Books

Hello, mystery fans! Welcome to another edition of the Unusual Suspects newsletter! While I am not the biggest fan of rehashing old properties—*points at all the incredible new writers waiting for a shot*—I did grow up a huge fan of the everything-goes-boom action comedy films and a big Eddie Murphy fan, so I am absolutely

Rosena Fung’s latest graphic novel, Age 16, explores the complicated relationships between three generations, jumping in time between the experiences of three 16-year-old girls: Roz in Toronto in 2000; her mother, Lydia, in Hong Kong in 1972; and Roz’s grandmother, Mei Laan, in Guangdong in 1954. How did you come up with the narrative structure

Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside

What are your bookstore rituals? For example, where do you go first in a store?I go first to the new in paperback section. I love the feel and heft of a paperback as well as its affordability and convenience. I also love reading staff recommendations, even for books that I’ve read before. It’s always fun

Shay Youngblood, playwright and novelist, has passed away in Peachtree City, GA at the age of 64. Her friend, Kelley Alexander, said the cause of death was ovarian cancer. Youngblood’s works, which include the short story collection The Big Mama Stories (1989), the novels Soul Kiss (1997) and Black Girl in Paris (2000), and her

If you are the sort of person who can’t bear to part with sentimental objects—“That belonged to Mamaw!”—this book is for you. Packed inside The Heirloomist: 100 Heirlooms and the Stories They Tell are photographs and stories of 100 items belonging to everyday as well as famous people, including Gloria Steinem, Rosanne Cash and Gabby

After Wordle took over our screens in 2022, word games continued to climb in popularity. Once seen as a niche hobby, it’s now common to see someone puzzling over a crossword on their phone as a daily activity. Of course, there’s a pretty big overlap between crossword puzzlers and readers: we’re both word people. So

Get ready to fall in love with Max, the irrepressible elementary school narrator of That Always Happens Sometimes. He’s full of energy and enthusiasm that constantly erupts like a volcano. In Kiley Frank’s clever text, Max poses a series of questions that reveal his personality, such as “Have your electric pencil sharpener privileges ever been

Indie bookstore Fabulosa Books — located in San Francisco’s historically queer Castro District — is running a program called “Books Not Bans.” Last May, Fabulosa’s Becka Robbins began raising money for the project, which uses customers’ donations to send LGBTQ+ books to places in the country where they’ve been banned. So far, the books have

Both an art book and a kind of poetic herbarium, An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children defies easy classification. That’s for the benefit of readers, though: Untethered to the conventions of traditional genres, writer Jamaica Kincaid is free to create something brand new, and perusing the pages feels like true discovery. Kincaid’s tone shifts

Here’s your weekend round-up of the most-read stories from Today in Books, with my commentary. Grab your coffee and catch up! The Thriller Writer Outselling James Patterson & John Grisham You’re expecting this to be a story about the latest TikTok romantasy hit, aren’t you? The clock app may be hogging headlines with stories about

🦸 Books Where the Villain is Actually the Hero 🏆 The Most Popular Book Club Books of June, According to Goodreads, ☘️ Historical Fiction Books Set in Ireland The Best of Book Riot Newsletter Sign up to The Best of Book Riot to receive a round-up of the day’s new content. Thank you for signing up!

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

Arundati Roy has been awarded the PEN Pinter Prize, which celebrates writers whose work display an “unflinching, unswerving” look at the world. Roy, who was the first Indian writer to win the Booker Prize in 1997, said she was “delighted” to win the award, saying “I wish Harold Pinter were with us today to write

Diane Marie Brown’s Black Candle Women tells the story of three fierce Black women united by the spells and elixirs that have been passed down in their family. Willow, Augusta and Victoria Montrose lead a quiet existence in California until Victoria’s teenage daughter, Nickie, becomes involved with Felix. Unaware of the family curse—that anyone a

🤖 A new startup from the former co-founders of Scribd aims to help publishers license books to AI companies. 💖 In the mood for a summer fling? Check out these excellent deals on romance ebooks. 🎁 12 gifts for you and your book club buddies. The Best of Book Riot Newsletter Sign up to The

When Daniel Lohr’s and Leah Auerbach’s eyes meet as they wait to board the SS Raffaello, their connection is instant and electric. The year is 1939, and they’ve both booked first-class passage on a weekslong journey from Trieste, Italy, to Shanghai. But while the cruise liner is massive in size and gorgeous in design, its

We all love a good hero(ine) story, and today is all about celebrating them! We’re paying homage to the most iconic heroes, looking at the ordinary everyday heroes, celebrating our queeros, and questioning the hero’s journey. Are you feeling valiant? Gallant? Courageous? Grab your sword, summon up that secret dormant magical power you’ve probably got

A woman is standing beside me at the swings. I can see the exact expression on her face; I can hear her voice as she chats with her son. Her name is Tessa, and she isn’t real. Like all readers, I’m familiar with the way reality and fiction can blur together. I remember visiting Edinburgh,

Emily has a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi, MS, and she has an MFA in Creative Writing from GCSU in Milledgeville, GA, home of Flannery O’Connor. She spends her free time reading, watching horror movies and musicals, cuddling cats, Instagramming pictures of cats, and blogging/podcasting about books with the ladies over

For so many of us, the refrigerator is an appliance we’ve interacted with daily for as long as we can remember. It’s also one we take for granted, rather than viewing it as emblematic of the world-changing innovation Nicola Twilley explores in Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves. As readers will

There’s nothing better than a beautifully written, well-narrated audiobook. Whether I’m trying to learn about a moment in history or simply relax, audiobooks have become one of my go-to methods of reading. And when it comes to Black historical audiobooks, there is a wide and wonderful world to choose from. I’m looking for two things

Last week, Jeff O’Neal rounded up the books being named the best of the year so far by tallying up all the titles on ten of the biggest lists out at the time of writing: The New York Times, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, The BBC, The New Yorker, Vogue, Vulture, Esquire, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble.

10 Nebula Award Winners You Should Put on Your TBR Early June marks the latest round of Nebula Award winners. I’m writing this post before the awards, so by the time this goes live, the winners will have been announced. Congratulations to them all! As both an admiring reader and aspiring writer in the science

“Rat stories are like ghost stories: everybody has one,” writes British author Joe Shute at the start of Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat. Shute’s own original rat story involves going to an alley to watch a ratcatcher and his trained dogs at work. The rats escaped down a sewer, sparing the author the

Libro.fm, the independently owned audiobook service that lets you choose which indie bookstores receive a portion of your audiobook sales, has released a list of top 10 bestselling audiobooks of all time to commemorate their 10th anniversary. The list is based on sales reported to Libro.fm from over 3,000 indie bookstores and includes thought-provoking nonfiction,

Trains are, for whatever reason, surprisingly common in contemporary genre fiction. Perhaps it is their predictability, with their reliance on firmly laid tracks and regular timetables representing an imposition of order on a chaotic world. But rarely is this made so explicit as in Sarah Brooks’ The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, where a

Has the DEI Backlash Come for Publishing? Dan Sinykin and Richard Jean So have some fascinating data in The Atlantic. In looking at the racial breakdown of more than 1700 novels published by major publishers in the last five years (2019 – 2023), Sinykin and So found that the percentage by nonwhite writers doubled, from

There is an immediate richness to the historical fiction of Tracy Chevalier (Girl With a Pearl Earring, Remarkable Creatures), one that goes beyond carefully researched details and evocative prose, and into deep emotion. In her 12th book, The Glassmaker, Chevalier weaves a tapestry of character and conflict, change and stability, to create a story that