Books

Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her
0 Comments
In Root Fractures, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s second collection of poems, the speaker is haunted by echoes of the past that reverberate into the present, and by generational, individual and collective traumas. In deft and surprising ways, the forms of the poems interact with their content, both shaping and breaking it. The poems center on the
0 Comments
An astonishing 30-40% of food goes to waste in the U.S. “As well as being financially foolish, wasting food damages the planet because it accelerates climate change,” notes food writer and cookbook author Sue Quinn in her latest cookbook, Second Helpings: Delicious Dishes to Transform Your Leftovers, which aims to keep food from our own
0 Comments
It’s been a newsy week in the world of books and reading, and I’ve got a smorgasbord of stories that didn’t make the cut for the full Today in Books treatment. Let’s catch up!  💸 Publishing models that rely on gig workers are bad for everyone.  🪐 The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has announced the finalists
0 Comments
Home is where the heart is—but what makes that heart want to live in that home forever? As someone who’s moved 10 times in his adult life and is “fascinated by the kind of people whose grandchildren visit the home that they raised their children in,” interior designer Jeremiah Brent found himself wondering what makes
0 Comments
The title of Laura Bontje’s playful picture book is a palindrome sentence that can be read forward or backward. Palindromes are something that Hannah, protagonist of the delightful Was It a Cat I Saw?, loves: As Bontje tells us, “Anything Hannah could do forwards, she could do backwards too.” Hannah likes palindromes so much that
0 Comments
A successful fantasy plunges readers into a world that feels removed from the ordinary, while still maintaining a familiarity or unexpected resonance. National Book Award finalist Traci Chee’s Kindling does exactly that as it takes readers into an unknown world ravaged by a war in which “kindlings”—teenage warriors trained since childhood to wield a dangerous
0 Comments
Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more. I go away for a week and we get both a new online bookstore from RuPaul (didn’t have that one on my publishing bingo card) and a new publishing startup from some industry heavy hitters! If you’re in catch-up
0 Comments
Every year, Muslim students from different Los Angeles high schools celebrate Independence Day together at Monarch Beach. But this year, while everyone’s waiting for the fireworks, an offshore explosion detonates, destroying the beach, injuring many and even causing death. Police detain six Muslim teenagers at the scene, calling it terrorism. Samia, Nasreen, Qays, Muzhda, Abdullahi
0 Comments
In her latest spellbinding collection of poems, The Moon That Turns You Back, Hala Alyan renders rich, intricate landscapes of heritage and place that arise from her own experiences. A Palestinian American novelist, poet and clinical psychologist, Alyan is familiar with diaspora and displacement. Born in America, she moved to Kuwait with her Palestinian father
0 Comments
Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her
0 Comments
Podcasts, subreddits and social media: There are countless ways to feed constantly hungry true crime fanatics. But where does lore end and truth begin? Lucy Chase is an Angeleno with a deadly secret . . . that she can’t even remember. The snarky antihero of Amy Tintera’s Listen for the Lie has spent years away
0 Comments
Akira Toriyama was one of the most influential mangaka: he created Dragon Ball in 1984, which would later become the hit series Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super. This action fantasy comedy franchise inspired many other series, like One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach. On March 7th, the official Dragon Ball Twitter/X account shared that
0 Comments
After your very first novel receives a Newbery Honor and you go on to win two Newbery Medals; after you become a two-time finalist for the National Book Award; after several of your books are adapted for the big screen (not to mention a stage musical and an opera); after you’re named the National Ambassador
0 Comments
This originally appeared in our Today in Books daily newsletter, where each day we round up the most interesting stories, news, essays, and other goings on in the world of books and reading. Sign up here if you want to get it. _____________________________ Why Does Every Famous Woman Have a Book Club Now? Of course,
0 Comments
Few YA series have garnered the level of devotion and praise achieved by Holly Black’s Folk of the Air series (FOTA), which followed Jude Duarte and her battle for power in Faerie. It’s no surprise that Black’s massive fan base rejoiced when the author released a spinoff duology, the Novels of Elfhame. Picking up right
0 Comments
Can you believe it’s March already? I’m currently blissfully believing outdoor reading weather is right around the corner, even though it hailed for about an hour straight yesterday. Luckily, there’s no such thing as bad reading weather. I would love to hear from you in the comments: What is your favorite book you’ve read so
0 Comments
Shortly after 9/11, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe’s great-grandmother, troubled by the state of the world, commissioned a symphony. A Coast Salish elder and Indigenous language activist, Vi taqʷšəblu Hilbert had no prior connection to classical music. Yet her belief that our broken world desperately needed healing resulted in “The Healing Heart of the First People of
0 Comments
Unresolved psychological trauma is the cause of much suffering and pain—from anxiety and depression to addictions and PTSD. “Psychedelics, Dreams, and Rituals: A Guidebook for Explorers, Therapists, and Facilitators”, is a practical, step-by-step book on using psychedelics, dreams, and rituals to help you heal the root cause of trauma. This book will show you how to
0 Comments
On the same day each August, Ana Magdalena Bach travels by ferry to a Caribbean island, in order to lay a gladiolus bouquet on her mother’s grave. Afterwards, she spends the night in the same hotel overlooking a lagoon inhabited by blue herons. Against an evocative backdrop of jungles and beaches, this pilgrimage remains unvarying
0 Comments
RuPaul, drag superstar and pop culture icon, has been busy on his lifelong way to stardom—a destiny, he reveals, foretold by a psychic before he was born. He has been an actor, producer, author, model, dancer, singer, songwriter, media host, business mogul and creator of the multi-Emmy-winning reality TV series, “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” He has
0 Comments
Netflix is releasing a limited series based on The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Ripley stars Andrew Scott as Tom Ripley, Johnny Flynn as Dickie Greenleaf, and Dakota Fanning as Marge Sherwood. It’s written and directed by Steven Zaillian, the Academy award winning screenwriter of Schindler’s List, Moneyball, The Irishman, and many more. The
0 Comments
Since the advent of The Folk of the Air series in 2018, Holly Black has held legions of YA fantasy readers in thrall to the world of Faerie: its acorn cups and everapples, redcaps and ragwort steeds, mad revels and delicate, deadly riddles. Her latest novel, The Prisoner’s Throne, is another delicious descent into the
0 Comments