Books

The winners of the 2022 Hugo Awards were announced Sunday, September 4th in a ceremony at the 80th WorldCon— named ChiCon this year— in Chicago, IL. The event was hosted by authors Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz. The Hugo Awards, science fiction’s most prestigious award, were first presented in 1953 and have been presented

★ Ruby Fever In Ilona Andrews’ Hidden Legacy series, the world is dominated by magical families known as Houses. Catalina Baylor is the Deputy Warden of Texas and a Prime, an extremely powerful magic user. She’s moving her House and her fiancé, assassin Alessandro Sagredo, into a new compound when an important politician is killed

From the Legend series , Vol. 1 by Marie Lu ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 29, 2011 A gripping thriller in dystopic future Los Angeles. Fifteen-year-olds June and Day live completely different lives in the glorious Republic. June is rich and brilliant, the only candidate ever to get a perfect score in the Trials, and is

Nursery rhyme books are a staple of childhood reading for good reason — they’re short and simple to read and remember, but they also carry layers of storytelling that introduce very young children to the ways that stories, rhymes, and language work. Reading nursery rhymes is a great way for parents and caregivers to bond

The titular character of Mazey Eddings’ Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake is dealing with some very rom-com-appropriate problems—namely, that her two-night stand with a hot Australian guy resulted in an unexpected pregnancy, and she’s now trying to platonically cohabitate with him. But alongside all the tropey hijinks, Lizzie also gains a better understanding of and more

Author Peter Straub died this past Sunday in Manhattan due to complications of a broken hip. Straub, born in Milwaukee on March 2, 1943, was a popular horror novelist with a somewhat unorthodox pedigree— before turning to writing about the fantastical, he had published short collections of poetry. Although he was reluctant to label his

Lizzie Blake knows that she’s a lot. A lot of energy and enthusiasm. A lot of creativity and vibrant warmth. But also a lot of mess and chaos. Her attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder can make things difficult, given that she lives in a world built for people whose brains don’t function like hers. After a lifetime of

From the Big Bright Feelings series by Tom Percival ; illustrated by Tom Percival ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2019 Ruby is an adventurous and happy child until the day she discovers a Worry. Ruby barely sees the Worry—depicted as a blob of yellow with a frowny unibrow—at first, but as it hovers, the more

Buckle up, because there is so much fantastic small press nonfiction coming out this fall! Memoirs and graphic memoirs, essay collections, and anthologies, genre-defying hybrid works that blend history, travel writing, science, and more — and all of that is just the beginning. I had to reign myself in, because there are just so many

by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 8, 2020 An aimless young musician meets the girl of his dreams only to have his newfound happiness threatened by several inexplicable—and possibly supernatural—events. The story opens as Leeds Gabriel meets with a detective while his girlfriend, Layla, is restrained in a room one flight above them. Through

Some people love summer. I get it. At least, I pretend to get it. I really cannot understand what summer has going for it that winter doesn’t (well, except swimming), but I can appreciate that some people love the heat the way I love the cold. So I nod along during the hottest months and

Poet and author Ander Monson has seen the 1987 movie Predator, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger on the run from an alien in a Guatemalan jungle, 146 times. To explain why, he wrote Predator: A Memoir. Through a scene-by-scene exploration of the film, which he describes as “satire wrapped in gun pornography,” Monson reckons with his lifelong

It is only in the last couple of years that I have fallen in love with cozy mysteries, which is in itself a mystery to me because there’s very little I love more than an episodic story. When I first encountered this subgenre, I texted a fellow bookish friend with an enthusiastic “OMG THESE ARE

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020 Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006). A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for

I love eating! To me, food is a comfort, and it’s maybe a blessing and a tragedy that I seem to plan everything in my daily routine around meals. When I go on vacation, I wake up thinking about the plan for the day, and when and where we are going to stop for eating.

There were too many times when my mother would catch me reading a book with a flashlight under my sheets, demanding I go to sleep already. I can’t say that romance was ever my go-to genre as I was (ironically) falling in love with reading as a kid. I loved fantasy, mystery, and historical fiction,

by Craig Smith ; illustrated by Katz Cowley ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2010 The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty. In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey”

Banned Books Week is coming, which means that waves of displays in libraries, classrooms, and bookstores are also incoming. We’re already seeing many, and while they are useful for highlighting the reality of censorship across America to those who are not as tapped into the news about it, too many banned books week displays are

Barbara Ehrenreich was an author, journalist, and activist who published more than 20 books, including Nickel and Dimed, which documents several months she spent working the lowest-paying jobs in the U.S.A. and trying to survive on that income. She wrote articles and book reviews for a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times,

by George Takei & Justin Eisinger & Steven Scott ; illustrated by Harmony Becker ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2019 A beautifully heart-wrenching graphic-novel adaptation of actor and activist Takei’s (Lions and Tigers and Bears, 2013, etc.) childhood experience of incarceration in a World War II camp for Japanese Americans. Takei had not yet started