Books

How would a middle schooler navigate an unspeakable tragedy? That’s the subject Liz Garton Scanlon beautifully explores in Lolo’s Light, her second middle grade novel.  Twelve-year-old Millie is thrilled when she gets her first babysitting job. Her older sister isn’t available, so Millie gets to watch their neighbors’ 4-month-old baby, Lolo. The Acostas make the

It’s a very exciting week if you’re a crime fiction lover. New books are coming from established authors and debutantes alike and they involve crows, crime kings and even a crazy president. The latter comes to us care of the prolific American author James Patterson, who has teamed up with Brendan DuBois for Blowback. Meanwhile,

Twelve-year-old Millie is thrilled to work her first babysitting job, but her world turns upside down the morning after, when she learns that her four-month-old charge, Lola, has died of SIDS. In her second middle grade novel, Liz Garton Scanlon beautifully depicts a middle schooler navigating an unspeakable tragedy. Let’s start with this book’s striking

The New York Times has reported on the passing of Hilary Mantel. Mantel, 70, died from a stroke on Thursday. The British author, two-time winner of the Booker Prize, was a prolific author of literature, including historical fiction, personal memoirs, and short stories. She authored Wolf Hall (Booker Prize winner), Bring Up the Bodies (Booker

While Agatha Christie eventually grew tired of Hercule Poirot, describing him as ‘an egocentric creep’ and devising a deeply divisive ending for him, she retained her affection for the far more personable Miss Jane Marple. From her first appearance in The Tuesday Night Club, a short story published in 1927, through to her final appearance

“Grandma’s been staying with us since she got sick,” reads the opening line of The Bird Feeder, which gently ushers readers into a difficult, necessary story. “That means now I can visit with her anytime I want,” reads the next line, letting the reader know that, while this story might be sad, there are also

Yesterday, in response to the increased number of book banning attempts across the country, the City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Library (CPL) have declared themselves safe spaces for endangered stories. The city of Chicago and the CPL have established “Book Sanctuaries” across 81 library branches and 77 neighborhoods. These sanctuaries are safe spaces

Murder, kidnapping, blackmail and yakuza. American author Michael Pronko’s fifth novel in the Detective Hiroshi series has all the elements of a classic police procedural with a dash of extra action to raise the blood pressure. The Tokyo resident sets the novel in the city and its rich suburb of Azabu. Patrick returns to Japan

Recent high school graduate Aria Tang West was looking forward to spending one last summer with her two best friends before starting as an astronomy major at MIT in the fall. But that was before some topless photos, taken by a boy without Aria’s consent, made their way to social media. The slut shaming that

Months ago, the Brooklyn Public Library started its Books UnBanned project in order to counter increased efforts to ban books across the country. Through the initiative, teens and young adults ages 13-21 can obtain a Brooklyn Public library card for free and gain access to the full collection of 350,000 eBooks and 200,000 audiobooks. A

Translated by Quentin Bates — Following on from The Fox and Silenced, Harm is the latest in the Dark Iceland series by Sólveig Pálsdottir, in which Reykjavik detectives Gudgier Fransson and Elsa Gudrún investigate murder cases. As Iceland has a small population and a minuscule rate of serious crime, their skills are often required outside

All families are dysfunctional, but some raise it to an art form, as Amanda Svensson so deftly outlines in her admirable novel A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding, winner of Sweden’s Per Olov Enquist Literature Prize, awarded annually to a young writer poised for a breakout. It all starts with the birth of triplets

Spotify subscribers will be able to find one new feature in their app today: audiobooks. The company launches its audiobooks feature today in the U.S. with a library of 300,000 books from major publishing houses, indie publishers, and amateur audiobook authors. Audiobook listeners will be able to sample books before buying them à la carte

Cassie Blake, the girl at the heart of Jodi Lynn Anderson’s powerful and timely Each Night Was Illuminated, was raised as a believer in the religious town of Green Valley. She even wanted to grow up to become a nun. But when Cassie was 11 years old, everything changed.  First, Cassie’s mother abandoned her family.

Orbit Discover an epic tale of magic, revenge, and an empire on the verge of ruin in the first ever novel set in the blockbuster universe of League of Legends. I fell in love with video games as a kid not by playing them all on my own first, but by watching my brothers play.

