Books

Laury Egan’s new novel, Jack & I, is the dark tale of a 16-year-old New Jersey boy growing up in a state of utter confusion. Part of the turmoil around him is environmental and stems from a succession of foster homes with families of varying mixes of sympathy and exploitation. But most of his confusion

Both an art book and a kind of poetic herbarium, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children defies easy classification. That’s for the benefit of readers, though: Untethered to the conventions of traditional genres, writer Jamaica Kincaid is free to create something brand new, and perusing the pages feels like true discovery. Kincaid’s tone shifts

Here’s your weekend round-up of the most-read stories from Today in Books, with my commentary. Grab your coffee and catch up! The Thriller Writer Outselling James Patterson & John Grisham You’re expecting this to be a story about the latest TikTok romantasy hit, aren’t you? The clock app may be hogging headlines with stories about

Margaret Kingsbury grew up in a house so crammed with books she couldn’t open a closet door without a book stack tumbling, and she’s brought that same decorative energy to her adult life. Margaret has an MA in English with a concentration in writing and has worked as a bookseller and adjunct English professor. She’s

Our new books report this week includes the latest David Raker novel by Tim Weaver, some creepy crawlies that make bodies disappear in the new novel by Tracy Buchanan, plus three indie crime novels that are also worth checking out – two from the US and one from Britain. Continue to discover your next crime

One of the UK’s strongest new crime writing talents returns in July – we can’t wait to see what Joanna Wallace gets up to with The Dead Friend Project. Our new books report also brings you the latest from Sarah Hilary, SB Caves, Johanna Copeland and Luke Deckard, whose stories range from slow burn psychological

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

Arundati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize, which celebrates writers whose work display an “unflinching, unswerving” look at the world. Roy, who was the first Indian writer to win the Booker Prize in 1997, said she was “delighted” to win the award, saying “I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write

Last year Mark Billingham introduced us to the unpredictable Detective Sergeant Declan Miller in The Last Dance, a book that takes a different tone to the author’s Thorne novels. The Wrong Hands continues Declan’s story along with the mix of genres seen in the first book – part police procedural and part grief manual with

🤖 A new startup from the former co-founders of Scribd aims to help publishers license books to AI companies. 💖 In the mood for a summer fling? Check out these excellent deals on romance ebooks. 🎁 12 gifts for you and your book club buddies. The Best of Book Riot Newsletter Sign up to The

Ah, Helsingør, the ancient Danish town where Hamlet was prince, and it’s the setting too for drama of a different ilk as The Sommerdahl Murders arrives in Britain on Channel 4’s streaming service Walter Presents from Friday 28 June 2024. If you’re a fan of cold, dark Nordic noir crime shows like the recent Jana:

When Daniel Lohr’s and Leah Auerbach’s eyes meet as they wait to board the SS Raffaello, their connection is instant and electric. The year is 1939, and they’ve both booked first-class passage on a weekslong journey from Trieste, Italy, to Shanghai. But while the cruise liner is massive in size and gorgeous in design, its

What’s a girl to do when she works in PR and journalism, but has a secret fascination with the darker side of human nature? Not that celebrity PR doesn’t get to some dark places now and again – but for Tracy Buchanan the answer has been to turn her skill to writing crime novels. Based

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,

In case you missed it, on Saturday I put together a list of the queer books that appeared on the many Best Books of 2024 So Far lists as a bonus for paid subscribers. Did you know that your paid subscription now gives you access to all of Book Riot’s bonus content across all our

As a music lover, it’s tempting to say that Addison McKellar deserves everything that’s coming to her for attending a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Still, I must remember I’m here to review books and not their character’s music choices, no matter how dubious. Addison is approaching 40, and has a mid-life crisis heading for

There is an immediate richness to the historical fiction of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures), one that goes beyond carefully researched details and evocative prose, and into deep emotion. In her 12th book, The Glassmaker, Chevalier weaves a tapestry of character and conflict, change and stability, to create a story that

When little Afia can’t sleep, her mind as active as a summer night, she and her papa travel in their imaginations to find love. And find it they do—in the sun-warmed sand, on a snowy mountain top, in the ocean’s friendly waves and even in the darkest night sky. Before she finally drifts off to

Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women tells the story of three fierce Black women united by the spells and elixirs that have been passed down in their family. Willow, Augusta and Victoria Montrose lead a quiet existence in California until Victoria’s teenage daughter, Nickie, becomes involved with Felix. Unaware of the family curse—that anyone a

Both Same as It Ever Was and your debut, The Most Fun We Ever Had, are lengthy novels that examine family dynamics over the course of decades. What draws you to this type of story? I’ve always been drawn as a reader to big, meaty novels that stick with a cast of characters over a

For so many of us, the refrigerator is an appliance we’ve interacted with daily for as long as we can remember. It’s also one we take for granted, rather than viewing it as emblematic of the world-changing innovation Nicola Twilley explores in Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. As readers will

With its near 500-page count and robust endnotes, The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq might at first glance scare off readers who haven’t sniffed a textbook in years. But thanks to Steve Coll’s crisp and dynamic prose, what’s between the covers feels little like an academic

With about half of the year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time we did some reflection. And Goodreads, with its millions of members, is always a great place to get a pulse check on what’s popular among the people. The most popular books of the year so far were determined by looking at which new

First edition front cover. When most people think of Shirley Jackson, they think of horror. The Haunting of Hill House is often cited as the archetypal 20th-century ghost story. Even scaremonger-in-chief Stephen King regards Shirley Jackson as a major influence, devoting 30 pages of his 1982 memoir Danse Macabre to her work. The Californian writer

In White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, MacArthur fellow and activist-pastor William J. Barber II makes the logical but nonetheless surprising point that, even though poverty has a disproportionately high impact on Black Americans, there is a vastly greater number of white people living in poverty, leading lives

Alex Gerlis is a veteran espionage author with three series already behind him, but with Every Spy a Traitor he launches a new series. This time it’s a classic fish out of water story, similar to those written by Eric Ambler, but with a twist. Ambler (The Mask Of Dimitrios, Journey Into Fear) was a

Gennifer Choldenko’s The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman is a moving story about an 11-year-old abandoned by his single mom and left to care for his 3-year-old sister, Boo, inspired by Choldenko’s own childhood experiences of having undependable parents and a caring older brother who acted as a surrogate parent. Fans of the Newbery Honor

In Malas, the legend of La Llorona (the Weeping Woman) ties together the stories of two women from different generations in a Texas border town. When the two meet in the ‘90s, their connection—including a shared love of Selena—threatens to surface buried town secrets. Malas is your first novel. Can you tell us a bit

Since I write about new LGBTQ book releases every week on Our Queerest Shelves, I keep a giant spreadsheet of upcoming queer books, adding titles as soon as I learn about them. I follow approximately a million queer book blogs, BookTubers, BookTokers, Bookstagrammers, etc — and that’s not to mention the deluge of publicity emails

Each section of neuroscientist and corporate coach Nicole Vignola’s Rewire: Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change is titled with phrases that will sound familiar to readers bent on self-improvement: “Ditch the Negative,” “Shift Your Narrative,” “Boost the Positive.” While those imperatives may not be new, the author’s explanations of how one