A tattooed man rises above a city skyline

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The City of Bones is the first book in a fantasy series by Cassandra Clare, the Shadowhunter series. The book imagines a world in which magical creatures of all sorts exist, but are generally invisible to ordinary humans. […]
A raven descends from the air, claws out. Four teenage boys are in the background

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The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (Book 1 of a cycle of four books) is about magic and yearning. The main characters, all teenagers of 16 or 17 years, try to solve a magical mystery while they struggle […]
Lucy snatches the football away from Charlie Brown, who flies into the air

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After working through the beta readers’ comments on the first draft, I solicited another review from someone who hadn’t seen the manuscript before. This isn’t a beta reader exactly. Is there such a thing as a gamma-reader? The […]
A satyr plays the pips atop a Greek column

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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a dreamlike mystery that unfolds like a rose: first the petals are tightly closed, but as they open one by one, a new flower is revealed. At the start, the protagonist, who narrates […]
Three books lie open on a desk surrounded by stacks of closed books on either side

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I usually have at least one book I’m reading (or listening to) — often more than one. As I walk around the city or work out in the gym, audiobooks keep me company. And curling up in bed […]
Three wedges of focaccia sprinkled with rosemary on top

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I cook a lot. And I like cooking. The pandemic hasn’t made me yearn for restaurants or do a lot of takeout (though I do worry about my friends who work in restaurants). I just keep on cooking. […]
A skyline of New York City

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Where do gods come from? Cities have had gods for millennia, but how do the gods of cities come into being? It’s a messy process and, like a turtle egg hatching on the beach, there are always predators […]
Tiles laid out on a Scrabble board

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And now for vampire lingo… Vampires are obsessed with eternal life and their elitism, in that they have attained immortal life, and they believe that this is because they somehow deserve it. After all, not everyone who’s bitten […]
Text from a dictionary with the definition of the word "lingo"

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Werewolves love and hate the moon. She gives them freedom on their Night, but rules their lives, even when it’s not the Night. She can be a cruel mistress. She gives them amazing strength and magical abilities (like […]
Egyptian hieroglyphics with English translations

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I was challenged by my sharp-eyed editor to reconsider how vampires and werewolves describe themselves and their world. It would be more intriguing, she said, if the werewolves and vampires have their own lingo such that it takes […]