Books

This week, PEN America sent a letter to Missouri school boards and the state legislature, demanding a reversal to a spate of book bans enacted thanks to the state’s Senate Bill 775. The bill makes any material with “visual depictions” of “graphic material” illegal for schools to have available. This is why so many graphic

Jane Harper really started something with The Dry, now Antipodean crime fiction is so popular in the UK that Australian publisher Ultimo is releasing new titles directly. Following Sulari Gentill’s The Woman in the Library we have Adrian Hyland’s Canticle Creek. It’s a gritty, inventive slice of Outback noir that at first appears to be

Vega is a girl with stars on her skin. Her mother created the tattoos when Vega was small, knowing that one day she would take up the mantle of the last Astronomer. Vega has never left their valley and knows only the safety of her mother’s cottage. But her mother is dying from a sickness

I hold SFF in translation very close to my heart. On one hand, it lets me read all kinds of new and wonderful stories from around the world — which is fun, but it also teaches you so much about the particular country the story’s from. On the other hand, my second reason is even

Translated by Tara Chase — Danish author Anne Mette Hancock is writing the kind of crime fiction that’s perfect for lovers of Nordic noir. Her debut, The Corpse Flower, was a hit in Denmark and appeared in English last year. Now investigative journalist Heloise Kaldan and police detective Erik Scháfer are back in The Collector,

A few years after British actor Tom Felton hung up his Slytherin robes for good, he hit rock bottom. It was the first step toward reclaiming his identity, as it prompted him to ask how and when he left the wisecracking kid from Surrey behind and instead became dependent on the numbing effect of alcohol.

It was one of those days where I was reluctant to let go of summer, but I was all too ready to wrap myself in a blanket and marathon watch something on the television. I was not in the mood for a British murder mystery, nor my slow slog through New Girl. I wanted something

The Crime Fiction Lover Awards have returned – the only awards in the genre where the nominees and winners are chosen by readers. We are down to the shortlists for each category and today we bring you the last six in the Best Debut Crime Novel. This is an important category for us because new

From childhood, death neither repulsed nor frightened Hayley Campbell but instead spurred her curiosity. So it was only natural that Campbell, a freelance journalist based in London, would interview people who make a living from death: not just a funeral director and an embalmer but also a crematorium operator, a crime scene cleaner, an executioner

I don’t mean “bloody” the British slang way. This is not about grammar. I mean “bloody” literally. As in menstrual blood. I’d like to know why periods are rarely mentioned in literature. There’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, which lands itself on challenged and book banned lists; Carrie; The Widows of Malabar Hill;

Translated by Sylvía and Quentin Bates — Icelandic crime fiction is the gift that just keeps giving, punching well above its weight in the international arena. This latest offering sees an English debut for the journalist, playwright and YA novelist, Jónína Leósdóttir. The title Deceit is apt because this is a book in which secrets

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah The engrossing 10th novel from Nobel laureate Gurnah is filled with compassion and historical insight. Bitingly funny and sweetly earnest, Mathews’ debut is one of those rare novels that feels just like life. Not since Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend has a novel so deftly probed the magical and sometimes destructive

The indie publishing house Corylus Books specialises in discovering unique voices in crime fiction from various countries, then diligently translates the authors’ novels into English. Jónína Leosdóttir is the latest distinctive crime writer Corylus has found, and the third from Iceland, following Sólveig Pálsdóttir and Óskar Gudmundsson. Jónína’s novel Deceit has just hit the shelves

“Get in. Get out, No drama. Focus forward.” That’s the motto guiding Avery Anderson at the beginning of her senior year of high school, when she and her parents move from Washington, D.C., to Bardell, Georgia, in order to care for Avery’s estranged, dying grandmother. Yet Avery soon finds herself surrounded by drama in Jas

Is it good or bad luck to see a condor? I can’t remember. Let’s say good, because this week the legendary author James Grady – creator of Six Days of the Condor – has a brand new thriller out and it’s set on a train. We’ve also got two new names for you in Kellye

