Manuscripts

Coretta Scott King Honor author Lesa Cline-Ransome has earned a reputation as an excellent chronicler of American history in more than 20 works of fiction and nonfiction. In For Lamb, she powerfully captures the events that lead to a fictitious lynching in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1940.  Cline-Ransome was inspired to write For Lamb after visiting

It’s fairly common for SFF writers to write all SFF, all the time. It makes sense: science fiction and fantasy are, like all literary genres, modes with their own histories, tropes, archetypes, and conventions. If an author is successful working within any genre, it makes sense that they might choose to continue doing so. Plus,

Historical fiction presents a certain narrative highwire act in and of itself, and each author confronts the challenge of weaving fictional stories into real historical events differently. No matter the approach, though, the balance of verisimilitude and invention is paramount. With The Three Lives of Alix St. Pierre, Natasha Lester takes on that challenge and

2022 has been a wild ride. As I reflect back on the year, it seems like 2022 has been filled with truly scary moments. But at least the horror books of this year have been good scary and not fear-for-the-future-of-humanity scary. Horror novels, as always, remain a great way to escape from the terrors of

In Have I Told You This Already? Stories I Don’t Want to Forget to Remember (4.5 hours), Lauren Graham, the beloved actor and bestselling author of Talking as Fast as I Can, offers conversational, witty essays about everything from changing trends in undergarments to the process of coming to terms with aging, from adventures in

Beginning in October, here at Book Riot we’ve been watching as a slew of Best Books of the Year lists came rolling in from publications ranging from The New York Times to Buzzfeed. This was a great year for books, but it’s interesting to see just how little overlap there is between these lists. To

We like our politics to be binary. It is comforting to hear that we are on the good side and other people are on the bad. But life, obviously, is not binary, and neither are our politics. In V.V. Ganeshananthan’s second novel, readers are carried to a reckoning with this fact.  Set in 1980s Sri

Readers have likely noticed that super-bright colors continue to dominate book cover design in 2022, but while evaluating all the covers she’s seen this year, BookPage’s Brand & Production Designer Meagan Vanderhill was looking for more than eye-catching colors. Good book jacket design is certainly about grabbing a reader’s attention, she explains, but it’s also

Yesterday, I was standing in front of my desk, piled high with books I had checked out from the library or received for review, trying to decide what to read next. I shifted from foot to foot and gave myself a pep talk. “Pretend you are a normal reader. You’re just picking whatever book looks

Since about 2014, I’ve always kept an eye on Pantone’s Color of the Year. I like this idea of a color defining or giving shape to an upcoming year, much in the way I like thinking not about resolutions but about words or phrases as a means of organizing the next 12 months. Over the

Making its rounds on social media over the past two weeks is a story from The Atlantic about the end of high school English class. It’s not necessarily what you think it might be. The author, a high school teacher in Berkeley, California, explores how ChatGPT, a conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, might radically alter

Are you guilty of reading ahead? We certainly are: The January issue previews some of our most anticipated books of 2023, including upcoming books from Tom Hanks, KJ Charles, S.A. Cosby and many more! Plus, love will be in the air in our February issue, which includes Valentine’s Day features & an expanded romance column.

Here at Book Riot, we publish 8-10 posts every weekday, not counting news stories, deals round ups, and other miscellanea. That’s thousands of posts in a year. Some of them blow up, and some of them are snubbed by social media algorithms. Regardless of the views, likes, or shares, though, our contributors have written some

Ammaar Reshi, a product design manager in California, used an AI-powered chatbot called ChatGPT to make a children’s book over a single weekend. After publishing the 12-page picture book, which he titled Alice and Sparkle, he even began selling it on Amazon. After Reshi’s tweets about the book went viral, there were many artists who

After solving two notorious cold cases, Stevie and her friends from Ellingham Academy are off to jolly old England to uncover the truth about a double murder that took place at a wealthy country estate in 1995. Meanwhile, they’re also dealing with college applications, academic pressures, romantic entanglements and more. In Nine Liars, bestselling author

