Books

★ Hotel of Secrets In Hotel of Secrets, Diana Biller whisks readers away to 1878 Vienna. Hotel Wallner is Maria Wallner’s somewhat tarnished family legacy, thanks to her unmarried parents’ decadeslong affair. She’s determined to help the place regain its former glory during Vienna’s traditional ball season. American Secret Service agent Eli Whittaker arrives at

When book banning started to heat up two years ago, many wondered how long until a library worker would be seriously hurt over defending the right to read. Now, we know it’s not going to be long at all. Over the last month, several libraries have faced bomb and shooting threats as a direct result

Imagine if Elizabeth Cady Stanton had been distracted from her suffrage efforts because she fell in love, Hallmark movie-style, with a local Seneca Falls man. Or if Emily Dickinson contacted tech support but could only communicate in her trademark poetic style. Or if the Gettysburg Address had been written by “The West Wing” creator Aaron

The 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award winner has been announced. Out of 512 American novels and short story collections published in the U.S. in 2022, Yiyun Li’s book, The Book of Goose, was named the best novel by Tiphanie Yanique, R.O. Kwon, and Christopher Bollen, the writers who served as judges this year. The Book of Goose

You Know Her Meagan Jennett’s You Know Her is a crackerjack debut thriller. A book about a serial killer is not necessarily notable; there are many of those on the racks at bookstores. Books about female serial killers are in somewhat shorter supply, and a book in which said female serial killer is a narrator

What states invest the most money per capita into their public libraries and how is that reflected in the number of visits per person at those libraries? Thanks to a new report pulled together by Scholaroo, a team who helps students find and acquire scholarships, we can get a sense of where and how people

John Randolph, a wealthy enslaver from Virginia, member of Congress for almost 30 years, strong defender of states’ rights and prominent public speaker, died in 1833. In the will that he created in 1821, he stipulated the freeing of every enslaved person on his plantation, which would amount to one of the largest manumissions in

The National Book Foundation has announced the honorees for its 5 Under 35 list, which names “five fiction writers under the age of 35 whose debut work promises to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Honorees must have published their first and only book of fiction within the last five years. The writers

Sword of Fire is centered around a socio-political struggle against the unjust courts of the Kingdom of Deverry. While that certainly could be a backdrop for a bleak, dark struggle, Kerr’s novel is instead a lovely quest with an ever-optimistic, wholeheartedly enthusiastic crew of brilliant women and chivalrous men.

I love a good YA paperback, so I’m really excited to see such a wonderful assortment of 2023 spring YA paperbacks. What I don’t love about paperbacks, though, is their rising costs; it’s becoming too clear that even the “cheaper” option for buying books is becoming untenable for so many, especially teenagers (and if your

Sixteen-year-old Samantha “Sam” Kang has long felt like the odd one out in her family. Her older brother, Julian, is a “literal genius” studying science at Yale, while Sam is a B-minus student who’s more into podcasts and movies than college application-friendly activities like clubs or sports. Her mom, Priscilla, is a lawyer, and her

STARS AND SMOKE by Marie Lu Winter Young is an international pop sensation whose star power has smashed records. Sydney Cossette is the youngest and most ambitious spy in her covert ops group. When a major crime boss invites Winter to perform a private concert for his daughter’s birthday, Sydney and Winter’s lives suddenly collide.

Children’s literacy advocate John Schu and Caldecott Honor recipient Lauren Castillo celebrate the power of finding the perfect book—in a story that’s more relevant than ever. This is a word on a page.This is a page in a book.This is a book on a shelf . . . waiting.With a sea-horse kite in hand, a

Book Depository is an online book retailer based in the UK that started in 2004. In 2011, it was bought out by Amazon, and by the end of April 2023, it will be shutting down for good. The online retailer was known for offering free shipping to 160 countries, and it was a useful option

One house that deserves a second chance meets two hearts that deserve the same . . . Buying a haunted house was never in Ashley Scott’s plans, but when an intriguing opportunity drops into her lap after a major life setback, she finds herself trekking cross-country to Hope Harbor on the Oregon coast to launch a new

