Frederick Joseph constructs a true roller coaster of a narrative in This Thing of Ours, painting his protagonist’s complex struggles with language that is both poetic and engaging for a young adult audience. ... Read full Story
Dogged by mental illness, poverty and arrests, Erika J. Simpson’s mother also filled their lives with magic, as told in Simpson’s wonderful debut memoir, This Is Your Mother. ... Read full Story
The final work of the late Tomie dePaola, Where Are You, Bronte? is a heartfelt tribute to dePaola's beloved dog, with illustrations from Barbara McClintock that pay homage to dePaola's inimitable style. ... Read full Story
Wonder Women is a definitive collection of contemporary figurative painting by women and nonbinary artists from the Asian diaspora. ... Read full Story
Becky Aikman’s enthralling Spitfires chronicles the lives of American women who piloted British planes during World War II, fighting for their right to a future in the skies. ... Read full Story
In her debut novel, The Names, Florence Knapp intertwines three timelines to present a complex and deeply affecting story of the long-lasting impacts of domestic violence. ... Read full Story
American women pilots had to cross the pond to fight in World War II. In Spitfires, historian Becky Aikman keeps their story alive. ... Read full Story
For AAPI Heritage Month, settle down for a heartfelt read with these children’s books that explore the ways we connect to each other. ... Read full Story
This year's theme is Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, and if someone asked us (no one did, but we can dream), here's where we'd tell them to look for inspiration. ... Read full Story
The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet imagines what Charlotte Lucas and Mary Bennet could be away from their families—and reader, what they are is hot for each other. ... Read full Story
One Way Witch is another Nnedi Okorafor classic, a statement on politics, gender and history delivered as an unputdownable sci-fi & fantasy adventure. ... Read full Story
Courtney Gustafson woke up in her new home to find 30 cats living in her yard. She tells their stories in her poignant, beautifully written debut memoir, Poets Square. ... Read full Story
After the hilarious and expressive Spider in the Well, we couldn’t wait to see what Jess Hannigan was going to do next. Luckily, she hasn’t made us wait too long! Yet another delightfully dramatic protagonist greets us in The Bear Out There, this time warning us of a scary bear—but of course, things aren’t that straightforward. ... Read full Story
William Dalrymple’s magisterial history of Indian trade plumbs the depths of scholarship to reveal a new understanding of the ancient world. ... Read full Story
“Imagine, for example, that the gods decided to bestow upon Sisyphus a modicum of mercy. The rock, the hill, the never-ending, pointless labor all remained nonnegotiable as far as the gods were concerned, but the mercy of the gods was to change Sisyphus’s attitude to these things. … He is never happier than when rolling large boulders up steep hills, and the gods have offered him the eternal fulfillment of this strange desire.” — Mark Rowlands, The Word of Dog: What Our Canine Companions Can Teach Us About Living a Good Life, 2024
Did you know?
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the English language has more than a modicum of words referring to a small amount of something—it has oodles, from smidgen to soupçon. But while modicum can be applied to countable or physical things (like words or salt) it is almost always applied instead to abstract concepts like respect, success, control, hope, dignity, or privacy. Modicum traces back to the Latin noun modus, meaning “measure,” which just so happens to be the ancestor of more than a modicum of English words, from moderate and modify to mold and commode.