Books

Jesmyn Ward fans, rejoice! We officially have a title and release date for her next novel. Let Us Descend is slated for an October 3rd release from Scribner, a Simon & Schuster imprint. The book will tell the story of enslaved teenage girl Annis, turning an unflinching eye at the terrifying reality of a life

Fans of realistic spy fiction will enjoy David McCloskey’s debut thriller Damascus Station, newly available in paperback in the UK. I listened to the audio version narrated by Andrew B Wehrlen and found it an utterly engaging tale. The story, in the early days of the Syrian uprising in 2011 and details the efforts of

Goldie Taylor’s absolutely stunning memoir is dedicated to “the women who made me.” Taylor’s mother, her Auntie Gerald, Auntie Killer and Grandma Alice come to shimmering life in this tough and tender book. The Love You Save depicts Black life in East St. Louis in the 1970s and ’80s, evoking Taylor’s family’s voices and experiences

In the Goodreads monthly roundups of new books to watch out for, they often highlight eye-catching titles, whether they’re poetic, surprising, or particularly punny. Today, they gathered up some of the best new titles (August 2022 to January 2023 releases) in their own post. Goodreads notes that titles long enough to be a complete sentence

When we say Lapaz, we mean the town in Ghana, rather than Bolivia, but this week’s collection of new books will take you all over the map and through a wild range of topics and ideas too. From Kwei Quartey’s new African mystery, you can work your way through immigration issues in Seattle, a William

Against the Currant transports readers to the Little Caribbean neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where Lyndsay Murray is ready to open her own bakery. She just needs to clear her name first. Lyndsay and her family have worked hard on Spice Isle Bakery. But on opening day, another local business owner,

Novelist Paul La Farge has died at the age of 52. He passed from cancer on January 18th in Poughkeepsie, New York as confirmed by his wife. La Farge was a New York native whose essays and fiction appeared in publications like The Village Voice, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s. His debut novel, The Artist

What’s most fun about Rich Zahradnik’s new crime thriller set in Brooklyn is the peek into worlds most of us haven’t experienced first hand. It tells the story of Grigoriy ‘Grigg’ Orlov, a young man who washed out of the police academy when a racist attack by other cadets wrecked his knee and left him

Maggie Molinaro survived a hardscrabble childhood in the downtrodden streets of Manhattan to become a successful businesswoman. After a decade of sacrifice, she now owns a celebrated ice cream company. But when she offends a corrupt banker, she unwittingly sets off a series of calamities that threaten to destroy her life’s work. Liam Blackstone is

Long-running crime series are like an addiction. Once you’ve started with book one, if the author is skilled enough to get you on the hook, it’s impossible to say no to books two, three, four and so on. Sadly, after a while some writers take the foot off the gas and start to cruise –

This home-and-back-again adventure tale belongs to Evergreen, a wide-eyed squirrel who lives deep in Buckthorn Forest. Evergreen has a long list of fears, including but not limited to germs, loud noises, heights, swimming and thunderstorms. When her mother asks her to travel through the forest to take soup to Granny Oak, Evergreen responds, “I can’t

So far this year, eight states have introduced legislation that makes it easier to prosecute teachers and librarians under “obscenity” and “harmful to minor” laws — these have been weaponizing in recent book banning battles, being used against librarians and educators just for having LGBTQ books or sex education books on the shelves. EveryLibrary, a

From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict comes an explosive novel of history’s most notorious sisters, one of whom will have to choose: her country or her family? Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters—each more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next—dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they’ve weathered scandals before,

In November last year, the major pirate ebook site Z-Library was seized by the FBI. The website, which hosted free ebooks it didn’t own and even charged them for it, was popular among students, even widely gaining traction on TikTok. On Twitter, many users also bemoaned its death, while many authors celebrated this illegal distribution

Long winter nights are for reading! Our February issue contains great new fiction from Sonora Jha, Tessa Bailey and Stephen Graham Jones, plus the best books for Black History Month and more. In upcoming issues, keep an eye out for our Writers to Watch list, highlights in inspirational fiction and outstanding new memoirs.

