This Month

Stories about monsters and animals have a timeless allure — perhaps because we all get bored with being merely human now and again. Amidst this month's beastly selection, you'll find a number of books that examine how such creatures come to be. There's a cultural history of the Frankenstein phenomenon, a monstrous encyclopedia by Jorge Luis Borges, and an eye-popping biography of the king of Japanese monster-makers. A good creature tale is always waiting to be reinvented, as Toby Barlow shows with his noir-as-pitch debut novel (in verse!) about werewolves in LA. For Leonie Swann, it's about getting inside an animal's mind, with her detective yarn about a flock of sheep who investigate their shepherd's murder. We close with two features: an interview with alternative-animation pioneer Ralph Bakshi and a meditation on the glorious strangeness of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are .