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Fan-fiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3) could be offline for up to 4 weeks after security incident

29 October 2026 at 23:43
The site has such a passionate user base that, within two hours of the announcement, its status page's posts had garnered millions of views (and much panicked commentary) across social media.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula audiobook review – cinematic horror with an A-list cast

29 October 2026 at 18:00

Jonathan Bailey, Ella Purnell, Aimee-Lou Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal and more bring shock and gore to an immersive retelling with real bite

Do we really need another retelling of Bram Stoker’s fabled horror novel, which has already yielded multiple films, plays and radio dramas? Perhaps not, but this new audio version of Dracula, directed by Mary Lambert and adapted by Robyn Aherne, justifies its existence with an unusually star-studded cast, a streamlined story and an immersive and frequently nightmarish sound palette.

Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey is smooth and charismatic as the eponymous count who invites a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker (Louis Partridge), to his castle in Transylvania to assist him with the sale of a property. There, Harker becomes increasingly uneasy as he glimpses the count’s diabolical powers and realises that he is, in fact, a prisoner.

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© Photograph: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images for Netflix

© Photograph: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images for Netflix

© Photograph: Marc Piasecki/Getty Images for Netflix

‘We sold out tickets within 13 minutes’: new novel from romantasy author Sarah J Maas sparks fan mania

28 October 2026 at 23:21

Move over Oasis – 6,000 people tried to buy 220 tickets to a masquerade ball to celebrate the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, while specialist bookshops catering for the genre report huge sales

When The Spicy Librarian, a romance bookshop in Leamington Spa, announced a masquerade ball to celebrate the new Sarah J Maas novel, 6,000 people tried to buy 220 tickets. “We sold out within 13 minutes,” says the shop’s co-founder Ali Maynard James. “As soon as tickets went on sale, our website crashed”.

The shop was one of many across the UK marking the release of A Court of Splintered Harmony, the first instalment of Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses series in more than five years. On Monday night, bookshops threw parties and opened past midnight – and The Spicy Librarian hired a stately home to mark the occasion.

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© Photograph: Beth Melvin

© Photograph: Beth Melvin

© Photograph: Beth Melvin

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