The 2023 PEN American Literary Award Longlists have been announced! This year’s awards will confer $350,000 to more than 100 writers and translators in eleven different categories that include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, literature in translation, and more. The winners will be announced at the Literary Awards Ceremony on March 2nd at The Town

Following Evil Things and Deep as Death, Trouble is the third novel in Katja Ivar’s series about the Finnish detective Hella Mauzer. Set in Helsinki in 1953, it’s a procedural with hints of a Nordic noir atmosphere to it, a touch of espionage as the Cold War is in progress, but it’s very much a

Is the 21st century “an epoch in which games and play are the model for how we interact with culture and each other”? Designer and professor Eric Zimmerman thinks so. At the very least, games can provide an extraordinarily useful way to learn by doing. In The Rules We Break: Lessons in Play, Thinking, and

2023 may be newly upon us, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay here. That is what is so great about historical mysteries/thrillers: They allow us to dive into another time and place and see how people lived. You get to learn about how their society works, how people eat and dress, as well

This week sees the release of Trouble, the third book in the Hella Mauzer series by Katja Ivar. Set in 1950s Finland, during the Cold War, the books tell the story of a young police woman and budding detective who cuts against the grain when it comes to how things were done in the police

For their entire lives, Penny and Tate have orbited each other reluctantly. Since before Penny and Tate were born, their moms, Lottie and Anna, have been attached at the hip, and this permanent package deal means constant, unwanted proximity for the two daughters. See, Penny and Tate are not friends. They’re also not not friends.

January is a great time to read YA books about fresh starts, though I find it hard to believe it is 2023. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that it took me two full years to recover from 2020. Nonetheless, I am ready to acknowledge that we made it through another trip around the sun

Biker gangs, drugs, guns, cops, infiltrators, murder – get ready for organised crime, Scandinavian style, as the Danish crime show Grow arrives on Channel 4 and on Walter Presents. The first episode will air at 11:30pm on Sunday, 22 January, and you’ll be able to stream the full box set via More4 on your device.

Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is a thoughtful manifesto on the inherently subversive and joyous act of socializing. In seven chapters about different types of hanging out (“Dinner Parties as Hanging Out,” “Hanging Out on the Job,” etc.), Liming explores the fading art of leisure and its cultural roots. Liming

Right-wing politicians got the new legislative year off to an impressive start with several new bills across the country directly targeting books, reading, and intellectual freedom. Of course, we know that these bills aren’t about the books at all, but instead are another avenue to chip away at the rights of marginalized populations: people of

We love it when our news column contains some big names that we know and love alongside new crime authors to introduce to our readers. And that’s how it is this week as we have one of the biggest names in British crime fiction, Elly Griffiths, potentially heralding the end of her immensely popular Ruth

After writing two witty novels about gay life in Washington, D.C., Louis Bayard hit on a winning formula with his 2003 novel, Mr. Timothy, which starred Dickens’ Tiny Tim and gave the character a complexity that was sorely lacking in the original. He followed that up with The Pale Blue Eye, a story of Edgar Allen

Ken Follett’s next novel will be published on September 26, 2023. It will be titled “The Armor of Light“ and will conclude the eight-volume Kingsbridge series that follows 1,000 years of Western civilization, from “Ethelred the Unready to the election of President Obama.” Readers will follow a group of linked families, starting in the fictional

Long-buried truth meets long-awaited fiction with deadly consequences in The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, the third fiendishly complex novel by Janice Hallett. Having skewered the venerable pastimes of amateur dramatics and children’s literature in her previous books, this time round Hallett focuses her perceptive storytelling on the phenomenon of true crime, shining a

Sixty-seven years after the savage murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, his cousin still seeks some kind of justice. Haunted by the 1955 hate crime that ignited the civil rights movement, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. brings everything and everyone back to life in A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice