“She Gave A Great Deal Of People A Great Deal Of Pleasure.” This is what’s engraved on bestselling author Jackie Collins’ plaque in the crypt housing her remains, so I learned from Sophie Gilbert writing for The Atlantic.

Gilbert walks Collins’ path from London to Los Angeles, tossing facts about the author like so many bread crumbs. Here’s a sampling:

• She wrote a total of 32 books and sold more than half a billion copies
• She believed she’d been a panther in a previous life
• At 13, she charged her classmates to read sex scenes she’d written
• She grew up in the shadow of Joan Collins, her famous older sister

Gilbert tours a more depleted and guarded version of L.A. than the one she encountered in Collins’ fictional and real-life stories. She writes,

Jackie would find Hollywood’s new power dynamics perplexing: Many of her female characters are writers and reporters on the movie-celebrity beat, who see their job as pushing past the sanitized narratives that publicists try to present. But as media jobs have dwindled, influencers have stepped in to fill a void.

If reading about Collins and the women she wrote makes you want to pick up one of her books, consider her biggest bestseller, Hollywood Wives.

I’ve never read a Collins, but the author shaped my earliest vision of Woman Writer thanks to the 1989 campy flop classic Troop Beverly Hills. In the film, filthy-rich writer and troop member mom Vicki Sprantz slinks into scenes wrapped in animal print, face framed by a corona of Aqua Net hair, purring observations into a tape recorder at A-list events. Sprantz was modeled after Collins, and who wouldn’t want to walk in those heels? — SZW

We sometimes get questions from listeners of the Book Riot podcast about how to get more out of their reading lives. Here is one thing that I think maybe more people feel than they admit:

Lately, I’ve noticed that one of the biggest things getting in the way of my reading pleasure is…all the other books I want to read. Instead of getting completely immersed in whatever I’m currently reading, I find part of my brain constantly thinking about what I should read next, or wondering whether there’s something else I’d rather be reading. I feel like I’ve accidentally turned my TBR into a queue I’m supposed to work through rather than a collection of possibilities.

How do you think about your TBR, library holds, and new releases without turning reading into another thing to optimize?

Core problem: The joys of reading are different than the joys of looking for things to read. The pleasures of buying/requesting/listing books are both faster and more available than those of reading. So it is easy to get upside down on what you might read versus the time it takes to sit down with a book and do the thing.

Hard truth: Maybe ditch the TBR if it makes things worse. Maybe keep a list of possible reads, but don’t plan ahead or incur psychological (or real) debt by buying stuff way before you are going to read it. I don’t have a TBR and never have trouble finding my next one. This actually makes the process a little more fun because the enjoyment of finding a book happens after you are reading, rather than before or during.

You can listen to our full discussion of this question and stories from the world of books and reading on the most recent episode of the Book Riot podcast, available wherever you listen.

Elizabeth Acevedo is the bestselling YA author of The Poet X, among many others. Her newest is Anger is Only a Shadow, out tomorrow from Quill Tree Books. Below, she recommends three of her favorite YA books about mental health.

I’ve been really interested in how YA novels consider the mental health of the protagonist, and the ways that these characters are able to find and implement different tools for emotional regulation. As we know, and as the CDC confirms, there has been an increase in the number of teenagers reporting that they experience high levels of sadness, hopelessness, and anxiety. Novels that affirm teens’ experiences without resorting to didacticism are crucial for helping young people feel seen, and also for offering different modes of coping.

Here are some of my favorite YA books of the last five years that deal with mental health. 

Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay: This is a novel that follows four generations of Filipino boys as they traverse manhood, love, justice, and community. Each character has a different way of processing his feelings, and the youngest protagonist, Enzo, deals with severe anxiety, for which he sees a therapist. Ribay does a fantastic job of depicting imperfections in the characters, how the youngest among them is able to model grace, and what it means to truly acknowledge the past in order to release oneself from its hold. 

All The Fighting Parts by Hannah Sawyerr: After undergoing sexual assault by her youth pastor, sixteen-year-old Amina finds herself incapable of accessing the assertive and defiant voice she’d had prior to that sexual violence. Told through verse, the book shows how Amina learns to rely on trusted allies, challenge the inner voice that tells her people won’t believe her, and also lean on the adults in her life. This is a novel that moves through the varying emotions that come with being a victim of molestation, including self-forgiveness and empathy toward other victims.

Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle: In this dual-perspective love story, LaDelle offers a narrative in which the main characters deal with PTSD, anxiety, and parentification. Both teens feel the weight of their parents’ expectations heavy on their shoulders, and each one deals with past situations that have left them shielding parts of their truth. The way mental health care is offered in this novel is not through therapy, but rather, we see the main characters engage in music therapy, in journaling as a way to process and to let people in. This is a novel that reminds us that wounds need a witness. 

Young adult fiction has produced some of the scariest horror reads in recent years. That’s not surprising, given that adolescence itself can be a horrifying experience. It’s also not surprising given that horror has always been a staple of this reading category (hello Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine!). 

With fall reading season upon us and YA horror hitting shelves at a rapid pace, here are a few standout titles you’ll want on your radar. 

• Adam, Mine. by K. Ancrum: This romantic queer horror is a love letter to Frankenstein. Victor wishes to figure out how to bring the dead back to life, and while no one wants to let him try his hand at it (for obvious reasons!), he takes matters into his own hands after a drunken bet.

