Books

The official trailer for the Bridgerton prequel series Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story was just dropped by Netflix. It shows a young Charlotte, played by India Amarteifio, as she questions why she was chosen to wed King George, played by Corey Mylchreest. As she begins to familiarize herself with court life, she meets familiar characters

Graham Bartlett’s debut novel Bad for Good gave us a fictional Brighton very different from that of Peter James’ in the Roy Grace novels – grimier, the politics a lot nastier. This corrupt and corroding cityscape is even more evident in his second police procedural, Force of Hate. These streets are mean but so are

“Never meet your heroes” is a sentiment that’s probably been around as long as celebrities have existed, and Lex Croucher’s Infamous is a perfect illustration of why. Edith “Eddie” Miller is a Jo March-esque heroine, a young woman with literary aspirations in Regency England. She’s awed to the point of speechlessness when she meets gifted,

Nichole “Nic” Blake and her father, Calvin, have moved 10 times in as many years. In Jackson, Mississippi, Nic has finally managed to make a friend, JP, by bonding over their shared love of the bestselling Stevie James fantasy book series, but there’s one thing Nic must hide from her friend. She and her father

From her base in eastern Pennsylvania, Karen Katchur is a crime author with a background in criminal justice who blends her expertise with her imagination and a tablespoon or two of social commentary. Doing so, she produces character-driven thrillers with healthy elements of procedural realism and some dark humour too. Her latest is The Greedy

Do you ever get a little creeped out when you visit your grandparents’ house? There’s something about the stillness of unused rooms and the sweet, dusty smell that can give you a slight sense of dread. But if you were to visit the Montgomery house in T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones, you’d leave

Taylor Jenkins Reid has dominated bestseller lists and BookTok for a few years now, and for very good reason: her books are juicy stories of Hollywood, the rich and famous, and every day women going through impossible situations. Reid has an almost supernatural ability to craft stories that make readers want to keep turning the

Ann Cleeves is the creator of Vera Stanhope, Jimmy Perez and Matthew Venn and all three crime fiction series have been turned into TV productions – with Shetland claiming an runaway win in the CFL Awards Best Crime Drama category in 2022. In total, the English author has written more than 35 best-selling crime novels,

It’s 1940, and Millie and Reginald Thompson face a difficult decision: How can they best protect their 11-year-old daughter from the trauma of World War II? Reginald’s own youth was marred by the worries of World War I, and he’ll do anything to protect his daughter’s childhood. He convinces Millie to send Beatrix to live

Are you the kind of person who browses through Zillow to dream about the perfect property — and judge rich people’s weird decor choices? If so, you’re definitely not alone. Of course, the ultimate dream of book lovers is an elegant home library, with built-in bookshelves and a rolling ladder. That was the takeaway from

Every day, thousands of young American citizens who live in Mexico cross the border into the U.S. to receive their education, from elementary school all the way to college. Their families endure early mornings, arduous commutes, long lines and stressful interactions with border agents, simply to make it to class on time. In his second

If you’ve spent any time on the internet during the past 10 years, then you know about the “This Is Fine” comic. We’ve all seen it: a two-panel strip of a dog in a bowler hat, holding a mug, and calmly saying “this is fine” as the room is swallowed up by flames. Although the

Peter Swanson is well known for complex and clever plotting that’s designed to keep readers guessing. It was shown off to dazzling effect in The Kind Worth Killing, which came out in 2015 and sold by the truckload. Its follow-up made CFL’s Most Wanted List for 2023 – after all this time, could The Kind

Hamra and the Jungle of Memories is a stunning retelling of “Little Red Riding Hood” that brims with big emotions, big adventure and very big teeth. Hamra knows the rules about the Langkawi jungle behind her island home in Malaysia: Never enter without asking the jungle’s permission, never use her real name and never take

In case you’re new around here, you should know that we love a good cover trend at Book Riot. Pantone color of the year? Check. Best covers of the year? You betcha. Books with sexy, suggestive fruits on the cover? Uh, yeah. This time, let’s take a look at some wonderful minimalist book covers coming

If you’ve ever travelled to Egypt, The Lost Americans by Christopher Bollen will take you back there. At least it had that effect on me. And, if you’ve never been there, when you finish this fast-paced thriller, you may feel as if you’ve made the trip. The Sahara dust settling on everything, the smells of

Throughout his broadcasting career, journalist and host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Ari Shapiro has made connections with people from all walks of life. In his sparkling memoir, The Best Strangers in the World: Stories From a Life Spent Listening, Shapiro intimately invites readers into his childhood and beyond to show them how his youthful

With the fervor over AI and how ChatGPT will inevitable change English classes — and nary a word from said author of that piece on the scores of books being removed from those classes — it seemed only right to experiment with the tool. How easily could it parrot the talking points of “parental rights”

Stepping back into the mists of time to try and solve a mystery is a favourite topic for the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason and this is a popular branch of crime fiction for readers too, so it’s great to see the second book in his series about the aging detective Konrád in our roundup. The

Historical fiction is the star of our April issue (11 of our favorites!), but we’ve also got the first memoir from Big Fish author Daniel Wallace, Victor LaValle’s highly anticipated new horror novel and exceptional Earth Day books for kids. Upcoming issues of BookPage will bring special books for Mother’s Day and new releases from Hector Tobar,

If I had to summarize John Catsimatidis’s new book, How Far Do You Want to Go?: Lessons from a Common-Sense Billionaire, it would be two words Catsimatidis uses in a key passage. Simply put, and paraphrasing slightly, Step in. Stepping in is what sticks in my memory, not the actual education-based strategy and methodology Catsimatidis

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