Books About MFA Programs (06/26)
Seduction Theory is framed as a student's creative writing MFA (Master of Fine Arts) thesis, and the book's main characters are instructors in the program. MFA programs can serve as uniquely effective settings for stories. Many authors have been through them themselves, and can portray the experience in an authentic way. The often-...
Novels About Reality Television (06/26)
Aisling Rawle's debut novel The Compound takes place on an unnamed reality competition television show, where contestants live together, compete in challenges to earn rewards, and gradually get banished until only one remains to win the grand prize. As it borrows recognizable elements from popular reality shows like Survivor and Love ...
Books About Magical Portals (06/26)
In Megan Giddings' novel Meet Me at the Crossroads, magical doors appear around the world, offering an entry into another dimension. The modern portal fantasy genre, where a magical entryway leads to another world, dates back to classic works like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Alice in Wonderland. But as novelist and ...
Books About the Korean War and Its Aftermath (06/26)
Eve J. Chung's historical novel The Young Will Remember explores the history of the Korean War through the perspective of a Chinese American journalist who finds herself in North Korean territory after a plane crash. Falling between World War II and the Vietnam War, both of which were heavily publicized in American media, the Korean War ...
Romance Novels with Complex Themes (06/26)
In many ways, Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life is about the complex bond between mothers and daughters that prompts mothers to act in strange, counterintuitive ways. While the novel is quite unabashedly a romance, thoroughly embracing the genre's tropes, it is much more than a happy, breezy read with a satisfying end. Going against ...
Memoirs about Mothers (06/26)
Erika J. Simpson's
This Is Your Mother is an unconventional memoir about the author's mother Sallie Carol. Below we highlight some other recommended memoirs in which an author reflects on their relationship with their mother, often (but not always) after her death.
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou: Angelou's seventh volume of ...
Books About Family Businesses (05/26)
Family businesses provide fruitful ground for writers. The interpersonal dynamics at play are uniquely high-stakes, and there's a lot of room for things to go fascinatingly wrong. Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker focuses on a family that owns a chain of discount stores. Here are five other books that use fact and fiction to ...
Weddings in Contemporary Literature (05/26)
In Anne Tyler's Three Days in June, main character Gail Baines must deal with the chaos of her daughter's wedding while facing career disappointment and job loss. As weddings are landmark events in many people's lives and may reflect (or challenge) traditional family values, they can make for rich and meaningful story settings, and ...
Reimagining the Classics from a New Perspective (05/26)
Percival Everett's
James is a reimagining of
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Huck's enslaved companion Jim. This kind of reconfiguration is a common source of inspiration for authors, as one can see in the following list of books that similarly provide new points of view on classic works of literature.
Beautiful ...
Mauritian Literature in English Translation (05/26)
Mauritius is an African island nation found in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. Its location between the African and Asian continents and its colonial history mean the country is today home to a variety of cultures, giving rise to a vibrant literary scene with works written in several different languages.
Though some key titles ...
Body Horror Fiction About Women (04/26)
In Kim Samek's short story collection I Am the Ghost Here, several stories fall into the realm of 'body horror.' The phrase refers to books or movies featuring the transformation or mutilation of the human body. The term was coined by Philip Brophy in a 1983 article on horror films. Although the concept might seem unique to cinema, it can...
Books Featuring Actors as Characters (04/26)
The protagonist of Katie Kitamura's Audition is an actress, and sections of the novel reflect her thought process on performance, from the creation of her character to her considerations of a play's rhythms and structures. This plot device allows author Kitamura to contemplate themes that she and all novelists must also explore, ...
Classics of Queer Irish Literature (04/26)
Ireland has an undeniably rich literary history across a wide range of fiction, drama, and poetry—this abundant legacy includes a number of noteworthy pieces of queer fiction and memoir. One of the latest entries into this catalog is poet Seán Hewitt's debut novel Open, Heaven, a gay coming-of-age story that centers on ...
