Books

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

Ever since I was a kid, I have loved reading books featuring a haunted house with a creepy resident; a feisty, determined heroine; and strange goings-on that gradually turn scary. But rarely, if ever, have I read a haunted house book that features such gorgeous prose as Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel, Starling House. Early

Ann-Marie Cahill will read anything and everything. From novels to trading cards to the inside of CD covers (they’re still a thing, right?). A good day is when her kids bring notes home from school. A bad day is when she has to pry a book from her kids’ hands. And then realizes where they

It’s spring break in 2009. Childhood best friends Dani and Zoe are freshmen in college, and are finally spending a week in New York City like they’ve always dreamed. Accompanying Dani is her classmate Fiona, a cigarette-smoking, tragically hip art student whose uninhibited and self-possessed attitude attracts Zoe immediately. Dani wants to do classic tourist

One recent morning, before I left home to plant white oak trees in a nearby park, I turned to Margaret Renkl’s The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year. As often happens, a passage from the New York Times columnist grounded me and pulled my vision forward: “Planting a tree is a gesture of faith in

In Caroline O’Donoghue’s acclaimed novel, The Rachel Incident (9.5 hours), university student Rachel is extremely busy juggling a precarious love pentagon involving her Victorian Literature professor, her gay best friend James, her boss (who happens to be the professor’s wife) and her boyfriend. Naturally, mistakes are made. But despite being very funny, The Rachel Incident

Gennaro’s Cucina: Hearty Money-Saving Meals From an Italian Kitchen by Gennaro Contaldo focuses on cucina povera, the traditional cooking of rural Italy, where seasonality and a “waste not want not” lifestyle deliciously intersect. If you love to buy loaves of artisan bread but often find them stale before you can eat them up, grab this

Anyone immediately transported to a riverside pier by the lyric “So open up your morning light” will love Thea Glassman’s Freaks, Gleeks, and Dawson’s Creek: How Seven Teen Shows Transformed Television. “Today’s teen shows are leading the charge when it comes to progressive, diverse, and creative storytelling,” Glassman writes, but they wouldn’t exist without the

The Hidden Language of Cats Sarah Brown knows and loves felines: She has a doctorate in the social behavior of neutered domestic cats, and the dedication page of her new book simply reads, “For the cats.” Those who said “Aww!” at that information will delight in Brown’s The Hidden Language of Cats: How They Have

Addison Rizer is a writer and reader of anything that can be described as weird, sad, or scary. She has an MA in Professional Writing and a BA in English. She writes for Book Riot and Publishers Weekly and is always looking for more ways to gush about the books she loves. Find her published

Sam Becker loves—or, okay, likes—his job. Sure, managing a bed and bath retailer isn’t exactly glamorous, but it’s good work and he gets on well with the band of misfits who keep the store running. He could see himself being content here for the long haul. Too bad, then, that the owner is an infuriating

By day, Leah Rachel von Essen is the editor-in-chief of Chicago Booth Magazine at the University of Chicago. By night, she reviews genre-bending fiction for Booklist, and writes regularly as a senior contributor at Book Riot. Her blog While Reading and Walking has over 10,000 dedicated followers over several social media outlets, including Instagram. She

When Renée Watson read her first Ramona Quimby book as a child, she was startled by where Beverly Cleary’s beloved heroine lived: Klickitat Street was just around the corner from Watson’s aunt’s home in Portland, Oregon. “I was so in awe that a character in a book could live in my city and in a

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside

Tan Twan Eng’s third novel, which was longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, is set in the early 1920s, when the British writer William Somerset Maugham and his secretary (and lover) Gerald Haxton visit the coastal province of Penang, Malaysia, as the guests of Lesley and Robert Hamlyn. Part of Penang’s European elite, Lesley and

Nobel winning American poet Louise Glück died today, Friday, October 13. She was 80 years old. Glück was the US Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004, and her work explored religion, mythology, and the natural world with deeply personal and autobiographical tones. Her poetry earned not only the Nobel in 2020 for her collection The

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

Poet and young adult author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s adult debut, Witch of Wild Things, is a story of family legacies and complicated sisterhood, told with romantic and lush magical realism.  For the entirety of Sage Flores’ life, she’s known three things. First, the old gods have no love for Flores women and have thus cursed

Mara (They/Them) has accidentally on purpose made their entire life about books and stories. Mara graduated with a B.A in creative writing and theatre and is halfway through an MFA in Creative writing. In addition to writing for Book Riot, Mara also has written for The Independent Book Review, Wargamer, and The Other Half, to

What would Hansel and Gretel be like as adults? Kell Woods’ inventive retelling explores the answer to this question, following Hans and Margareta “Greta” Rosenthal as down-on-their-luck German peasants struggling to make a living in a world still recovering from the Thirty Years’ War. Greta has never felt like she fit into Lindenfeld, a little

Kelly Jensen is out this week, so Erica Ezeifedi and I are filling in on censorship news. Unfortunately, none of us can be Kelly, even with our forces combined, so we’re trying something a little different in the censorship news round-up. Instead of one big story and dozens of bullet points, we have each picked

Today, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Norwegian novelist and playwright Jon Fosse. Fosse’s work has been highly acclaimed across Europe, and is gaining more and more of an audience in English-speaking portions of the world. The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded for entire bodies of work, and Fosse’s win comes as

Veteran narrators Michael Kramer and Kate Reading return to this fantastical world, along with a new POV portrayed by Marisa Calin.V. E. Schwab, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, opens another door to a new fantasy series set in the dazzling world of Shades of Magic. Prepare for tangled schemes and perilous

Just in time for Banned Books Week (October 1-7), two California library systems — San Diego Public Library and LA County Library — have joined the Books Unbanned initiative. In 2021, the Brooklyn Public Library started the initiative as a way to counteract the deluge in book banning in schools across the country. Though this year

California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein passed away Thursday night after a long struggle with health that started with a case of shingles months ago. At 90, she had served as a senator for 30 years, making her the longest-serving woman senator ever. Feinstein details some of her career as a trailblazing democrat in Nine and Counting:

Book Riot and the EveryLibrary Institute have teamed up for a survey that examines parents’ perceptions of public libraries and book bans. The survey asked questions like, “Do you feel your child is safe at the library?” “How comfortable are you with LGBTQ+ characters and themes in children’s books?” and “At what age should children

Ashlie (she/her) is an educator, librarian, and writer. She is committed to diversifying the reading lives of her students and supporting fat acceptance as it intersects with other women’s issues. She’s also perpetually striving to learn more about how she can use her many privileges to support marginalized groups. Interests include learning how to roller

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View

More than 150 artists, musicians, actors, and writers — including Amanda Gorman, Roxane Gay, Parma Lakshmi, Ron Perlman, and others — have signed an open letter decrying book bans. The letter, which was led by LeVar Burton, was published Tuesday through pubic advocacy organization MoveOn Political Action. It calls for everyone across the country to

Kelly is a former librarian and a long-time blogger at STACKED. She’s the editor/author of (DON’T) CALL ME CRAZY: 33 VOICES START THE CONVERSATION ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH and the editor/author of HERE WE ARE: FEMINISM FOR THE REAL WORLD. Her next book, BODY TALK, will publish in Fall 2020. Follow her on Instagram @heykellyjensen. View