In Sister, Maiden, Monster a new virus tears across the globe–but it’s not COVID. It’s something much worse.

PVG is a virus that has scary symptoms. Patients begin with headaches and nausea that later results in throwing up their own blood. Many of them die. Those that recover are forced to accept their fate: they’ll need to consume either blood or brains from humans to survive.

The story follows three POVs through the timeline of the PVG pandemic. First, there’s Erin, a quiet woman who lives with her boyfriend, goes to work, and doesn’t step outside the Status Quo. Then, there’s Savannah, a sex worker in a brothel who discovers a new turn on: committing brutal murders. Lastly, there’s Mareva, a woman plagued with chronic tumors from childhood who’s desperate to ignore the coming apocalypse.

Victor LaValle’s Lone Women is the story of Adelaide Henry, a young black woman with a horrifying secret.

Growing up in the early 1900s on a small farm in California, Adelaide hasn’t had it easy. And yet, when she reads an article about women homesteading alone in Montana–in exchange for land–Adelaide is too tempted to pass it up. The caveat? She must bring with her a larger than life secret, packed into a steamer trunk.

The secret Adelaide’s tried so desperately to lock away is just dying to come out, and it’s only a matter of time.

The one thing, like many others, that I was absolutely astounded by was McCurdy’s sense of normalcy by the way her family acted and how she was treated as a child. As she began to understand that other families didn’t behave the ways hers did, her depression worsened and caused a slew of very real health problems, which she depicts in a raw, candid manner that will touch even the most unaffecting readers.

If you like to read like I do, it might be hard to imagine that some of the great literary works we can hold in our hands—some of our FAVORITE books started with a blank page (or maybe even a blank screen–but, let’s be real, Jane Austen wasn’t googling ‘how to write a book’).

Just My Type is an adorable new rom-com where exes become lovers, the main character works on finding herself, and therapy is much approved.