60+ ways to fight book bans

Banned Books Week is over, but literary activism is a 24/7/365 gig, and there’s a whole lot more to it than buying books. That, as our resident expert Kelly Jensen explains, “is an act of consumerism.”

Furthermore, it is a myth that book bans increase book sales and “help” an author whose work has been targeted. It is also a myth that book bans encourage young people to obtain the banned title.

What’s at stake are our public institutions of democracy: public libraries and public schools.

So, what can you do to fight against book censorship and increase your own knowledge, vocabulary, and fluency in the world of censorship as it is right now?

Find out who represents you in your state legislature and in the US House of Representatives and Congress.

Host a banned books exchange night that doubles as an opportunity to gather together to watch a film or webinar related to book censorship.

Spend 10 minutes every month reading through the previous month’s public school and public library board minutes. Then, spend 10 minutes reading through the documents for the upcoming meeting.

Read a book on activism, advocacy, and/or liberation, and put one lesson into action.

If you have the financial means, support your local newspaper. If your community doesn’t have a newspaper, consider subscribing to a regional one.

Be a fact-checker in conversations about banned books.

See the full list of small actions that make a big difference.

ON AIR

The books everyone is talking about right now

covers of american hagwon hollywood ending and threshing day positioned in a graph with a red arrow pointing up and to the right

Well, it’s a hot one, maybe even the hottest month of the literary year.

Threshing Day, the mid-series drop-in short story collection to Rebecca Yarros’s Emyprean series, came out of the gate with more than 485k hardcover copies sold in the first week.

John Green’s adult fiction debut, a behind-the-scenes Hollywood romance, is delighting readers and reviewers alike, and Green is ev-er-y-where on the publicity circuit.

Min Jin Lee’s latest multigenerational family saga is flying off shelves and into all the best group chats.

Our mid-month check-in also finds memoirs from Sylvester Stallone and Colin Kaepernick climbing the charts, while Verity and East of Eden enjoy an adaptation bump.

Hear the whole run-down of the hottest books of October on the Book Riot Podcast.

HORROR

We keep our monsters in the family

‘Tis the season for monsters, and in these books the howl is coming from inside the house. While ghoulish fictional families can be fun and whimsical à la The Addams Family and The Munsters, the families in these books are of the more sinister variety. Beware these page-turning horror books about monsters in the family.

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean: If you think you love books, meet The Family. Devon is part of a long line of book eaters, but she flees the patriarchal system when it’s discovered that her son was born with a hunger not for books but for human brains. The Need by Megan Mostyn-Brown*: Talia and her family are perpetually on the run thanks to a genetic disorder that makes her son hunger for human flesh. For Vera and her family, The Need is a point of pride. But Talia and the Armstrongs are on a collision course as the biggest mistake of Vera’s life and Talia’s deepest secret rise to the surface. Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones: Libby, Darren, and their nephew are mongrels living on the fringes of society. The time has come for the young boy to figure out whether he belongs with his aunt and uncle, continuing to pad in their restless, bloodied tracks, or if he’s meant to walk away. White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi: This literary horror novel introduces us to a family grieving their matriarch in a home that has housed a long line of Silver women. When daughter Miri meets Ore, a Black woman who becomes her lover, the xenophobia festering in the walls and floorboards begins to ooze out and set another tragedy in motion. – SZW

*A message from our sponsor

COOL BOOKISH PLACES

The most haunted bookstores and libraries from around the world

If I have to be a ghost when I die, I want to be a ghost with books.

And it seems like a lot of ghosts feel the same, because ghosts are haunting libraries and bookstores all over the world. If you’re in search of a tour around the world of haunted literary locations, read on.

These are some of the most haunted bookstores and libraries.

Moravian Book Shop — Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

The Moravian Book Shop has been open since 1745 and is the oldest bookstore in America, so of course it’s haunted. A few years ago, the bookstore’s manager thought he saw a shoplifter trying to steal something. But you guessed it. It was a ghost. And apparently no one else saw her. Another very helpful ghost of a man in a dark cloak led staff members back to the kitchen to warn them when a stove was left on.

The Willard Library — Evansville, Indiana

The Willard Library’s ghostly claim to fame is the ghost of The Grey Lady. Employees and patrons of the library have claimed to smell the scent of perfume, sense a strange cold feeling, and feel a light touch on their hair and earrings. During a visit to the library, a group of lecturers from the University of Southern Indiana claims they saw the Grey Lady peering into water. A group of policemen claims to have seen two ghosts in an upstairs window.

