Manuscripts

Sam Heughan, known to legions of fans as Jamie Fraser in the popular TV show based on Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, recently decided it was time to walk the rigorous West Highland Way in Scotland, a long-distance hiking trail that runs from north of Glasgow to Fort William in the Scottish Highlands. He wanted a

HarperCollins Union, which represents more than 250 employees from different sectors of the publishing house, has been on strike since November 10th. Their demands are for better pay, diversity initiatives, and more security for unionized workers. Salaries at HarperCollins start at $45,000 pretax, well below a living wage in New York City, with an average

All hell broke loose when Casey Parks came out to her family. But amid all their weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, there was a bright spark that came to dominate Parks’ personal and professional life for over a decade, which she recounts in Diary of a Misfit (14.5 hours). Parks’ stern, conservative grandmother

British award-winning author Marcus Sedgwick has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 54. Sedgwick wrote over 40 children’s books, was nominated for more than 30 awards, and won the Printz award in 2014 for Midwinter Blood. He described his latest series, Be the Change, as a “brilliant interactive and accessible resources for kids to

Vega is a girl with stars on her skin. Her mother created the tattoos when Vega was small, knowing that one day she would take up the mantle of the last Astronomer. Vega has never left their valley and knows only the safety of her mother’s cottage. But her mother is dying from a sickness

Who would have thought a discussion about the intelligence (or lack thereof) of humans and animals could be so fascinating and fun? Such is the case in If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal: What Animal Intelligence Reveals About Human Stupidity (7 hours), thanks to the conversational prowess and keen (I’ll go ahead and say it) intellect

A few years after British actor Tom Felton hung up his Slytherin robes for good, he hit rock bottom. It was the first step toward reclaiming his identity, as it prompted him to ask how and when he left the wisecracking kid from Surrey behind and instead became dependent on the numbing effect of alcohol.

Each month, the Amazon Book Editors post a list of their favorite books out that month. At the end of the year, this team of nine editors draws from these lists, as well as considering any they may have missed, to choose their top books of the year as a whole. They each have different

Love is hard. And when trauma is added to the mix, the partner you adore can struggle to be the partner you need. Kennedy Ryan’s latest contemporary romance, Before I Let Go, is dedicated to the “strong girls . . . hustlers . . . [and] superwomen,” all of which could be used to describe

“I do trust librarians, I trust our teachers and I want to know that I don’t have to look at this list. But here I am finding multiple books that unfortunately are part of the LGBTQ community,” said Joni Shaw Smith, a member of the Keller Independent School District board at last night’s meeting. Keller

From childhood, death neither repulsed nor frightened Hayley Campbell but instead spurred her curiosity. So it was only natural that Campbell, a freelance journalist based in London, would interview people who make a living from death: not just a funeral director and an embalmer but also a crematorium operator, a crime scene cleaner, an executioner

Science fiction and horror: two great tastes that taste great together! Genre mashups are a blast. (Not “pew-pew” blast, but “rollicking good time” blast.) And there are so many great sub-genres: dystopian fiction, medical experimentation, robots, space travel, aliens. Sometimes a few of those things at once. There’s so many great books to choose from.

Babel by R.F. Kuang Set in an alternate Victorian Britain, R.F. Kuang’s standalone historical fantasy is an unforgiving examination of the cost of power. Everywhere With You by Carlie Sorosiak, illustrated by Devon Holzwarth Carlie Sorosiak and Devon Holzwarth’s flawless picture book rings with a tender truth: When you are with the ones you love, everywhere

Kevin Conroy, best known as the voice of Batman in Batman: The Animated Series and numerous other projects, passed away on November 10th after a short battle with cancer. He would have been 67 later this month. Conroy was born in Westbury, New York in 1955. He studied acting at Julliard alongside fellow iconic DC

Afterlives by Abdulrazak Gurnah The engrossing 10th novel from Nobel laureate Gurnah is filled with compassion and historical insight. Bitingly funny and sweetly earnest, Mathews’ debut is one of those rare novels that feels just like life. Not since Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend has a novel so deftly probed the magical and sometimes destructive

