Books

The United States Postal Service unveiled the new Toni Morrison forever stamp last Tuesday at a ceremony held at Princeton University. Morrison, one of the most influential modern American writers, was a professor at Princeton for almost 20 years, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and the Nobel Prize in Literature before she passed away

“What a brilliant programme. I was so upset when we got to the final episode.” “Sara Mortensen is totally convincing in her portrayal of the autistic Astrid.” “Astrid has to be one of the best TV shows.” These are just a few of the comments made on our site when we previewed the first series

Leta McCollough Seletzky, author of The Kneeling Man Counterpoint | April 4 In the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., one man is kneeling down beside King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, trying to staunch the blood from the fatal head wound. This kneeling man, Leta McCollough Seletzky’s father,

The New York Public Library has shared the five finalists for its 2023 Bernstein Book Award. The award, currently in its 36th year and named after journalist Helen Bernstein Fealy, honors nonfiction books by journalists that highlight current issues on a national or global scale. This year’s finalists cover issues that range from discrimination against

The Pale Horse is one of Agatha Christie’s darkest and most gothic mysteries, and is arguably the best among many great novels by this author. Today, the book is being republished in a special format by The Folio Society, complete with illustrated plates by the East Anglian illustrator Olivia Daw. To give you a flavour

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, the controversial first lady of 28th president Woodrow Wilson, had some impressive predecessors. There was women’s rights advocate Abigail Adams, wife of second president John Adams and mother of sixth president John Quincy Adams. During the War of 1812, Dolley Madison, wife of fourth president James Madison, rescued the nation’s treasured

If you’ve been paying attention to the news lately, you know there’s been a flood of anti-trans legislation, bans of trans books, and a disturbing increase in anti-trans rhetoric recently. In response, Sim Kern, author of Depart, Depart! and Seeds for the Swarm, is hosting a Trans Rights Readathon next week!  This is a decentralized fundraiser, which means you can

Yes, the eponymous protagonist of Liz Nugent’s new crime mystery, Strange Sally Diamond, is strange. And for good reason. Sally lives a mile outside a small village in Ireland’s sparsely populated County Roscommon. Alone with her father since her mother died several years earlier, Sally is in her early 40s and has become her father’s

Vietnamese writer Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel to be translated into English, the award-winning The Mountains Sing (2020), spun an epic family saga centered on the Vietnam War. Her luminous new novel, Dust Child, is less spacious but still focuses on reverberations from that war. Through intersecting stories of Vietnamese and American characters, Dust

The Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburō Ōe passed away March 3rd of old age. His work has repeatedly been compared to William Faulkner, and Kazuo Ishiguro described him as “genuinely decent, modest, surprisingly open and honest, and very unconcerned about fame.” Kenzaburō Ōe was a Japanese novelist known for his fiction addressing social and political issues,

It seems like 2023 is turning out to be the year of crime fiction farewells. First came the end, for the time being at least, of Elly Griffiths’ series featuring forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway; now, thousands of miles and continents away it is time to say goodbye to Aaron Falk, who works in the financial

In 1767, Phillis Wheatley arrived in Boston via a slave ship at the age of 7. In the years leading up to the start of the American Revolution in 1775, she became famous across New England and in London for her poetry. For all her talent and influence on the issues of her day, such

In the high school library that I manage, I run a manga club that is very popular with the students. In the past eight years I’ve seen it grow and evolve with the students. Manga is by far the most popular kind of book we have in the library, especially with those who claim they

In Freeze, a group of strangers convene upon an Arctic ship in order to win the £100,000 prize offered by the new reality TV show, Frozen Out. At the simplest level, this novel is both a survival thriller and a locked-room mystery as the contestants face perils both planned and unplanned. At another level, it’s

Dr. Alexa Hagerty, an associate fellow at the University of Cambridge and an anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Stanford, can read bones. In Still Life With Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains, Hagerty explores the close connection between bones and words. Like words, bones can be articulated (arranged into a coherent form, such as a

