Books

As readers who enjoy young adult books look back on 2021, they’ll see that it was a year packed with truly amazing new books. Here are the 15 titles BookPage readers loved most. This novel’s easy charm, strong mother-daughter relationship and romantic elements recall the best moments of “Gilmore Girls” or “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”

Filled with humor, misadventures, triumphs and sorrow, Amor Towles’ novel The Lincoln Highway (16.5 hours) follows Emmet Watson, his kid brother, Billy, and their friends Duchess and Woolly on an epic road trip from Nebraska to New York. Each chapter is told from a different point of view, and Edoardo Ballerini narrates as all but

Wattpad, a platform used to host both fan fiction and original fiction, has announced a new partnership with ViacomCBS. Viacom will adapt stories from Wattpad as well as the webcomic platform WEBTOON into series to stream on Paramount+. Wattpad was purchased this year by Naver, the parent company of WEBTOON, for $600 million dollars. This

Mary Balogh’s fabulous Westcott series boasts some of the most memorable characters in her oeuvre and her latest installment, Someone Perfect, is a fitting addition. Despite coming from very disparate backgrounds, two people connect at an unanticipated and deeply emotional level in this historical romance.  Lady Estelle Lamarr was horrified when her close confidant, Maria,

Mark your calendars: the classic and much-beloved children’s television show Reading Rainbow is coming back in early 2022. After more than 15 years off the air, the show will return to airwaves as Reading Rainbow Live, and it will feature a diverse and rotating range of comedic troupe performers as hosts. The return was prompted

In Olga Dies Dreaming, the personal and the political are masterfully intertwined. Its titular heroine, the uber-talented Olga Acevedo, grew up in a working-class Nuyorican family (New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent) full of strivers and revolutionaries. But as an adult, she makes her living as a wedding planner, catering to New York City’s elite

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“Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third,” T.S. Eliot said. James Joyce called Dante Alighieri “my spiritual food,” and Russian poet Anna Akhmatova learned Italian just to read him. The influence of Dante and his Divine Comedy permeates Western history and, clearly, the consciousness of even the most modern

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In Therese Beharrie’s And They Lived Happily Ever After, romance novelist Gaia has an unusual way of working through her stories: She personally experiences the passages she’s written in deeply vivid dreams. But when she bases a hero on her best friend’s hunky brother and he starts sharing the dreams with her, the path to

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Charlie Barnes, the hero of Joshua Ferris’ novel A Calling for Charlie Barnes (11.5 hours), has pancreatic cancer. Or maybe he doesn’t. He is a shyster, a con man and a liar. Or perhaps he’s a dreamer, a nobody who could be a somebody, if only the planets would align in his favor and grant

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We appear to be living in a golden age of crime stories, with podcasts and series galore, but this popular fascination is truly timeless, everlasting and ever evolving. L.R. Dorn’s debut novel, The Anatomy of Desire (8 hours), updates Theodore Dreiser’s classic 1925 crime drama, An American Tragedy, by using the documentary format to explore

Alice Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky detailed her rape as a freshman at Syracuse in May of 1981. Her alleged rapist was convicted in 1982. A judge cleared that man, Anthony Broadwater, now 61, of that conviction on Monday because of significant flaws in the prosecution and concerns that the wrong man had been convicted and

In this often hilarious and consistently stirring performance, comedian, actor and all-around celebrity Jamie Foxx dishes on his toughest role: being a father. Throughout Act Like You Got Some Sense: And Other Things My Daughters Taught Me (6 hours), Foxx brings honesty and heart to touching stories about his childhood—growing up with an absent mother

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Cas, the younger lord of the Oliveran fortress city of Palmerin, is no stranger to death. Mysteriously abducted near the Oliveran border in the midst of war with the neighboring kingdom of Brisas, he watched from afar for three long years as thousands fell to brutal violence and thousands more to a pestilence that ravaged

We begin each new reading year with high hopes, and sometimes, when we’re very lucky, we find our expectations rewarded. So it was with 2021. It must be said that a lot of these books are really, really long. Apparently this was the year for total commitment, for taking a plunge and allowing ourselves to

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What if the events in the fairy tales you heard as a child didn’t really happen that way at all? This is the question posed by Martha Brockenbrough’s Into the Bloodred Woods , a savage spin on happily ever after.  The novel takes place in a mythical kingdom ruled by a king, his gold-spinning queen

A motley crew, their skilled leader and a living ship walk into a bar—and the bar explodes. You Sexy Thing kicks off with a literal bang (and ends with one), but the rest of the story is dialogue and flashback-driven as Cat Rambo shifts perspectives and timelines to color in their cast of characters. Captain

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Kate Sweeney’s debut YA novel, Catch the Light, is a moving story of healing through art and opening yourself up to a new life after suffering a great loss. Sweeney graciously shares a heartfelt look into her experiences of grief and loss, which inspired the story of her protagonist, Marigold “Mary” Sullivan.  Sweeney discusses what

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In You Are Here (For Now), artist and author Adam J. Kurtz is vulnerable, wise and hilarious as he doles out advice and comfort to anyone who’s really going through it. What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received?Sometimes the worst advice comes from the people who love us the most. I won’t go into it

Ever been curious what the best cities for book lovers are? Lawn Love, a company focused on revolutionizing the lawn care business, recently did a study to explore which cities make the mark and which fall short in honor of National Family Literacy Month. The study looked at the 200 biggest cities across the United

Two picture books explore the art and craft of writing and storytelling, offering advice and encouragement for budding young writers. In How to Make a Book (About My Dog), Chris Barton answers a question that children often ask him when he visits schools as a children’s author: “How do you make your books?”  Barton guides