
St. Crowe, Nikki: East of Envy (Tor/Bramble 978-1250382221, $32.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Dark fantasy romance novel, second in the Great & Terrible Land series. Dorothy Gale, betrayed by the wizard, must team up with the dangerous, heartless Tin Woodman. Simultaneous with the Macmillan/Tor Bramble UK edition.
Strahan, Jonathan: Vaster than Empires: Speculative Fiction of the Eternal and the Ephemeral (MIT Press 978-0262054874, $24.95, 296pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 11/03/2026)
Original anthology of 15 SF stories, covering the “frontiers of life, intelligence, and temporality.” Authors include Adrian Tchaikovsky, Wole Talabi, Aliette de Bodard, Greg Egan, Tochi Onyebuchi, Caroline M. Yoachim, and more. Commissioned by the Berggruen Institute through its Future Humans initiative. Part of MIT’s Twelve Tomorrows series published in partnership with MIT Technology Review.
Taylor, Roxy: Claimed by the Orc King (Tor/Bramble 978-1250439239, $19.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/03/2026)
Fantasy romance novel, first in the Fated and Bound series. Attending FantastiCon, Thena attracts a seven-foot-tall green stranger — but he’s not in costume, and is on Earth searching for his fated mate. Simultaneous with the Titan Books UK edition.
Wilson, Sariah: Thief of Hearts (Amazon/Montlake 978-1662543241, $28.99, 333pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 11/01/2026)
Romantic fantasy novel, first in the Heart of the Goddess duology. Warrior Basilea enters a deadly competition and encounters Zain, a frustratingly handsome thief, only to discover a secret that threatens the gods.
Wixey, Matt: Basilisk (Titan Books UK 978-1803367354, $19.99, 560pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 11/03/2026)
Horror novel. As they get drawn into a mysterious online game, hackers Alex and Jay are hunted by a group called the XXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX, who guard the Basilisk, a psychic weapon that drives people insane. A first novel.
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A few years ago, I was on a plane with my Kindle Paperwhite in my lap, and when I grabbed the seatbelt to strap in, the buckle hit the screen and cracked it. It was still usable, but the bright spot was distracting. — Read the rest
The post My Kindle cracked again, so I switched to a tiny Xteink e-reader appeared first on Boing Boing.
There was a time when the internet was cool. One could be forgiven if memories of the cool-internet era have grown fuzzier over the years, now that the web has become a self-regulating machine in an indomitable surveillance system and all. But I know it was true, because I was there. “Information superhighway” was a fitting nickname for a system that could blast the average user through a vast network of art and intelligence. (“Blast” being a relative description of how fast dial-up and early WiFi felt at the time.)
Most of my adult music taste can be traced back to those early days, watching hyper-pixelated videos of the “Numa Numa” guy dancing to Romanian boy-band hits, or animated aliens piloting their spaceship to the thumping Europop of Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee).” Archaic video hosting sites were a cultural gateway. Laggy Adobe Flash games commandeered afternoons. It was heaven, until it wasn’t.
But paradise can’t be lost if it was never really paradise to begin with. The internet’s dark underbelly was always there, lurking slightly out of frame behind the firewall. If something that once seemed magical could be turned into something so corrupt in a comparably short time, its malevolent potential was a feature from the beginning, not a bug.
“Public Access Afterworld” is less of an artistic pivot than a confirmation that Schoenbrun’s worldbuilding skill is well beyond their peers, cinematic or literary.
Few people navigate the internet’s light-to-dark spectrum as well as writer-director Jane Schoenbrun, whose films play like dispatches beamed out from the depths of online black holes. Their work remixes the thrill of early internet exploration into colorful abstraction, cracking open an esoteric feeling to analyze its contents and origin — to varying effect. Schoenbrun’s three feature films, 2021’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow” and last summer’s “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” are as unwieldy as their verbose titles suggest. It’s impossible to watch one, let alone all three, without realizing that Schoenbrun has a lot on their mind, sometimes too much for a single film to bear. Schoenbrun’s talent for image-making, however, ends up shouldering much of that weight, letting intricate ideas about identity and personal relationships to digital media sit gracefully atop beautifully rendered cinematography.
But what happens when someone so known for their visual flair abandons alluring imagery altogether and lets their writing do all the work?
In Schoenbrun’s debut novel, “Public Access Afterworld,” the filmmaker takes a sizable risk, stripping away the meticulously crafted onscreen worlds to assert the dexterity of their prose. At 592 pages, this book could easily feel like a smug kiss-off to all those — present company included — who have criticized Schoenbrun’s reluctance to pare down their concepts into less dense works. But while the novel is imposing from sheer size alone, the shift in medium lends their elaborate, occasionally exhausting storytelling a curious new potency.
Schoenbrun confidently guides readers down winding, interconnected roads, bouncing between online cults and peculiar digital ephemera to weave a gripping search for truth in a time when the internet has made everything fiction. “Public Access Afterworld” is less of an artistic pivot than a confirmation that Schoenbrun’s worldbuilding skill is well beyond their peers, cinematic or literary.
