The Diviners by Libba Bray (Little, Brown) 
We heard people buzzing about this book at Worldcon — it’s set in the 1920s, where Evie O’Neill comes to New York to live with her crazy uncle and tend the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies. There’s a rash of occult murders committed by a scary serial killer, a bizarre cult, and some intense stuff — good thing Evie has supernatural powers of her own. Plus we meet Memphis Campbell, a runner for the King of Harlem, and his white girlfriend Theta. Tons of stories intersect against the backdrop of Prohibition and the Jazz Age, for a flapper-tinged version of Buffy.
Birthdays
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.