Books

“Too bad I never went to detective school,” Francesca Loftfield muses near the end of The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia. On a mission for an international aid group, the 27-year-old arrives in the titular Italian town in 1960, charged with starting a nursery school in the isolated mountain village. Life here couldn’t be more

Welcome to Today in Books, our round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest stories from the last week. The New York Times Best Books of the 21st Century is Moving Units I have gotten emails from booksellers and librarians (and regular book buyers and borrowers too)

In 18th-century England, women and men had no setting where it was acceptable to converse as equals on intellectual subjects like literature, fine art, foreign affairs, history, philosophy and science. That is, until women began hosting lively gatherings that defied sexist gender norms. When Elizabeth Montagu began hosting her salons in her house in London,

Sony is adapting Liz Moore’s novels The Unseen World and The God of the Woods, which we just wrote about as being Thee Book of the Summer. The plan is for both adaptations to be developed as series, with the same executive producers as Sony’s adaptation of Liz Moore’s Long Bright River: Neal H. Moritz

Shaun Hamill’s fiction jolts the reader with an immediate sense of ambition, a sense that they are about to be not just immersed, but plunged into something enormous that nevertheless keeps a grip on its humanity. With his follow-up to A Cosmology of Monsters, The Dissonance, Hamill once again retains that massive scope while telling

Harris books are moving, Hugo culls fraudulent votes, N.K. Jemisin on the literature of survival, and more. Kamala Harris Book Sales Soaring A 60,000% increase in book sales means (at least) two things are true: enormous surge in interest and a low starting point. If Harris were selling 1000 copies a week, say, before Biden

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of the National Book Award finalist The Undocumented Americans, has a lot in common with the titular protagonist of her debut novel, Catalina. Like Villavicencio did, Catalina attends Harvard as an undocumented student, and her broad ambitions could easily be imagined as the precursor to Villavicencio’s success. With the recent prevalence

Book Deals This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Today’s Featured Book Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Book Deals Previous Daily Deals View original source here.

It’s clear from the jump of Jasmin Graham’s marvelous Sharks Don’t Sink: Adventures of a Rogue Shark Scientist why the author feels such a kinship with the titular fish. Sharks, who have survived five mass extinctions, are survivors. As Graham narrates her journey to becoming a marine biologist, from a childhood spent fishing with her

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. On the Life-Changing Joy of Re-Reading Books I hardly ever re-read books. It’s not that I am against

R. Eric Thomas reflects on the experience of returning home in his funny, forthright Congratulations, The Best Is Over!. Accompanied by his partner, David, a Presbyterian minister, Thomas leaves Philadelphia and goes back to Baltimore, Maryland, where he grew up, only to find a once-familiar landscape very much altered. In this inspired collection, he showcases

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

Young children courageously face their fears in Dare to Be Daring, a funny and reassuring tale told in upbeat, singsongy rhyme that provides an excellent mantra for situations when a little extra motivation is needed: “Today, I will dare to be daring.” As author Chelsea Lin Wallace acknowledges in straightforward, witty prose, trying something for

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Florida Recommends Pride & Prejudice to Read about ‘American Pride.’ Florida, ground-zero for book-banning and censorship, continues to

On the first morning of preschool, Ravi comes downstairs wearing ladybug wings and antennae. When he refuses cornflakes for breakfast, his mother tells him that it’s actually a bowl full of “aphids,” leading him to slurp it down. Later, when she suggests that Ravi brush his teeth, he replies, “Ladybugs don’t have teeth . .

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Next week, I’ll be sharing the results of the Our Queerest Shelves Halfway Check-In Survey, but today, I wanted to chat with you about my answers to the questions about my favourite new and backlist queer books I’ve

In addition to her beautiful language and intricately constructed characters, one of Tana French’s great skills is her knack for an evocative setting. Think the deceptively quaint mountain village of Ardnakelty in The Searcher and The Hunter, or the siren call of cozy, idyllic Whitethorn House in The Likeness. But Broken Harbor is perhaps French’s

January 7, 2025 would have been Zora Neale Hurston’s 134th birthday, and now it will be the publication date of The Life of Herod the Great, a novel Hurston was still working on when she died in 1960. Per a release, the novel “brings first-century BC Judea to vivid life, and portrays Herod the Great

A Refiner’s Fire Hard to believe though it may be, Commissario Guido Brunetti has survived 32 hair-raising adventures thus far, and is back for number 33 in Donna Leon’s sophisticated police procedural series set in Venice, Italy. As A Refiner’s Fire opens, members of two rival gangs have been herded into the police station following

Katie’s parents never told her “no” when she asked for a book, which was the start of most of her problems. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Lake Forest College and is working towards a master’s degree in library science at U of I. She works full time at a public library reference

Joseph Nightingale, nicknamed Fearless after a moment of heroism during the Bosnian conflict, is a British war photographer who was in Nairobi during the August 1998 attack on the U.S. Embassy. While he was away, his pregnant girlfriend, an award-winning investigative journalist, was killed in an automobile accident. As Praveen Herat’s gripping debut political thriller,

We cover a lot of news here at Book Riot. These are the stories readers found most interesting this week, accompanied by my commentary. The Most-Anticipated Most Anticipated Summer Reading List The Millions‘s seasonal preview lists have been a staple of the bookish internet since well before BuzzFeed popularized the idea of the listicle, and

Get ready to fall in love with Max, the irrepressible elementary school narrator of That Always Happens Sometimes. He’s full of energy and enthusiasm that constantly erupts like a volcano. In Kiley Frank’s clever text, Max poses a series of questions that reveal his personality, such as “Have your electric pencil sharpener privileges ever been

If you’re reading your email on the Friday of a holiday weekend here in the U.S., we know we’ve got to make it worth it for you. Today’s line-up is aces. Last year, following Pride, I pulled together a piece that covered all of the targeted anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on schools, libraries, and bookstores over the

This reviewer is emphatically not a cat person. So it’s a testament to my faith in Lucy Knisley that I eagerly picked up Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair.  The comics included here will be familiar to the bestselling author’s numerous social media followers; over many years she chronicled the misadventures and many (many) demands

Shay Youngblood, playwright and novelist, has passed away in Peachtree City, GA at the age of 64. Her friend, Kelley Alexander, said the cause of death was ovarian cancer. Youngblood’s works, which include the short story collection The Big Mama Stories (1989), the novels Soul Kiss (1997) and Black Girl in Paris (2000), and her

The author of The Night Ends With Fire, a new fantasy romance inspired by the legend of Mulan, shares her bookstore habits and favorite library memories. View original source here.

Indie bookstore Fabulosa Books — located in San Francisco’s historically queer Castro District — is running a program called “Books Not Bans.” Last May, Fabulosa’s Becka Robbins began raising money for the project, which uses customers’ donations to send LGBTQ+ books to places in the country where they’ve been banned. So far, the books have

A woman is standing beside me at the swings. I can see the exact expression on her face; I can hear her voice as she chats with her son. Her name is Tessa, and she isn’t real. Like all readers, I’m familiar with the way reality and fiction can blur together. I remember visiting Edinburgh,