Books

One of the things I absolutely love is a character with a great name. In fact, a question authors get asked quite often is how they name their characters. When the main character has a great name, it tends to draw the reader in. But if names set up the tone of the character’s journey,

“So I bought this book from this cute indie bookstore I’d never been to but always wanted to go,” I told my therapist during our last session. “It wasn’t a book that I was dying to read, but I hadn’t seen it pop up anywhere else, and it’s the kind of book you can flip

It’s always a challenge to find new books that’ll not only pique your interest, but also to make you fall in love with them. Most readers rely on recommendations from friends or good old-fashioned Google. Now over the past decade, social media has really showed up for readers. Personally, I love surfing through Goodreads or

As a medieval fantasy reader, whether you have encountered a literary barkeep opening up a new cask of ale in a rebel’s tavern or a king celebrating a victory with a chalice of wine, the question of why we drink in medieval fantasy is inescapable. A good part of medieval fantasy books are based on

Nobody writes romance quite like Talia Hibbert. Few authors have planted their feet at the intersection of wholesome and horny, though I wish more would. If you’re only familiar with her Brown Sisters books like Act Your Age, Eve Brown, I suggest diving into her backlist. Her self-published books, including The Princess Trap and The

Funny books are often overlooked. Attention often goes to “serious literature” – the great American novels or the heartwrenching coming-of-age stories of the world. While there are some awards for humour books, such as the Mark Twain Book Awards or the much-missed Roald Dahl Funny Prize, they aren’t as high profile as The Booker Prize

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Detectives Pierre Niémans and Camille Delauney will be back on British screens for a third series of the French crime show The Crimson Rivers, which begins at 9pm on Friday 25 March on More4. You can also stream the series online via Walter Presents. Played by Olivier Marchal (The Promise) and Erika Sante, the investigative

In Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction, David George Haskell admits that, in all his formal training as a biologist, he was rarely asked to use his ears as an evaluative tool. This may come as a surprise to anyone who is familiar with Haskell’s work, which

Despite the fact Captain Underpants and similarly funny books remain perennially popular with young readers, a Mississippi educator was fired this week for selecting a humorous, age-appropriate book to read to second graders. Toby Price, an assistant principal at Gary Road Elementary School in Byram, Mississippi–just outside Jackson–was asked to set up a class via

Yes, This is the Night They Come for You is here and it’s a good choice to lead off our weekly new books report. Robert Goddard’s new book is a mystery tinged by the dying age of empire – with the French getting the boot from Algeria. Perhaps it’s fitting as we witness a new

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Peter Swanson has created another lively homage to classic mystery puzzles in his new novel, Nine Lives. Much like his earlier book, Rules for Perfect Murders, several of the characters recognise the new story’s parallels to Golden Age murder mysteries and this time the resemblance is to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and

Armed with knitting needles, retractable swords and a mean cup of tea, the pink-clad Ladybird Scouts are the covert defenders of the world. High school junior Prudence Perry left her Ladybird circle after her best friend was killed three years ago. She wants nothing to do with the competitive toxicity of the group, but she’s

I grew up writing letters — in the 1980s and ‘90s, it was the only accessible way to communicate with long-distance friends that didn’t cost money by the minute. As a child I had pen pals acquired through the Growing Without Schooling network (my longtime pen pal’s name was, if I remember right, Summer) as

Superheroes have been around a long time, and most of the characters and genre conventions are pretty well established. But did every character always look and act the way we expect them to today? In this series, I’ll be looking at the first appearances of iconic superheroes to see what’s familiar, what’s fallen by the

This year’s long list for the Women’s Prize for Fiction includes five debut novels. The award, created in 1996 after the Booker Prize failed to list any women-authored titles in the prior years, honors books written in English by women. This year’s slate includes books by six American authors, five British authors, two writers from

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Rereading our favorite books is such a comforting practice, but this month, we’re celebrating the special occasion when you get to reconsider a book that you merely appreciated in the first go-around. With some time and a new perspective, a second reading can lead to love. Interior Chinatown Experimental or unusual literary structures can be

Eminem and Elton John with Stan. Pavarotti and Skunk Anansie with You’ll Follow Me Down. Metallica and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with S&M. All exceedingly unlikely duets to be sure, but perhaps none is more unlikely than the collaboration between mega-bestselling author James Patterson and Country music megastar Dolly Parton, which has resulted in

“My favorite book growing up was Harriet the Spy,” Erika Krouse says, speaking by phone from her home in Colorado. “It’s funny because that’s what I ended up doing. [Harriet] wanted to be a writer, and she wanted to be a spy, and I did too.” In 2002, years after Krouse’s Harriet the Spy phase,

“An Audiobooks App I Can’t Live Without” was originally published in our Audiobooks newsletter. Sign up for it here to receive the latest from the audiobooks world! After a winter of cold, rainy weather, the corgis were clamoring for adventure, so my spouse and I ventured out into the beautiful early spring weather here in South Carolina.

UK readers will know Charlie Higson as one of the comedians behind The Fast Show, the seminal 1990s BBC sketch programme. In the comedy world, he has also worked with greats such as Vic Reeves, Bob Mortimer and Harry Enfield. However, there’s a darker side to Mr Higson too. He’s appeared in Broadchurch and Grantchester,

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Just as COVID restrictions have eased we’ve now got the heightened worry that every living thing on the planet could soon be vaporised in a nuclear cataclysm… but at least there’s our weekly newsletter to distract you. And anyway, as crime fiction lovers, we’re used to a bit of tension, right? Our report begins with

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Murder on sanctified ground is the darkest sin referred to in the title of DV Bishop’s new historical crime novel set in Renaissance Italy. In this case it’s a shocking and brutal stabbing at a secluded convent. However, this is not the only troubling crime in this intriguing and engrossing mystery… This is the second

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One of the main reasons people love Scandinavian crime fiction is that it often takes on some of the toughest social issues, throwing complex ethical conundrums for the police investigators involved. The Swedish programme Snow Angels goes even further. It gets right inside the lives and relationships of a range of participants – victims, culprits,

Shirley Hughes was the English author and illustrator of beloved picture books like Out and About, Dogger, and the Alfie series. She wrote more than 50 books, including novels, and illustrated 200 others, winning two Kate Greenaway Medals almost 30 years apart for her illustrations. She also won a BookTrust Lifetime Achievement award in 2015.