As the fall entertaining season lurches into full swing, quality cake recipes are in high demand. No offense to Julia Child’s Reine de Saba, but those who have been overly reliant on the old standards should spend some quality time with Gâteau: The Surprising Simplicity of French Cakes, by Aleksandra Crapanzano. A James Beard Award–winning author who spent a chunk of her childhood in France, she’s also written a food column for The Wall Street Journal for the past decade. Gâteau, her third cookbook, is an exhaustive affair, with highly detailed chapters on baking equipment, ingredients both familiar and obscure, and spirits. The recipes are user-friendly and accompanied by Crapanzano’s helpful and charming anecdotes. It’s a pleasure to digest, even for those who have no intention of pre-heating an oven. For those who do like to get their hands dirty, more than 100 recipes await, ranging from the traditional (La Madeleine Classique) to the wacky (Cake Croque Monsieur). ($30, amazon.com) —Ashley Baker

“Bad” may not be a strong enough word to describe the five Garvey sisters. Adapted from a 2012 Belgian series called Clan, this 10-episode Apple+ series revolves around a murder. The black comedy opens with a funeral. It’s for “the Prick,” the smug, manipulating, misogynist husband (Claes Bang) of Grace (Anne-Marie Duff), the sweetest and most supple of the Garvey sisters. The death, it becomes immediately clear, is an inside job. Told through flashbacks and interwoven time lines, the show is anchored by the unstoppable ensemble of Irish sisters—played by Sharon Horgan, Eve Hewson, Sarah Greene, and Eva Birthistle—each of whom has her own reason to murder the Prick. The more the story unspools, the more we not only sympathize with but cheer on the Garveys. (tv.apple.com) —Bridget Arsenault

After the incredible success of Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City album, Ezra Koenig, the band’s vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter, was “burned out.” During his six-year hiatus, inspiration for the band’s next chapter came via a Grateful Dead cover band. While the influence isn’t obvious, that band, like the actual Grateful Dead, played “music with guitars that seemed compelling, joyous, exciting,” Koenig said. A new 10-episode podcast, America’s Dead, features interviews with artists inspired by the psychedelic-rock band, from Koenig to Mac DeMarco, to the members of Animal Collective. Hosted by Grammy-winning filmmaker and producer Emmett Malloy, the podcast also looks at the band’s influence outside of music. Magic-mushroom experts and religious scholars are welcomed onto the show, too. (podcasts.apple.com) —Clara Molot

Leave it to Liz Lambert, the hospitality visionary behind a myriad of enviably cool and idiosyncratic boutique hotels, to create the perfect indoor-outdoor slipper. She teamed up with Mickey Ashmore, a fellow Texan and the founder of the indie shoe brand Sabah, to create the El Cosmico Baba. This sturdy, handcrafted slip-on has an open back and a top made from hand-painted saddle leather. The colorful ombré stripes take inspiration from the signature robes at the slipper’s namesake, Lambert’s Marfa-based hotel, El Cosmico. The shoes will make their debut during the Trans-Pecos Festival of Music + Love this weekend. They’re perfect for a cool night of live music under the cosmos or an alfresco dinner with some fashionably discerning Manhattanites. ($350; farwestcollective.com) —Laura Neilson

The cartoonist Drew Friedman still remembers the first black-and-white comic he ever read. In 1968, at a bookstore in downtown Manhattan, he found a copy of Zap with a warning on the front that read: “Adult intellectuals only.” That comic, created and illustrated by Robert Crumb, helped ignite the underground-comic renaissance of the late 1960s, which saw the medium become a countercultural force. It also ignited Friedman’s love of comic books. (You can find several of his cartoons on this very Web site). He recalls that first experience in the introduction of his new book, Maverix and Lunatix: Icons of Underground Comix. A “tribute to the great underground comix creators,” it covers the “essential” 101 cartoonists working between 1967 and 1977. Friedman draws a caricature of each artist, and writes a brief bio explaining their significance in the genre. The book is comprehensive enough to entice diehards but covers enough basics to introduce rookies to the comic-book landscape. ($34.99, fantagraphics.com) —Jensen Davis

While there’s always room for florals in our scent wardrobe, a woodsier whiff gets us more excited for a fall of brisk walks and hot beverages imbibed around a fire. Enter Bois Dormant, the 11th scent from Celine’s Haute Parfumerie Collection. It’s inspired by Hedi Slimane’s memories of searching all over London for secondhand suits from Savile Row when he was 19 years old. To capture that formative moment in his journey as a couturier, he blended notes of powdery wood and English flannel, and used inventive techniques to interpret the olfactory experience of vinyl records. It’s a heady mix that’s intended to be the daytime counterpart of the house’s Black Tie fragrance. Forgive us for wanting to wear it 24-7. ($315, celine.com) —Ashley Baker