Top reads for the week: The Light Eaters, Paranoid Gardens, and I Was a Teenage Slasher

We have been intrigued by the latest fiction, nonfiction, and comics that have been released.

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is something of a slasher expert. The author has tackled the genre in several of his novels (most notably the Indian Lake trilogy, which features a slasher-obsessed protagonist) and has an ongoing Fangoria column devoted to his influences, so it’s no surprise to see that he’s published another take on the canon. But this time we get a different perspective: that of a slasher.

I Was a Teenage Slasher is a fictionalized memoir about Tolly Driver, who in 1989 reluctantly became Lamesa, Texas’ own Michael Meyers at the age of 17 — a transformation apparently driven by forces beyond Tolly’s control. It uses the classic slasher formula and injects a lot of heart.

Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger

The Light Eaters: How The Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Plant Intelligence was published in the spring, but it just popped onto my radar and I immediately fell in love with both the premise and Schlanger’s easy-to-digest writing. style. The Light Eaters explores the long-debated concept of plant “intelligence” by talking to scientists and diving deep into the complex processes that underlie plant survival.

There’s quite a bit of anthropomorphism, but The Light Eaters offers a truly fascinating glimpse into the inner workings of plants, accessible to non-scientists, and may at least inspire you to look at nature a little differently.

Paranoid Gardens, Gerard Way, Shaun Simon, Chris Weston

The first digital issue of Paranoid Gardens, Gerard Way and Shaun Simon’s new six-issue series, came out this week, and it’s wonderfully weird. Right off the bat, we’re introduced to Lo, a nurse with amnesia and a tragic (but so far unexplained) backstory who works at a facility for aliens and paranormal beings. And it’s not just the patients who are unusual – there’s also something unusual about the building itself. The drama moves quickly, and Lo “must fight his way through corrupt staff members, powerful theme park cults, and his own personal demons and traumas” to understand his role in it all “and discover what secrets the gardens hold.”

Paranoid Gardens is written by Way (yes, of My Chemical Romance fame, but also The Umbrella Academy) and Simon (The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, co-written with Way), with art by Chris Weston, colors and lettering by Dave Stewart. Nate Piekos.