Lit Hub Daily: August 28, 2026
Lit Hub Daily: August 28, 2026 THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1749, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is born. “He wrote sad songs but didn’t...
Long Before Toy Story, It-Narratives Imagined the Inner Lives of Objects
It’s nighttime in the playroom and the toys have gathered for a conference. For modern audiences, this scene likely evokes the imaginative world of...
Book Riot’s Deals of the Day for August 27, 2026
A tale of shipwreck, mutiny, and murder, gothic boarding school horror, how big tech exploits our desire for connection, and more of today's best...
The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout audiobook review – brilliant portrait of an existential crisis
Artie Dam is a much-loved history teacher from coastal Massachusetts famed for his white socks and old sneakers and who sees a growing hopelessness...
Lit Hub Daily: August 27, 2026
Lit Hub Daily: August 27, 2026 THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET - What do you do when your writing group thinks your story’s hilarious (when it’s...
The Best New Books of September, According to Indie Booksellers
September is one of the biggest months of the year for publishing. It comes with a deluge of new book releases, including from beloved and...
The Bestselling Books of the Week, According to All the Lists
The bestsellers this week include a couple of new releases appearing on this list for the first time: What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking:...
New YA Nonfiction and Comics for August 2026
There’s some good news to report from the world of young adult nonfiction, and it’s this: there are actually multiple works of nonfiction written...
The Cast Additions to Season 2 of MURDERBOT and More SFF News
Hello, my little lucid dreamers! In today’s round-up of recent sci-fi and fantasy links, I have updates to share about the cast of Apple TV’s...
‘Til Death (And After): Undead Romances Involving Ghosts, Vampires, and Spirits
In the romance genre, authors make a sacred promise to their readers that their protagonists will, by the end of the story, live happily ever after....
Prepare to be Scared: 2026 Halloween Picture Books for Kids
Celebrating Halloween in August? It’s more common than you think! Once the July barbecues are over and the kids are headed back to school, it’s...
📚 A truly limited run
John Manuel Arias is the author of Crocodilopolis, out this week from Bloomsbury. Below, he recommends three must-read Costa Rican writers. Costa...
What It Means to Love Elliott Smith
One of the last videos taken of Elliott Smith shows him at the Fonda Theatre, in Los Angeles. He’s sitting in a metal stacking chair, wearing faded...
Help, My Writing Group Think My Latest Story Was Really Funny: It Wasn’t Meant to Be
Hello again, gentle readers! Welcome back to another delightful installment of everyone’s favorite bimonthly drunken advice column, Am I the...
The Letter Doula: How to Help a Life Arrive on the Page
The Letter Doula: How to Help a Life Arrive on the Page Ronda Beaman Offers Some Tips For Expressing Our Most Intimate Thoughts on Paper For years,...
Short But Sweet: Nine Novellas To Read In a Single Afternoon
In anticipation of the publication of my novella, American Moon, I’ve been thinking a lot about the form. Novellas are tiny in the world of books,...
Six Novels That Try to Keep Up With Elizabeth Taylor
I first saw Elizabeth Taylor in The VIPs, when I was a moony and impressionable teenager. There were nuances I surely missed, but the movie’s larger...
5 Book Reviews You Need to Read This Week
“It will be up to the reader to decide whether the various narratives in The Castle coalesce convincingly to support the notion that we live in a ‘a...
Stories From Memory: On Finding Inspiration in My Husband’s Moroccan Family
In my living room a framed photograph hangs on the wall. A man clad in balloon pants and torn white shirt tosses a wooden pitchfork full of straw...
A Poetry of Witness and Invention: Wallis Wilde-Menozzi on Translating Antonella Anedda
“In my poetry,” she said, “there has always been an emphasis on concrete detail, put more simply, I think I fell in love with reality….When we are...
Leila and Kahled
The sunlight streaming through the arrival hall windows was a dirty gold the afternoon our flight from Paris landed. The airport’s walkways, draped...
3 Must-Read Costa Rican Writers
John Manuel Arias is the author of Crocodilopolis, out this week from Bloomsbury. Below, he recommends three must-read Costa Rican writers. Costa...
The Shadeless Border
It was twilight. A horse approached, and from its speed it was clear that it intended to cross me. It wanted to leave Khanaqin as quick as possible...
Aruni Kashyap on India’s Cockroach Youth Movement
Novelist Aruni Kashyap joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Jennifer Maritza McCauley to talk about the surprising surge of a new youth movement...
Kolkhoz by Emmanuel Carrère review – intricate portrait of an elite French family
When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary”...
Get your limited-edition Book Riot hoodie
You asked (for a return of our super-soft OG hoodies), and we are answering. In celebration of Book Riot’s 15th anniversary coming up October 1,...
In lieu of flowers, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is accepting donations.
In lieu of flowers, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is accepting donations. The queen is dead, long live the queen! Dolly Parton—perhaps the most...
'Life of M' constructs a portrait of how stardom hides a person's core
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Rachel Cusk, a Canadian-born British writer, has stretched the boundaries of fiction with a series of interrogatory,...
Lit Hub Daily: August 26, 2026
Lit Hub Daily: August 26, 2026 THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1914, Julio Cortázar is born. Catherine Lacey looks at Montserrat Roig’s...
Past Meets Present in These Dual-Timeline Historical Fiction Reads
How does the past affect our present? It’s a question we find ourselves faced with time and time again, so it’s no surprise that it comes up in...
A Gothic Historical, and More New Books for August 26, 2026
It wasn’t until this year that I realized August is about the only month without a single holiday in the United States. Although it is one of the...
Why We Love Monsters, Metaphorical and Otherwise
Science fiction and horror stories have long been used to tackle subjects that more realistic genres might have trouble being so blunt about. The...
2027 Mystery and Thrillers I’m Already Screaming About
Even though I am writing this in August of 2026, thanks to publishing announcements and catalogs, my mind is already in the year 2027. Have I...
When Fact is Scarier Than Fiction: 8 Terrifying Nonfiction Books
Who needs fictional horror when the real thing is outside your door? While ghouls and goblins may make us shiver, the world has all kinds of dark...
📚 A familiar panic
You’ve no doubt seen the headlines and handwringing proclaiming that men are being pushed out of the literary landscape: Men don’t read anymore. Men...
Long Live Dolly Parton, Giver of Books
Long Live Dolly Parton, Giver of Books Ellen O'Connell Whittet on the Radical Enterprise of the Imagination Library I signed my first baby up for...
Catherine Lacey on an Antifascist Classic of Catalan Literature
Catherine Lacey on an Antifascist Classic of Catalan Literature In Praise of Montserrat Roig’s Goodbye Ramona, Translated by Megan Berkobien and...
What Anne of Green Gables Reveals About White Girlhood
“How dare you!” Anne Shirley seethes. Anne stands in her one-room country schoolhouse wearing a gingham dress. She grips in her girlish hands the...
How American Bureaucracy (Literally) Steals Years From Your Life
Washington currently estimates that Americans spend 12 billion hours a year filling out government forms, meaning the average person spends six...
Self-Mythologizing on the Radio: A Brief History of Audio Patriotism
It feels fitting, in the country’s semiquincentennial, to reflect on the ways in which we have mythologized ourselves over the past 250...
7 Novels About Obsessive Athletes
7 Novels About Obsessive Athletes Drew Buxton Recommends Julie Otskuka, Ashton Politanoff, Quan Barry, and More Accomplishment in sports, unlike in...
Translation as a Journey: Jessica Sequeira on Vlady Kociancich’s The Eighth Wonder
Along with her novels, Vlady Kociancich worked on a translation of Joseph Conrad’s The End of the Tether, which according to her obituary by Daniel...
The Anniversary
The last time I saw my mother, she walked me to the door to say goodbye. Then, before closing it again, she waited until I disappeared down the...
S. Shakthidharan on Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha
The Windham-Campbell Prizes Podcast features a series of conversations with past and present Windham-Campbell Prize winners about their favorite...
Passage by Colin Thubron review – mortality and memory in a gem of a novel
Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age...
Tayari Jones and Ann Patchett on the books they quit writing
Tayari Jones and Ann Patchett on the books they quit writingThe National Book Festival brought together two greats — Ann Patchett and Tayari Jones —...
Dolly Parton, Champion of Books, Dies at 80
We’re crying into our sweet tea today as we mourn the passing of Dolly Parton, who died this morning at the age of 80. The iconic musician—as...
The 2026 Kirkus Prize Finalists Have Been Announced
The 2026 Kirkus Prize Finalists Have Been Announced Kirkus Reviews, the country’s leading publisher of early book reviews, has just announced the 18...
How Carlos the Jackal became the world's most wanted terrorist of the '70s and '80s
How Carlos the Jackal became the world's most wanted terrorist of the '70s and '80s In The Jackal, national security writer Joby Warrick writes...
Everything we know (so far) about Billie Eilish’s Bell Jar.
Everything we know (so far) about Billie Eilish’s Bell Jar. Earlier this year, we got wind that Billie Eilish—that reigning maestra of youthful...
The Death of Men in Literature Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
You’ve no doubt seen the headlines and handwringing proclaiming that men are being pushed out of the literary landscape: Men don’t read anymore. Men...
Squeeze in one last summer read: Here are 3 suspense thrillers to choose from
Penguin Random House; Cardinal It's the end of summer, so let's grab what escape we can, which, for me, means reading suspense fiction. The...
