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On October 14th, my friends in Canada (I’m looking at you, @RandomHouseCA!) will be celebrating Thanksgiving, and I’ll be sitting here jealous in Philadelphia. Because I want Thanksgiving turkey RIGHT NOW and have to wait until November. And no, the Thanksgiving sandwich they make at Cosi will not hold me over. Stop suggesting that, Blair.

So as I sit here, cranky, I decided to reflect on some Canadians I’m thankful for. And not just our publishing buddies up north or our fabulous Quirk blogger @MsMariaVicente, but the fantastic authors that call Canada home. Thanks for writing (and sometimes drawing!) such amazing work.

This Saturday, the bookish community will be celebrating the literary world of Star Wars, and we’re super excited to be a part of it. Hooray for Star Wars Reads Day!

An eBook exclusive re-release of Sam Stall's Suburban Legends came out October 1st! So through the month of October, we're sharing excerpts from the collection of spooky stories. Because Halloween! 

They told you the suburbs were a great place to live. They said nothing bad could ever happen here. But they were wrong.

This collection of terrifying true stories exposes the dark side of life in the ’burbs—from corpses buried in backyards and ghosts lurking in fast food restaurants to UFOs, vanishing persons, bizarre apparitions, and worse. 

So lock your doors, dim the lights, and prepare to stay up all night with this creepy collection of true tales. We promise you’ll never look at white picket fences the same way again!

Read an excerpt below (Roadside Assistance), and pick it up for $3.99 via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or the iBookstore this month! 

Hey there Quirk fans! Welcome to the Quirk DIY Book Club! This month's selection is Creepy Cute Crochet by Christen Haden! 

Same as last month, you can snag one of TEN free copies by entering the Rafflecopter below. Winners will receive a copy of the book, and will be encouraged to send in photos of their finished crafts, which we will post here on the Quirk blog at the end of the month. You'll also be invited to pin along with us on our Pinterest page.

This Sunday is Mad Hatter Day. It’s a real thing, I swear! And, in true Hatter fashion, we celebrate the numbers sticking out of the character’s topper (“In this style 10/6”) not as the order to make a hat in that particular style that costs ten shillings sixpence but as a day: October 6th—the perfect way to celebrate mix-ups and silliness with a little bit of an un-birthday.

The iconic John Tenniel sketch (above) from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was what started this all. An illustrator, graphic humorist, and political cartoonist, Tenniel drew ninety-two drawings for the Wonderland series. All 2,000 copies of the original print run of the book were shelved because Tenniel objected to the publication’s print quality. A new edition was released in England in December 1865 and became an instant best-seller. And what happened to those 2,000 shunned books? They were resold in America, where apparently we weren’t so choosy about the fineness and fidelity of our lines.

But the Official Day (Sunday) didn’t come around until 1986. A group of computer technicians in Boulder, Colorado celebrated the first Mad Hatter Day, indicating that Tenniel’s “In this style 10/6” is a set of instructions to act in the style of the Mad Hatter on October 6^th. They designated the holiday as a day of general silliness, a much-needed break in the calendar between April Fools Days. The holiday garnered national attention in 1988 when the celebrations attracted national press coverage.

(image via flickr)

Now go out and have a cup of tea, wear a silly hat, and bake cupcakes that bear the message “Eat Me.” Come up with your own response to the Mad Hatter’s unanswered riddle: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” But most of all, be sure to be ridiculous without apology.

CREEPY CUTE CROCHET by Christen Haden ($3.99)

AMAZON / BARNES & NOBLE / IBOOKSTORE / KOBO