Books

If you’ve ever brought a toddler to the grocery store, you know what it’s like to write a novel. You can prepare all you want, but it will never go the way you expect. There’ll be surprises, distractions, accidents, meltdowns and the occasional detour down the wrong aisle. Sometimes you might impulsively throw something in

We are fortunate to live at a time when books of all kinds are available from many sources. As historian Andrew Pettegree shows in his lively, thoroughly engaging The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century, it’s taken many twists and turns to reach this point. The author

Coming of age in 1920s Britain, Olivia yearns for freedom. Her father, a closeted actor, and his longtime lover have established a life of quiet respectability in the country, their security dependent on conformity and discretion. When Olivia meets wild, working-class Tamsin, she can no longer contain her desire for a more liberated life—but in

During a tough time, my cousin surprised me with a care package that included a fabulous homemade card, and the personal touch provided me with a much-needed boost. You, too, can create similar gifts with Martina Calvi’s The Art of Snail Mail: 20 Mail Art Craft Projects for Crafting Connection. For adults and children alike,

Want to turn an ordinary T-shirt into a work of art? Or create a lasting message for yourself or others? All you need is some basic supplies and Ciara LeRoy’s Lettered in Thread: Creative Techniques for Designing and Embroidering Meaningful Messages. LeRoy, founder of the Cincinnati-based Pretty Strange Design, is an artist specializing in hand-lettering

It’s fascinating to learn about the inspirations for and driving forces behind cultural icons, and Serling: A Journey Into the Twilight Zone With TV’s First Visionary provides that kind of in-depth education. Before Alan Sepinwall began writing his insightfully presented chronicle of Rod Serling’s extraordinary life, he “worried that I wasn’t enough of a Serling

In Elizabeth Hand’s seductive, slow-burning gothic novel Unspeakable Things, 18-year-old Olivia Madden enjoys a privileged yet precarious life in the 1920s. She’s the neglected daughter of Peter, a closeted, once famous actor whose career has long been in decline and now lives at Kerrith Hall, a rented, understaffed estate on the Cornish moors. Despite living

Alice Hoffman’s historical fantasy and K.S. Shay’s intriguing debut are both set in that most magical of regions: New England. Originally published here.

Silas House’s The Tulip Poplars is a story of love between people that society says should not love each other. House, a poet and the author of Southernmost, traces the paths of four friends who call the Appalachian mountain town of Bright Star, Kentucky, home through much of the 20th century. The four friends are

In 2024, artificial general intelligence researcher Andrej Karpathy coined the term “jagged intelligence” for AI. “What he meant,” writes Kevin Roose, “was that AI systems could be astonishingly brilliant in some ways and astonishingly dumb in others.” Two years later, it’s hard to imagine more fortuitous timing for Roose’s The AGI Chronicles: The Inside Story

You couldn’t ask for a better examination of the significance of Black quiltmaking than Stories in the Seams: A People’s History of Black Quilts and Their Makers. As the writer of Diasporic Threads: Black Women, Fibre and Textiles and editor of Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilts in the American South, New Orleans-based scholar Sharbreon

“To me, the uncanny isn’t defined by fear. It’s about objects with shadow, undocumented history, the past and other lives.” That’s how author and photographer Mark C. O’Flaherty describes his aesthetic in Sanctum: At Home With the Uncanny, a book that celebrates eccentric collections of objects and the moody, luxurious interiors where they reside. A

Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club) continues his winning lighthearted mystery ways with We Chase Shadows, a sequel to We Solve Murders. While The Thursday Murder Club series features four sleuths who have banded together in a retirement home, the We Solve Murders mysteries spotlight an unlikely trio who, in book two, have formed a

Say it ain’t so, Joe! After 36 years and 15 novels (not to mention short stories, graphic novels and a TV series), Edgar Award-winning author Joe R. Lansdale is retiring his indomitable duo, Hap Collins and Leonard Pine.  At Petrified Dreams’ opening, the two are already retired from the detective business, or so they think.

