Part of our mission, and something that really excites us, is to spread the word about new authors – writers for you to discover who are bringing their own unique voices to the genre. So this is a special week here in On the Radar because four of the five writers we feature today have
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It’s summertime, and many families are about to spend a whole lot more time together than they do during the rest of the year. What better time to search out the best LGBTQ+ audiobooks for the whole family? Road trips, days by the pool, and even sweltering afternoons hunkered down in the AC can all
DCS Kat Frank and her artificially intelligent sidekick AIDE Lock were first introduced to the crime fiction-loving public in In the Blink of an Eye, in January 2023. Since then, AI has infiltrated just about every part of life and not always for the good. So, I have to admit that the idea of reading
★ The Open Era Edward Schmit debuts with The Open Era, an appealing exploration of love, rivalry and the rigors of professional sport, centered on the US Open Tennis Championship. At 20, Austin Hardy qualifies for his first Grand Slam tournament. Out since high school, the press focuses on his being gay more than his
Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Amazon’s Best Books of the Last 10 Years Amazon decided to have a little throwback moment with its latest round-up, which looks at the books they’ve chosen as the best book of each year for
Few settings are more deceptively dangerous than a picturesque rural community. As many have found to their misfortune, beneath the herbaceous borders, parish council meetings and carefully maintained public image lurk old grudges, quiet humiliations and lives that have curdled into resentment. A Plot to Die For taps expertly into that tradition, combining the petty
Justine van der Leun opens her introduction with the story of Nikki Addimando, a woman convicted of murdering her boyfriend, who’d been sexually and physically abusing her for years. After her sentencing, she told the court, “I was afraid to stay, afraid to leave, afraid that nobody would believe me, afraid of losing everything. This
As the new month starts, we’re sitting back and taking stock of the latest goings-on in the world of BIPOC lit. While we’re getting the temporary shutdown of a fire literary magazine, we’re also getting a star’s reading list and what sounds like a delicious New Orleans-set romantasy. Let’s get into it. HEATED RIVALRY Star
If you’re looking for a work of fiction that’s charming from start to finish, Villa Coco is the book for you. It’s seductively entertaining from the get-go, with a luscious opening line: “The little Tuscan train station, brown shutters against yellow paint, seemed so fanciful you might unwrap it and find it was chocolate.” Indeed,
Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Here are the biggest headlines from last week. The New Yorker‘s Best Books of 2026 So Far The publication we keep in stacks around our homes to let everyone know how smart we are has
Having a strong religious foundation was my parents’ top priority when I was growing up. They were college-educated and supplemented my academic education at home. I picked up my huge vocabulary from them, but I didn’t know that K-12 schools had libraries, much less librarians. The first time I entered a school library that wasn’t
Not every crime is solved by a grade A detective or a hotshot sleuth, and in this case, an eclectic and rompy friend group bestows upon themselves the duty to solve the messiest of offences. Nicole is a Black lesbian junior lawyer with big dreams and near-zero social life; Brandon is a gay Jewish hotelier
In Robin Stevenson’s sensitive, engrossing novel The Book of Jupiter, readers see into the life of a child deeply imbedded in the control and perils of a cult community. The stars have never been so limitless, yet also limited, for 13-year-old Ara, who has grown up cloistered in a small rural homestead known as Jupiter
In Britain, across Canada and the US, all over the Northern Hemisphere flowers are blooming… foliage is flourishing… vines are creeping… plants are proliferating… and in some cases poisons are brewing in their deadly roots. We’d never really thought about it but botanical noir could well be a thing and our first two books certainly


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A fairy tale that is charmingly told and delightfully illustrated, The Sweetest of Lemons is truly the sweetest of books. While traveling by car to visit his grandfather’s farm outside of Isfahan, Iran, a boy listens to a storyteller share the fantastic tale of a young man’s journey to take back “a lemon so perfectly
Last week’s Literary Activism post spoke at length about the importance of speaking up and out about legislation that directly impacts libraries–whether or not your library will be the target. Specifically, it was surprising that, despite hours of research and outreach to dozens of library professionals nationwide, there were no examples of public library boards,
In 2020 and 2021, news articles speculated that the few dozen remaining lesbian bars in the U.S. might soon be gone. This concerned Rachel Karp, who had made memories in several of these bars and recognized them as repositories of queer knowledge and records of queer lives. As she puts it, “For centuries, queerness was
Walter Mosley appears on our video call in a room bathed in sunshine. Small rectangular abstract prints on the wall behind him glow, and glass and plastic bottles on shelving near the window shimmer. When I ask where he’s calling from, Mosley says “Santa Monica”—which also happens to be the setting for the opening pages


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Pizza Hut’s Summer 2026 Book It program opened for enrollment on May 1st and will officially kick off June 1st. The much-beloved reading challenge rewards pre-K through 6th-grade readers with personal pan pizzas for reaching their parent-set reading goals. Kids can earn one pizza per month for June, July, and August if they meet their
If ever a book opened with a bang, it’s Michael Connelly’s latest, Ironwood, featuring Detective Stilwell and set on Catalina island, off the coast of California. This is the second in the series, and it’s released a year after we first met Stil, in Nightshade. Connelly’s books have usually been set in the heart of
A couple of years back, Scottish crime fiction author Andrew Raymond took a brief sojourn away from writing his DCI Lomond novels for a research trip to South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Andrew had a cunning plan, which is about to come to fruition with his next novel, The Long Isle. Not only will
Ever since She Rides Shotgun blew us out of our armchairs in 2017, we’ve been keeping an eye out for the SoCal crime author, Jordan Harper –especially our in-house dark thriller aficionado, Rough Justice. And right now, RJ is licking his lips over A Violent Masterpiece which is looking sharper than an X-Acto blade rolling
Today’s round-up of literary headlines includes the TV adaptation of Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward series, the winners of the Barnes & Noble Children’s & YA Awards, Book Threads drama, and more. Brandon Sanderson’s Skyward Series is Getting a TV Adaptation Earlier this year, Brandon Sanderson signed a deal with Apple TV for adaptation rights to the
If a man is found stabbed through the forehead by a unicorn, the sensible reaction is probably to question the witness, the lighting conditions and perhaps the sanity of everyone involved. But in The Unicorn Murders that bizarre image is simply the starting point for one of the most exuberantly improbable mysteries of the Golden
Nine murders. One seemingly impossible disappearance. Nineteen burglaries. An adrenalin-fuelled car chase and an impressively grand theft. Plenty of domestic drama. A taste of pie-based controversy. Not a bad tally so far for May’s crime spree on CFL… but can you do any better? Before anyone calls the police, we should clarify: the only thing
Another right-in-this-moment new thriller, Melinda Leigh’s You Can Tell Me takes on the potential downsides of true crime reporting. Crime authors have given some memorable depictions of the excesses and dangers of this current societal preoccupation. I’m thinking of Paul Cleave’s The Pain Tourist or Lori Roy’s The Final Episode among numerous others. Leigh is
Some memoirs swagger with the author’s self-importance. Not historian Ada Ferrer’s magnificent, aptly titled Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter. Ferrer, a habitué of musty, fragile archives and a brilliant writer, won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Cuba: An American History. In this memoir, she writes “as the strange daughter who loves
Students aren’t taking it quietly, either. Like their peers in Central York High School–a 40 minute drive south of Elizabethtown–students have been protesting the board’s censorship agenda. The protests began in the dead of winter, the weather far from amenable for being outside. But students showed up, their voices and beliefs in an education free
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