Books

RuPaul, drag superstar and pop culture icon, has been busy on his lifelong way to stardom—a destiny, he reveals, foretold by a psychic before he was born. He has been an actor, producer, author, model, dancer, singer, songwriter, media host, business mogul and creator of the multi-Emmy-winning reality TV series, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” He has

Since the advent of The Folk of the Air series in 2018, Holly Black has held legions of YA fantasy readers in thrall to the world of Faerie: its acorn cups and everapples, redcaps and ragwort steeds, mad revels and delicate, deadly riddles. Her latest novel, The Prisoner’s Throne, is another delicious descent into the

There’s nothing like crime fiction involving a butler to take you back to the Golden Age, the inspiration for so many cosy crime novels. So we’ll start this week’s new books report with the latest from Cathy Ace, then migrate into psychological thrillers, detective crime fiction and perhaps even hopscotch over to some true crime

This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it. Spotify’s Next Audiobook Offering is a Weird One I have heard that audiobooks are doing well

Mark Coggins’s new Tokyo-based crime novel, Geisha Confidential, features middle-aged San Francisco-based private investigator August Riordan, who has appeared in a number of previous books in this award-winning series. Read this fast-paced story, and you’ll barely have time to feel the jet lag. Almost as soon as Riordan’s plane lands, trouble starts. He’s made the

I can’t believe we’re at the end of month two of the 2024 Read Harder Challenge! Despite writing these updates every week, it still seems to be sneaking up on me. As always, this week I have my own reading updates, some recommendations from the comments section for one of the tasks (in this case,

There’s truth to the adage write what you know. New Zealand author Tom Baragwanath follows this advice by setting his debut novel in Masterton, where he’s from, resulting in a strong and authentic sense of place. On the other end of the spectrum, he defies it by using a female protagonist and creating an utterly

Billie Walker does not want to accept that she is a war widow, even though it has been a couple of years since she last saw her husband. Nor does she have any intention of working as a reporter for the society pages. She enjoyed being a war correspondent in Europe and working side by

There seems to have been a spike in the number of ex-intelligence officers writing espionage novels recently – and they know what they’re talking about. Among them are David McCloskey and IS Berry in America, and James Wolff and Charles Beaumont in Britain. Dark Arena is slightly different, with former airforce pilot and DGSE officer

This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it. __________________________________ Saturday Night Live Skewers Truman Capote I haven’t been watching the confusingly

Although some people liken it to Nordic noir due to the latitude, Alaskan crime fiction has its own vibes and tropes. In some ways, it’s like that 90s TV show Northern Exposure, with murder thrown in. Quirky and dark. The cold is a killer, the wilderness is a killer, some of the people are pretty

It’s common practice among many publishers to leave translators’ bylines off book covers—an act of erasure that reinforces the widely held belief that original texts are sacred and thus superior to any translation. Jennifer Croft, who is best known for her translations of Nobel Prize-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk’s books, is challenging readers and critics

For too long, the tyranny of standard page counts has kept published stories to a set length. There was one category for short stories and one for novels, with nary a middle ground in sight. But as ebooks became more popular, the humble novella took its rightful spot in the literary ecosystem. No more will

Before March of 2018, I never intended to write a sequel to There There. When I first decided to do it, the mean voices inside immediately began judging me. Like it was lowbrow. Like it belonged in the Marvel universe of decision-making, like people would think it was a cash grab even though I made

Murder and Mamon is the fourth book in the Tita Rosie’s Kitchen Mystery series by Mia P Manansala. It is a delightful culinary cosy mystery about Lila Macapagal, a baker and amateur detective. Lila is passionate about food, family and friends. Should anything happen to her family or friends, Lila will happily step into her

A bookshop becomes an inspiration for transformation in this thought-provoking tale by author and essayist Hwang Bo-reum. After she burns out from her intense career and divorces her controlling husband, Yeongju decides to find emotional fulfillment by pursuing her childhood dream of owning a bookshop. Although she finds the business aspect of running a bookshop

Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. It Feels Like a Lot Because It Is a Lot If your latest scroll through the Netflix menu left you feeling like every other option was based on a book, you’re not super wrong. Nearly one-third

Don’t know about you, but I, for one, am intrigued to see Oscar Wilde’s the ageless Dorian Gray appear in a crime novel alongside Sherlock Holmes. Wow! The Classified Dossier has finally been revealed by crime author Christian Klaver and it looks like the perfect distraction from the cost of living crisis, climate change and

Despite her love for logic and science, 12-year-old Sahara Rashad longs for a trip from her home in Queens, New York, to Merlin’s Crossing, a wizard-themed amusement park. Alas, as Nedda Lewers’ magical coming-of-age adventure Daughters of the Lamp opens, Sahara realizes her dad didn’t find her “Ten Reasons the Rashad Family Should Go to

Libby, a free app through which patrons can check out books from their local public libraries, has joined the book award game. This year, on March 12th at 7 pm EST to be exact, the Libby Book Awards — also called the “Libbys” — will be presented. The award-winners will be out of 17 categories

Ah, that well worn crime fiction trope, the dual timeline! What fun it is to skip back and forth across the decades, trying to keep the multiple story paths on point in an increasingly frazzled brain! Is it any wonder my heart sank upon seeing the words “30 years ago” in the preface to this

Graham Halstead serves up an atmospheric performance in the audiobook of The Glutton (11 hours), A.K. Blakemore’s mesmerizing novel about a peasant boy with a voracious appetite for just about anything. Tarare is a sickly man close to death, strapped to his hospital bed and watched over by a nun who is terrified by rumors

Thomas Mullen made his name with the Darktown novels, set in racism-riddled 1940s Atlanta. Last year, he changed tack with a near-future sci-fi thriller called Blind Spots. With The Rumor Game he returns to mid-century America with a historical thriller set in Cambridge, Massachusetts early in World War II. Journalist Anne Lemire writes a column

Valerie Martin’s captivating new novel, Mrs. Gulliver, lies just beyond the horizon. The year is 1954. Verona Island floats a longish ferry ride away from the mainland. Lila Gulliver’s clients enter through a side door behind a hedge, unseen from the street, though prostitution is legal on the island. Lila, who tells this tale, is

An orphan and immigrant in the vast industrial city of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir has made a name for herself as the proprietor of Spindrift, an innovative teahouse situated at the intersection of the posh and working class sides of town. Alongside her adopted brother, Jin, Arthie is offering something unique at Spindrift—especially to the

Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. Suspense-thriller fans, take note! We’ve got an exclusive excerpt of The Guest by B.A. Paris today on Book Riot. And it’s Tuesday, so you know I’m picking the “it books” of the week. Keep a-scrolling! West Virginia House Passes

“What’s past is prologue,” Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest. Tommy Orange demonstrates the veracity of that line in Wandering Stars, his follow-up to There There, the 2018 debut novel for which he was a Pulitzer finalist. Few literary debuts are as chillingly of-the-moment as There There, which spanned a huge cast of Native American characters

The shocking disappearance of four people infuses suburban Palmetto, Illinois, with confusion and fear in Melissa Albert’s gripping supernatural horror thriller, The Bad Ones. Among the missing is high school junior Nora Powell’s best friend, Becca Cross. As children, the duo established a creative partnership and spent hours in the woods together, with Nora writing

Is solving a crime similar to bird watching? You’ve got to do your research, use your intuition, know what you’re looking for, recognise it when you see it, exercise patience and arrive at just the right time to avoid disappointment. So maybe spotting a rare species of bird is closer to catching a criminal than

This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it. ____________________________ LeVar Burton Signs Deal with Pantheon for Two Books One is going