Like the rest of their work, Schoenbrun’s novel is deeply concerned with the internet and its seedy electronic underbelly, using traditional media as a portal to the web’s sleaziest, scariest parts. “Public Access Afterworld” is divided into episodes, not chapters — although each episode has eight individual components, like a TV show divided by ad blocks. This unique structure serves the story, following the zealots of the titular analog realm that lurks beyond the television static through the action.
We begin in 2009, just after television signals convert to digital transmission, when high school best friends David Sawyer and Erin Morrison see something strange in the fuzzy image filling their old cathode-ray television screen: a broadcast from an unknown entity called Public Access Afterworld. Their lives soon become consumed by the quest to find the source, turning to proto-internet message boards and video hosting sites in their search. Before long, dead ends give way to a digital abyss, pulling them both into something that will alter their perception of reality and the lives of hundreds of others called to follow them.
This audacious mystery makes an ideal premise for a novel, where Schoenbrun can toy with reader expectations without the added task of ensuring that the final image reflects their objective. As it turns out, Schoenbrun’s writing is stronger when it’s devoid of visual images. Description and style can take hold without restraint. And while their prose is sometimes redundant, even the excess flows without struggle.
A screenplay may be a different monster from a novel, but both depend on a writer’s foresight. An image has to exist in the mind before it makes it onto the page. But whether that image translates to the viewer in its final context is another matter.
“Public Access Afterworld” is a page-turner in the tradition of supermarket paperbacks from Stephen King and Clive Barker, both of whom know cinema well. But Schoenbrun’s innate familiarity with the internet — its legendary Creepypasta stories and disconcerting YouTube videos that seem to spring from the void — sets their story apart from the classics. This is a contemporary novel through and through, and Schoenbrun writes with practiced conviction, subtly differentiating the different characters’ perspectives without dropping the pace.
Having three movies under their belt helps there, too. A screenplay may be a different monster from a novel, but both depend on a writer’s foresight. An image has to exist in the mind before it makes it onto the page. But whether that image translates to the viewer in its final context is another matter. In their filmmaking, Schoenbrun sometimes struggles to apply broader themes within a minute-to-minute narrative, creating pacing issues that reveal a dissonance between intention and execution.
For example, there’s a sizable gap between the one-shot montage sequences in “TV Glow” and “Camp Miasma.” The former brilliantly evokes wistful teenage dreaming as a character walks through their high school, adorned by a yearning Caroline Polachek song and light-pink diary scribblings. It’s a clever riff on teenage social politics and the hormone-ridden adolescence that so often define both our identities and our future. The “Camp Miasma” montage, on the other hand, toils under three layers of metafiction, as an ’80s slasher-film murderer stalks and kills at summer camp set to a Counting Crows tune, haphazardly interrogating the viewer’s relationship to nostalgia. With Schoenbrun, I often find it’s hit or miss.
But in the current media landscape, consistency is overrated. I’m always more drawn to big ideas that have the potential for colossal failure. There are certain things you can draw from a Schoenbrun film that you could never get from, say, a Martin Scorsese movie, no matter how hard you try — and I’m not just talking about the trans subtext in all of Schoenbrun’s work. For an artist as formidable as Scorsese, a flop means nothing. But for someone like Schoenbrun, defeat defines their future. Every decision is a risk. And art without risk is just a product.
While I’m hesitant to claim that Schoenbrun’s primary strength is as a novelist rather than a filmmaker, “Public Access Afterworld” goes some distance toward making that case. It’s not that Schoenbrun is bad at making movies, but their mind seems to operate like a story map, with hundreds of red strings pinned between plot points. Too many overlapping yarns in a movie make for a convoluted final product, a big clump of colorful material that’s too dense to pry apart to see the substance lurking below. But at least in this novel, the yarns overlap without tangling. A clear view suits Schoenbrun’s cerebral nature. We can admire the blue sky before the clouds cover the sun.
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KYIV — With another bitter winter of fighting in the Russia-Ukraine war ahead, diplomatic activity is ramping back up in a fresh attempt to close in on a ceasefire and eventually a final peace accord.
Under renewed pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Kyiv and Moscow are preparing to send negotiating teams to Abu Dhabi for a three-way meeting with American officials to explore the potential for agreement. The meeting is penciled in for Nov. 10.
But many questions about the process remain, including whether Europe will have a seat at the table when key decisions are taken — and who should fill it. Based on remarks from key leaders, and conversations with European officials granted anonymity because the talks are sensitive, POLITICO breaks down what’s under discussion for an agreement and what could get in the way.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the agenda for Abu Dhabi should first include initial steps toward de-escalation, such as prisoner swaps and ceasefires on energy infrastructure and for the Black Sea. There should also be a discussion among the technical negotiating teams of what format a future three-way meeting between leaders — Trump, Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — should take, he told reporters this week.
When it comes to a final deal, one overriding question for Ukraine is what form of security guarantees it will get from Europe and the U.S., or potentially NATO. Zelenskyy won’t want to accept anything he believes could leave Ukraine vulnerable to a future attack from Russia.
