You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better.

I'm author and book devour, Mallory O'Mara.

And I'm Brea Grant, filmmaker, and e-reader.

This episode, hey, happy Halloween.

We're talking about stories with human monsters.

Those are humans that do terrible, horrible things.

And we are recommending extremely scary books.

Plus, we interview Glass or Favorite, Alma Katsu, about her new novel fiend, which we both loved.

This episode is so exciting for so many reasons, but this is a great interview.

And we've been big fans of Alma for so long, so excited to finally have her on the show.

For sure. But before we get into it, Brea, what are you reading for spooky season?

I just finished a book called The Manor of Dreams by Christina Lee. Have you read this one?

No. Okay, it's a haunted house book, which I know you love.

And it's about basically this older, this, this, the first Chinese actress to win an Oscar.

Oh, I do know this.

Dyes.

Okay.

And her family is called to the house to read the will, but then also the family of her long-time housekeeper,

the daughter and granddaughter. And when they're called there, basically, they're like,

great, you will get like what's left of her fortune, which is like $40,000 split between

you to the family. And this giant mansion that's falling apart, but it is giant and worth

a lot of money will go to the housekeeper's family.

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