*Editor’s note: Yesterday’s headline story indicated that school board members now faced removal for book banning decisions after a court ruling. Board members can be deposed to testify about their decisions, but the ruling did not cite removal.
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On Monday, four Supreme Court Justices recused themselves from hearing the case, BMG Rights Management v. Vetter.

The reason? They cited conflict of interest because of business relationships (AKA book deals) with Penguin Random House, which, like BMG Rights Management, is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. (The four justices are Jackson, Barrett, Gorsuch, and Sotomayor).

This means that the Supreme Court lacks a quorum and therefore cannot rule on the case. When this (very rarely) happens, the ruling of the lower court holds.

In this particular case, these conflicts of interest seem to hinder rather than help PRH, as BMG Rights Management v. Vetter is about a rights-holder’s ability to reclaim rights that have been previously sold (read more about the details of the case here), which generally speaking is something a publisher does not want.

The Big Question: it seems to me the looming issue that would most be affected by this is about training LLMs on copyrighted materials. There are several cases making their way through lower courts that one would imagine would end up in front of the Supreme Court. If these justices recuse themselves in these cases, whichever lower court ruled on them would effectively be settling the law on the most important copyright question possibly of all time.

Part book club, part English class, Zero to Well-Read is a podcast about the books people talk about as if everyone has read them.

• In each episode, hosts Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky tell you everything you need to know about a classic or culturally significant book.

The show just took home two Signal Awards—bronze in Arts & Culture and silver in Best New Podcast—and is a mainstay on the Apple Podcasts books chart, with downloads placing it in the top 1% of all podcasts.

Here are some fan-favorite episodes to get you started:

• East of Eden: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
• Parable of the Sower: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
• Little Women: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube
• Gone Girl: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

Find Zero to Well-Read wherever you listen to (or watch) podcasts.

Young readers love a scary story. I mean, we all know the name R.L. Stine. If you’re looking for haunting reads that are perfect for kids and teens who love a monster mash, a graveyard smash, here are some books sure to delight horror fans of all ages.

The Weight of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson: Teens who are newly interested in Stephen King’s Carrie, thanks to the recent adaptation, should check out this spin on the story. Terror is about to rain down on a Georgia high school’s first integrated prom as students plot against biracial teen Maddy.

Horror Picture Book: Looking at Me by Soshichi Tonari, illustrated by Junji Ito*: Don’t expect the stuff of lighthearted kids’ picture books from this story for teens. Who better to transport a reader to the haunting world of a child than horror legend Junji Ito?

The Jumbies by Tracey Baptiste: Middle grade readers will be transported to the forbidden forest where the jumbies dwell, following young Corinne La Mer whose bravery is about to be tested. This story, inspired by Caribbean folklore, combines friendship and ancient magic for a chilling and heroic adventure.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz, illustrated by Stephen Gammell: You can’t go wrong with this kids’ classic, and the new edition returns Gammell’s truly nightmarish illustrations to the iconic scary story anthology.

Check under the bed, plug in the night light, and get to reading.

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This first rhyming dictionary was The Manipulus Vocabulorum, published in 1570 by Peter Levins, as it was “necessarie for makers of meeter.” In the 500 years since, rhyming dictionaries have become a critical tool for most people trying to write lyrics, poems, or anything else that rhymes.

But for Jeremy Desmon, a teacher and writer of musical theater, even modern digital versions weren’t enough. Or rather, they were more than enough: “ You rhyme the word men, okay? And 100 of them are different kinds of hen. And that’s just what you find online in these dictionaries. And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t want 78 versions of hen.’”

So he made RhymeHamster.

Creating his perfect digital rhyming dictionary exposed all the kinds of rhymes, and choices about rhymes, that are possible and that vary by writer and rhyming need: “ I do want you to feel like it’s exhaustive, because it is. But I don’t wanna exhaust you. I want you to feel like it’s a tool, and I want you to feel like I got you.”

Some features that make RhymeHamster special:

Identities: These aren’t rhymes, but instances where a word contains another word (think enjoy and joy). For the right line, it could be just the right thing.

