291: Fiend by Alma Katsu – Summer Reading Spectacular

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

161: Grady Hendrix and Becky Spratford

Steve chats with bestselling horror author Grady Hendrix and Readers’ Advisory Specialist Becky Spratford about how Grady grew up with libraries, the legitimacy of genre fiction, lessons learned from Stephen King, and the Summer Scares program.

Grady Hendrix is a best selling author whose novels include Horrorstör, My Best Friend’s Exorcism – which he describes as “basically Beaches meets The Exorcist” — and most recently, We Sold Our Souls. He’s also the author of the Bram Stoker Award winning, Paperbacks from Hell, a history of the horror paperback boom of the ’70s and ’80s, and Mohawk, a horror movie about the War of 1812.

Becky Spratford is a Readers’ Advisory Specialist in northern, IL. She trains library workers all over the world on how to help leisure readers in the public library. Becky runs the popular and critically acclaimed RA training site RA for All and its evil twin, RA for All: Horror. She is a regular contributor to Booklist, EBSCO’s NoveList database, and Library Journal. Becky is the author of The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror, 2nd edition [ALA Editions, 2012] and is currently at work on the 3rd Edition. She is a proud member of the Horror Writers Association, whose membership recently elected her Secretary. You can connect with Becky on Twitter @RAforAll.

SHOW NOTES:

Summer Scares FAQ / Resource List
Ladies of the Fright

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