Putin is also likely to raise the need for security guarantees — for Russia — including limiting or potentially reversing NATO’s presence in the neighborhood.
Then there’s the question of territory. Zelenskyy’s view is that marking out any boundaries, temporarily or permanently, is something that can only be discussed at leader level. “No one else has the authority to do so,” he said Tuesday.
Zelenskyy said during previous sets of negotiations over the past year, “as a compromise,” that Ukraine had been prepared to discuss the idea of a demilitarized “buffer zone” on both sides of the contact line in the Donbas region.
Similar ideas were proposed for other parts of Ukraine. Zelenskyy said his negotiators discussed these questions again with the Americans in recent weeks. “We are ready to discuss the issue of territories because the Russians keep wanting to discuss it and make it part of the agenda,” he said. But this would need to be at a leader-level meeting.
European leaders are adamant that they must be included in final negotiations, not least because it is they who are are now providing the vast bulk of financial and military support to Ukraine. Trump ended American aid in 2025.
Zelenskyy and U.S. officials accept that European governments will likely need to be involved in discussions about security guarantees — mainly because any peacekeeping forces deployed to Ukraine would be dominated by European troops.
The Coalition of the Willing, a loose alliance of more than 30 countries led by France, the U.K. and Germany, put together detailed proposals in coordination with the U.S. almost a year ago. Ukraine is also interested in exploring bilateral security guarantees with the U.S., a discussion that would not need to involve European officials.
Plans for rebuilding Ukraine and nurturing its economic revival would also have to involve Europe, Zelenskyy said. “We cannot envision such a, so to speak, ‘Marshall Plan’ without Europe.”
Trump’s renewed interest in Ukraine also resurfaced some sore questions for European governments: Who should represent them when it comes to decision time? And should they even be talking to Putin at all?
With no clarity emerging from Brussels, some leaders have taken matters into their own hands. On Tuesday, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre held a 90-minute call with Putin, urging him to end the war. It went down badly with several European governments, including Denmark, Italy, Sweden and Lithuania. One frustrated diplomat said: “There are too many middle-aged men who want to end up in the history books having solved this war.”
Russia has said the Stubb-Støre call achieved nothing of substance and the war will likely “escalate.” By some accounts, Putin used much of the time on the phone lecturing the Nordic leaders on regional history.
One problem in identifying a lead negotiator is that the European countries with a stake in the talks are not only in the EU — the U.K. and Norway, for example, are both outside the bloc. Without clarity of leadership, European interests risk being sidelined when the talking gets serious.
One critical unknown factor in the mix is how long Trump’s attention will stay on Ukraine.
After the U.S. and Israel launched a war with Iran in the spring, progress on Ukraine stalled for months, only to return this fall as Trump sought to mitigate the impact of the Middle East conflict. A new escalation in the Iran war risks sidelining the negotiations all over again.
The U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Zelenskyy, Stubb and Støre in Oslo on Oct. 20. Witkoff then went to St. Petersburg to meet Putin the next day. There was supposed to be a follow-up meeting in Brussels this week in preparation for negotiations in Abu Dhabi — but the Americans postponed the talks, apparently due to developments in the Middle East.
“The meeting in Abu Dhabi now depends on the American side,” Zelenskyy said Tuesday. At a press conference Wednesday, he added: “We very much hope that the escalatory processes in the Middle East — which are currently the subject of so much discussion — will not interfere.”
After their Kremlin call, Stubb and Støre apparently told Zelenskyy they felt Putin was serious about the Abu Dhabi opportunity. But in public and private, diplomats and political leaders in Europe are deeply skeptical that Putin is at all serious about an imminent path to peace.
Despite the Kremlin insisting he is on board, European diplomats believe the Russian leader is just playing for time in the hope that Ukraine weakens over a winter of attacks on its energy system, and Europe — perhaps with the far-right Marine Le Pen in charge of France — gets tired of paying for the war and gives up next year.
That’s why EU officials know they cannot pin their hopes on peace and need to redouble their financial support and military aid for Ukraine, while tightening sanctions on Russia. EU leaders will discuss the issue of securing funds for Ukraine’s war effort at their summit in Brussels scheduled for November 26.
Nicholas Vinocur in Brussels contributed to this report.
LONDON — Andy Burnham became Britain’s prime minister 100 days ago on a pledge to end 40 years of neoliberalism. His first budget announced he wouldn’t do that on the front page.
Wednesday’s 150-page red book was titled “breathing space for today, fresh hope for the future”, a confession, with true British modesty, that it was a stepping stone to bigger pledges downstream.
Burnham’s top finance minister, Chancellor John Healey, unveiled 98 changes, including help for most households’ energy bills, which are due to spike this winter because of Donald Trump’s war with Iran, and a £10 billion defense package to support Ukraine.
Many of the tax tweaks were limited and technical, including an 8% cut to tariffs on soy milk. Healey’s ambition was reined in by surging global oil prices and a political choice by his boss not to blow the doors off yet.
