Manuscripts

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

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

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,

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

The category of young adult literature is 55 years old, and since its “official” beginning with The Outsiders in 1967, it has not only grown in popularity, its reputation as a body of thought-provoking literature has, too. This is due to too many factors to name, but it is a welcome shift in perspective both

One book. Nine readers. Ten changed lives. New York Times bestselling author Erica Bauermeister’s No Two Persons is “a gloriously original celebration of fiction, and the ways it deepens our lives.” That was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go… This program includes a bonus

A group of University of California at Berkeley (UCB) students are entering the second full week of occupying the school’s Anthropology Library, slated for closure. The silent protest organized by students has had them setting up makeshift beds among the library collections, and they plan to remain inside until the school agrees to keep the

In her engaging Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, memoirist and critic Claire Dederer wrestles with a complicated, sometimes slippery subject: What do we do with art—movies, novels, songs, paintings—we once loved, and sometimes still love, from men we now consider monsters? “I started keeping a list,” she writes. “Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, William Burroughs,

Summer is right around the corner and what does that mean? It means that you (hopefully) have more time to read! If you don’t, at least the children in your life do. Enter the best summer reading programs 2023 has to offer. Kids are on summer break, and they have a lot more time on

Back in the 1980s, it was all “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades.” These days, not so much, with dystopian stories like The Hunger Games doing a much better job to capture the zeitgeist. Speaking of capturing, that’s one enterprise in which the United States still excels; about one out of every five

People often ask, “When did you know you were going to be a writer? When did you decide?” I have many answers to this question, because being a writer is a way of moving through the world, a way of seeing, of hearing and, I’ve learned, believing. When I was last asked this question, in

I love mysteries! It was my first favorite genre when I was little, and I read all the popular series. (Except the Bobbsey Twins, for reasons I don’t remember now.) There was something about seeing so many of a series on the shelf at the library that made me want to read them. As an

Keyword stuffing in product names is a handy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool to get an item to sneak up to the top of search results — the more keywords, the better! You’ve probably seen it for a variety of products, from books to sustainable bamboo reusable makeup removing pads. See what I did there?

Five teenagers, spread across two rival countries, each have a story to tell in The Isles of the Gods, the first book in a fantasy duology from Australian author Amie Kaufman.  Selly is an Alinorish sailor whose magician’s marks never matured, leaving her without the ability to communicate with elemental spirits. Alinor’s Prince Leander knows

Back in 2017, The Guardian ran a piece calling up lit “the new book trend with kindness at its core.” As they noted, one of the earliest iterations of this was Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, a story whose protagonist is a misfit and a bit of a loner, but gradually learns

Flirty and modern, Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg is a sapphic retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Liz Baker is an occasionally impulsive yet organized Leo who loves her friends, enjoys her job and sees the bright side of almost any situation. She’s even got a positive outlook on the news that

I grew up on Star Wars, so you can imagine that science fiction, space fantasy, and science fiction romance have a special place in my heart. After all, what is Star Wars if not an epic science fiction love story? (Don’t try to fight me on this.) There’s just something about the combination of science

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do,” Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote. In journalist Shannon McKenna Schmidt’s detail-rich and revealing account, The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back, it is abundantly clear that the four-term first lady lived her words. Beginning as a Red

In 1894, a group of women banded together to honor their history and legacy. These women, all white, established themselves as the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in Nashville and set to work venerating the history of the Confederacy. UDC established both a national chapter and chapters throughout member states in the south, their

In His Majesty’s Airship: The Life and Tragic Death of the World’s Largest Flying Machine, award-winning author and historian S.C. Gwynne (Rebel Yell) delves into the little-known story behind the 1930 crash of a hydrogen-filled British airship called R101. R101 was the brainchild of Lord Christopher Birdwood Thomson, who held the rather inflated title of

ThriftBooks, where teachers get FREE BOOKS! Buy 4 used books, get a 5th one free with ThriftBooks teacher-only promo code! Teachers, faculty, and staff members at accredited K-12 schools and universities, as well as homeschool instructors, childcare workers, and library staff can qualify for our educator program, ThriftBooks 4 Teachers™. Get more for less with

When Rachel Klein was born 12 years ago, Krasnia’s oceanside capital of Brava was a lively, lovely place dotted with palm trees and populated by citizens who reveled in living there. Sadly, in British screenwriter and playwright David Farr’s The Book of Stolen Dreams, lightheartedness is long gone from present-day Brava.  A tyrannical man named

For fans of Agatha Christie and other mystery writers, wills — and trusts to a lesser extent — come up a lot in plots. Greed and jealousy prove extremely good motives for murder. Who inherits, who does not, and any conditions of the will can create endless reasons for one character to off another. Or

On her website, Irish artist Katie Holten asks, “What is the language we need to live right now? How can we learn to be better lovers of the world?” One of her answers is an innovative—and downloadable!—tree alphabet font: For each letter, she has drawn a corresponding tree. This project provides the stunning visual component

The 2023 Women’s Prize shortlist as been announced. The six books were judged by broadcaster and writer Louise Minchin, journalist and writer Bella Mackie, novelist Rachel Joyce, writer Irenosen Okojie, and member of parliament, Tulip Siddiq. They were described by judges as being “ambitious, eclectic, and hard-hitting” Half of the shortlisted authors are debut novelists,