Newsletters Dev – Page 1101

A Young, Sexy Crime-Fighting Sigmund Freud: Today In Books

Post author By Jamie Canaves
Post date July 7, 2018

We’re giving away $500 of the year’s best YA! Click here, or on the image below to enter:

A Young, Sexy Crime-Fighting Sigmund Freud

So that’s a thing that is coming to Netflix. The psychoanalyst, and prolific writer, will be searching for a serial killer in an upcoming drama that will obviously be fictional history. Freud is currently casting and will start filming in the fall. I’m sure there will be plenty of Oedipus jokes to come.

Jahkara Smith Cast In AMC’s Upcoming NOS4A2 Adaptation

YouTube star Jahkara Smith, who uses makeup tutorials for hilarious and scathing social commentary, has landed a recurring role in the adaptation of Joe Hill’s awesome NOS4A2. Smith working on an adaptation on a super imaginative horror novel seems perfect and I can’t wait. Is it 2019 yet?!

Rapper Stormzy Announces Publishing Imprint

English rapper Stormzy, in partnership with Penguin Random House, has a new publishing imprint called #Merky Books. With plans to publish two to three books a year, it will also offer writing competitions and paid internships beginning in 2019. “I know too many talented writers that don’t always have an outlet or a means to get their work seen and hopefully #Merky Books can now be a reference point for them to say “I can be an author.”

The Kids Are All Right

Kid Lit Signs from the Families Belong Together March

Post author By Karina Glaser
Post date July 6, 2018

Hi Kid Lit friends,

There have been lots of ways the kid lit community has rallied against the recently rescinded policy of separating children – some as young as four months old – from families who cross the border of the United States seeking refuge. Last Sunday, people in cities all across the nation marched in support of keeping families together.

Sponsored by Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic.

Raina Telgemeier’s #1 New York Times bestselling, Eisner Award-winning companion to Smile!

Raina can’t wait to be a big sister. But once Amara is born, things aren’t quite how she expected them to be. Amara is cute, but she’s also a cranky, grouchy baby, and mostly prefers to play by herself. Their relationship doesn’t improve much over the years, but when a baby brother enters the picture and later, something doesn’t seem right between their parents, they realize they must figure out how to get along. They are sisters, after all.

Raina uses her signature humor and charm in both present-day narrative and perfectly placed flashbacks to tell the story of her relationship with her sister, which unfolds during the course of a road trip from their home in San Francisco to a family reunion in Colorado.

The group Kid Lit Says No Kids In Cages began with about twenty kid lit authors and has grown to thousands of supporters. They desired to heighten awareness of the issue by raising funds that would be distributed to six organizations working with immigrant advocacy and legal representation. You can sign the pledge in support of their statement here, and donate here.

Raising Our Voices is another group that formed in response to government’s recently rescinded policy of separating the children of undocumented immigrants from their families. Audio producer Julie Burstein and Pippin Properties creative director Holly McGhee created a website and loaded images created by children’s book illustrators that could be downloaded for free. There are instructions on the website about how to print the images onto signs for marches. Recently, postcard images that can be printed out and mailed to children who are still separated from their parents have been added to the website.

Families Belong Together by Peter H. Reynolds:

Asylum by Erin Entrada Kelly:

Where Are The Children by Edel Rodriguez:

Falling by Yvette Fedorova:

Art by Jennifer K. Mann:

I know I listed some children’s books with immigration themes in the last newsletter, and here are those links in case you missed it, plus a few more lists:

New Children’s Books with Immigration Themes, from Book Riot’s The Kids Are All Right newsletter

Children’s Books About the Immigrant Experience, via Book Riot

Fifteen Books for Kids About the Immigrant Experience in America, via Brightly

30 Multicultural Picture Books About Immigration, via Colours of Us

Six Middle Grade Books On the Immigrant Experience, via Book Riot

And this is a podcast from Scholastic Reads about immigration stories.

I love Harlem’s Little Blackbird: The Story of Florence Mills by Renee Watson, illustrations by Christian Robinson. The language here is just gorgeous, and the bold colors really capture the energy and vibrancy of Florence Mills’s life.

Magnificent Creatures: Animals on the Move! by Anna Wright (Faber and Faber Children’s, 6/17) is so lovely. Wright’s delicate use of pen and ink, watercolor, and fabric collage works perfectly with scientific facts about each animal featured.

The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden (Sky Pony Press, 9/4) takes an honest look at housing insecurity. Seventh-grader Zoey has her hands full as she takes care of her much younger siblings after school every day while her mom works her shift at the pizza parlor. When Zoey joins the school debate team, she begins seeing the world in a different way and finds ways to make positive change in her life and in the people around her.

Giveaway Alert! Win $500 of the year’s best YA fiction and nonfiction so far. Link to enter here. Contest ends on July 31st.

As I mentioned in last week’s newsletter, we are moving to a twice-a-week newsletter! New releases will now be in our Tuesday emails, and Sundays will be reserved for themed book lists, author interviews, features, and maybe some cover reveals… stay tuned!

I’d love to know what you are reading this week! Find me on Twitter at @KarinaYanGlaser, on Instagram at @KarinaIsReadingAndWriting, or email me at karina@bookriot.com.

Until next week!
Karina

*If this e-mail was forwarded to you, follow this link to subscribe to “The Kids Are All Right” newsletter and other fabulous Book Riot newsletters for your own customized e-mail delivery. Thank you!*

Today In Books

Arsenic and Old Books: Today in Books

Post author By Sharifah Williams
Post date July 6, 2018

This edition of Today in Books is sponsored by K.J. Howe’s The Freedom Broker.

Arsenic And Old Books

So, it turns out that three rare books from the 16th and 17th centuries contain large concentrations of arsenic on their covers. The poisonous books hail from the University of Southern Denmark’s library collection. Researchers were trying to read recycled Latin texts used to make the books’ covers when a lab came back with the results that the green pigment layer obscuring the texts was arsenic. (Note to self: never lick fingers after touching books again.)

ALA Approves Graphic Novel Roundtable

The American Library Association’s governing council approved a Graphic Novel Roundtable. This means we may get awards, events, guests and more from the ALA around graphic novels. The decision was announced at the ALA annual conference.

Philip Pullman Argues Against Emphasis On Exams

Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials, spoke against the emphasis on exam results in education and reading. “The function of a book or a poem or a story is to delight, to enchant, to beguile,” said Pullman. The author was one of dozens of children’s writers to sign a letter calling for Sats (curriculum assessments carried out in primary schools in England) to be scrapped.

And don’t forget–we’re giving away $500 of this year’s best YA books (so far)! Click here to enter.

Audiobooks

New Audiobooks for July!

Post author By Katie MacBride
Post date July 5, 2018

Happy July, Audiophiles! Hope you are enjoying the summer sun (don’t forget sunscreen!) or, like me, hiding indoors from heat, bugs, and other outside summertime things. But whether your indoors or out, there are plenty of new audiobooks to keep you company.

Just for Book Riot readers: sign up for an Audible account, and get two audiobooks free!

But first! We’re giving away $500 of the year’s best YA fiction and nonfiction so far. THAT IS A LOT OF YA BOOKS, Y’ALL! Enter here.

New Audiobooks for July (publisher description in quotes)

It All Falls Down by Sheena Kamal; narrated by Bahni Turpin; release date: 07-03-18

The suicide of Nora Watts’ father filled her life with grief and unanswered questions. Her journey to understand the truth of his father’s life and death takes her from the “hazy Canadian Pacific Northwest to the gritty, hollowed streets of Detroit.” While Nora tracks down the secrets of her father’s life she thinks might help fill in the gaps of her own identity, back in the Pacific Northwest, the mistress of a billionaire turns up dead from an apparent overdose. The woman’s death has a connection to Nora, one that could end up killing her. I don’t usually write about sequels (this one is a sequel to The Lost Ones) and, having just started, I can tell you that if you want to listen to both, you should listen to The Lost Ones first because the ending revealed in the beginning of It All Falls Down. But I’m digging it so far!

