Author: Erica Ezeifedi

You may be over-pumpkin’d, but I promise you these are really good! I felt inspired to share this recipe with you after buying some pumpkin cheesecake bites at Target. They aren’t too cloying, and their pumpkin flavor is very natural.

Here, Camila gives recipes for a Biscoff crust in addition to the cheesecake. For the crust, you need Biscoff cookies, brown sugar, and unsalted butter.

For the cheesecake: cream cheese, sugar, brown sugar, sour cream, large eggs, vanilla extract, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon powder, and nutmeg.

For full instructions and quantities, click here. For a video, click here.

This looks to be a ridiculously good collection of new horror stories by Black authors. A girl travels to the depths of the earth seeking a parent-killing demon. Freedom riders get stranded on a quiet road in Alabama, where they start to witness the uncanny.

Writers include  Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.

From the National Book Award Finalist and author of Jawbone comes a cerebral techno-horror. Six struggling creatives share an apartment in Barcelona — Kiki Ortega, who’s writing a pornographic novel; El Cuco Martinez, a video game designer; Iván Herrera, a writer with body dysphoria; and the Terán siblings, Emilio, Irene, and Cecilia. All of them are connected to the controversial and mysterious cult video game Nefando. A game in which players could find catharsis from trauma, but also maybe a slip in personal ethics. This explores what happens in the darkest parts of the web and how there are those of us who go towards pain.

Bayron has such a talent for taking familiar narratives and reworking them in a way that is simultaneously thought-provoking and natural. In You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight, 17-year-old Charity Curtis has the summer job any horror lover would want: playing the Final Girl in a full-contact horror game. At Camp Mirror Lake, she and her co-workers act out scenes from the beloved slasher movie Curse of Camp Mirror Lake, trying to make the experience feel as real as possible for guests. But then things get a little too real when her co-workers start disappearing. Now, Charity and her girlfriend Bezi are trying to get to the bottom of the murders happening around them while becoming the Final Girls of their own story. Fans of horror will appreciate Bayron’s subversive take on many of the tropes of the genre, including how race and gender have traditionally been portrayed.

The unsettling stories in this collection begin with the belief that many Indigenous people share — that whistling at night can not only summon evil spirits but invite them to follow you home. The stories of these evil spirits, ghosts, curses, hauntings, and more are told by an amazing cadre of both well-known and emerging Indigenous authors, from Rebecca Roanhorse to Cherie Dimaline to Richard Van Camp, and more. Monstrous manifestations from Indigenous mythology intermix with social horrors like the effects of colonialism to paint a viscerally terrifying picture.

Sometimes I crave something green, but also a little greasy. Just a little. And these veggie pancakes hit the spot. The ingredients are also pretty ubiquitous in North American kitchens, I think. You’ll need: flour, salt, water, leek greens, carrot, scallions, red cabbage, Jalapeño slices, and avocado oil (or any oil).

Mix the ingredients and fry up your little pancakes!

For more detailed instructions, ingredients, and a video, please visit here.

Nguyen, author of the bestselling The Sympathizer, writes a memoir that feels original, with humor strewn throughout. He details his journey from Vietnam to the U.S. as a child and how he was separated from his family but eventually reunited. The longer he lives in the U.S., the more he sees that it isn’t quite the promised land it’s been labeled as.

This National Book Award finalist is a highly imaginative look at personal and combined histories. The narrator reunites with a man he met in a hospital when he was much younger — a man who is now dying. He promises to finish a project the man, named Juan, was working on that involved a ’40s research book titled Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns (which actually existed). Much of Juan’s copy of the book has blackouts (or redactions — places where pieces of text are blacked out, only allowing certain words to be read). As Juan’s health continues to fade, the two share stories of past joys and lost loves.

After Cam’s love, Kai dies and starts haunting him, he leaves L.A. for a visit to his hometown of Houston. There, he reunites with his former bestie TJ. But it’s not super easy to fall back in step with how their old friendship used to be after such a long estrangement, especially with TJ not knowing what to do with the new Cam, who is bent on destroying himself. With luxurious descriptions of food and food preparation, Washington tells a story of messy relationships and found family.

Ms. Ward has been snatching edges for a minute, and I’m sure this will be one of the most talked about books of the year. The title is from Dante Alighieri’s Inferno (“‘Let us descend,’ the poet now began, ‘and enter this blind world.’”).

Annis is our guide as we descend into the hellish world of American slavery. Sold by her white enslaver father, she nurtures her spirit with memories of her mother and the stories she told her of her African warrior grandmother. As she’s forced to journey through the harshest conditions — from the Carolinas’ rice fields to New Orleans’ markets for enslaved people — she finds herself both aided and potentially manipulated by spirits. This is a magically rendered account of a terrible time in history.

