Slainte! A polyamorous gothic love story set in a crumbling Scottish castle, Savage Blooms is for readers who like their sex kinky and their relationships complicated. ... Read full Story
Gilbert King’s Bone Valley transcends the true crime genre, laying bare injustice and exploring the humanity of a victim, a killer and a husband wrongfully accused of murder. ... Read full Story
A constantly expanding story that never loses its warm human core, King Sorrow is a must-read for horror fans and a welcome return for Joe Hill. ... Read full Story
Equal parts disturbing and moving, The Works of Vermin explores a fantasy city infested by magical pests—including an enormous, poisonous centipede. ... Read full Story
Extremely smart, carefully plotted and well-researched, Atlas of Unknowable Things is an academic horror novel crossed with a conspiracy thriller. ... Read full Story
After fleeing an abusive marriage with her child, Betsy Cornwell transformed a historic knitting factory on the rugged coast of Ireland into a residency for writer-mothers like herself. ... Read full Story
Till We Meet Again is a riveting, skillfully crafted account of one life in World War I that provides insight into the human cost of war. ... Read full Story
The Perfect Tuba is Sam Quinones’ joyful celebration of the titular horn and a moving paean to the communities that form around it. ... Read full Story
In Melinda Taub’s fresh spin on Jane Austen’s Mary Bennet, the scholarly lady manages a Frankensteinian experiment gone awry—and falls in love with Georgiana Darcy in the process. ... Read full Story
Matisse at War is a thoroughly researched and impeccably presented portrait of one of history’s great artists and those closest to him. ... Read full Story
With wit and relish, Eleanor Johnson’s urgent Scream With Me tracks six classic horror films alongside the rise of second-wave feminism. ... Read full Story
In Quan Barry’s The Unveiling, a group of Antarctic castaways hide terrible secrets, and even the ice itself has ghastly history buried within it. ... Read full Story
Jade Chang’s What a Time To Be Alive casts a keen eye on the frenzy of social media and the disingenuous and addictive world of influencers and the influenced. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 8, 2025 is:
finicky \FIN-ih-kee\ adjective
Finicky describes someone who is very hard to please, or something that requires a lot of care, precision, or attentive effort.
// Although she was a finicky eater as a child, she grew up to become a world-renowned chef famous for her encyclopedic knowledge of global ingredients.
// The latest game in the series boasts amazing graphics but the controls are a little finicky.
"Stardom is a fleeting concept, one that we've seen play out with the biggest of stars over time. Even without outright missteps, artists often find themselves scrutinized by the masses for reasons entirely unrelated to their work. More often than not, this pressure either drives them to prove their worth to a finicky fanbase—one that will jump ship the second something else catches their attention—or pushes them back into obscurity." — Aron A., HotNewHipHop.com, 22 Aug. 2025
Did you know?
If you're a reader of a certain age (say, a Boomer, Gen Xer, or even a Xennial) you may remember cheeky television commercials featuring Morris, a finicky housecat who only eats a certain brand of cat food. (Morris is still featured on product labels.) Morris's tastes in cuisine are not only very particular, but very fine as well, and that's appropriate given the origin of finicky. The word came about in the early 19th century as an alteration of finicking, itself a 17th century alteration of another adjective, finical, which in turn is a late 16th century coinage likely derived from the adjective fine.