Africana Library — Kimberly, Northern Cape, South Africa

The Africana Library is one of South Africa’s premier reference libraries, housed in the old Kimberley Public Library. It’s also said to be haunted. People have reported hearing teacups rattling in the kitchen and footsteps in the room when no one is there. It’s believed that the spirit walking around the library is Bertram Dyer, the first qualified librarian in the country, who died by suicide after he was caught defrauding the library.

Check out the full list here. — EM

AUDIOBOOKS

What’s on at Audible

a cell phone and pair of ear buds next to a collage of audiobook covers

Whether you’re in the mood for spooky season listening or a dose of dragons, here are five audiobooks included in your Audible + membership, including an Audible exclusive that’s causing quite the stir online.

Mazywood by Tananarive Due, read by Joniece Abbott-Pratt – The grandson of a famous Black actress visits her secluded California cabin and finds a whole lot more there than he bargained for… Threshing Day by Rebecca Yarros, read by Various – I apologize for the voice I make every time I talk about this book (10:12 timestamp – you’ve been warned). In summary: the dragons are back! East of Eden by John Steinbeck, read by Richard Poe – Look, I didn’t have “Steinbeck is back on bestseller lists” on my 2026 book person bingo card either. But hey, good books are good, and adaptation bumps are real. Bram Stoker’s Dracula, read by Ella Purnell and Jonathan Bailey – You either know why this made the list, or you don’t. And if you don’t, now you do. Rooted by Leopoldo Goût, read by Krysta Gonzales – An art lawyer returns to Mexico City to celebrate the repatriation of several stolen artifacts, including a statue of an Aztec god called The Flayed One. What could go wrong? —VD

PLANTING THE SEEDS OF TERROR

Botanical horror favorites

photo credit: Allan Amato

Delilah S. Dawson is the author of the botanical horror novellas Bloom and Monstera—out this week from Titan Books. Below, she recommends three of her favorite botanical horror reads.

There’s something slightly terrifying about plants—and I say this from a desk featuring a Monstera deliciosa, a Philodendron tatei ‘Rojo Congo’, and a Ficus microcarpa. On the surface, plants are beautiful, decorative objects that clean the air and make a space feel lively, fresh, and natural. Below the surface, however, they are living things with an alien intelligence that blindly probe for light, move so slowly we can’t perceive it, and will gladly feast on a human corpse for their desired nutrients. They’re the perfect vehicle for a horror story, and here are some of my favorites.

Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin: A young woman moves in with her parents and finds a job in the florist’s shop of a dying mall. She is entranced by the shop’s owner but soon learns that a different intelligence is in charge. Part Little Shop of Horrors and part Clerks, it’s a lush and atmospheric read.

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran: In this creepy Southern gothic climate horror YA tinged with Vietnamese mythology, Noon’s coastal Mississippi town is ruled by a red algal bloom after a catastrophic hurricane, and now she and her mother hunt through the wreckage for mutated wildlife to sell. But Noon is transforming, too…

A Botanical Daughter by Noah Medlock: When two Victorian gentlemen, a taxidermist and a plant specialist, obtain an unusual tropical fungus, they use their skills to explore how it might be given a more human life. This queer sporror is a delightful and unexpected journey.

And of course, my own Bloom and Monstera fit the bill. Blame it on the 63 plants in my house—I can’t get enough of botanical horror!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Roxane Gay, born October 15, 1974

Did you know? Gay was the first Black woman to be a lead writer on a Marvel comic (Black Panther: Women of Wakanda).

CRITICAL LINKING

You are now free to roam about the internet

a laptop computer with scattered headlines on its screen against a red background

Get by with a little help from experts’ favorite parenting books.

Preview the first grown-up American Girl novel.

Watch the trailer for a hot new manga adaptation.

Surprising no one, AI-detection software is pretty not great.

An immersive Dune experience, complete with giant sandworms, is headed to LA.

END NOTES

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Kelly Jensen, S. Zainab Williams, Emily Martin, Vanessa Diaz, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Vanessa Diaz for copy editing.

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up here.

Got a tip, question, comment, or story idea? Drop us a line: thenewsletter@bookriot.com