Books

“When I love a song, there is almost always a moment that sounds like how I imagine truth to sound,” writes poet Amy Key in Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone. “It’s the moment in the song that touches the bruise you didn’t know you had, the aching, denied part of you.

by Tish Rabe ; illustrated by Laura Hughes ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 21, 2016 Rabe follows a young girl through her first 12 days of kindergarten in this book based on the familiar Christmas carol. The typical firsts of school are here: riding the bus, making friends, sliding on the playground slide, counting, sorting shapes,

There are not enough books about exercise for all bodies. I realized this while reading an amazing romance novel about a woman who falls for her fitness coach. I was intrigued by the fact that I could read it through Audible and I really loved the cover art. However, I felt nervous once I hit

Growing up in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1950s and ’60s, novelist Fae Myenne Ng (Bone) and her youngest sister accompanied their father to Portsmouth Square to visit the elderly “Orphan Bachelors” who gathered in the park “like scolds of pigeons.” Because of the United States’ exclusionary immigration laws, these men couldn’t bring their wives

Twelve-year-old Addie is still working through the aftermath of a family crisis when her dad, a futurist, decides the two of them need a change of scenery for the summer. He’ll oversee a university research lab where talented students are experimenting with using virtual reality as a tool to teach everything from nutrition to empathy.

What is literary fiction? I’ve been trying to figure it out, and I’m stumped. (Let me just say this up front: this essay is about 750 words, and I absolutely do not give a definitive definition anywhere in those words.) Like any genre or age category, “literary fiction” is a designation that is primarily a

by Alexandra Siy ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2001 In this glossy photo essay, the author briefly recounts the study and exploration of the moon, beginning with Stonehenge and concluding with the 1998–99 unmanned probe, Lunar Prospector. Most of the dramatic photographs come from NASA and will introduce a new generation of space enthusiasts to

Mary Beth Keane grew up around bars. “Most of my uncles owned bars or worked in them,” she says. Which is why, when the world entered COVID-19 lockdown, Keane found herself yearning for the indoor camaraderie of a really packed bar. But besides socializing with her husband and two sons, the best she could do

How is the happy ending in a romance “earned?” What sort of redemption arc or emotional growth does a main character need to go through to “deserve” love? What mistakes are “unforgivable” for romance characters to make? These kinds of questions trouble me as a romance reader because they can require the genre to provide

In her first memoir, Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir From an Atomic Town, Kelly McMasters chronicled her happy childhood in a small blue-collar seaside community—and her horrified realization that nearby nuclear reactor leaks were causing cancer in numerous residents. McMasters again explores the notion of something dark and poisonous lurking beneath a bright, beautiful surface

There are dozens of censorship bills under consideration across the country. You can keep tabs on them and their status over at EveryLibrary, who have been diligently tracking them and getting people to write and show up to put an end to them. It will shock absolutely no one to see how many of those

by Patricia McCormick ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 8, 2012 A harrowing tale of survival in the Killing Fields. The childhood of Arn Chorn-Pond has been captured for young readers before, in Michelle Lord and Shino Arihara’s picture book, A Song for Cambodia (2008). McCormick, known for issue-oriented realism, offers a fictionalized retelling of Chorn-Pond’s youth

What happens when dreams don’t pan out? That’s the question that Malcolm and Jess Gephardt both face after years of marriage in Mary Beth Keane’s engrossing fourth novel.  Like her bestselling 2019 novel, Ask Again, Yes, The Half Moon is set in the fictional town of Gillam, New York, modeled after Keane’s hometown of Pearl

The Illinois Senate has passed HB 2789, a bill whose terms dictate that state funding from public or school libraries that remove books from circulation will be withheld. As per the bill, the $62 million of funding that goes to the state’s libraries will only be eligible for said funding if they “adopt the American Library

Nigeria Jones is a teenager. She’s a warrior princess. She’s a sister. She’s a stand-in mother. She’s a queen. She’s a student. Within the Movement, the Black separatist utopian community founded in West Philadelphia by her parents, Kofi Sankofa and Natalie Pierre, Nigeria is all of these things and none of them. Alongside the Movement’s

Even after the start — and stop — of using labels like #OwnVoices, and the increased effort for diversity across literature that began in 2020, publishing maintains its cis, white status quo. But why? Well, for one, success in publishing, as with many other fields, can depend on who you know. As a result, people

In this speculative novel set in a postwar future, a retired detective/government operative comes out of retirement to solve the murders of several people who, like him, possess remarkable mental powers. Giesler, the author of The Nothing Within(2019), sets this tale of futuristic intrigue at the end of the 21st century and the beginning of

Jimmy Propfield joined the army for two reasons: to get out of Mobile, Alabama, with his best friends Hank and Billy and to forget his high school sweetheart, Claire. Life in the Philippines seems like paradise—until the morning of December 8, 1941, when news comes from Manila: Imperial Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor. Within hours,

The trailer for Dune: Part Two is here! The trailer teases for the second part of the onscreen adaptation of Dune, published in 1965 by Frank Herbert. Dune is a multi-award winning and nominated book that is recognized as one of the most influential works of fantasy. The trailer released today opens with Paul Atreides

Exercise—the simple act of moving our bodies and giving our cardiovascular systems a bit of a challenge—is fraught territory in American life. This is largely because we have a fitness industry, as we have industries for everything, and industry tends to cause as many problems as it solves. “The fitness industry is filled with life-hacks