In the spring of 2014, a truly shocking story broke: two young teens lured their friend into the woods and stabbed her 19 times. The motivation behind their gruesome crime? The girls were trying to please a fiction character known as Slender Man - an urban legend born of the internet. This real case shocked the world when it first broke—and it’s inspired the newest book by USA Today bestselling author Carter Wilson, too. MISTER TENDER’S GIRL went on sale earlier this year to rave reviews, and, after meeting the author at this year’s Thrillerfest conference, I knew it was finally time to make space for it on my reading list. In this fictionalization of the Slender Man case, readers go down the rabbit hole with Alice, the survivor of a stabbing at the hands of two of her friends. Alice was intended as a sacrifice to a character known as Mister Tender—a bartender from a series of graphic novels dreamed up by Alice’s own father. Carter Wilson blurs the lines between reality and fiction to gripping effect in MISTER TENDER’S GIRL; readers will find themselves drawn into a world that’s just close enough to our own to be genuinely creepy, and just over the top enough to be totally binge-worthy. Our culture’s obsession with true crime doesn’t seem to be going anywhere soon, and if you’re as fascinated by the Slender Man case as I am, Wilson’s reimagining of it belongs on your TBR.