Books

From the Jake the Fake series , Vol. 1 by Craig Robinson & Adam Mansbach ; illustrated by Keith Knight ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 2017 Black sixth-grader Jake Liston can only play one song on the piano. He can’t read music very well, and he can’t improvise. So how did Jake get accepted to

During small talk not long after meeting someone new, inevitably the question “So what do you do?” comes up. When I tell them I’m a librarian, more questions follow. Usually the same ones over and over, such as, “Do people still use libraries?” or “Aren’t you worried about becoming irrelevant?” or “Are you worried about

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

Banning books has been around since approximately one minute after books themselves. Even if you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years — and let’s face it, who hasn’t in a lot of ways — you’ve probably heard something about the many brouhahas surrounding the availability of literature in local and school

We’re living in an age of reboots. Everywhere you turn, another classic show or movie is getting a fresh start or a cast reunion. So it feels very much of the moment to have a romance set during the production of a beloved TV series’ 20th anniversary special. The Reunion, Kayla Olson’s adult debut, opens

by Joanna Rzezak ; illustrated by Joanna Rzezak ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 18, 2021 This book is buzzing with trivia. Follow a swarm of bees as they leave a beekeeper’s apiary in search of a new home. As the scout bees traverse the fields, readers are provided with a potpourri of facts and statements about

The Scrabble dictionary has been updated for the first time since 2018, and it includes 500 new words — though Scrabble won’t reveal what every one is, telling players to hunt through the new dictionary to find them all. They’ve also removed several hundred slurs and other offensive words, so that they can’t be played

Louise Joyner left home as soon as she could, fleeing the humidity of Charleston, South Carolina, for a career in industrial design in Silicon Valley. Her brother, Mark, stayed put, his meandering and dysfunctional lifestyle patronized to his face and savaged in his absence by his family, as is so often the case with mildly

Writing Tips has compiled data from the most popular Google searches based in the USA beginning with “how to pronounce”. Here are the ten words words Americans found the most difficulty pronouncing in 2022. how to pronounce acai (18,000 searches) how to pronounce nguyen (15,000 searches) how to pronounce gyro (15,000 searches) how to pronounce

Published 20 years ago, Neil Gaiman’s Coraline (3.5 hours) is a near-perfect horror story, pitting brave but misunderstood Coraline against a narcissistic monster in a battle for her soul. Sophisticated and profound, this treasure of a middle grade novel, beloved by readers of all ages, is now available in a new audiobook, performed by a

by Stephen King ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 6, 2022 Narnia on the Penobscot: a grand, and naturally strange, entertainment from the ever prolific King. What’s a person to do when sheltering from Covid? In King’s case, write something to entertain himself while reflecting on what was going on in the world outside—ravaged cities, contentious politics,

by Jesse Q Sutanto Vera Wong Zhuzhu, age sixty, is a pig, but she really should have been born a rooster. We are, of course, referring to Chinese horoscopes. Vera Wong is a human woman, thank you very much, but roosters have nothing on her. Every morning, at exactly four thirty, Vera’s eyelids snap open like

Maggie Molinaro survived a hardscrabble childhood in the downtrodden streets of Manhattan to become a successful businesswoman. After a decade of sacrifice, she now owns a celebrated ice cream company. But when she offends a corrupt banker, she unwittingly sets off a series of calamities that threaten to destroy her life’s work. Liam Blackstone is

One of the pretty consistent staples of a cozy mystery is that the amateur sleuth also has a day job. By that, I mean their detective work is pretty much a hobby. It’s not even a side hustle, since they don’t get paid after they solve the mysteries. Which is a bit disheartening if you

Lovers of Colm Tóibín’s novels (among them Brooklyn, The Master and The Magician) might not know that the Irish author is also a longtime essayist. A Guest at the Feast gathers recent essays that show his full range. A Guest at the Feast is divided into three sections: personal essays, essays examining the power of

by Kathleen Glasgow ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2016 After surviving a suicide attempt, a fragile teen isn’t sure she can endure without cutting herself. Seventeen-year-old Charlie Davis, a white girl living on the margins, thinks she has little reason to live: her father drowned himself; her bereft and abusive mother kicked her out; her

Late last summer, the official email notifying me of my library’s temporary closure for renovations found me capital-D Devastated. Around this time last year, I sat in the breakfast nook pondering the magic of libraries and, more specifically, my deep appreciation for my local branch with the pink camellias outside. There, I browsed and borrowed

Stephen Ellcock has made a name for himself as a digital curator, or “image alchemist.” He ventures deep into visual art archives and surfaces with paintings, drawings, photographs and other images that inspire and intrigue. His fourth book, The Cosmic Dance, is “but a tiny sample of the fruits of ceaseless foraging,” and like his

Regardless of whether you read ten or 100 books a year, you probably try to keep a record of the books you’ve made your way through. Over the years, many of us have used digital apps for this (often Goodreads, but others like StoryGraph have been gaining more and more support), but have you considered

What if perfectionism isn’t a curse or a character flaw but rather a common state of being that can be harnessed for good? In her eye-opening book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control: A Path to Peace and Power, psychotherapist and former on-site Google therapist Katherine Morgan Schafler posits that perfectionists can live a life