Burnham has reviews on the creaking welfare system, devolving power to the regions and a “10-year plan” all coming before Christmas. Only then can he grind out the numbers for next year’s spending review.
The Labour MP Darren Jones, who served in the Treasury until Burnham arrived in July, called it a “steady-as-she-goes budget” that was to be expected. Many Labour MPs were happy, cheering measures for their area and pointing toward a bigger bang later on. Industry lobby groups could grasp onto something in their area of expertise.
But with U.K. growth struggling, others were less generous. Joe Shalam of the center-right Centre for Social Justice think tank called it the “fudge-it budget.” Tory leader Kemi Badenoch asked: “Is that it?”
Perhaps the trickiest response for Burnham was from Mainstream, the left-wing campaign group that helped propel him to the Labour leadership this year. “Ending 40 years of neoliberalism can only be delivered by radical action,” read a statement by the group’s interim council.
POLITICO looks at five other takeaways from Wednesday’s budget.
The chancellor’s big bazooka was to slap a much-anticipated tax rise on banks — but he surprised many by saying it will last only 15 months. It will raise less than £1 billion in its peak year.
It wasn’t the only temporary measure Healey unveiled on Wednesday. He extended existing cuts to fuel duty, a tax cut on household energy bills and a £2 cap on bus fares, but only until 2027. They will all need to be reviewed again before his next annual budget.
Likewise, some of Healey’s spending plans thin out after a few years, which suggests they may need topping up later. This applies even to the areas closest to Burnham’s heart. Budget documents suggest support to end rough sleeping will total £1.1 billion in the two years from April 2027 but only £270 million in the three years after that.
There were plenty of changes, of course, such as to writing-down allowances, property income taxes and tax on savings. Whitehall will have to find more administration cuts while tax inspectors hunt down another £3.2 billion a year. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a non-partisan economic think tank, called it all a “hodgepodge” of “fiddly measures” that would do little to affect growth.
Many of the more fundamental decisions were kicked down the road. Healey has committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defense by 2035, but will only spell out how to fund it in a spending review at some point in 2027. Major reforms to the welfare system — spending on which is still rocketing — will only be decided after two reports by the Labour grandees Stephen Timms and Alan Milburn are published in November.
Healey published a “fiscal devolution roadmap” that spelled out a path to handing regional mayors full control of the business rates raised in their areas by the end of the decade, but this has an element of wait-and-see too.
Healey had a narrative for his cautious approach. “I decided on an early budget to give the country a bit of breathing space and to provide stability and direction in the face of speculation,” he told MPs Wednesday. “We’ll continue to map out that direction for Britain through the prime minister’s 10-year plan and the spending review.”
This is not the Burnham who complained Britain was “in hock to the bond markets” last year.
Burnham and Healey can blame Trump — up to a point.
The chancellor said the headwinds that once faced Britain are now “global economic storms,” fueled above all by the U.S. conflict with Iran. “We did not want this war,” Healey told MPs.
Journalists spent Wednesday trawling through the usual gloomy parade of numbers about the U.K. economy produced by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. Britain’s projected growth in 2027 was cut from 1.6% to 1% (though Treasury officials insisted GDP per person will rise overall by the end of the decade).
Healey chose to leave himself with a smaller fiscal buffer than his predecessor Rachel Reeves, telling MPs he had used it to “absorb the impact of the Iran war.” He also raised net taxes by £7 billion a year, though this was far less than the £26 billion in Reeves’ last budget.
But the situation is so volatile that these numbers, based on market energy prices in mid-August, are probably already out of date. The OBR’s “severe shock scenario” had oil prices peaking at around $115 a barrel in the first half of 2027. They already hit that level this week.
Healey insisted that Britain is doing well in the circumstances; his ministers all point to an International Monetary Fund prediction that the U.K.’s deficit will be the lowest in the G7 by 2029.
Opposition parties, however, paint a picture of a nation where everything is just getting gloomier. The tax take was already on course to rise to a record high; Healey broke that record again on Wednesday. (It is now due to reach 38.6% of GDP.) Britain’s spending on debt interest has almost tripled since 2020.
Healey resigned as defense secretary under former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in June to protest the lack of military spending — but now faces mounting unanswered questions about his own plans.
Healey did two big new things on defense spending on Wednesday. First, he confirmed an open secret in Westminster: he plans to reach 3% of GDP by 2030 — on a path to NATO’s 3.5% by 2035 — but repeated that the details of how he’ll pay for it will only be spelled out in next year’s spending review.
Secondly and more significantly, he outlined his plan to plug a £1.8 billion-a-year gap in Starmer’s defense investment plan — but provided only scant details.
The Treasury said it will be paid for by shaving 1% off each Whitehall department’s capital budget in the coming years. However, those departments have not yet worked out what they will cut; that is a problem for another day. These questions will dog Healey for the next year.
At least one person was delighted: Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Ukrainian president said the chancellor “made my day” with a £10 billion package of economic and military support to Kyiv. Part of the package needed special sign-off by ministers because civil servants warned they could not guarantee it would provide value for money.
