Books

In The Half-Life of Valery K, the titular Soviet scientist is released from a Siberian prison and transported to a town called City 40, which seems to be absolutely suffused with unhealthy levels of radiation. The most frightening thing? As Natasha Pulley reveals, towns like City 40 really did exist. In the 1960s, across the

In Book Riot’s anti-censorship coverage, we’ve mentioned Lafayette, Louisiana several times, from its library board granting itself the power to ban books to its new policy forbidding any “cultural displays,” which prevents any Pride book displays as well as displays about Black History Month and more. Cara Chance is the North Regional Library Branch Manager

Michael Connellly, Joseph Knox and Mick Herron with their Theakston winnings. Heading to the final day of the Theakston Crime Writing Festival in Harrogate, I met a man walking with his young son, wobbling along on a trike. “What’s going on at the Old Swan?” he asked. “If I told you, I might have to

Whether it’s zombie westerns, apocalypse horror or fugitive noir novels, Jason Bovberg is an author obsessed with writing pulp fiction and having fun while doing it. His novels are stylish and expressive, full of dense, zesty prose that demonstrates his love of writing and a willingness to push boundaries in whatever genre he tackles. On

In How to Read Now, Elaine Castillo models how to read not just books but also history, culture and the world with an eye toward understanding how the ideas that inform our reading lives came to be. You write that your book’s title, How to Read Now, is both a comment and a question. Can

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals London, With Love by Sarra Manning for $0.99 The Goodbye Coast by Joe Ide for $2.99 Home Body by Rupi Kaur for $1.99 The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave for $2.99 Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs for $1.99 A Taste of

She’s best known for the critically acclaimed Ziba MacKenzie series, but Victoria Selman used lockdown to come up with her first standalone novel Truly, Darkly, Deeply – uncharted territory for an author who describes herself as a planner. “I know where my stories are going, but don’t always know the pitstops along the way,” she confesses to

Not 40-degree heat. Not wildfires. Not that annoying fly who keeps flying straight into the glass. Nothing will stop us bringing you the latest crime novels – and things are going to get even hotter with The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias. And we all know where the devil lives, right? No air-con

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson for $2.99 Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for $1.99 We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter for $2.99 The Royal We by Heather Cocks & Jessica Morgan for $2.99 The Butterfly Girl

Denise Mina is back with the second in her new ‘C-series’, featuring Anna and Fin. 2019’s Conviction introduced us to podcast fanatic Anna McDonald and rockstar Fin Cohen as their lives were turned upside down by failed marriages and they embarked on a non-romantic adventure together, investigating the mysterious deaths of a father and his

The Pokémon Company International announced a job opening for an archivist. The position, which is one available in many of the franchise’s games, will entail creating a an archive and museum. The archivist will work with the game data librarian to write policy and catalog Pokémon’s vast lore, among other things. Pokémon was created in 1996

Former US FBI agent Ken Harris has brought back his entertaining private investigator Steve Rockfish with young assistant – now partner –Jawnie McGee in this second of a series, following the author’s debut, The Pine Barrens Stratagem, earlier this year. In this novel, Jawnie has passed her PI exam, and the two of them have

TikTok has joined the ranks of other virtual book clubs by debuting its own this month. The TikTok Book Club is a result of #BookTok, a section of the site where book lovers gather to discuss books. This book club comes as no surprise, as the immensely popular BookTok community has amassed more than 65 billion

Chick-lit cannibalism is how Chelsea G Summers describes her new dramedy thriller – and that gives you a flavour of it, the novel is a tongue-in-cheek fable. A niche sub-genre maybe, but it’s wicked funny if you have the stomach for it. Hell hath no fury like a love-scorned celebrity chef and as you might

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn for $1.99 Stony the Road by Henry Louis Gates, Jr for $1.99 Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for $1.99 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston for $1.99 The Moment of