The Future of Terrorism: ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Alt-Right by Walter Laqueur and Christopher Wall; narrated by Christopher Price; release date: 07-03-18

We don’t always get the audiobooks we want, we get the ones we deserve. Terrorism isn’t a pleasant thing to read or think about but it’s something that we all reckon with–-whether we’re following coverage of the latest terrorist attack on the news or it happens down the street from where we live. Publishers Weekly says of The Future of Terrorism, “A brief, fast-paced historical overview leads to probing and provocative ruminations on the multifarious factors that draw young men toward violence in the service of an ideology … The authors’ nuanced perspective on a complex phenomenon will appeal to readers interested in what lies beyond the headlines.”

Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home by Anita Hill; narrated by Bahni Turpin; release date: 07-03-18.

Narrator Bahni Turpin is having a helluva month! She’s also the narrator of It All Falls Down and The Healing by Gayl Jones (mentioned below). But I’m thrilled to see Anita Hill’s book–-I’ve long felt that she was among the first two stand up and say #MeToo and #TimesUp, before there were hashtags and movements around issues of workplace sexual harassment.

In this book, the subject is not sexual harassment but the “crisis of home.” Hill “exposes its deep roots in race and gender inequities, which continue to imperil every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream…The achievement of that ideal, Hill argues, depends on each American’s ability to secure a place that provides access to every opportunity our country offers.” I’m really interested to hear her thoughts on this.

The Occasional Virgin by Hanan al-Shaykh; narrated by Soneela Nankani; release date: 07-10-18

The Occasional Virgin follows two women, Yvonne and Huda, “both women spent their childhoods in Lebanon—Yvonne raised in a Christian family, Huda in a Muslim one—and they now find themselves torn between the traditional worlds they were born into and the successful professional identities they’ve created.” More successful in career than relationships, the two women meet in London and “ a chance encounter with a man at Speaker’s Corner leads to profound repercussions for them both. As the novel continues, each woman will undertake her own quest for love and romance, revenge and fulfillment.” Revenge and fulfillment? YES, PLEASE!

If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi: Stories; written and read by Neel Patel; release date: 07-10-18

I know people say not to judge a book by its cover, but I am judging it by the title and I LOVE IT. I’m also a sucker for linked stories which, when I was writing fiction, was what I wanted to do. “In 11 sharp, surprising stories, Neel Patel gives voice to our most deeply held stereotypes and then slowly undermines them. His characters, almost all of who are first-generation Indian Americans, subvert our expectations that they will sit quietly by. We meet two brothers caught in an elaborate web of envy and loathing; a young gay man who becomes involved with an older man whose secret he could never guess; three women who almost gleefully throw off the pleasant agreeability society asks of them; and, in the final pair of linked stories, a young couple struggling against the devastating force of community gossip.”

The Healing by Gayl Jones narrated by Bahni Turpin; release date: 07-10-18

“Harlan Jane Eagleton is a faith healer, traveling by bus to small towns, converting skeptics, restoring minds and bodies. But before that she was a minor rock star’s manager, and before that a beautician. She’s had a fling with her rock star’s ex-husband and an Afro-German horse dealer; along the way she’s somehow lost her own husband, a medical anthropologist now traveling with a medicine woman in Africa. Harlan tells her story from the end backwards, drawing us constantly deeper into her world and the mystery at the heart of her tale – the story of her first healing.”

The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump by Michiko Kakutani; narrated by Tavia Gilbert; release date: 07-17-18

The New York Times’ infamous (former) book critic is back for a meditation on how to deal with our “post-truth” world. I know I’m not alone in feeling constantly overwhelmed by the way in which fact no longer seem to matter so if Kakutani can help us see our way through this, I’m all ears.