Literary Cameos (03/26)
In Rebecca Kauffman's novel The Reservation, the titular restaurant booking is for a group that includes bestselling author John Grisham. This isn't the first time a novelist has chosen to feature a guest appearance by another author—here are some other notable literary cameos for readers to discover.
Mark Twain in Darryl Brock's...
Tilly Nightingale's Books for Healing After Loss (02/26)
In Libby Page's novel This Book Made Me Think of You, Tilly Nightingale receives an unexpected gift from her recently deceased husband, Joe: before he died, he hand-picked one book for each month of the first year she would be living without him. These books help Tilly rediscover her love of reading, and in a way, herself. Joe's ...
Bog Bodies: A Reading List (02/26)
Katya Balen's novel
Our Numbered Bones centers around the discovery of an ancient, fossilized corpse in a peat bog in rural England. These so-called 'bog bodies'
have been found throughout the world, particularly in Northern Europe, and offer invaluable insight into life and death thousands of years ago. The discovery of a bog body ...
Novels Within Novels (02/26)
Nnedi Okorafor's Death of the Author includes an example of a type of metafiction known as an 'embedded narrative'—in other words, the novel contains another novel (in this case a futuristic science fiction narrative) within its pages. This technique has been around for hundreds of years, in works like Shakespeare's Hamlet and A ...
When Friends Become Caregivers: A Reading List (01/26)
In Ann Packer's
Some Bright Nowhere, a woman asks her best friends to be her caregivers as she's dying of cancer. It's not as uncommon a fictional plot as you might think. Sometimes the relationship precedes the illness; other times the patient/carer dynamic gives way to friendship.
Talk Before Sleep (1994) by Elizabeth Berg
When ...
Novels About Late-Life Romance (12/25)
Virginia Evans' debut novel, The Correspondent, features ardent letter-writer Sybil Van Antwerp, who has just turned 73 when the novel opens. Through her correspondence, we learn about many aspects of Sybil's rich life, including a growing attachment to a man of her acquaintance, with whom she eventually finds late-life love and ...
Books Set in Sweden (11/25)
In Lisa Ridzén's debut novel When the Cranes Fly South, main character Bo struggles with a lack of autonomy near the end of life as he passes his days at his home in northern Sweden. Readers interested in reading more stories that take place in the country need not look far to find some. Here are just a few other examples of popular ...
Women Who "Left" Their Children: A Reading List (11/25)
In Quiara Alegría Hudes's novel The White Hot, April Soto asks a librarian for '…any books about a mother who leaves her child.' She receives in return a list of both real and fictional women who, according to the librarian, did just that, in various ways ranging from calculated murder to choosing not to raise a child under ...
Vacations from Hell (11/25)
Quan Barry's literary horror novel
The Unveiling follows an Antarctic sightseeing expedition that goes horrifically awry. Here are a handful of other thrillers and horror novels about dream vacations gone very, very wrong—perhaps you'll want to pack one on your next holiday?
The Ruins by Scott Smith
Two young couples set out ...
Books That Take Place Over a Single Day (10/25)
Souvankham Thammavongsa's novel Pick a Color takes place over the span of one day at a nail salon, Susan's, owned by the main character Ning. This slice-of-life style of storytelling has been employed by numerous authors for different purposes—to heighten dramatic tension, to explore one character's daily reality, or to defy ...
Grief Memoirs Exploring Suicide Loss (10/25)
Miriam Toews' memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the grief behind the loss of a loved one to suicide, as the author tries to understand the deaths of her father and sister, about a decade apart from one another, through the act of writing. There have been many memoirs and other works of nonfiction centered around navigating grief, ...
Books About Science and Systems (10/25)
In The Last Extinction, geologist Gerta Keller summarizes research supporting her theory of Deccan volcanism (which suggests the dinosaurs were not killed off in conditions produced by an asteroid but rather by a period of sustained volcanic activity) and offers a view of the patriarchal and other hierarchical systems she encountered over...
