Both of Yiyun Li’s sons died by suicide. Her clear-eyed memoir Things in Nature Merely Grow is not about getting through grief, but about living in its abyss. ... Read full Story
A surreal spin on grimdark, The Starving Saints is that rare book that gives fantasy and horror readers what they want in equal measure. ... Read full Story
In her latest wonderful graphic novel, Spent, Alison Bechdel captures what it means to be flawed yet striving to live by your values, while navigating the joys and absurdities of life. ... Read full Story
Baby snatchers abducted a Chinese toddler and sent her to a U.S. adoption agency. A decade later, Barbara Demick reunited her with her birth family. ... Read full Story
Madeleine Thien makes a case for the search for home as a central tenet of our humanity in her complex, ambitious fourth novel, The Book of Records. ... Read full Story
Barbara Demick reports the story of twin girls separated by China’s one-child policy in her moving, sensitive Daughters of the Bamboo Grove. ... Read full Story
Stressing the importance of science and collaboration, Jason Chin’s Hurricane offers an invaluable reference for informed young beachgoers, weather watchers and budding scientists. ... Read full Story
Milo Todd’s soulful and suspenseful account of trans people fighting for survival amid political persecution after World War II, The Lilac People, could hardly be timelier. ... Read full Story
Sakina and the Uninvited Guests is a unique celebration of the beauty and mysteries of art, language and the importance of remembering our ancestors. ... Read full Story
Colette is an engaging tale that celebrates the joys of independence and solitude while gently encouraging individualistic readers to embrace the warmth of community. ... Read full Story
As we mark the centennial of Malcolm X’s birth, The Afterlife of Malcolm X serves as a vital reminder of his enduring impact—and why his story continues to matter. ... Read full Story
Erin Entrada Kelly’s At Last She Stood shares the story of World War II guerilla fighter and leprosy advocate Josefina “Joey” Guerrero, helping inspire in a new generation of readers the bravery to overcome immense odds. ... Read full Story
Ocean Vuong’s second novel represents an evolution of his novelistic powers. It’s magisterial, precise and mythic in its resonance. ... Read full Story
Peniel E. Joseph vividly chronicles the Civil Rights Movement in the pivotal year of 1963—when “America came undone and remade itself.” ... Read full Story
Part myth, part horror and part mystery, Mina Ikemoto Ghosh’s Hyo the Hellmaker is a fresh take on divine fantasy that’s replete with the unexpected. ... Read full Story
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 16, 2025 is:
abject • \AB-jekt\ • adjective
Abject usually describes things that are extremely bad or severe. It can also describe something that feels or shows shame, or someone lacking courage or strength.
// Happily, their attempts to derail the project ended in abject failure.
// The defendants were contrite, offering abject apologies for their roles in the scandal that cost so many their life savings.
// The author chose to cast all but the hero of the book as abject cowards.
“This moment ... points toward the book’s core: a question of how to distinguish tenderness from frugality. Is ‘Homework’ about a child who took a remarkably frictionless path, aided by a nation that had invested in civic institutions, from monetary hardship to the ivory tower? Merely technically. Is it a story of how members of a family, protected by a social safety net from abject desperation, developed different ideas about how to relate to material circumstance? We’re getting there.” — Daniel Felsenthal, The Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2025
Did you know?
We’re sorry to say you must cast your eyes down to fully understand abject: in Middle English the word described those lowly ones who are rejected and cast out. By the 15th century, it was applied as it still is today to anything that has sunk to, or exists in, a low state or condition; in modern use it often comes before the words poverty, misery, and failure. Applied to words like surrender and apology, it connotes hopelessness and humility. The word’s Latin source is the verb abicere, meaning “to throw away, throw down, overcome, or abandon.” Like reject, its ultimate root is the Latin verb jacere, meaning “to throw.” Subject is also from jacere, and we’ll leave you with that word as a way to change the subject.