One of the best experiences for any reader is the chance to corner someone and passionately recommend our recent favorite read. In order to spare our friends and family from having to endure this for the hundredth time, we do quarterly Comics Riot Roundups, where we can recommend our favorite comics and graphic novels that

Jessica Love (Julián Is a Mermaid) gently demonstrates the power of knowledge in A Bed of Stars, a picture book about a child whose father takes them camping in the desert. Every night before bed, the child imagines “the whole universe stretching on endlessly.” This recurring thought makes the child feel small and insignificant, and

Do you want to update your wardrobe for the changing seasons? If you’re the bookish type, chances are you have one — or manyyyyy — reader-themed tees you wear out and about or as loungewear in your home. As we shift into warmer days in the northern hemisphere, it makes sense that a closet update

As she approached the age of 40, Dionne Ford, co-editor of the 2019 anthology Slavery’s Descendants, wondered how she had become “an invisible woman.” Who was she behind the mask she’d created to survive white supremacy and evade her struggles with mental illness? In Go Back and Get It: A Memoir of Race, Inheritance, and

Let’s hear it for the romances that celebrate the diversity of bisexual romantic experiences. While searching my shelves, real and digital, for the best bisexual romance books, I enjoyed finding books across the YA and adult romance spectrum that just get it. There can be a tendency for outsiders to collapse a person’s sexuality to

I absolutely love reading strange or surreal books that leave me unsettled and with that “what the heck did I just read?” feeling. More often than not, those are the books that stay with me for a long while. Especially because of how genuinely bizarre they can be. So if you’re like me, you’re in

The lights started shortly after Matthew Vollmer’s mother died. It was the fall of 2019, and Vollmer’s father now lived alone, sleeping in the same bed where his wife of decades had released her final breath. He had spent 10 years caring for her as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases slowly took their toll. Now Vollmer,

Spring is on the way, and for a lot of people, that means plants are on the brain. It makes total sense! It’s starting to warm up bit by bit and all those spring cleaning projects are getting tackled. For some plants are a big part of the process. Houseplants need repotting or fresh soil.

The photograph taken after the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the Lorraine Motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, is one of the most recognizable of the 20th century. As the civil rights leader lay dying, people nearby pointed to something out of frame while one man knelt at King’s side. The photo

Adding Dungeons & Dragons miniatures to your roleplaying game really brings the campaign to life! Dungeons & Dragons (or really, any RPG) is already the perfect medium for active storytelling. You are more than an audience; you are an active participant, shaping the story around you, crafting a WORLD around you. A great Dungeon Master

“I could see why so many stories were set in lighthouses,” thinks Julia, the titular narrator of Julia and the Shark, upon reaching her family’s unusual new home for the summer. “It’s a good place for adventures even before you go inside.” In this illustrated middle grade novel, award-winning British writer Kiran Millwood Hargrave (The

In the winter, I love to sit in front of the fireplace show on Netflix and cuddle up with a good audiobook. I sip warm tea while listening to something like Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May, narrated by Rebecca Lee. Lee’s soothing voice with May’s comforting words

Most American history buffs have seen the terrifying photograph of the Ku Klux Klan’s parade on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1925, with the U.S. Capitol visible in the background. Sadly, that’s just a minor glimpse of the klan’s sway during what we prefer to remember as the Jazz Age. But in fact, there are more white

Grace Linn is a 100-year-old widow of a WWII veteran, a grandmother, and a craftivist. On Tuesday, she spoke at a Martin County, Florida school board meeting to protest the removal of 80+ books from the school library. Her statement has gotten a lot of media coverage, and she was later interviewed on MSNBC, Fox

Eb didn’t mean to mess up Flow’s brand-new shoes, and Flow would never hit a girl, but in Kelly J. Baptist’s Eb & Flow, an accident leads to angry words, then a fistfight and then a 10-day suspension from school for seventh graders Ebony (Eb) and De’Kari (Flow). As they stare down two weeks at