Manuscripts

★ A Love by Design Elizabeth Everett’s praiseworthy Secret Scientists of London series returns with the third installment, A Love by Design. Engineer Margaret Gault has recently returned to London from Paris and is intent on opening her own firm, despite all the struggles that await a businesswoman in Victorian England. Maggie quickly finds a

Who’s ready to take a Judy Blume character quiz? Judy Blume books have been there for me at every age of my life. In elementary school, I laughed as my mom read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing out loud to me and my sister. I related to Margaret’s quest to discover who she is

Australia has perhaps the most unusual (and dangerous) wildlife of any continent, a product of its unique status as a vast island that broke off from other landmasses millions of years ago. Due to this isolation, plants and animals specifically adapted to its climate, independent of what was evolving in the rest of the world.

It’s a new year, meaning that the groups and individuals creating hell for public educators will be developing their new plans for continued “work.” What began as an attack on “Critical Race Theory” in 2021 — spearheaded by the right-wing darling Christopher Rufo — has morphed into disdain for other categories of teaching and books,

Throughout our lives, we encounter fraught decisions around love and money: whether to take a better job across the country when our partner wants to stay put; when and whether to marry, buy a house, have a child; if we should work full time with children in the picture. Money and love “are profoundly intertwined,

In a fantastic collaboration between two top-notch institutions working against censorship and book bans, high school students across the country are invited to apply to and take part in the Freedom to Read Advocacy Institute. Brooklyn Public Library–named Librarians of the Year from Library Journal for their Books Unbanned program–and PEN America–a leader in tracking

When Theo’s promposal during the biggest house party of the year doesn’t go as planned, he escapes to an empty bedroom to regroup. Over the course of the evening, four more teens, each with their own troubles, join Theo in the mermaid-themed bedroom. What follows is a night of heartfelt conversation and more than one

The official trailer for Lionsgate’s Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret adaptation has been released. The new movie is based on Judy Blume’s iconic coming-of-age novel with the same name that follows preteen Margaret Simon as she contends with a new school and longings to fit in. The trailer shows Margaret (played by Abby

Accepting dares is a way of life for Theo Wright. His close-knit friendships with Jay and Darren revolve around tasking one another with all manner of physical challenges and public humiliations. When Jay dares Theo to ask his crush to prom, Theo knows that his only chance to do so will be at the biggest

Flatiron Books publisher of Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight to hell in this sequel to Ninth House, the smash bestseller by Leigh Bardugo. Thick with history and packed with Bardugo’s signature twists, Hell Bent brings to life an intricate world

John Hendrickson begins his memoir, Life on Delay: Making Peace With a Stutter, at the point when most people first encountered his byline: during an interview in 2019 with then-presidential candidate Joe Biden for The Atlantic, where Hendrickson is a senior editor. Although he is a person who stutters, the viral article, titled “What Joe

In addition to a list of the Most Anticipated 2023 horror releases, Goodreads has also released a Most Anticipated list for Science Fiction and Fantasy. They note that 2023 will be a great year for speculative reading, with a mix of releases of very buzzy books and those by popular authors, like Salmon Rushdie, Chloe

When Henrietta Weldon’s parents decide that she should switch from private to public school for seventh grade, Henri is excited—and determined to hide her nerves. Between her messy bedroom and her struggles with math, Henri’s family of competitive overachievers treat her like “a problem to be solved.” Her older sister, Kat, refuses to answer Henri’s

While Merriam-Webster declared 2022 the year of “gaslighting,” hundreds of linguistic scholars from the American Dialect Society voted in the suffix “-ussy” as their word of the year. First, there was “bussy,” a portmanteau of “boy” and “pussy”. It was added to Urban Dictionary in 2007, and that entry claims it’s been around in LGBTQ

Set in the isolated backwaters of Ljosland, an alternate version of Iceland, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries follows the eponymous Dr. Wilde in her quest to investigate and catalog the Hidden Ones, mysterious faeries that inhabit the land surrounding the town of Hrafnsvik. Solitary by nature, Emily is more at home making deals with brownies

