Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Today, we look back at the most popular stuff we did this week.

The Best New Books Out in October, According to Indie Booksellers

This is a mix of September and October releases, and I’m going to be honest with you, I’m not sure why the Indie Next List is organized this way. Maybe the publication dates shifted since they were nominated, or maybe indie booksellers are just mysterious that way.

Nothing Says Lovin’ Like Something from the Coven: Witchy Romance Novels!

A chill in the air? Check. Pumpkin spice-flavored everything hitting the shelves? Check. Pop-up Halloween stores appearing overnight? Check. It’s official: it’s the season of the witch! Today’s recommendations have hex appeal and feature witches who can work all kinds of spells (or maybe not), but can’t stop themselves from falling in love. Oh-oh-oh, it’s magic!

Book Riot Exhorts You to Vote and Endorses Kamala Harris for President

I can say it no better than our own Sharifah Williams does in our endorsement of Kamala Harris:

We find ourselves, again, approaching an election season where it is imperative to lend our voices to the call for every American to vote and be heard. The last time we published a political endorsement, we had not yet witnessed the January 6th attack on the Capitol, which resulted in at least seven deaths and more than 150 injuries in connection with the insurrection as well as a shaken nation. Roe had yet to be overturned, placing politicians between doctors and patients and giving states often catastrophic power over the reproductive health and family planning decisions of many. Book bans and censorship had yet to reach a critical point, with political groups standing in front of parents, librarians, and educators, telling them what their children and students can and cannot read. Americans who have witnessed their country’s descent into a regressive age demand freedom and change.

Donald Trump’s claim that non-citizens are crossing the Southern border and registering to vote in US elections has become a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, even though every major study shows that non-citizen voting is exceedingly rare.

But a lawsuit filed last month shows that those false assertions of voter fraud are leading to real world instances of qualified voters being blocked from casting a ballot.

On August 13, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen, an election denier who supported Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 results, announced that his office had identified 3,200 alleged noncitizens who had registered to vote in the state and had begun removing them from the voter rolls. He said the names were pulled from a list of individuals who had received noncitizen identification numbers from the Department of Homeland Security. Even then, he conceded that “it is possible that some of the individuals who were issued noncitizen identification numbers have, since receiving them, become naturalized citizens and are, therefore, eligible to vote.”

On September 27, the Department of Justice sued Alabama, arguing that Allen’s actions were in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, which prohibits the removal of voters from the rolls within 90 days of an election. That so-called quiet period exists “to mitigate the risk that errors in systematic list maintenance will disenfranchise, confuse, or deter eligible voters by ensuring that they have adequate time to address errors and understand their rights,” the Justice Department wrote in its lawsuit.

It’s October, the one month of the year when I join the crowd of horror fans. Something about the weather cooling off, the leaves falling, and the approach of Halloween has me reaching for horror, thrillers, dark fantasy, and everything unsettling. I especially look forward to the October 24-hour readathon, which I’ve been doing every year for more than a decade. It’s the perfect time to read through a big stack of horror comics and novellas in one sitting!

Currently, my dresser is covered in stacks of horror books, most of them queer. I save them all year, and I place a bunch of library holds to come on October 1st, so I’m drowning in options. I’m reading An Education in Malice by S. T. Gibson at the moment, a sapphic vampire dark academia novel based on Carmilla, and I’m loving it so far. A Dowry of Blood is one of my favourite books, so that’s not a surprise. I’m also listening to the audiobook of If I Stopped Haunting You by Colby Wilkens, a bi4bi M/F romance between two Indigenous horror authors set in a haunted castle. I’m really enjoying it, partly because Penelope is one of the most stubborn woman main characters I’ve ever read, and I’m here for it.

As I mentioned, I have dozens of queer horror/Halloween books to choose from this month, but here are five of the titles on my TBR, from a queer monster anthology to a trans YA horror novel to an asexual romance set in a haunted house.

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Exported gas emits far more greenhouse gas emissions than coal, despite fossil-fuel industry claims it is a cleaner alternative, according to a major new research paper that challenges the controversial yet rapid expansion of gas exports from the US to Europe and Asia.

Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels when combusted for energy, with oil and gas producers for years promoting cleaner-burning gas as a “bridge” fuel and even a “climate solution” amid a glut of new liquefied natural gas (or LNG) terminals, primarily in the US.

But the research, which itself has become enmeshed in a political argument in the US, has concluded that LNG is 33 percent worse in terms of planet-heating emissions over a 20-year period compared with coal.

After the Emirates began to empty out despite Arsenal’s 2-0 lead over PSG, should fans who leave early be called out for their disloyalty? Or should we all just stop whining about it? Luke, Andy, and Vish tackle one of football’s big taboos.

Elsewhere, with the old guard of managers almost completely gone (just you left now, Dychey), have managerial mind games become a thing of the past?

Plus, why are more players returning to their old clubs and what are our favourite football noises? No, Gary Neville’s orgasm doesn’t count...

