10 must-read SFF releases to make October your best reading month yet

Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark

With the recent conversations surrounding racism in the United States, P. Djèlí Clark’s new release is another book on this list that feels all too relevant to what’s happening in the real world right now. That just makes it more important to pick up, though, soRing Shout is definitely a novella readers will want to keep on their radar.

In Ring Shout, Clark reimagines the history of the Klu Klux Klan, taking readers back to 1915, when  D. W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation swept the nation and revealed the hatred residing there. According to the book’s synopsis, the KKK intends to “unleash Hell on Earth,” but luckily, there’s someone around to stop them:

"“Luckily, Maryse Boudreaux has a magic sword and a head full of tales. When she’s not running bootleg whiskey through Prohibition Georgia, she’s fighting monsters she calls “Ku Kluxes.” She’s damn good at it, too.”"

I don’t know about you, but Maryse sounds like a character I’d follow to the ends of the Earth. And she’ll be facing plenty of monsters — some tangible, some less so — over the course of this book, but she’s more than willing to if it means stopping the hate that’s sweeping through the nation. Will she succeed? Well, if she does, readers may find themselves wishing Maryse and her magical sword had existed in our own world.

Ring Shout is available now in ebook, audiobook, and print formats.