In 2015, Alex Gino published George, the story of a transgender 4th grade girl learning to accept herself and to come out to her loved ones. In 2021, to remedy their mistake of deadnaming the main character, Gino re-released the book as Melissa. Regardless of title, Melissa has made the American Librarian Association’s top ten

A line from Jessica Johns’ haunting, atmospheric and beautiful debut novel, Bad Cree, has been tumbling around in my head since I set the book down. “That’s the thing about the [prairie]. . . . It’ll tell you exactly what it’s doing and when, you just have to listen.” Johns’ protagonist, a young Cree woman

Self-help has been a booming genre for adults for decades, with books available that can teach us everything from how to boost our self-esteem, overcome addiction, and deal with mental illness to how to actualise our wildest dreams. Adults often buy self-help when we reach a turning point in our lives, or find ourselves in

To remember is not just to recall a thing. Remembering can be a way of putting things back together, in the way that dis-membering is to take them apart. Kai Thomas’ stellar novel, In the Upper Country, is all about this sort of re-membering. It’s inspired by the true stories of formerly enslaved and freeborn

Known for his novels exploring the wintry, rural lands of the Northeast including Sweet Hereafter and Affliction, as well as his award-winning work Cloudsplitter, which followed the life of abolitionist John Brown, author Russell Banks was considered by many to follow in the footsteps of other American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Walt Whitman.

Jami Attenberg (All This Could Be Yours) looks back on her years as a roaming artist in I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. Attenberg has lived an uncompromising life as a writer, and she muses about her choices in this forthright memoir. Frequently crossing the country to promote her books,

Anytime I’m having trouble focusing on reading, I love to pick up a cozy fantasy book to reset. They’re just pure joy in book form. If you’re not familiar with the genre, welcome to your new favorite fantasy sub-genre. The concept was relatively new to me as well, though I quickly realized these sorts of

It’s 2023, horror fans! Which means we have a whole new year of horror books to look forward to reading. January is starting off with a bang with a bunch of great new horror novels to choose from. Seriously, these books are a great way to start off a whole year of horror. Will you

Despite filling feeders and growing native plants, I continue to be disappointed by the birds that frequent our yard. So much of the same old, same old: cardinals, sparrows, chickadees. I do especially love chickadees—but where are the goldfinches, if not the bluebirds? Joan E. Strassmann’s Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the

Book censorship in school libraries continues to rise. A Texas school district pulled 41 titles from the shelves, including the Bible, to put them under further review. Missouri passed a bill that makes any text with “visual depictions” of “graphic material” illegal to have available in schools. This has caused the removal of many graphic

Few conditions feel more dystopian than toiling away at a dead-end job. But imagine performing menial chores in a massive, vacant research facility so remote that a helicopter is required to get there. Plus, outdoor conditions are so fierce that anyone who steps outside is likely to develop a mysterious “snow sickness.” This is the

At the start of a new year, I’m always hopeful — nay, overzealous and unhinged — about how many books I can actually read in the whole year. But it’s so much fun to flip the page, start brand-new, and dive right into the challenge! And when I get behind on my reading goals, reading

In her second novel in verse, National Book Award finalist Amber McBride blurs the lines between fantasy and reality. Eighteen-year-old Whimsy has been hospitalized for the 11th time in 10 years. Although her grandmother taught the young conjurer that “Fairy Tales are real, / magic is real,” she also offered a warning: “Careful, Whimsy, /

Paperbacks are the ideal book format for me. There’s no screen glare. There’s no figuring out how or where to store a dust jacket. There’s simply a flexible binding and cover that allow for folding and curling pages. I know — many of you likely flinched at the idea, and that’s fine. You can keep

The people of Raddith are used to living with magic. The country bustles with business, bureaucracy and other hallmarks of humanity, but around its edges are whispers of curses—dangerous magic spawned from intense negative emotion. Kellen, an unraveller with the rare ability to undo these curses, and Nettle, his stoic companion with a hidden past,