You’re on an Airplane: A Self-Mythologizing Memoir written and read by Parker Posey; release date: 07-24-18

I feel the need to personally apologize to each and every newsletter reader because HOW COULD I NOT KNOW PARKER POSEY WAS WRITING AND NARRATING AN AUDIOBOOK?! I love Posey so much. I’ve loved her since Party Girl–-the best ’90s movie about a wannabe librarian you’ll ever see–-but anyway, she’s hilarious and smart and I expect this audiobook will be the same.

“Parker takes us into her childhood home, behind the scenes of the indie film revolution in the ’90s, the delightful absurdity of the big-budget genre thrillers she’s turned into art in a whole new way, and the creativity that will always be part of both her acting and her personal life. With Posey’s memorable, hilarious and poignant voice, her audiobook gives the listener a feeling of traveling through not only a memoir, but an exploration, meditation, and celebration of what it means to be an artist. Buckle up and enjoy the journey.”

Swords and Spaceships

Swords and Spaceships June 6

Post author By Jenn Northington
Post date July 5, 2018

Happy Friday, explorers and Erinyes! Today I’m reviewing All Systems Red by Martha Wells and Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones, and talking about July releases, grimdark, audiobooks, and more.

This newsletter is sponsored by Flatiron Books and Legendary by Stephanie Garber.

After being swept up in the magical world of Caraval, Donatella Dragna has finally escaped her father and saved her sister Scarlett from a disastrous arranged marriage. The girls should be celebrating, but Tella isn’t yet free. She made a desperate bargain with a mysterious criminal, and the time to repay the debt has come.

Need some great reads this month? Swapna rounds up some of July’s new releases to consider, including Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (which I’ll be talking about next week!).

Prefer moral complexity to clear right and wrong? Here’s some grimdark for you. And while I’d never seen NK Jemisin’s The Fifth Season classified this way before, I’m hard-pressed to disagree with the rationale.

Need basically the opposite of grimdark? Have some funny fantasy! (Shout-out to Sarah Kuhn’s Heroine Complex series, they are the perfect summer reads.)

SFF for your earholes: If you’re heading out on a road trip, to the beach, on a plane, or cannot summon the energy to physically turn pages because this heat is just TOO MUCH, Alex has some fantasy audiobook suggestions for you.

Adaptations update! Here’s an overview on Tor.com of what’s in process right now. It is helpfully organized by release date, so go ahead and mark your calendars. (I can’t believe they are rebooting Gambit AGAIN.)

D&D alignments were my original Hogwarts-House sorting, so I was delighted with this post on kids book character alignments! Harriet is totally true-neutral.

It seems like we’ve seen every bit of sci-fi swag there is, and then a new Book Fetish post comes out. That Black Panther tote!!!!

Today in reviews we’ve got a found family plus AI and a family of origin plus werewolves.

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells

It only took a bajillion awards and the repeated insistence of various Book Riot Insiders for me to finally read All Systems Red, and I am happy to finally be on this bandwagon.

Despite the ominous name of the series, it’s surprisingly light on gore. All Systems Red follows the self-described Murderbot (technically a cyborg programmed to be a security guard) as it works to protect an exploratory team of humans on an uninhabited planet. This becomes very complicated when their comms go down, and dangers start to come from the least expected places. There are gun-battles, giant worms, and plots aplenty, but it’s ultimately more optimistic and fun than anything else — ideal summer reading.

It is a novella, so telling you much more about the story would be very spoilery. Instead, I will tell you that Wells envisions her AI character with wit and panache. Imagine if Spock and a computer had a painfully shy baby that just wanted to watch K-dramas all the time — that is Murderbot, more or less. Add to that the dynamics of the crew as they interact (or don’t) with their security bot and struggle to understand its personhood, and you’ve got a heartfelt, captivating story with great action and pacing. And there are sequels! Artificial Condition is out now, Rogue Protocol will be out on August 7, and Exit Strategy will be out in October.

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones

Trigger warning: domestic violence, body horror

an illustration with a red-tinged silhouette of a wolf in the foreground and a standing person in front of power lines and a car against a yellow background We did an Octavia Butler read-alikes show on Get Booked recently, and I picked Mongrels for my Fledgling comp. I do not take comparisons to Octavia Butler lightly, but this book blew me away. Let me tell you a little bit about why.