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In June, Oklahoma’s Trump-supporting top school official, Ryan Walters, ordered the state’s schools to teach the Bible in class—and this week, his department put in a $3 million proposal to buy 55,000 Bibles for Oklahoma schools. But out of the thousands of versions available for purchase, it seems only two holy books fit the state Department of Education’s strict criteria: one sold by Donald J. Trump, and one sold by his son Don Junior.

Surprise, surprise.

On Friday, the nonprofit news outlet Oklahoma Watch reported that the superintendent’s bid documents included specific standards for the Bibles set to be used in Oklahoma classrooms, standards only met by two editions.

According to the documents, the books must:

Inigo Philbrick, the disgraced art dealer who committed the largest art fraud in American history, may have been released from prison but his crimes still resonate. On Tuesday, a US magistrate judge said that a Jean-Michel Basquiat painting that was used by Philbrick in his illegal scheme belongs to a collector he misled—and not the high-profile art lender he also duped.

The collector, Alexander “Sasha” Pesko, has been locking horns with the art lender. Athena Art Finance, for over five years in court filings that outline complex and conflicting transactions by Philbrick. He was released from federal prison earlier this year after pleading guilty to wire fraud in 2021.

In 2016, Philbrick purchased the Basquiat, titled Humidity (1982), for $12.5 million from Phillips auction house. He then sold shares in it to Pesko and another collector called Damien Delahunty, telling them that they were buying the shares from a company in Pennsylvania—SKH Management Corp. The firm, however, didn’t exist. Pesko and Delahunty are allies in the litigation, but the judge’s writing only mentions the former.

Pesko purchased a 66 percent stake in Humidity for $12 million through his company Satfinance, while Delahunty bought a 12.5 percent stake, forking out $2.75 million.

When the cash landed in his bank account, Philbrick resold the Basquiat in its entirety to an offshore company called Boxwood that he had set up on the island of Jersey in the English Channel. After this, he included the painting in a series of works that he used as collateral to get his hands on a $10 million loan from Athena. Athena then locked the painting in a New York storage facility in 2017.

Two years later, Athena sent Boxwood and Philbrick a default notice. At the same time, he was also hit with his first serious fraud lawsuit. Not long after, Philbrick fled the US. A judge in New York then ruled that he owed Athena $14.3 million, and the art lender moved to take ownership of the Basquiat.

Pesko and Delahunty protested the decision, and the parties have been battling over Humidity ever since.

Valerie Figueredo, the US magistrate dealing with the case, said Philbrick’s transfer to Boxwood through his company Inigo Philbrick Ltd was “a fraudulent conveyance.” She added that Boxwood “had no rights in the painting and thus could not convey a security interest to Athena.”

Figueredo’s decision is a recommendation to the case’s presiding judge, U.S. District Court Judge George B. Daniels, who will end up making the final call.

For its part, Athena said it will appeal the decision. Jonathan Shapiro, one of the art lender’s attorneys, told Artnet News, “Our client utilizes an industry leading, well-trodden approach to asset-backed lending. Ultimately, we expect that the court will rule—as other courts have in the past—that the secured lender is entitled to enforce its rights against Philbrick and, in this case, his ‘silent partners.’”

Artnet news also spoke to Gregory Clarick, an attorney for Delahunty, who said, “We are pleased that the court correctly and sensibly found that Inigo Philbrick could not transfer the painting to Athena after he sold interests to Satfinance and to our client Delahunty Ltd.”

At the opening of the inaugural Atlanta Art Fair (AAF) this week, there was discussion of what the fair—the first of its stature in Atlanta—is not. A numbers contest; a commercial thoroughfare; a crash landing into some locale’s front yard, complete with cleanup for the locals. The ambition is site-specificity: come, buy, stay, but this labor is foremost for the love of Atlanta.

“All of the people here are so passionate about finding funding, championing their artists. Every dollar has to be fought for, there is so much work to amplify each voice. People need to be paying attention to Atlanta, but there hasn’t been a mechanism for that,” Kelly Freeman, the fair’s director, told ARTnews. (Atlanta, it’s worth noting, ranks 49th in the US in terms of public art funding.) Freeman added that regional artists don’t lack quality or quantity, but rather a gathering place.

The Atlanta Art Fair, open to the public Friday through October 6 at Pullman Yards—jam-packed at the preview—is the presumed remedy.

Five years in the making, the fair was organized by New York’s Art Market Productions (AMP), which Freeman also leads, and Intersect Art and Design, which runs the popular summer fair in Aspen. Nato Thompson, curator and self-described “cultural infrastructure builder,” was tapped as artistic director for AAF.

In the lead-up to the fair, the AAF team said to expect a “unique microcosm of the American South,” with strong representation by regional galleries and a smattering of New York, Los Angeles, and international outfits. I don’t know about the whole South, but the fair was a neat introduction to the outfits that fuel Atlanta art; its cultural partners include the High Museum of Art, the National Black Arts Festival, and Flux Projects. Hopefully the exhibitor list in subsequent editions will expand to include more galleries and partners across the South.