Literature

Jesmyn Ward fans, rejoice! We officially have a title and release date for her next novel. Let Us Descend is slated for an October 3rd release from Scribner, a Simon & Schuster imprint. The book will tell the story of enslaved teenage girl Annis, turning an unflinching eye at the terrifying reality of a life

Two-time Caldecott Honor recipient Marla Frazee brings her considerable talents to a timeless celebration of birth and life in In Every Life, a wonder of a picture book.  In an introductory note, Frazee shares the long history of her book’s inception. In 1998, she witnessed a call-and-response-style blessing for a new baby. She’s made a

Novelist Paul La Farge has died at the age of 52. He passed from cancer on January 18th in Poughkeepsie, New York as confirmed by his wife. La Farge was a New York native whose essays and fiction appeared in publications like The Village Voice, The New Yorker, and McSweeney’s. His debut novel, The Artist

Against the Currant transports readers to the Little Caribbean neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, where Lyndsay Murray is ready to open her own bakery. She just needs to clear her name first. Lyndsay and her family have worked hard on Spice Isle Bakery. But on opening day, another local business owner,

Little Free Library is launching the Indigenous Library Program this spring. The new program will distribute LFL book-sharing boxes to tribal lands and other Indigenous communities. Boxes will be shipped to volunteer stewards for free and will come with two sets of books — one set will feature 25 books written and/or illustrated by BIPOC

This home-and-back-again adventure tale belongs to Evergreen, a wide-eyed squirrel who lives deep in Buckthorn Forest. Evergreen has a long list of fears, including but not limited to germs, loud noises, heights, swimming and thunderstorms. When her mother asks her to travel through the forest to take soup to Granny Oak, Evergreen responds, “I can’t

So far this year, eight states have introduced legislation that makes it easier to prosecute teachers and librarians under “obscenity” and “harmful to minor” laws — these have been weaponizing in recent book banning battles, being used against librarians and educators just for having LGBTQ books or sex education books on the shelves. EveryLibrary, a

From New York Times bestselling author Marie Benedict comes an explosive novel of history’s most notorious sisters, one of whom will have to choose: her country or her family? Between the World Wars, the six Mitford sisters—each more beautiful, brilliant, and eccentric than the next—dominate the English political, literary, and social scenes. Though they’ve weathered scandals before,

The 2023 PEN American Literary Award Longlists have been announced! This year’s awards will confer $350,000 to more than 100 writers and translators in eleven different categories that include fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, essay, science writing, literature in translation, and more. The winners will be announced at the Literary Awards Ceremony on March 2nd at The Town

Long winter nights are for reading! Our February issue contains great new fiction from Sonora Jha, Tessa Bailey and Stephen Graham Jones, plus the best books for Black History Month and more. In upcoming issues, keep an eye out for our Writers to Watch list, highlights in inspirational fiction and outstanding new memoirs.

2023 may be newly upon us, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay here. That is what is so great about historical mysteries/thrillers: They allow us to dive into another time and place and see how people lived. You get to learn about how their society works, how people eat and dress, as well

Is the 21st century “an epoch in which games and play are the model for how we interact with culture and each other”? Designer and professor Eric Zimmerman thinks so. At the very least, games can provide an extraordinarily useful way to learn by doing. In The Rules We Break: Lessons in Play, Thinking, and

January is a great time to read YA books about fresh starts, though I find it hard to believe it is 2023. To be fair, I’m pretty sure that it took me two full years to recover from 2020. Nonetheless, I am ready to acknowledge that we made it through another trip around the sun

For their entire lives, Penny and Tate have orbited each other reluctantly. Since before Penny and Tate were born, their moms, Lottie and Anna, have been attached at the hip, and this permanent package deal means constant, unwanted proximity for the two daughters. See, Penny and Tate are not friends. They’re also not not friends.

Right-wing politicians got the new legislative year off to an impressive start with several new bills across the country directly targeting books, reading, and intellectual freedom. Of course, we know that these bills aren’t about the books at all, but instead are another avenue to chip away at the rights of marginalized populations: people of

Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time is a thoughtful manifesto on the inherently subversive and joyous act of socializing. In seven chapters about different types of hanging out (“Dinner Parties as Hanging Out,” “Hanging Out on the Job,” etc.), Liming explores the fading art of leisure and its cultural roots. Liming

Ken Follett’s next novel will be published on September 26, 2023. It will be titled “The Armor of Light“ and will conclude the eight-volume Kingsbridge series that follows 1,000 years of Western civilization, from “Ethelred the Unready to the election of President Obama.” Readers will follow a group of linked families, starting in the fictional

After writing two witty novels about gay life in Washington, D.C., Louis Bayard hit on a winning formula with his 2003 novel, Mr. Timothy, which starred Dickens’ Tiny Tim and gave the character a complexity that was sorely lacking in the original. He followed that up with The Pale Blue Eye, a story of Edgar Allen

The books community on Reddit has released their list of the best books of 2022. The books were chosen by individual threads made for each category: Best Debut, Best Literary Fiction, Best Mystery or Thriller, Best Short Story Collection/Graphic Novel/Poetry, Best Science Fiction, Best Fantasy, Best LitRPG, Best YA, Best Romance, Best Horror, and Best

Sixty-seven years after the savage murder of Emmett Till in Mississippi, his cousin still seeks some kind of justice. Haunted by the 1955 hate crime that ignited the civil rights movement, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. brings everything and everyone back to life in A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice