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When a young bride goes missing, her loved ones are forced to question how well they knew her… and how well they know themselves. From Marybeth Mayhew Whalen, the author of When We Were Worthy, comes a riveting new novel about big family secrets laid bare in a small southern town. Read Only Ever Her. Juicy. Scandalous. Dangerous. Heartbreaking. Friendship ending. We’re talking about secrets, of course, and all the things they can be and consequences to come once they are told....

In a riveting true crime investigation, journalist Jan Stocklassa follows the trail of intrigue, espionage, and conspiracy begun by Stieg Larsson, one of the world’s most famous thriller writers. For years before he died, Larsson had been amassing evidence on the 1986 unsolved assassination of Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister. Larsson’s archive was forgotten until Stocklassa was given exclusive access to the author’s secret project. Was Sweden’s most notorious unsolved crime cracked by the author of the Millennium novels?...

The placement will be held for 12 months and came as a result of a partnership between Ultimate Library and Soneva Fushi in 2018. Since then, people from various arenas of the book publishing and education fields have served as barefoot booksellers. The position will start in October and applicants have until August 13 to apply.

I’m not a book club person — I am not great with deadlines on reading. I did take part in an online club pre-pandemic, but otherwise, I’m mostly a solo reader. That said, I’ve always envied and admired those who are engaged in a book club, whether or not it has anything to do with reading the book. I have fond memories of one of my high school teachers inviting us over to dinner for a book club discussion back in the day, and it was such a great way to get to know my fellow classmates, as well as my teacher in a relaxed, ungraded situation (I recognize how weird it sounds a teacher invited us to his house, but there were permission slips and plenty of safety nets in place to ensure safety, etc....

I personally see the rise of monster romance in line with some larger societal trends. More and more, people are marrying later or not at all. Meanwhile, toxic behavior continues to be called out and exposed. One cheeky way to process all of this is to say that people still crave romance but are rejecting humans, who just aren’t worth the trouble these days. Queer monster romance is very much a thing with its own ethos, and plenty of the merch is devoid of gender implication....

Bookwise, the years immediately after the turn of the millennium saw the publication of bestsellers including The Nanny Diaries, The Poisonwood Bible, Atonement, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. There was less of an emphasis on big young adult titles — the Twilight and Hunger Games phenomenons were still years away. I remember how the Barnes & Noble I frequented had five low shelves of young adult books. They were located right outside of the children’s section like an afterthought....

Now I might point out to him that it’s curly and thick. Also, guess what, kid, you’re probably going to have big hair too. But I had a realization. When he points to me on “some mommies work at home,” and “some mommies have big hair,” it’s because he is starting to know me. This human who started as an ambitious ball of cells can now recognize that I have voluminous hair....

Hypnotic, propulsive, and utterly transporting, Jennifer Saint’s Ariadne forges a new epic, one that puts the forgotten women of Greek mythology back at the heart of the story, as they strive for a better world. The whiplash that accompanied our constantly changing daily lives will leave its mark for some time. If you are currently trying to plan or (even just picture) what next year might look like in the school library, you are not alone....

Ebooks on JPay tablets are sourced from Project Gutenberg, a volunteer group dedicated to making ebooks freely available to readers. Their library of free literature is made available to foster education, entertainment, and literacy and is accessible to use and distribute freely across the U.S. For those in Ohio prisons, this policy change gives greater access to materials once inaccessible. In early 2019, Ohio prisons began rejecting book donations* from trusted partners, allowing book access only through JPay tablets....

In her newer books, she does an amazing job weaving together juicy historical plot lines with page-turning mysteries. And in all of her books she writes with beautiful language, strong character development, and deeply felt emotions. I’ve never been a reclusive Hollywood actress or an aging former rock star or a woman whose husband disappeared. However, while I’m reading her books I strongly relate to these characters and feel fully immersed in their stories....

How did you do? I for one am disappointed in the integrity of most comic book captains. For shame! It’s like you can’t even trust assorted bank robbers in spandex anymore. After the Super Soldier Serum successfully transformed Steve Rogers into the U.S. army’s ultimate weapon, he was given the title “Captain America”…but Steve Rogers was still just a private. Did that make him a private pretending to be a captain, or a captain pretending to be a private?...

Some poking around yields Trinity Sight by Jennifer Givhan, published in 2019, House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer, and The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. One could make an argument for Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. There are probably more that I hope to discover with further digging, but it’s worth noting that in the case of the former you don’t have to dig at all. Why that should be, I don’t know—although I do have some guesses, mostly to do with the marginalization of Indigenous, Hispanic, and Latinx writers, but that’s a different piece!...

Most comics aren’t bold enough to open on a splash page of an attack by a killer space moose paired with a single text box telling you to get your pump on, but fortunately for everyone, Kaptara—the new Image title from Chip Zdarsky and Kagan McLeod—is precisely that bold. Is “bold” the right word, here? Let’s go with it. That’s the attitude the creative team is taking, at least, with a weird and wild first issue eager to set up and knock down its pins at least twice as it plays a merry game of “Try and Guess What This Series Is About” over 32 rapid-fire pages, at the end of which everybody’s a winner…except for whoever might have died along the way....

This post originally ran on January 30, 2015. _______________ The Black Hood #1 Reading The Black Hood #1 (“The Bullet Kiss (1 of 5)” for those keeping score) was like running through a checklist of things I’ve wanted to see in a superhero comic for a while now. Let’s start with the plot stuff. Greg Hettinger is a cop in Philadelphia. The story starts with him answering an emergency call; four men with guns are causing trouble outside a school....

I’ve never been a crier, but I cried more than once. This was how one uses their art. Florence, for those who may not know, is a mega book lover. And more than that, she’s got her own book club online that she participates in. But it’s not a club she began; it was through a tweet by a 14-year-old girl named Leah Moloney that the “Between Two Books” club began....

Of course, I don’t mean to suggest that we should go back a century and give up emails and texts. Contemporary communication, with its ease and immediacy, is a gift that those who came before us – those whose loved ones moved across the world, or who moved away from the people they loved themselves– would have treasured. But I do hope to make a case for breaking out the pen, or quill and ink if you really want to go all out, and writing more letters....

What makes queer monster romances the best is they tend not to be Princess and the Frog stories. Monstrosity does not need to be remedied by love. Queer monster romances are often between a human and a monster, where by the end the human has embraced the so-called monstrosity within themselves. That monstrosity may in truth be individuality, or the ability to prioritize oneself, one’s own values, and one’s own desires over what the wider world is offering....

The First Printed Book Chinese woodblock printing was in use prior to the Gutenberg Bible by many centuries. According to the British Library’s website, the first known woodblock printed book is a copy of The Diamond Sutra dated 868, which is now housed in the BL’s collection. There is a short dedication at the end noting it was to be distributed on behalf of the commissioner’s parents. If you’re curious, you can take a look at it here....

Reeves has said he’d like to play everyone’s favorite surly X-Man, Wolverine, now that the mutants have escaped the clutches of Fox’s oft questionable decision making and are back home with Marvel (well, technically, Disney) but is that the right role for him when there are so very many possibilities? I’ve seen some other suggestions flying across my Twitter TL the past few days I think may suit Reeves better....