Much of what Healey did unveil appeared to be aimed at preserving the “Burnham bounce” in the polls and with his own MPs.
The chancellor called it a “budget for the working people of Britain” and Treasury analysis says it was redistributive, handing the biggest boost to the poorest households (albeit only raising their incomes by 0.6%).
Central to this was Healey’s closest thing to a “rabbit out of the hat” — a £100-per-household cash payment to people living in homes below a certain value this winter. One Labour MP enthused that the criteria for the payment (which Treasury officials say will capture 88% of the poorest households) was “absolutely brilliant” because it will capture working households and those on benefits at the same time.
There was another £1.5 billion for social and affordable housing, a “covenant” to govern new AI data centers and changes to mileage rates for self-employed workers. Burnham has prided himself on being a grassroots politician; it was a grassroots package.
How much voters will notice is another question. The IFS warned the package of “breathing space” measures was still “relatively small.” It could be swallowed by a rise in annual energy bills in January — predictions of which have recently ranged from £276 to £469.
The OBR warned there has been “virtually no growth” in real household disposable income per person over the last decade or so, and predicted “no real earnings growth in 2027” despite Burnham and Healey’s efforts to help.
Burnham only has to call an election by mid-2029 and keeps trying to snuff out talk of going earlier — but every prime minister does this until they don’t.
His MPs were studying the budget Wednesday to work out if it makes an early general election more or less likely. It’s fair to say they couldn’t agree.
On the one hand, this cautious budget of temporary measures might suggest Burnham — who needs his own mandate for more radical changes to the electoral system or Britain’s relationship with the EU — is holding out for the country’s backing.
Others would say a cautious stepping-stone budget is hardly the eye-catching approach you would take if you were about to sell yourself to voters. Growth is set to be slow next year; Burnham needs time to turn the economy round and show he can change things.
Burnham told journalists on Wednesday: “I don’t know how many times I’ve done this now, but yes, I can rule out calling a general election in the next 12 months.” The speculation will continue anyway.
Esther Webber, Emilio Casalicchio, Sam Blewett and Charlie Cooper contributed reporting.
CORRECTION: This article was updated on Oct. 29 to better reflect the Centre for Social Justice’s ideological stance.
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Buba, Gabrielle: Of Stolen Pearls and Broken Rice (PS Publishing / Absinthe Books 978-1803945934, £20.00, 120pp, formats: hardcover, 11/01/2026)
Historical fantasy novella. In occupied Manila during WW2, witch Isa-Gani inherits a Famine spirit from her dying uncle. Signed, limited hardcover edition of 200.
Cady, Jack: Hooch Tuesday (Fairwood Press 978-1958880456, $30.00, 204pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 11/01/2026)
Satirical fantasy novel. Misfits and outcasts, including a DAR witch and a talking bulldozer, deal with mishaps like a grenade delivery. An early work of the author, never before published. Introduction by Gordon Van Gelder.
Dutton, Alysandra: The Stolen Women (Harlequin/Park Row 978-0778306801, $30.00, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Historical novel with speculative elements. When the Sabine women around her start disappearing, Safinia sets out to figure out why, and is helped by a mysteriously knowledgeable stranger named Livy. Copyrighted by Sarah Alysandra Dutton.
Feldman, Stephanie: The Night Parade and Other Stories (Fairwood Press 978-1958880432, $19.99, 264pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Collection of horror stories. Mid-Atlantic tales of friendships, families and grief with a feminist twist, including the titular novella about a young widow trying to bring her husband back. The author’s first collection.
Fracassi, Philip: Overpass (PS Publishing / Absinthe Books 978-1803945897 , £20, 144pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, 11/01/2026)
Horror novella. When an earthquake strands them on a collapsing LA overpass, commuters also discover that one of them has a mutilated corpse in the trunk. Limited, signed hardcover edition of 200.
Gregory, Daryl: The Porcelain Sisters (Tachyon Publications 978-1616964719, $17.95, 208pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/27/2026)
Humorous dark fantasy/horror novella. Ruth accidentally damages her porcelain-doll sister Isabel, and must overcome a ruthless Clan des Sorcières as she seeks the witch known as the Dollmaker.
Iijima, Brenda: Shelter is Necessary for Existence (Two Dollar Radio 978-1953387592, $18.95, 288pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Satirical horror novel. A family buys and renovates a Brooklyn brownstone, but after they move in Sue learns of the mysterious deaths of the previous residents, the house starts to bleed.
Kiernan, Caitlín R.: Gethsemane (Subterranean Press 978-1645243779, $40.00, 56pp, formats: hardcover, 10/31/2026)
Dark fantasy novelette set in the world of Threshold. Dancy Flammarion faces ancient sea threats at an abandoned alligator farm on the Florida-Georgia line. A signed, limited hardcover edition of 600.
Kvita, AM: An Uncertain Magic (Orbit US 978-0316586658, $19.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Fantasy novel, second in the Green Witch Cycle series. Joan, enjoying her otherwise tranquil life, has to deal with her best friend’s possession by a god — and a crush whose best friend is also possessed. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition.