Explore a rare collection of LGBTQ+ children’s books dating back to 1969.
Explore a rare collection of LGBTQ+ children’s books dating back to 1969. The Mechanics’ Institute, one of the oldest cultural institutions on the...
Here are the finalists for the 2026 Kirkus Prize.
Here are the finalists for the 2026 Kirkus Prize. This morning, Kirkus Reviews announced the 18 finalists for the 2026 Kirkus Prize, which...
Lit Hub Daily: August 25, 2026
Lit Hub Daily: August 25, 2026 THE BEST OF THE LITERARY INTERNET TODAY: In 1900, Friedrich Nietzsche dies. New data centers are threatening to...
The Best Book Club Books Out This Month
Any book could potentially be a book club book, especially when it comes to book clubs that are focused on specific topics or genres. But then there...
6 Trans Books Out in Fall 2026 to Preorder Now
The Last Prophet of Palestine by Noor Al-Ahmad (Queer Fiction) Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues by Kim de l’Horizon, translated by Jamie Lee Searle...
Side Characters Shenanigans in a HAMLET Send-Up
Minor characters take center stage in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard’s Hamlet send-up, marking its 60th anniversary this year....
8 Fall Book Releases to Preorder Now
There are so many wonderful books hitting the shelves these days, so it can be hard to decide what to pick up. That’s why I’ve rounded up a wide...
Library Budget Cuts Across the Country, and More Updates For Library Workers
Library Budget Cuts Across the Country, and More Updates For Library Workers Welcome back, library friends. I have news about library budget cuts, a...
Go Figure: 5 Excellent Sci-Fi and Fantasy Mystery Novels
For all the readers who don’t mind chocolate in their peanut butter, here’s a list of exciting sci-fi and fantasy books that dip into the mystery...
The Epic Fantasy Making Big News Right Now
Children of Blood and Bone is a YA fantasy that has it all: adventure, a fierce protagonist, forbidden magic, the beginnings of an enemies-to-lovers...
Rachel Cusk, Liane Moriarty, Jill Lepore, and more: 20 new books out today!
We’ve all been reading about it for months, and now finally it’s time to read the thing itself: Life of M by Rachel Cusk is available today! And...
📚 Book gossip is fired up
Wattpad, an online platform for original stories and fanfiction, recently changed its policies to state that “Pornographic content (created...
What Hieronymus Bosch’s Fantastical Tryptiches Reveal About the Artist’s Worldview
While Giotto sought to communicate the Christian messages that he had been commissioned to depict by encouraging his viewers to empathize with the...
What the World’s Nightscapes Reveal About Our Dependence on Artificial Light
An image of Earth at night as seen from space appeared on my laptop screen during an internet search. The captivating image with a vague...
On the Rise of White Christian Nationalism in the US
UC Santa Barbara in the 1980s felt like the counterculture’s afterparty: sun-drenched, restless, and still echoing defiance. Palm trees swayed over...
Data Centers: The Latest Thing to Destroy Beautiful West Virginia
The data centers have been speaking to me lately, in the form of ChatGPT slop.Article continues after advertisement The spam offers to market my new...
A Poem by Antonella Anedda
A Poem by Antonella Anedda From the Collection Emerging from the Winter Sea Storditi dalla nostalgia, confusi dai sogni, con i teli da bagno pieni...
6 of the Best New Book Releases Out August 25, 2026
The rest of today’s books have serial killers, Haitian American duality, corrupt coffee dynasties, dark academia romantasy, and more. Dèy by Edwidge...
Mary Oliver Documentary Premieres Tonight on PBS
Tell me, what is it you plan to watch on your one wild and precious summer night? If Mary Oliver’s poetry means something to you, here’s your...
What’s Happening With Wattpad?
We simply don’t have the space to get into that here, but this is the environment we’re dealing with. Unsurprisingly, users were shocked by this...
3 Asian American (and Canadian!) Romance Treats
Jeannie Chin is the author of The Cozy Nook Bookshop, out today from Forever. Below, she recommends three cozy and heartwarming Asian American and...
Author Jill Lepore discusses new book, 'The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State'
NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Harvard professor and writer at the New Yorker Jill Lepore about her new book, "The Rise and Fall of the Artificial...
Last Day of a Prior Life
Here’s what happens: She sees the boy the first day the house goes on the market, while cleaning the kitchen between visits from two potential...
Agnes Callard on Socrates’ Turf
Agnes Callard on Socrates' Turf In Conversation with Merve Emre on The Critic and Her Publics Welcome to Season Four of The Critic and Her Publics:...
Feminism for a World on Fire by Natasha Walter review – hope amid the hopelessness
It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of...
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