In the same way that Butler took the vampires trope (traditionally white, traditionally romanticized) and exploded it, Graham Jones takes the werewolf trope and turns it inside out. Sometimes literally — this book is gross. Just flat-out gross. I’m not much of one for body horror, and have put books down for similar reasons, but somehow Mongrels kept pulling me back in, even as I cringed away.

The story follows a young boy who lives with his aunt and uncle (siblings, not a couple) as they constantly move from place to place, trying to outrun the law both for their actions as humans and potential discovery of their werewolf nature. As of yet, our narrator has shown no signs of inheriting the ability to change — and it’s all he wants in the world, even as he sees how difficult it makes life for his relatives. The stories that have been handed down to him, the truths that they conceal, and the realities of life when magic is mundane, all swirl together to form a thoroughly captivating narrative.

It’s a messy, complicated, hardscrabble life that Graham Jones has given his characters, and one that many will recognize. Right and wrong have almost no meaning for these characters; there is only survival, from one day to the next. And yet their love for each other and their fundamental humanity makes it impossible to dismiss them, if not flat-out love them like I ultimately did. This book is a stunner, and you should read it immediately.

And that’s a wrap! You can find all of the books recommended in this newsletter on a handy Goodreads shelf. If you’re interested in more science fiction and fantasy talk, you can catch me and my co-host Sharifah on the SFF Yeah! podcast. For many many more book recommendations you can find me on the Get Booked podcast with the inimitable Amanda.

Stay frosty,
Jenn

Unusual Suspects

“Let’s Be Very Angry”

Post author By Jamie Canaves
Post date July 5, 2018

Hi mystery fans! It’s Friday, but we had a day off on Wednesday and all the days are confused so I’m gonna start by recommending something non-mystery related: Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette on Netflix is fantastic, you should go watch it. And now back to our previously scheduled mystery content!

Sponsored by Pegasus Books’ The Seasonaires by Janna King

An idyllic Nantucket summer begins like a dream for scrappy Mia, Southern beauty Presley, handsome introvert Cole, sultry Jade, energetic young designer J.P., and party-boy Grant, all of whom are working as seasonaires—influential brand ambassadors—for the clothing line Lyndon Wyld. But like all things that look too good to be true, the darkness lurking underneath slowly rises to the surface. Corporate greed, professional rivalries, and personal conflicts mix with sex, drugs, and the naiveté of youth, exploding in a murder that sullies their catalog-perfect lives.

From Book Riot and Around the Internet

I rounded up new paperback releases for beach reading over at Novel Suspects.

Dick Smith is offering a $5000 reward to anyone who can solve one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries: “Twenty years after a pilot first spotted The Maree Man — a mysterious large-scale artwork carved into the desert in a remote part of Australia — its origins and the people behind it are still unknown.”

At EW Amber Tamblyn’s debut novel expands the #MeToo conversation: “The novel for me really felt, even as I was writing it, like an indictment of our culture — including myself and most readers — for how we are either complicit or complacent when it comes to the culture of rape.”

Giveaway (Hug a Luck Dragon and enter): Book Riot is giving away $500 of the year’s best YA fiction and nonfiction so far! Some great mysteries on the list: White Rabbit, Undead Girl Gang (Reviews for both here), and Before I Let Go (Review).

Adaptations and News

Vivien Chien revealed the cover for the third book in the Noodle Shop Mystery series!

Megan Abbott had a great chat with Gillian Flynn at Vanity Fair: “There’s a huge place for anger right now—particularly for the many, many women who’ve been violated—and this is a time to be angry. Let’s be very angry. Constructive anger is a very useful tool, and is a very important thing to express.” (The adaptation premieres this Sunday on HBO)

Remember how the Grantchester adaptation was losing James Norton but we didn’t know who would be joining the series? Now we know: Tom Brittney has joined the PBS mystery show. “Santer added, ‘I’m delighted that Tom is joining the cast. He’s a hugely likable and talented actor, and will make both a fine vicar of Grantchester and a great crime-solving partner for Geordie Keating.'”