Partita is, in a way, a love story, though the central love in question is not for a person, but for classical piano. Livia Bohusz grows up on a dairy farm in rural east Tennessee, her most prized possession a copy of the key to the local church where she practices piano day after day.

A vampire serial killer, a haunted Cold War submarine and one very unsettling dog will be haunting our dreams (nightmares?) this season. Originally published here.

It’s easy to see why Stephen Graham Jones is one of the most beloved authors in modern horror. His books are filled with vivid, terrifying imagery, he incorporates social commentary with deft grace and, of course, his intimate knowledge of the genre has made him a favorite among readers who like things a bit meta.

Jessica is a stay-at-home mom to a teen named Sandy, who dabbles in witchcraft. Her husband, Greg, works at some internet company where he does things she doesn’t fully understand. Jessica wouldn’t exactly call herself happy, but tries not to think too hard about why, especially when it comes to her own sexual identity.  When

Choose your perfect Halloween adventure from these four festive reads, ranging from middle grade to young adult novels. Originally published here.

A Game of Cat and Killer The subtitle of Jiro Akagawa’s novel A Game of Cat and Killer is “The Casebooks of Mikeneko Holmes,” “mikeneko” being the Japanese word for “calico cat.” As you might guess, casebooks suggests that this is the first book of a series; as you might not guess, the novel was

Hernan Diaz’s extraordinary latest work, Ply, is set amid modernity’s wreckage, but it is not quite a postapocalyptic novel. There was no capital-C Calamity, just the inevitable entropy greed engenders. The antagonists are primarily executives, chief financial officers of utility companies with private armies (except the one who’s more of a tech giant a la

“I don’t know how to write short novels,” admits Min Jin Lee. Her first two books—2007’s Free Food for Millionaires and 2017’s Pachinko—were both about 500 pages. Her third, American Hagwon, is well over 600. “I just want to die most of the time when I’m writing them,” she says. “I’m like, ‘Why would you

Jessica Brody’s deep knowledge of mysteries and writing is on full display in How to Write a Murder, a delightfully meta take on what it means to tell a killer story. Nine people travel to the Pen Ultimate Writers Conference, held in the mountains of California. They’re all there thanks to renowned mystery writer Ian

Elzbieta “Libby” Lakoski thought the hardest thing she’d have to do all year would be watching Carter Coldwell (her longtime best friend and longtime crush) marry someone else. Instead, she finds herself pushed into solving an old Coldwell family mystery before the wedding—because if she doesn’t, a curse could cost Carter his life. Her sidekick

Dream More There are four core pieces of advice the “Dolly Mama” (as she sometimes calls herself) offers in her motivational book: dream more, learn from everything, care for everyone and be more. Read more Originally published here.

Sonido Reyes, author of National Book Award finalist The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School, is known for his amplification of Mexican and queer stories. Continuing these explorations within To Our Untamed Core, Reyes, who uses he and they pronouns, drops readers into a religious dystopian world of tyranny and resistance where “you’re bound only by

Tananarive Due’s Mazywood is an exceptionally crafted and paced horror novel with superb, surprising twists. The iconic writer and teacher of Black horror and Afrofuturism presents readers with a novel very much in the vein of her Bram Stoker Award-winning The Reformatory, where some of the most terrifying aspects of the plot are steeped in

Who hasn’t wondered what it would be like to soar high in the sky, perhaps flapping alongside surprised birds or soaring through fluffy clouds? In the endearing The Fantastic Floating Mr. Finnegan, translated from German by Tammi Reichel, Swiss duo Rebecca Gugger and Simon Röthlisberger (partners in creativity and in life) contemplate that possibility via

Emil Wilson’s first graphic novel, The Nightingales, is based on the true story of his father’s invitation to a co-worker, dying of AIDS in 1985, to move in to the family home. The fictionalized version of the story, presented as if from the pages of a sketchbook, follows Wilson’s sister, Lou, as she builds a