Alma Katsu – Circulating Ideas

Steve chats with Alma Katsu, author of the new book Incarnate, about her CIA background into early social media research, AI’s threat to creativity and authenticity, the story’s parallels with Picture of Dorian Gray, and the diversity of voices in the current golden age of the horror genre. Then over on the Circ Desk, NoveList librarians Yaika and Kaitlin suggest readlikes for Incarnate!

Read the transcript!

From beloved horror maven Alma Katsu comes a terrifying reimagining of The Picture of Dorian Gray for the internet age.

Beauty doesn’t fade. It feeds.

Dorothy Wagner has spent her whole life wanting nothing more than to be seen. But after failing to make her mark (any mark, really) as an influencer, she takes a job at a company focused on cutting-edge deepfake technology. And there, in secret, is where she creates her salvation.

Isabella. An impossibly gorgeous girl who takes social media by storm. Dorothy’s code is brilliant, and Isabella seems real. So real that she garners millions of followers. Brands beg to partner with her. Everyone wants to meet her IRL. The adoration—and the cash—flows in. Dorothy is finally happy. She’s getting all the attention she ever wanted—isn’t she?

Then the cracks begin to show. Dorothy can barely stay ahead of the partnership requests, and love letters and the rabid fans filling her DMs trying to track Isabella down. All this time working in secret with all this pressure is getting to Dorothy—she can’t tell where she ends, and her creation begins. And when someone gets a little too close to her secret, a violent confrontation sends Dorothy on the run, forcing her to confront what she’s willing to sacrifice to keep her secrets.

A modern reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is an illuminating, haunting tale of algorithmic worship and beauty that can kill.

SHOW NOTES:

Incarnate by Alma Katsu
Circulating Ideas 291: Fiend by Alma Katsu (2025)

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THE CIRC DESK RECOMMENDS:

Nothing Tastes as Good by Luke Dumas
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

Continuing the 2025 Summer Reading Spectacular, Steve chats with Alma Katsu, author of Fiend, about her experiences with libraries, her career in intelligence, the evolving nature of the horror genre, and artificial intelligence. And in The Circ Desk segment, Rebecca Vnuk from Library Reads and Yaika Sabat from NoveList offer reading recommendations related to Alma’s book.

Read the transcript!

Historical horror maven Alma Katsu turns her talents to the modern world for the first time, in this terrifying tale about an all-powerful family with an ancient evil under its thumb.

Imagine if the Sackler family had a demon at their beck and call.

The Berisha family runs one of the largest import-export companies in the world, and they’ve always been lucky. Their rivals suffer strokes. Inconvenient buildings catch on fire. Earthquakes swallow up manufacturing plants, destroying harmful evidence. Things always seem to work out for the Berishas. They’re blessed.

At least that is what Zef, the patriarch, has always told his three children. And each of them knows their place in the family—Dardan, as the only male heir, must prepare to take over as keeper of the Berisha secrets, Maris’s most powerful contribution, much to her dismay, will be to marry strategically, and Nora’s job, as the youngest, is to just stay out of the way. But when things stop going as planned, and the family blessing starts looking more like a curse, the Berishas begin to splinter, each hatching their own secret scheme. They didn’t get to be one of the richest families in the world without spilling a little blood, but this time, it might be their own.

SHOW NOTES:
Fiend

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Library Reads

The Circ Desk recommends:
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Weyward: a Novel by Emilia Hart
Galilee by Clive Barker
Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

Category: Alma Katsu

291: Fiend by Alma Katsu – Summer Reading Spectacular