How important are individuals in the shaping of history? Twentieth-century Europeans knew leaders whose decisions, good or ill, transformed their countries, the continent and, in some cases, the world. Ian Kershaw, one of our leading historians of the period, focuses on 12 of them in his enlightening and stimulating Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers

Reading Death on a Winter Stroll by Francine Mathews is like a vacation in an idyllic spot, at the most festive of times… with murder. It’s a police procedural set on an island 30 miles off the coast of Massachusetts. This is not a location suitable for a remake of Agatha Christie’s And Then There

In Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers, Oxford University Shakespeare studies professor Emma Smith offers a lively and engaging survey of the history of the book, focusing on the “material combination of form and content” she calls “bookhood.” It’s a “book about books, rather than words,” that describes with both insight and

In October, Barnes & Noble posted their list of the top 11 books of the year, as selected by their booksellers. The list included bestselling novels, a picture book, a New Orleans cookbook, a history of hip-hop jewelry, and more. Some of these books overlap with the previous editorially-selected Barnes and Noble Best Books of

We had no idea how popular the Crime Fiction Lover Awards would be when we launched them last year, but they’re back for 2022 and nominations have closed. Now it’s down to the final six in our Best Crime Novel category and as a crime fiction lover we welcome you to vote for your top

Two of the weepiest BookPage editors share a few of their favorite 2022 audiobooks, read masterfully by the authors, that deliver all the emotion. ★ Inciting Joy For readers invested in learning more about communities of care—informal collectives centered on the praxis of love—Ross Gay’s sixth book, Inciting Joy (Hachette Audio, 8.5 hours), is essential. The

The 2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for her debut YA novel The House of Rust. The novel is a coming-of-age story steeped in Swahili and Hadrami culture in which Aisha, a young girl in Mombasa, Kenya, embarks on a sea journey in an enchanted boat

To say anticipation was high for the latest novel by Jordan Harper would be something of an understatement. His 2017 debut, She Rides Shotgun (A Lesson In Violence in the UK), picked up a prestigious Edgar Award and we awarded it five stars as well as interviewing the author. We certainly didn’t expect to have

The onset of cold weather can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to the kitchen and cook, bake and sauté up a variety of delicious, warming meals and treats to be eaten as the early dark creeps in. Bliss on Toast It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a person wishes to

One of the projects on my never-ending to-do list is to update my reading journal. I keep a notebook of every single book I’ve ever read, and it’s been a few years since I have added to it. I love this kind of record keeping because as much as it is nice to keep reading

A desert star is a tiny white flower found, unsurprisingly enough, in the inhospitable desert sands. Resilient and beautiful, they’re “a sign of god in this fucked up world”, according to a friend of former LAPD detective Hieronymous ‘Harry’ Bosch. The flowers of the book’s title bloom near to a makeshift memorial in the Mojave

Back in August, Kelly Jensen wrote about how conservative propaganda led to Jamestown, Michigan voting down the library millage (tax) rate that was on the ballot, making it impossible for the library to stay open for more than a few months. Jamestown Conservatives called the librarians “groomers” who were “indoctrinating” children because they refused to

This is the second year of the Crime Fiction Lover Awards and the excitement is palpable. Based on nominations made by Crime Fiction Lover readers, we are now able to unveil our shortlists and ask you to make your votes. A big thank-you goes out to everyone who nominated. We’re hoping for an even bigger

We All Want Impossible Things is ostensibly a novel about death—but it pulses with life. Ash is a food writer who is separated from her husband, Honey. Their relationship is basically over, but they’ve been too lazy and cheap to file for divorce. Even so, Honey often visits, offering food and emotional support in equal

I wince every time I see the book I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy, which is often, considering it’s in my Libro.fm library. It’s pretty safe to assume the title and cover are meant to elicit a strong, immediate reaction. Which: A+ job. It’s not meant to be a joke, as the book