Langmead, Oliver K.: The Killing of a Chestnut Tree (Tordotcom 978-1250448613, $24.99, 176pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Fantasy novella. Dapper detective Havelock Harper and his partner Sebastian Wright investigate the murder of The Duke of Farleigh — only to discover The Duke is a tree.
Lee, Shannon & Lee, Fonda: Mark of the Warrior (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 978-1250902702, $21.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Young-adult fantasy novel, second in the Breathmarked duology. Li Jun tries to find his mother and twin brother, and is forced to make uneasy allies on the Council of Virtue. Based on characters and themes created by Bruce Lee, and copyrighted by Bruce Lee Enterprises. Ebook also available.
Lee, Yoon Ha: Code and Codex (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668059975, $29.00, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Space opera novel. Valentina works for the Censorate empire and its ruler Aurelia, extracting useful information from forbidden languages and then destroying them.
Liang, Ann: To Dream in Darkness (St. Martin’s 978-1250289483, $32.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Historical fantasy novel. Rujia, the healing god, makes a deal with Death, offering to free him in exchange for a reprieve of her sentence. Simultaneous with the Macmillan/Tor UK edition.
Lovecraft, H.P.: Lurking Fear and Other Early Terrors (Skyhorse/Talos 978-1945863462, $16.99, 576pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/27/2026)
Collection of cosmic horror stories. Includes “all your Lovecraft favorites,” including “The Outsider,” “Dagon,” “The Shadow over Innsmouth,” and “The Dunwich Horror.”
Maas, Sarah J.: A Court of Splintered Harmony (Bloomsbury USA 978-1639739134, $32.00, 352pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Fantasy novel, sixth in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series, and Movement I in The Valkyrie Cycle (3 Movements). Betrayals rock the Night Court, and Koschei the Deathless wakes in his mountain lake.
McGinnis, Mindy: What Rough Beast (HarperCollins 978-0063370746, $19.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
YA horror. Outcast Ava distracts herself from a traumatic event in her past by working at a wildlife rehabilitation center, where she accidentally awakens an underground entity.
McKenna, Juliet E.: The Riven Kingdom (Angry Robot UK 978-1836730378, $19.99, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Fantasy novel. When the king dies without an heir, two princesses vie for the throne of Arafaze, while the land’s Priests and Priestesses are drawn into the struggle.
Medina, Nick: Savage Lake (Penguin Random House/Berkley 978-0593952177, $30.00, 336pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Horror novel. Nell returns to Torchlight Lake where her estranged father died, but a road barricade traps her and her teenage son Oscar there for weeks, and she starts acting strange.
Mohamed, Premee & Sim, Jonathan: From the Library of Jurgen Leitner (Penguin Random House/Random House Worlds 979-8217092635, $30.00, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Horror novel in the Magnus Archives universe. Research assistant Hugh and acquisition specialist Sebastian work in Jurgen Leitner’s ominous private library years apart, but their stories intertwine. Simultaneous with the Penguin Random House UK/Del Rey UK edition.
Ntekim, Ikwo: Where We Go At Night (HarperCollins 978-1335453853, $19.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
YA fantasy novel. Trixie lives in Woods Crossing, a town where everything is perfect except the dangerous fae in the forest; one night, she sees her grandfather murdered in supernatural circumstances.
Otto, Braidee: Daughter of the Tempest (Penguin Random House/Dial 979-8217153855, $28.00, 448pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Fantasy romance novel, second in the Myths of the Empyrieos series. Betrayed and declared a traitor, Aella goes on the run with a stranger who promises to help her harness her powers.
Piper, Hailey: She Isn’t Herself Tonight (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668077122, $17.99, 256pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Horror novel. Rabbit is abducted by aliens every ten years, but as her life gets worse and her boyfriend evicts her, the aliens have yet to show up.
Ryan, Anthony: The Tomb of the Corpse King and Other Stories (Subterranean Press 978-1645243632, $48.00, 264pp, formats: hardcover, 10/31/2026)
Collection of dark fantasy stories set in the world of The Seven Swords saga. A hero seeks to end his curse at the Scarlet Ziggurat, a thief queen leads her army to the Tomb of the Corpse King, and more.
Schoenbrun, Jane: Public Access Afterworld (Penguin Random House/Hogarth US 978-0593978382, $33.00, 608pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
SF horror novel. Throughout the decades, scattered people in Texas start to receive transmissions from Public Access Afterworld. Author is a noted director. A first novel.
Stech, Joe: Think Weirder 02: The Year’s Best Science Fiction Ideas (CSF Press 978-1949787054, $18.00, , formats: paperback, ebook, 10/29/2026)
Year’s best anthology of “concept-driven” SF published in 2025. Includes stories by stories by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Thomas Ha, Isabel J. Kim, Rich Larson, and more.
Stein, Charlotte: Falling for a Villainous Vampire (St. Martin’s Griffin 978-1250352378, $18.99, 288pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Paranormal romance novel, third standalone book in the Sanctuary for Supernatural Creatures series. Vampire Halsten, after stalking Marley Maples, follows her to Hollow Brook, where he forgets his undead life and wants to woo her.