• Demonology for Overachievers by Lily Anderson (Sept 22): Merritt Maldonado is desperate for a full-ride scholarship to her dream school, and to get it, she makes a deal with a demon. As fellow applicants begin to die and Merritt sees that her academic rival Linus now bears the demon’s mark, she realizes their fates are tied even more tightly together than she could have ever imagined. Anderson’s horror is always tinged with humor, and this is no exception. 

• Nest of Tongues by Randy Ribay: Lily and her brother Caleb keep themselves a secret. They’re both manananggal, A.K.A. Filipino vampires. Staying quiet and hiding their true identity is how they can survive, but when Caleb becomes the target of a monster hunter, silence may no longer be an option. 

• Tell The Ghosts I’m Gone by Kalynn Bayron: Moll, Redd, Agnes, and Ossie have supernatural gifts, but they don’t want other people to fear them for it. They harness those gifts by offering paranormal investigative services. But when they’re called in to investigate a missing young woman at an old Victorian home—one that’s rumored to be haunted—the four are pushed to their limits.

• What Feeds Below by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (Oct 6): A giant chasm full of monsters and dangerous plants sits at the edge of the city. Besties Petra and Jade take tourists down into it to help earn a living. But when things go wrong, and Jade falls too deep, Petra must put her fears aside to go further into the Void than she’s ever gone before—and there’s something even darker awaiting her there.

Grab a seasonal beverage, turn all the lights up bright, and be prepared to get scared. Keep up with all the latest YA releases and news with our twice-weekly newsletter What’s Up in YA. — KJ

The most memorable horror books I’ve read double as social commentary. They take some real-life fear, extract its most essential parts, and repackage it for readers. In the case of historical horror, though, sometimes that real-life fear doesn’t need much repackaging. Sometimes, the real horror is simply how human beings have treated each other throughout history.

In the new historical fiction roundup Rachel Brittain compiled for September, there’s a good deal of this reality-based horror—from a 1920s Scotland-set Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde retelling to the story of a 1940s Black actress’s rage made manifest, written by the Queen of Black horror herself, Tananarive Due.

Add some horror to your TBR with this month’s new historical fiction:

• Mazywood by Tananarive Due: A filmmaker, whose late grandmother was a famous Black actress in the ’20s and ’50s, returns to the cabin he inherited to find that he and his family are not the only ones in the woods.
• The Eye of Goliath by Diego Muzzio, translated by Rahul Bery: A 1920s Edinburgh war veteran psychiatrist, Dr. Pierce, starts treating a man with strange symptoms whom no one else can cure—but then his experimental procedures become more and more gruesome.
• American Nightmare by Kelly McWilliams: Inspired by the real Walter White, who posed as a white man to uncover lynchings, American Nightmare’s Walter White is recruited by the NAACP to infiltrate racist organizations. Then a new chapter of the KKK, and one man (a butcher) who can see past White’s disguise, make his spying much deadlier.

More historical fiction out this month. —EE

Shaun Tan is a bestselling and Academy Award-winning author-artist of The Arrival, among many others. His newest graphic novel is Hometown, out tomorrow from Levine Querido Books. Below, he discusses 20 years of his career creating art about belonging.

Twenty years have passed between creating The Arrival and Hometown, and, as in real life, some things are different, and some are the same. Since 2006, I’ve gotten married, become a parent, moved house several times, worked on various unusual art projects, all with the usual ups and downs, joys, anxieties, and challenges.

Where The Arrival is about a character venturing forth into an unknown world to begin a new life, Hometown is about someone very much at peace already: a teenage girl with a loving family, a comfortable home, and a secure sense of meaning.

Where The Arrival presents a search for humanist sanctuary, Hometown presents a humanist sanctuary taken for granted. Well, not really, because there are no humans in this sanctuary. Except for the girl, of course, blissfully unaware of her genetic identity and unbothered by its implications, at least until another human arrives one day to turn her world upside down. You don’t belong here, he tells her. You must leave. 

I’m not sure why I found this idea so compelling, enough to commit seven years to writing and illustrating it over many revisions: a middle-aged Australian Anglo-Chinese stay-at-home dad in suburban Melbourne, making a book about a teenage girl in a strange jungle who finds out she has been adopted by aliens, sternly lectured by an idealistic missionary.

I think “dad” might be the key word here, as the story possibly reflects my subconscious concerns as a parent, wanting to raise children who can think for themselves, not just believe what I believe, not always do what I tell them without query (just most of the time, please—like putting on your shoes!) I would like them to make smart, honest, independent choices as they grow up, to become more of themselves. Even if it means going barefoot…

Read more at Book Riot.

Did you know? Brooks’ first book, Foreign Correspondence, is the chronicle of her search for her childhood pen pals as an adult.

Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go is getting a series adaptation

Check out one book club’s most divisive book selections (#4 how dare!)

Kick off spooky season with these upcoming horror adaptations

Read the hot goss on Sense and Sensibility from Jane Austen’s nephew

Find out why this adaptation of a 1901 feminist classic was “the sleeper hit of the summer”

Written by Sharifah Williams, Jeff O’Neal, Danika Ellis, Kelly Jensen, and Vanessa Diaz. Thanks to Erica Ezeifedi for copy editing.

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