Generational Trauma in Vietnamese American Fiction (08/25)
In 1975, the US military withdrew from Vietnam after having signed the Paris Peace Accords two years prior. This marked the end of the Vietnam War, and it left millions of Vietnamese citizens vulnerable—those who had had close ties to the US military were now under threat of being persecuted by the new communist regime. An estimated...
Artificial Intelligence in Literature (08/25)
As artificial intelligence has become an ever-present part of our world, more and more authors have considered its ramifications on our society. In recent years alone, a slew of novels and short stories have been published that explore themes like human nature, scientific progress, love, and human connection through the eyes of characters...
The Devil Personified: How He Shapeshifts in Literature (07/25)
The Hebrew word 'Satan' can be translated as 'adversary,' or 'accuser,' so in his nomenclature, he wasn't exactly set up for success. Satan, or the devil, is a figure who has origins in Abrahamic religions, well-known in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Conceptually, he has been depicted as a fallen angel, ghoulishly evil, as both an ...
Martin Amis: A Reading List (07/25)
Martin Amis (1949–2023) was an acclaimed English novelist and critic, known for his 'bleak comedy,' pyrotechnical prose, and his interest in vulgarity and profanity: creating 'a high style to describe low things,' as Dwight Garner put it in his
obituary of Amis for the
New York Times. His writing was witty, exuberant; he was, ...
Don't Skip the Footnotes! Novels that Use Footnotes as a Narrative Device (07/25)
Alternate chapters in Kate Atkinson's novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum are 'footnotes' to the main narrative, ostensibly offering background information about specific objects but actually offering windows into the history of generations of the narrator's family. Atkinson is not the only novelist to play with footnotes or endnotes as...
A Percival Everett Starter List (07/25)
Percival Everett's 2001 novel Erasure was adapted for film as American Fiction in 2023, leading to director Cord Jefferson's Oscar win for Best Adapted Screenplay. The year after, Everett's new novel James scooped up major awards, including the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. While these exposures and honors gained him some ...
Washington State Authors (06/25)
Jess Walter, the author of
So Far Gone, is based in Washington, a state that has produced a number of well-known writers. Below we feature a small selection of Washington State authors and books.
Many of
Sherman Alexie's early works are set on the Spokane Reservation, where he grew up. His linked short story collection,
The Lone ...
Contemporary Mexican Literature in Translation (06/25)
The Accidentals is a collection of short stories by Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel, translated from Spanish to English by Rosalind Harvey. Nettel's novel Still Born, also translated by Harvey, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023.
Here are some more examples of contemporary Mexican literature in translation worth ...
A Women in Resistance Reading List (05/25)
Suzanne Cope's Women of War details the efforts of four female resistance fighters in Italy during World War II, but it also highlights the efforts of countless unnamed women who supported revolutionary efforts. For those interested in learning more about the role of women in resistance movements, the following books explore stories ...
Terminal Illness Memoirs (04/25)
Rationally, we all know death is coming, but how many truly believe it? Most people only accept the inevitability when forced to by accident or terminal illness. Ironically, such a diagnosis can lend a new lease on life, as it did for Rod Nordland, author of Waiting for the Monsoon. Rereading E.M. Forster's Howards End recently, I came ...
Blood Magic in YA Literature by Asian American Authors (04/25)
In Vanessa Le's debut YA novel The Last Bloodcarver, her heroine, Nhika, is the titular protagonist: a person with the power to alter anatomy with a single touch, able to travel through a body's bloodstream, and cure it, wound it, or end its life altogether. Bloodcarvers can also feed on blood and proteins from other humans and animals to...
Cats in Japanese Literature (02/25)
Japanese people have been writing about cats for a long time. In 889, Japanese Emperor Uda wrote in his journal: 'Taking a moment of my free time, I wish to express my joy of the cat.' He proceeded to then describe the animal in thoughtful detail, including a humorous remark that will resonate all too well with cat owners: 'I affixed a ...