Sui, A.D.: Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends (ECW Press 978-1770418912, $19.95, 312pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Apocalyptic SF novel. On a floating trash island, Cassandra works on her plastic-dissolving fungi, but is arrested when her ex-lover Yana (expert in escapist parallel-timeline drug deleria) is murdered.
Talabi, Wole: The Fist of Memory (Astra House/DAW 978-0756418243, $29.00, 416pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Science fiction thriller novel. Assassin Tope, working for witchdoctor Baba, is caught up in a high-stakes global power struggle when an alien spacecraft appears in the sky. Simultaneous with the Orion UK/Gollancz edition.
Tan, Sue Lynn: For Ever More (Little, Brown 978-0316576239, $19.99, 368pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Yining flees to her ancestral home to seek the truth about her new powers, but is hunted by the queen now on the throne of the Three Kingdoms. Simultaneous with the Hodder & Stoughton UK/Hodderscape edition.
Warren, Kaaron: Going to Summertime (Meerkat Press 978-1965740156, $16.95, 106pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/27/2026)
Horror novella. Salon workers go on a team-building trip in the abandoned houses on Summerland Place, finding ghosts of many types.
White, Andrew Joseph: You’re No Better (Peachtree Teen 978-1682638224, $21.99, 334pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/27/2026)
Young-adult horror thriller novel. Trying to prove he’s better than his serial-killer father, trans teen Morgan sets out to unravel what happened to his father’s final, never-found victim. Simultaneous with the Daphne Press UK edition.
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An underground monorail, non-existent bizarrely skinny killer whales, directions to extinct attractions, guide maps that bear no resemblance to reality. AI-generated Disney theme park guide books are flooding the market, filled with hallucinated slop that would drive a trusting tourist insane with misinformation. — Read the rest
The post AI-written Disney guidebooks send tourists to rides that don't exist appeared first on Boing Boing.
One of my favorite publishers of beautiful books, Beehive Books, has a Kickstarter for Death Is a Room: Illustrated Gothic Tales by Women Writers.
It has nine Gothic horror stories by women writers, including Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin, Frances Hodgson Burnett, and Susan Glaspell. — Read the rest
The post A book of Gothic horror stories designed as a nine-room boarding house appeared first on Boing Boing.
Visit our bookshop.org page to purchase this week’s new books and support your local bookstore. And us!
Barnes, J.S.: Ebenezer Scrooge: Ghost Hunter (Titan Books UK 978-1803362946, $27.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/20/2026)
Horror novel. Seven years after the events of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge now works as an eradicator of troublesome spirits.
Blacke, Olivia: The Key to a Killer (St. Martin’s/Minotaur 978-1250336736, $29.00, 368pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Supernatural mystery novel, third in the Ruby and Cordelia series. Roommates and co-investigators Ruby (living) and Cordelia (ghost) investigate their most difficult case yet: Cordelia’s own hazily-remembered death.
Blackwood, Lauren: Knight of the God King (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books 978-1250891167, $21.00, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Young-adult fantasy romance novel. Aspiring knight Calliope and her handsome squire Beric are drawn into the schemes and secrets of a God King, who’s been waging war with something called The Dark for centuries.
Blake, Olivie & Adams, John Joseph: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2026 (HarperCollins/Mariner 978-0063441521, $19.99, 432pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Year’s best anthology, 12th in the series, with stories from 2025 by authors including Thomas Ha, Sarah Langan, Naomi Kanakia, and Alex E. Harrow. Introduction by guest editor Blake; foreword by series editor John Joseph Adams, who also provides a list of additional notable stories.
Card, Orson Scott: Ender’s Tribe (Blackstone Publishing 979-8228744219, $29.99, 288pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Collection of 8 science fiction stories from the Ender Universe. Includes the original story version of “Ender’s Game.”
Clarke, Susanna: The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City (Bloomsbury Circus US 978-1639739813, $16.99, 96pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Fantasy short story set in the universe of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Faeiries attacking medieval Durham surround it with trees, and the savvy Bishop seeks the new King, leader of the fairy host. llustrations by Victoria Sawdon. Simultaneous with the Bloomsbury Circus UK edition.
Cooke, C.J.: House of Cursed Daughters (HarperCollins UK 979-0008775681, $20.00, 400pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/22/2026)
Historical supernatural novel. In 1312, 1865, and 2026, three women in England and France confront terrifying curses and madness.
Daniel, Katherine: When the Night Comes Knocking (Penguin Random House/Berkley 979-8217191338, $30.00, 304pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Horror novel. Siblings Jane and Thomas, estranged after a near-fatal accident, encounter a mutilated man at a gas station in the North Georgia Appalachians.
Dewitt, Amanda: Devil’s Advocate: The Anti-Divine Comedy (Peachtree Teen 978-1682638682, $19.99, 320pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
YA contemporary fantasy novel. Ada Faust, daughter of the devil, attempts to become her father’s successor by sabotaging a do-gooder senator, only to fall for Hasan, a half-angelic intern.
