Around the Web: PW’s Best of 2023; Reviews and Essays in NY Times, The Atlantic, Washington Post

» Publishers Weekly‘s Best Books 2023 includes SF/Fantasy/Horror titles by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Lavie Tidhar, Yukimi Ogawa, Marina Enriquez, Emily Tesh, Ann Leckie, and S.L. Huang

» NY Times, Rick Yancey, 3 Nov 2023: 3 New Middle Grade Science Fiction Novels Disturb and Delight, subtitled “Jeanne DuPrau’s ‘Project F,’ Patricia Forde’s ‘The Girl Who Fell to Earth’ and Donna Barba Higuera’s ‘Alebrijes’ answer the question, Could this be the beginning of the end?”

» NY Times, 2 Oct 2023: Ruth Franklin asks How Queer Is “Frankenstein”?, subtitled “Three novelists reimagine Mary Shelley’s life and loves and her most famous creation.”

» The Atlantic, Hannah Giorgis, 30 Oct 2023: Six Books That Will Scare You—And Make You Think, subtitled “Black writers have long used science fiction, fantasy, and horror to dramatize the terrors of racism or to tell frightening tales.”

» NY Times, Randy Boyagoda, 27 Oct 2023: ‘The Reformatory’ Turns the Lingering Impact of Racism Into Literal Ghosts, subtitled “In Tananarive Due’s new novel, a boy sentenced to a brutal reform school must capture the phantoms of those who died at the institution in the past.”

» The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin, 26 Oct 2023: What Scares Jordan Peele?, subtitled “Jordan Peele and N. K. Jemisin on the subversive goals of Black horror in their new anthology, Out There Screaming.” (Text intro, 18 minute audio, and transcript)

» Washington Post, Charlie Jane Anders, 25 Oct 2023: Five great sci-fi and fantasy novels to read now, concerning titles by Cassandra Clare, Samit Basu, Micha Cárdenas, B. Pladek, and Alix E. Harrow