If you’re looking for an anti-censorship group to get involved with, you’re in luck. There are dozens across the country, with more popping up all of the time. While there is certainly a need for a national push against censorship — we need politicians at the federal level to do something — work at the

If we said the words ‘donut legion’ to you, what would spring to mind? A chocolate dip, maybe? Jam or custard? Sprinkles on top…? Being eaten by a police officer on their break, perhaps? Or, how about a sweeeet new standalone crime novel from Joe R Lansdale, creator of Hap and Leonard and author of

Gardening isn’t just for the countryside! This exuberant picture book celebrates the joys of community gardening and sharing food with neighbors and friends in the city. Red gingham patterned endpapers set the table for City Beet, a reimagining of a Russian folktale commonly known as “The Gigantic Turnip.” The story begins when young Victoria and

The 2023 Women’s Prize longlist has been announced! After the 1991 Booker Prize shortlist was announced, then called the Man Booker Prize, and no women authors appeared on it, a group of journalists met and wanted more. Together, they founded the Women’s Committee and began the quest for starting a literary prize of their own,

White Fox is the third novel to feature Russian KGB officer Alexander Vasin, a man much like Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther, in that he has had the bad luck to be born with a moral sense and independent streak while serving within a totalitarian regime. The preceding novels, Black Sun and Red Traitor, merged historical

Color: We can’t not see it, and yet we’re frequently unaware of the power of its strategic use, even as we feel the effects. But you’ll never take color for granted again after perusing Charles Bramesco’s Colors of Film, which explores the palettes used in 50 iconic films through four eras of cinema. Bramesco’s discussion

When I saw a social media post saying that Judy Heumann died, my first response was no no no, hopefully this is misinformation. I knew she had been in the hospital, and I hoped that this was one of those macabre false information posts about a celebrity’s death. But a few hours later, it was

It’s International Women’s Day every 8 March, but here at Crime Fiction Lover we believe you should be reading women crime authors all year round. From old school proper like Agatha Christie to sexually liberated like Chelsea G Summers, for every throwback commentator hoping to argue that men are better writers, there’s a woman author

In June 1994, the small town of Henley, Ohio, was devastated by a tornado, a flash flood and its first and only murder—still unsolved—all in the span of one week now known as “the long stretch of bad days.” Thirty-ish years later, aspiring journalist Lydia Chass learns that she is one history credit shy of

Here’s the thing that a lot of people may not realize about the United States: it may be recognized internationally as a singular country and culture, but it’s really more like a bunch of cultural regions dressed up in a trench coat and trying to pass itself off as one group, a la those kids

Richard Wright is best known for his literary novel Native Son and the bestselling memoir of his early years, Black Boy. The pioneering African American author, born to Mississippi sharecroppers, addressed race and prejudice in his country head on. And racism is the theme of this 1940s crime story, which was rejected by the establishment

The past has a way of catching up to you when you least expect it. The characters of Alex Finlay’s new thriller, What Have We Done, learn this the hard way. A TV producer (Nico), a rock star (Donnie) and a former assassin (Jenna) all believe they left a shared secret from their childhood in

When you get home from a stressful day at work, do you kick back with a nice cold beer? Or do you prefer hemlock tea? In Hannah Whitten’s The Foxglove King, poisons are drugs that produce a potent magical high. Full of courtly intrigue, smart characters and will-they-won’t-they romance, The Foxglove King is a heady

The Maltese Iguana  Buckle up for another wild ride with Florida ne’er-do-well Serge A. Storms and his stoner sidekick, Coleman, in their 26th adventure, The Maltese Iguana by Tim Dorsey. The title, a nod to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, refers not to a precious statue but instead to its modern-day Florida counterpart—an iguana-shaped bong.

Maya has it all figured out: She’s on the fast track to a promotion at her investment firm, she has a great apartment in Miami, and she’s still dating her handsome college sweetheart, a retired professional football player who will almost certainly put a ring on it sometime in the near future. So when the