The slant rhyme dial: Slant rhymes are almost rhymes, but not all slant rhymes are the same level of almost. Rhyme Hamster’s dial lets you decide how “slanty” you want your results to be.

Interior rhymes: What if you want to rhyme the middle part of the word, something that Sondheim apparently did all the time? That is a preference you can find rhymes by.

Desmon says that what turned out to be a personal project is now something he wants other people to find useful: “ I literally built it for myself. But then I decided that it was kinda cool and I wanted to share it with my students, and they kinda dug it. So I figured I might as well just tell people about it and keep making it better.”

Halloween is a little over a week away, and even when the Saturday celebration ends, the season will be ripe for tuning into scary reads. Libro.fm has a great bookseller-curated roundup of Halloween listens to get you in the spirit.

Here are five highlights from their picks, which include a variety of new releases, as well as well-known and under-the-radar listens:

• A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young and performed by Joy Osmanski: This dark work of cosmic horror explores one of the most common themes in chilling reads: what does it even mean to be human?

• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab and performed by Julia Whelan, Katie Leung & Marisa Calin: lesbian vampires. That’s it. That’s all you need!

• Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare, performed by Jesse Vilinsky: adapted into a delightfully campy film, this is the story of a small, struggling Midwestern town battling its demons–the clash of the past with the present and, uh, lots of clowns.

• They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran, performed by Nhi Do: An immersive story about climate change, class, and gender; you’ll never look at algae the same way again.
• Something Followed Us Home, edited by Cynthia Pelayo, performed by Diana Bustelo, Cynthia Farrell & André Santana: Short stories can be potent for delivering chills and scares, and this collection offers up a range of writers showcasing Latine horror. Find stories of folklore, history, colonialism, and more.

Check out the full Halloween Listens playlist. – KJ

Kyle Winkler is the author of The Ship of Death, out now from Avon and Harper Voyager. Below, he recommends three books that influenced his writing about games and gaming in horror.

Dawn by Octavia E. Butler: Let it be known: No one does body horror in the way that Octavia E. Butler does (see also the story “Bloodchild”). The book is about Lilith, who is taken in by aliens off a dying Earth. They keep her on their worldship and slowly habituate her and other humans to their race, the Oankali. Most of the book is composed of scenes of trial and error where the Oankali—who are covered in moving cilia-like feelers—attempt to get closer to Lilith and earn her trust. The book is rife and ripe with scenes of human anatomy and alien anatomy in close proximity, blending, engaging. The horror comes from the loss of bodily agency and the ultimate control that a more sophisticated and powerful being has over you.

Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith: For my money, Smith is the best of the Weird Tales Three, beating out H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. He had such an idiosyncratic mind. The collection I’m thinking of is the Ballantine collection from the 1970s, edited by Lin Carter. Zothique was a world that Smith set much of his weird sword and sorcery in. It very much influenced big sections of The Ship of Death. I even named a sea after it!

True Crime by Samantha Kolesnik: I rep this book every chance I get. It’s rough, grimy, emotionally exhaustive. But it’s also a stunner. A brother and sister, after suffering much abuse from their mother, kill her and then take off on a cross-country murder spree. I’m not usually prone to this kind of story. But the characters are so well-drawn and complex, and the dialogue so sharp, that it’s hard to put down. There’s a scene between the main character Suzy and a guy at a one-hour photo booth that still is seared into my brain years later. Kolesnik is a preternatural talent, but this is not for the weak of heart, shallow stomachs, or fly-by-night horror readers. It’s heavy.

Did you know? Lessing’s formal education end at age 13.

Literary scams are big business.

Where there’s a will… there’s an inheritance mystery novel.

Trans horror novels are flying off shelves.

Madewell has launched a collection of library-themed clothing and accessories.

Here’s the latest research on how readers feel about AI.

Written by Rebecca Schinsky, Jeff O’Neal, S. Zainab Williams, Kelly Jensen, and Danika Ellis. Thanks to Erica Ezeifedi for copy editing.

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