Last year Emma Cline’s ex-boyfriend hired lawyers over copyright, and other, claims regarding her debut novel The Girls. A federal judge has just dismissed the copyright claims–however the claims involving key-logging software to access personal info were not dismissed.

A South Carolina police union has objected to a high school reading list–yeah, you read that correctly. One of the books is The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a book that delves into police brutality. The police union claims they “received an influx of tremendous outrage” and that the book is “almost an indoctrination of distrust of police.” There’s a lot happening here, starting with people calling the police about book lists (what is happening?), and none of it is good.

True Crime

Why Are We Obsessed With Mothers Accused Of Murder? “Yet all together — and whatever one might think about their subjects’ guilt or innocence — they make a compelling, sometimes unintentional case that problematic assumptions and a gendered moralism can lead the public imagination, and the judicial apparatus, astray.”

7 British True Crime Documentaries You Won’t Want To Believe Happened In The UK

Gone Fishing: New true crime podcast launches

Discarded napkin helps US police crack 32-year-old murder mystery

Is True Crime as Entertainment Morally Defensible?

Kindle Deals

Megan Abbott’s brilliant noir Queenpin is $1.99! (Review)

Hollywood Homicide (Detective by Day #1) by Kellye Garrette is $0.99!!!!!! (Review)

The Name of Death by Klester Cavalcanti, Nick Caistor (Translation) is $3.99! (Dark Nonfiction About A Brazilian Hitman: Review) (TW: child rape/ torture)

Bit of My Week In Reading

I did a lot of muppet arming over getting my hands on Tana French’s upcoming The Witch Elm so naturally I started that IMMEDIATELY. And it’s so good. SO FREAKING GOOD I don’t want to finish it because then it’ll be over–*insert crying emoji.

I inhaled, INHALED, the first half of Orphan X by Gregg Hurwitz. I am a sucker for fictional assassins that I care about–let’s not explore this too deeply–and anything that gives me ’90s action/thriller movie vibes. Basically I am loving this read at the moment.

And I received Keigo Higashino’s upcoming Newcomer which I’m going to read this weekend–sorry other books that were first in line, I LOVE Japanese crime and I LOVE Higashino.

Browse all the books recommended in Unusual Suspects previous newsletters on this shelf. And here’s an Unusual Suspects Pinterest board.

Until next time, keep investigating! And in the meantime come talk books with me on Twitter, Instagram, and Litsy–you can find me under Jamie Canaves.

If a mystery fan forwarded this newsletter to you and you’d like your very own you can sign up here.

True Story

Nonfiction Backlist Favorites

Post author By Sharifah Williams
Post date July 5, 2018

Hello readers! Associate Editor Sharifah here, stepping in while Kim is away. And since I’m only around for a moment, I decided to take a detour from your regularly scheduled content to talk about some backlist nonfiction I’ve enjoyed recently, that might’ve gone under the radar.

Banksy Offers Support to Libraries: Today in Books

Post author By Sharifah Williams
Post date July 5, 2018

This edition of Today in Books is sponsored by Diode Editions.

Banksy Offers To Support Bristol Libraries

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees announced that graffiti star Banksy has volunteered to help keep Bristol’s 27 libraries open. Sweeping cuts would have closed 17 of the 27 libraries. The Banksy news arrived with the announcements that there would be a reprieve on the cuts and that all of Bristol’s libraries would remain open.

Barnes & Noble Fires CEO

The struggling company fired CEO Demos Parneros for violating company policies, though B&N didn’t specify which policies Parneros violated. They did say his termination “is not due to any disagreement with the Company regarding its financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud relating thereto.”

Goodreads Readers Choose Today’s Great American Novelist

Goodreads posted the results of a Facebook and Twitter survey asking readers to choose who they think is the greatest living American novelist. The top picks included Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Donna Tartt, and Jesmyn Ward. Click here to see the full list.

And don’t forget–we’re giving away $500 of this year’s best YA books (so far)! Click here to enter.

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