Books

Through a dialogue between an unnamed young gay man and an older, dying man named Juan Gay, National Book Award-winner Blackouts (Macmillan Audio, 7 hours) explores the suppression of queer history. Interspersed throughout the book are poems constructed by blacking out words from pages of Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, an actual book
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This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. N. Scott Momaday was the first Native American author to win a Pulitzer Prize, with his novel House Made of Dawn. He passed away on January 24th at age 89. Momaday wrote novels, poetry, essays, and memoirs, and
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In her first picture book, You Broke It! (Rise x Penguin, $18.99, 9780593660409), New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck takes an irreverent look at the endless barrage of reprimands that parents routinely fling at their offspring—“Sit still!” or “Get the hair out of your eyes!”—and twists them in ways that will leave both parents and young
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Sci-Fi/Fantasy Deals Deals Jan 29, 2024 This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Today’s Featured Deals $1.99 Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel Get This Deal $1.99 Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher Get This Deal $2.99 Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness Get This Deal $2.99
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Between the years of 1955 and 1958, Italian author Gianni Rodari wrote two newspaper columns for children: “The Mailbox of Whys” and “The Book of Whys.” With delightful illustrations by JooHee Yoon, The Book of Whys revisits Rodari’s whimsical responses to questions sent in by children throughout Italy. In a brief introduction, translator Antony Shugaar
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Cyrus Shams is, in his own words, “another death-obsessed Iranian man,” fixated on death—but more than that, on martyrdom. He needs his death to matter, for the act of his dying to have a purpose. Cyrus’ family inheritance is one of pointless death. His mother died when her plane was shot down by American forces
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When you imagine humanity’s first contact with an alien, what do you picture? For me, it’s the optimism of classic sci-fi: ethereal beings slowly stretching out long-fingered hands from a glowing ship, a sign of peace and acceptance. Seth Dickinson doesn’t share my vision. In Exordia, his energetic, suspenseful melange of alien invasion and military
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Introduced into the Illinois House January 23 by Representative Anne Stava-Murray and cosponsored by Representative Diane Blair-Sherlock, HB 4567 aims to protect library workers throughout the state from harassment, threats, and disorderly conduct. The bill comes in the new legislative session after the state passed the nation’s first anti-book ban bill last year and dealt
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Megan Frampton has once again brought history to vivid, technicolor life with the third installment of her School for Scoundrels series, Her Adventures in Temptation. This bold foray into the world of Regency damsels and the scoundrels who drive them crazy is spirited and scandalous, and Frampton’s refreshing voice gives the popular fake-relationship trope new
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As a 19-year-old undergraduate, Antonia Hylton read an academic paper that mentioned Crownsville State Hospital, known at its founding as the Hospital for the Negro Insane. That reference triggered an obsession with the hospital’s bleak history that has carried her through the 10 years it took to produce Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim
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‘Tis I, your local publishing and SF/F auntie, here to help answer a new “What the heck is going on?” This time, our subject is the 2023 Hugo Awards. If you’re on social media and follow any SF/F folks, chances are you’ve seen posts about eligibility, possible censorship, wonky voting numbers, EPH, Neil Gaiman, R.F.
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This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused
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Kiley Reid’s sophomore effort Come and Get It is a compelling, dialogue-driven novel about consumption, desire and class set at a state university in 2017. Readers who enjoyed Reid’s debut, Such a Fun Age, will find themselves in welcome territory. Millie, a woman whose college years were interrupted by helping an ill parent, has returned
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Read Harder isn’t the only reading challenge happening in 2024, of course! That’s why I’m highlighting some of the other challenges you might want to add to your reading goals this year. Fellow Book Rioter Laura Sackton is hosting Queer Your Year 2024: a yearlong reading challenge that celebrates queer list. There are 48 challenges
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From a high-rise apartment, a boy and his pregnant mother witness, in real time, a massive explosion devastate 20 blocks of an Australian city. The cause is never discovered, and in the aftermath, a superhighway is constructed over the site.  Twelve years later, the same mother speeds down the highway toward an abandoned shopping mall
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This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Jaime Herndon finished her MFA in nonfiction writing at Columbia, after leaving a life of psychosocial oncology and maternal-child health work. She is a writer, editor, and book reviewer who drinks way too much coffee. She is a
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The response from library workers and advocates was swift. Just like when someone said libraries should operate with hours like a bar — with plenty of night hours to accommodate working people and young people who want to socialize outside of, say, an actual bar — the person who made the suggestion quickly learned about
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