I know veggies aren’t always seen as a comfort food — which is the kind of food I prefer for book clubs — but this looks decadent. It calls for roasting an entire head of cauliflower after marinading it with harissa paste, making a lemony garlic yogurt sauce, frying chili, shallot, and pine nuts, and finally drizzling with tahini. The entire ingredient list, plus instructions and a video, can be found here.

Poet Nezhukumatathil’s childhood took her from mental institutions where her mother worked to the Arizona mountains where she hiked with her father, but no matter her physical environment, she always knew to seek comfort and guidance in the fauna she found around her. This illustrated memoir is a lovely ode to the natural world.

Science journalist Yong paints a vivid picture of all that can be sensed in the world. Turtles can outline the Earth’s magnetic fields, giant squids see sparkling whales, plants hold the songs of courting insects, and there are even humans who use sonar like bats. I love books that show how rewarding it is to step outside of our own singular experiences as humans.

Writer and comedian Blythe Roberson ponders on America’s view of travel — and all the alleged freedom it brings — as she takes to the road in her stepdad’s Prius. If road trips are the ultimate acts of freedom — as many American travel writers have stated — who truly has the financial means to be free? And why does it seem like all the travel narratives lauded as classics of the genre seem to be written by white guys? Roberson actually quits her day job to go on the ultimate American Adventure^TM, traveling to national parks, the ocean, the Pacific Coast, and more — all the while exploring just how our view of travel fits into things like enlightenment, conservation, freedom, and climate change.

The latest from the National Book Award-winner for All That She Carried shows how some history-making women of the 19th century subverted gender norms by finding freedom in physicality and their environments. The outdoor labor Harriet Tubman was forced to do taught her the skills she’d need to bring herself and others to freedom. Dakota writer Gertrude Simmons Bonnin found freedom from the American Indian boarding school she attended when she played basketball outside. And Louisa May Alcott found her feminist voice in writing that was inspired by nature walks.

It’s been a minute since I’ve had fresh hummus, which I think is worlds apart from store-bought. It’s surprisingly simple to make for it to be so good, and I love the aesthetics of this YouTuber (though I’m using a food processor rather than a mortar and pestle).

What you’ll need:

-2 cups chickpeas

-1/4 cup lemon juice

-1/2 cup tahini

-1/2 tsp cumin

-salt

-iced water

-2 tbsp olive oil

Mix everything together.

-Optional if you want meat: ground beef, garlic, pepper paste, tomato paste, black pepper, paprika. Instructions are within the video description.

You can make the tortilla chips from scratch or just get them store-bought like me!

Witches are few and far between in the UK, which is why Mika Moon and her group of witches meet only so often — safety is priority, and too many witches in one place tend to draw attention. Even though Mika is used to the loneliness, a big part of her rejects it, and she posts videos on a YouTube-like site where she shares magic tips, pretending to be a witch. But someone sees her for what she really is and invites her to a house out in the middle of nowhere to tutor three young witches into their magic. Somehow, she agrees and finds with the inhabitants of the house — especially a grumpy librarian — a family like none she’s ever experienced. But the transition from being a loner orphan witch to a loved one isn’t easy, and she’ll have to make some changes to adjust.

If I’m being honest with y’all, a big part of the reason I chose to include this one is the cover. It’s gorgeous! So fall. But also, since this is a romance, it’ll have that happily ever after, which I associate with coziness. Here, Ari and Josh meet and instantly dislike each other. They’re also both sleeping with the same woman. After some years pass, and they fully expect to never see each other again, a chance meeting sends them back into each other’s lives, this time a little worse for wear. They’re both recovering from breakups and find comfort in each other. This leads to a friends-with-benefits situationship, which eventually leads to you-know-what.

I like a cozy, foodie mystery any season, but I feel like they really lend themselves to fall. In this fourth entry into the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series, Lila Macapagal’s godmothers open a new laundromat. But when the body of one of their nieces visiting from the Philippines is found in the building next to a message painted on the floor, Lila will have to air out their dirty laundry (ha) to find out who did it. This is another book with the same endearing characters and delectable food descriptions that fans of the series have come to love.

So I actually first picked this one up in the summer and felt it really fit the season. And now I feel like I can say the same about it for fall. This is probably because it follows a young woman — who is modeled somewhat after the author — as she grapples with all her feelings through the seasons. While it handles some potentially heavy topics like mental health, I feel it has a quietly contemplative quality to it that lends itself to autumn. Also, the artwork and color palette are so pretty.

*Book Club Discussion: If you feel comfortable, you can discuss how the artwork made you feel and if it accurately represented the feelings mentioned. Also, what emotions did reading the book evoke overall?