Everson, John: The Witching House (Flame Tree Press UK 978-1805520238, $26.95, 366pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, 10/20/2026)
Horror novel. Giana tests an urban legend by writing the name “Madelyn” in blood on the mirror, only for Madelyn to appear and demand revenge for her murder.
Foster, Alan Dean: Lost on Paradise (Blackstone Publishing 979-8236033794, $32.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
SF novel. Trash scavengers Jonos and Liina try to escape polluted Earth for the alien-run planet Paradise, which they’ve seen in videos.
Grothe, Taylor: Lethal Kiss (Tor/Nightfire 978-1250433879, $19.99, 384pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Horror romance novel. A new hire at Preston University, Marcella is a monster that feeds on humans, but a spate of murders that don’t involve her cause her to align with desperate postdoc Lacie. Simultaneous with the Macmillan/Tor Nightfire UK edition.
Harrow, Alix E.: The Slantwise Histories and Other Stories (Tordotcom 978-1250345363, $29.99, 304pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Collection of stories, centered around alternate timelines and pasts. Includes 5 new stories and Hugo-winner “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies.”
Hellmund, Wanda: Our Dark Incantations (Ace 979-8217190737, $32.00, 528pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Fantasy romance novel. In a university of deadly magic and demonology, ex-healer Mira encounters Aidric, a frustratingly handsome soldier, only to discover a mystery that threatens the kingdom.
Kikic, Natalie: The Haunting of Lavender House (Harlequin/Park Row 978-0778307198, $30.00, 162pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Horror novel. Magdalena, a healer in 1895 Croatia, is suspected of being a witch; in 2026 Petra learns that her Croatian grandmother is still alive, living in their ancestral home surrounded by lavender fields.
King, Ani: Family Night (Mason Jar Press 978-0951853259, $21.00, 156pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/20/2026)
Collection of 52 magical realist flash-fiction stories. Queerness, family, and retro oddness center in tales, including a girl summoning her missing mother with yacht rock and a woman tries to raise daughters from the bones of her rabbits.
Marie, I.V.: Twisted Vows (Penguin Random House/Delacorte 979-8217234530, $17.99, 192pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Young-adult fantasy novel, third in The Souls of Blackwood Academy series. Wren is dropped at the gates of Blackwood, a school in purgatory, and is assigned a project with bad boy August.
Morris, Mark: Ghost Lights (Flame Tree Press UK 978-1805520115, $26.95, 288pp, formats: hardcover, paperback, ebook, 10/20/2026)
Horror anthology, 7th in the ABC of Horror series. Contains 20 original stories by Josh Malerman, Eric LaRocca, Rachel Harrison, and more.
Onoh, Nuzo: The Turning of Sally-Mae (Titan Books UK 978-1-835416075, $18.99, 320pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Horror novel. Assaulted and impregnated by wealthy ranch heirs, Sally-Mae Jenkins is sent from Texas to Africa on a missionary ship, and her unborn twins become the focus of Aja-Mmo, a spirit entity who’s also claimed local healer Amara.
Qurratulayn: Soot & Sacrifice (Page Street 979-8890035028, $22.99, 272pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Young-adult historical horror novel, second in the Blood & Breat duology. Evan Wilde got her revenge, but in the process unwittingly freed many devils from their Necro masters, and must team up with Rhys to stop the devil Jack.
Raughley, Sarah: The Queen’s Command (HarperCollins 978-0063344433, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Young-adult historical fantasy. Victorian courtier and heiress Vicky Davis attends Cheltenham Ladies College, where a secret game among senior girls allegedly grants the winner’s wish.
Robert, Katee: The Tarot Trials (Tor 978-1250412355, $32.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Fantasy novel, first in the Tarot Trials series. Kestrel, daughter of the executed Moon Champion, enters the deadly Tarot Trials to try to find the other Champion who killed her mother. Simultaneous with the Macmillan/Tor UK edition.
Singer, Alex T.: Angel Country (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press 978-1668216521, $20.00, 448pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/20/2026)
Historical horror novel. Scientist Ada Franklin wakes in her own grave in 1904 and finds her lab abandoned and her life’s work — a device that enables human-angel communication — missing.
Woodroe, Alex: Tatratea (Clash Books 978-1968043360, $17.95, 164pp, formats: paperback, ebook, 10/20/2026)
Eco-horror novel. Armed with gear and sanity-check protocols, researcher Errata investigates strange signals coming from Tatratea, an abandoned Romanian manner, while the world outsidegoes insane.
Wynne, Douglas: Wellspring (Promethean 979-8995262510, $20.00, 318pp, formats: paperback, ebook, audiobook, 10/26/2026)
Folk horror novel. Three former bandmates, fans of the classic rock band Bad Mother, investigate their friend Adam’s disappearance, all surrounding an infamous well that inspired Bad Mother’s magnum opus and drove its lead singer to madness.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep the site paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to continue quality coverage of the science fiction and fantasy field.
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