American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics reveals a hidden slice of history about the emergency services that we all depend on but largely take for granted. Kevin Hazzard (A Thousand Naked Strangers), a print and television writer who worked as a paramedic in Atlanta for nearly a

The longlists for the 2022 National Book Awards (NBA) were announced on September 14–16. The awards are divided into five categories: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Translated Literature, and Young People’s Literature. Among the judges for this year’s awards are Ben Fountain, Brandon Hobson, Pam Houston, Dana Johnson, and Michelle Malonzo for Fiction; Carol Anderson, Melissa Febos,

Listening to music is a uniquely personal experience. It can evoke strong feelings and memories. It can unite us or be a source of debate. In This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You, Susan Rogers (cognitive neuroscientist and Berklee College of Music professor) and Ogi Ogas (mathematical neuroscientist

Beware, Outback noir, Queensland is coming for your crown. That’s the vibe we’re getting from Troppo, the crime series now showing on Freevee via Amazon and on iView in Australia. It proves beyond doubt that there’s a lot more to Australian crime fiction than dusty sheep ranches and dried up billabongs. Things get underway in

Escape, by definition, is rarely easy, and in Uncultured, Daniella Mestyanek Young illustrates just how difficult it can be. Leaving the Children of God, the cult she was born into, and surviving the U.S. Army, a group she chose to enlist in as a young adult, have both left many scars. Lucky for readers, she

Nordic crime fiction returns to Walter Presents today with the box set of the Icelandic crime drama Sisterhood now available to stream! Not so much a mystery, this is a show that looks at dark secrets from the past and what happens when they resurface – both literally and in the minds of three guilt-wracked

The wellness industry offers a seductive promise: If you work hard, are dedicated and buy this shiny new thing, then you, too, can have the healthy, beautiful life you’ve always dreamed of. But for journalist Rina Raphael, that dream sounds too good to be true. In her new book, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus,

Authors using pseudonyms is nothing new. In fact, there are still five that are unknown, with another mystery author story fresh from the headlines this week. They choose a pseudonym for many reasons: to avoid the limelight, to remain anonymous, to avoid criticism, or to protect their identity. Some authors write under a pen name

It might be a little early to start planning for Halloween but if you’re looking for some horror x crime fiction then this week’s lead book is for you. A Sliver of Darkness by British author CJ Tudor includes 11 short stories full of terror. However, if novels are more your thing, we’ve got psychological

Sci-fi can be intimidating. Let’s not pretend it isn’t. There’s a whole set of rules to the genre and a new vocabulary to keep up with. On top of that, sometimes sci-fi can feel unwelcoming to the uninitiated. Where do you even start? Don’t worry, I, a very casual reader of sci-fi, am here to

On the face of it DCI Kath Fortune isn’t your typical crime fiction protagonist. She runs a cold case team in Shropshire, smokes like a chimney, has recently lost weight, is finally in a relationship with a man she has loved from afar for years and is best friends with a hardened criminal. Her team

Renowned filmmaker Werner Herzog has written more than a dozen books and screenplays, but The Twilight World (3.5 hours) is his first novel. Translated by Michael Hofmann and short enough to qualify as a novella, it’s the fictionalized story of Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, the real-life intelligence officer in the Imperial Japanese Army who defended Lubang

He’s an author who successfully merged crime fiction with a sense of other-worldliness in The Ice Twins, and SK Tremayne has taken a similar approach with The Drowning Hour, which came out in the summer. Now he is in the chair for a new edition of Dr Jacky Collins’ video interview series The Doctor Will

The Deal Goes Down sees a welcome return for Larry Beinhart’s long-standing PI creation Tony Casella. Time has moved on for the detective. Now he’s an ex-PI living in the Catskills with zero chance of living out a happy, peaceful retirement thanks to the bank. His mortgage was bought up during the financial crisis, the

Jordan Crane’s graphic novel Keeping Two, which took him 20 years to complete, pays very strict attention to form. Over the course of 300-plus pages, Crane rarely strays from a simple six-panel grid, arranging the action in neat squares that move down and across the page with an almost mesmeric energy and speed. With this