English crime author Mick Herron didn’t begin his writing career with the Slough House series, but there’s no doubt these novels represent his most successful work. The London setting, cast of memorable characters and espionage storylines have made the series ripe for adaptation, and it’s no surprise Apple pulled all the stops, casting such famous

“One of the great things about writing a book about 1940s Hollywood is that you can watch a bunch of old movies and call it research,” Anthony Marra says about Mercury Pictures Presents, a sprawling, bighearted tragicomedy set in Hollywood during World War II, with additional storylines in Italy and Germany. It took six years

In London, Ontario, Pride is held in July. The suburb of Wortley Village held its first Pride last weekend, and it included a drag queen storytime. The event was disrupted when a truck with Canadian flags on it circled the event honking continuously, and then a man got out of the truck and allegedly began

Readers, prepare to meet the most memorable middle grade protagonist of 2022. Twelve-year-old Olive Miracle Martin, the instantly endearing hero of Hummingbird, is, in her own words, a “joy-kaboom.” After being homeschooled due to a medical condition called osteogenesis imperfecta (sometimes known as brittle bone disease), Olive begins attending Macklemore Middle School, where local legend

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for $1.99 Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston for $1.99 The Moment of Tenderness by Madeleine L’Engle for $3.99 The Chai Factor by Farah Heron for $1.99 Nice Girls by Catherine Dang for

Tracy Flick, Tom Perrotta’s protagonist from his darkly humorous novel Election, returns in Tracy Flick Can’t Win (6 hours), an engrossing story of retrospection, regret and self-fulfillment. Now the vice principal at a suburban New Jersey high school, Tracy is vying for the principal gig, which means navigating school politics and the sophomoric behavior of

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray for $2.99 Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner for $4.99 Apple: Skin to the Core by Eric Gansworth for $2.99 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard for $0.99 The Essex Serpent by Sarah

Edited by Vern Smith — A crime fiction short story has to accomplish a lot in a compressed space. It has to describe the crime involved in enough detail to make sense to readers, it has to create believable characters whose fates you care about at least enough to arouse your curiosity, if not your

Moving halfway around the world to a new country where everyone speaks a new language would be a challenging experience for just about anyone. But for 10-year-old Zhang Ai Shi and her parents, leaving Taiwan means a chance for a better life in the United States, a place known in China as “the beautiful country.” 

Today’s Featured Deals In Case You Missed Yesterday’s Most Popular Deals Previous Daily Deals The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas for $1.99 The Flight Girls by Noelle Salazar for $1.99 She’s Too Pretty to Burn by Wendy Heard for $2.99 Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes for $3.99 The Lesbiana’s

If you’re on the queasy side, scroll down now. Forensic-based crime fiction novels might not be your thing… But if you love an unconventional clue, then the new Kathy Reichs novel needs to go on your reading list. Yes, someone has left an eyeball, complete with some GPS coordinates, on the back porch. And so

Isaac Fitzgerald grabs readers’ attention with the title of his memoir—Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional—and never lets go. He’s a mesmerizing storyteller who deploys unexpected delights from his very first line: “My parents were married when they had me, just to different people.” Not only that, but they “met at divinity school, which is a pretty

The 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize winners have been announced. The prize, awarded by the Whiting foundation, has been granted since 2018 with hopes to “acknowledge, reward, and encourage organizations that are actively nurturing the writers who tell us, through their art, what is important.” The funds issued are meant to supplement the budget of

Translated by Katherine Gregor — Hot on the heels of The Mirror Man by Lars Kepler comes a very different but equally chilling serial killer thriller from Italian maestro Donato Carrisi. It’s a decade since his debut, The Whisperer, which terrified readers across the continent. Now The Whisperer of that first novel is back, his

Thirty writers consider the myriad ways a human body can exist in the world in Body Language: Writers on Identity, Physicality, and Making Space for Ourselves. The thoughtful essays in this anthology, brought together by Catapult editors Nicole Chung and Matt Ortile, touch on everything from death, eating disorders and racism to sex and taking