Books of Stories Centering Black American Life (02/25)
Diane Oliver's Neighbors and Other Stories is a collection delving deep into the corners of Black American life in the 1950s and '60s that were not and are still not usually part of the public conversation. Historical and academic writing that discusses the situations of marginalized people often does not touch on the intricacies of their...
No-Tech Time Travel Books (02/25)
Exploring alternate realities through time travel is a familiar subject across fiction. Traditionally, the mechanism for making such a feat possible is the invention of a new technology: a time machine, a spaceship that can go faster than the speed of light, etc. Yet books built around these high-tech means often come with a mind-bending ...
The Memoir-in-Essays (02/25)
Compared to a traditional memoir, a memoir-in-essays allows for a more thematic approach and a diversity of styles and formats. It generally prioritizes ideas and memorable scenes or vignettes, and its essays might be linked or discrete. The essays in Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez appear in roughly chronological order, but a memoir-in-...
A Moby-Dick Reading List (01/25)
Whether you love Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, hate it or have never read it, you may find yourself unable to escape it. Even for a classic, it shows surprising reach, having inspired and influenced numerous authors, artists and scholars, historical and contemporary. Published in 1851, it continues to be deconstructed, reconstructed, ...
Novels Set on Vacations (11/24)
Weike Wang's
Rental House takes place during a couple's two vacations — one to Cape Cod and the other to the Catskills. Here are a few other novels in which vacations are equally illuminating about the characters' personalities and relationship dynamics.
Cape Cod:
Sandwich (2024) by Catherine Newman: Cape Cod is thick with ...
Unnamed Press (11/24)
Maureen Sun's The Sisters K was published by Los Angeles-based independent publisher Unnamed Press. Founded in 2014 by Chris Heiser and Olivia Taylor Smith, Unnamed Press was intended to be a publisher for international voices and translated literature but has since moved into domestic fare. The Press declares itself 'committed to ...
Books About Native Residential School Experiences (11/24)
Recent years have seen increased awareness of the ongoing trauma created by historical residential schools for Native children in North America, which were operated by government bodies and churches beginning in approximately the mid-1800s, and lasting until the 1960s in the United States and the 1990s in Canada. Hundreds of thousands of ...
Revenge Westerns (10/24)
Revenge is an arduous task, and tales of retribution are especially suited for the western setting. In the popular imagination, the American West is lawless and brutal, besotted with everyday bloodshed, and so revenge seems like an appropriate goal. Nearly every writer of westerns has a vigilante or two somewhere in their lineup. It's a ...
Young Adult Novels That Address Gentrification (08/24)
In
Like Home by Louisa Onomé, Nelo fights the forces of gentrification and change in the neighborhood that she loves so dearly. Gentrification has become an increasingly popular topic in recent young adult novels, and there are now a variety of titles offering different points of view on the subject.
This Side of Home by Ren&#...
A Reading List of Palestinian American Literature (05/24)
Hala Alyan, author of the poetry collection
The Moon That Turns You Back, has also published two novels:
Salt Houses, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award; and
The Arsonists' City.
Her work is part of a flourishing Palestinian American literary scene. For a further taste of poetry, one might try ...
Books Exploring Our Relationship with Birds (05/24)
Throughout his collection of poems Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves, J. Drew Lanham explores the restorative effect of immersing himself in nature. His particular passion, however, is birds. Humans have long been fascinated by the freedom, grace, and beauty of our feathered friends, ingraining them in mythology and symbolism for ...
Contemporary YA Literature by Indigenous Authors (04/24)
Darcie Little Badger's second young adult book, A Snake Falls to Earth, contains cultural elements from the Lipan Apache tribe, of which both the author and the book's main character, Nina, are members. The book references the animal people who appear in the Lipan Apache creation story, and it is inspired by traditional Indigenous ...
Adult Novels Focusing On Children During World War II (04/24)
Unsurprisingly, stories featuring the circumstances of child or teenage protagonists during World War II tend to appear prominently in the category of young adult literature, with classics like Lois Lowry's
Number the Stars existing as staples of historical fiction in schools and libraries all over. But as is the case with Jennifer Rosner...