The end of 2022 is fast approaching. How was your reading life this year? Did you read a ton of amazing books? Did you struggle through reading slump after reading slump? Did you discover any amazing new authors, or stick to your tried-and-true favorites? Are you feeling satisfied with what you read, or do you

Yesterday, the U.S. Postal Service announced seven new subjects that will be featured on stamps in 2023. Among the list is prolific children’s book author Tomie dePaola (1934-2020) and civil rights activist and author John Lewis (1940-2020). After participating in vital civil rights protests — even becoming one of the Freedom Riders in the early

Teen sleuth Stevie Bell is back! It’s the autumn of her senior year at Ellingham Academy, and she and her friends Nate, Janelle and Vi have been invited by Stevie’s boyfriend, David, to join him in London to solve another cold case. One rain-soaked night 1995, nine inseparable friends played a game of hide-and-seek on

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a nonprofit dedicated to defending free speech. To draw attention to the censorship happening in Texas schools and libraries right now, they’ve put up two billboards. The first, which is up in Keller now, says “Free Speech Makes Free People.” The second will go up December 18th,

‘Tis the season for “best of” book lists, and we’ve rounded up quite a few on Book Riot. The newest addition is the first “The Atlantic 10,” which the magazine defines not quite as the best books of the year, but the books that “impressed us with their force of ideas, that drew us in

Since September, I’ve been putting together this combined list of all the bestselling books, according to all the big bestsellers lists: the New York Times, both Combined Print & E-Book Fiction and Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction lists; Amazon Charts, both Fiction and Nonfiction; USA Today; and Publishers Weekly. To be honest, there aren’t usually

“Solitude is tolerable, even enjoyable at times. But when you realise that you’ve given your life to someone, yet you know nothing but his name? That kind of solitude is loneliness. That’s what kills you.” In An Yu’s ethereal Ghost Music, a woman’s grip on her suffocating life loosens as she is drawn into a

Renowned writer Hilary Mantel, who passed away in September at the age of 70, was widely known and respected for her Wolf Hall trilogy, as well as the scores of other books and essays that she wrote during her career. Her treatment of the political machinations of Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII inspired

Determining the best audiobooks of all time is a highly subjective process. What makes an audiobook the best? Do they have to have famous narrators or an ensemble cast? Are the most popular audiobooks the best, or do they have to be award-winning to be the best? Audiobooks have come a long way since their

“Fake news” has been the news for years, thanks to a president who helped empower distrust in people and institutions which have experience, expertise, and history in delivering information. But from “fake news” has been the larger discussion of mis- and disinformation, which themselves have been used to weaponize authority. But what exactly does misinformation

A sweet and touching portrayal of friendship, heartbreak and healing, The Key to My Heart by Lia Louis is a poignant romance with astute observations about life after loss. It’s been two years since her husband, Russ, died, and 32-year-old Natalie Fincher is still grieving. She’s lost her passion for the dreamy cottage she lives

As 2022 comes barreling to an end, there’s only one thing I’m looking forward to, my favorite holiday of the year. No, it’s not Christmas. It’s New Year’s Eve. NYE is truly the best holiday because it’s all about optimism. It’s about celebrating everything the last year represented and hoping for the best in the

In this trio of suspense novels, a seasoned spy, a clever reward-seeker and a thief extraordinaire take on complicated, dangerous assignments as they race against time and attempt to elude their equally determined enemies.  JUDAS 62 At just under 500 pages, Charles Cumming’s JUDAS 62 is a commitment, but those who love immersive espionage thrillers

One of the biggest readers’ choice book awards–and one that certainly captures the excitement and attention of the bookish internet–is the Goodreads Choice Awards. It’s an opportunity for Goodreads users to weigh in on the books they think were the best of the best that year. For 2022, it’s clear that the power of BookTok

Love stories set during the holidays are almost always good-natured, but this year’s standouts take good cheer and good will to another level. Personal transformations and turning points abound in these empathetic and festive happily ever afters.     ★ So This Is Christmas Author Jenny Holiday takes readers on a third trip to the fictional country