“Get in. Get out, No drama. Focus forward.” That’s the motto guiding Avery Anderson at the beginning of her senior year of high school, when she and her parents move from Washington, D.C., to Bardell, Georgia, in order to care for Avery’s estranged, dying grandmother. Yet Avery soon finds herself surrounded by drama in Jas

How important are individuals in the shaping of history? Twentieth-century Europeans knew leaders whose decisions, good or ill, transformed their countries, the continent and, in some cases, the world. Ian Kershaw, one of our leading historians of the period, focuses on 12 of them in his enlightening and stimulating Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers

In the 2022 school year, I decided to run a comic book club in the school library that I manage. I’ve run a manga club for 9 years there and decided to start a comic book club to focus on the massive popularity of the comics and graphic novels that we have on the shelves.

In her debut essay collection, comedian and actor Natasha Leggero muses, often hilariously, about what it’s like to have a baby at 42 and find your way as a mom. “It’s hard raising a child with a man,” she writes in the opening essay of The World Deserves My Children. “One day I asked my

In Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers, Oxford University Shakespeare studies professor Emma Smith offers a lively and engaging survey of the history of the book, focusing on the “material combination of form and content” she calls “bookhood.” It’s a “book about books, rather than words,” that describes with both insight and

Library workers are trained professionals. Most librarians spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to earn a master’s degree which helps teach them not only how to serve their communities, but how to access, assess, and make available accurate information for their patrons. It is an art and a science of balancing community needs

The nine short stories in George Saunders’ Liberation Day (7 hours) prowl a spectrum of dystopian premises and fall into two categories: tales about families, co-workers and neighbors navigating their relationships amid troubling current events; and stories about future humans who are reprogrammed as automatons (with the robotic voices to match) under other people’s command.

In October, Barnes & Noble posted their list of the top 11 books of the year, as selected by their booksellers. The list included bestselling novels, a picture book, a New Orleans cookbook, a history of hip-hop jewelry, and more. Some of these books overlap with the previous editorially-selected Barnes and Noble Best Books of

Two of the weepiest BookPage editors share a few of their favorite 2022 audiobooks, read masterfully by the authors, that deliver all the emotion. ★ Inciting Joy For readers invested in learning more about communities of care—informal collectives centered on the praxis of love—Ross Gay’s sixth book, Inciting Joy (Hachette Audio, 8.5 hours), is essential. The

“And The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, who’s a problematic author,” spits Bruce Friedman into the microphone at the October 6 Clay County District Schools board meeting. Baldwin’s classic is among the nearly 2,000 books on a list that Friedman, president of the Florida chapter of No Left Turn in Education, claims to have

Astrophysicist Moiya McTier gives a stellar performance of her book The Milky Way: An Autobiography of Our Galaxy (6.5 hours), a thoroughly entertaining and mind-expanding exploration of our galaxy as told in the first-person voice of the Milky Way itself. McTier’s unique portrayal is refreshing, engaging and funny as she imbues the galaxy with a

The 2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction has been awarded to Khadija Abdalla Bajaber for her debut YA novel The House of Rust. The novel is a coming-of-age story steeped in Swahili and Hadrami culture in which Aisha, a young girl in Mombasa, Kenya, embarks on a sea journey in an enchanted boat

The onset of cold weather can only mean one thing: It’s time to head to the kitchen and cook, bake and sauté up a variety of delicious, warming meals and treats to be eaten as the early dark creeps in. Bliss on Toast It is a truth universally acknowledged that if a person wishes to

The folks in How It Went, whom Wendell Berry writes about so beautifully, may remind readers of hobbits. They are neither small nor hairy footed, but they are kind and hardworking, and their Shire, the land around Port William, Kentucky, is part of them and they are part of the land. They have names like

★ Never Rescue a Rogue Virginia Heath’s Never Rescue a Rogue is a sophisticated Regency gem. In this second entry in the Merriwell Sisters series, world-weary nobleman Giles Sinclair battles ennui by trading barbs with journalist Diana Merriwell, his best friend’s sister. Though their charming family and friends think they would make a perfect pair,