THE STATIONERY SHOP, Marjan Kamali’s luminous, tender, and unforgettable novel, is as powerful as Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and packs the emotional impact of Nicholas Sparks’s The Notebook. Roya and Bahman are young lovers in 1953 Iran, battling family disapproval and political upheaval to stay together. When violent chaos consumes Tehran, the couple is torn apart, and Roya believes her fiancé is lost forever. But decades later and thousands of miles away, a twist of fate may provide answers to the questions she has carried in her heart for years....

Since the pandemic decimated theater around the world, theater artists were stuck on interminable pause. And in the summer of 2020, theater received a reckoning for its failures in racial inclusion. Though this was true for many industries, the theater industry and Broadway specifically has been criticized for years for its consistent passing over of artists of color. Back in 1966, Douglas Turner Ward wrote an article for the New York Times called, “American Theater: For Whites Only?...

1. Strange things are often found inside returned books. People have somehow not grasped the fact that while library books can be transportive, they are not meant to be vehicles for transporting their belongings. (The newspaper clipping from the 1940s was a cool find, but the human hair was not.) via GIPHY 2. There is no reading behind the desk. As a wonderful place of community for the town residents, there is almost always something going on at the library....

Edgar Allen Poe is often credited as one of the first crime writers, but as scholar Rachel Franks points out, stories of violating social norms are as old as Oedipus. She observed about early crime stories: “these early tales were designed to help establish a common ethical framework for how we should live with one another and inform us that there are consequences when the rules of that framework are broken....

I think about these characters as people who do everything in their power to achieve their goals, by any means necessary. If society sees their ways as “bad”, it doesn’t matter to them. That kind of thing puts these particular characters in a grey area where we as readers cannot seem to put them inside a box. Are they the hero or the villain of the story? That’s the magnificent thing about morally grey characters: They are a little bit of both....

Samantha prefers to avoid conflict. The blisteringly honest Holly craves it. But these old college roommates haven’t spoken in ages. Then their mutual friend Katie is hospitalized and needs an errand. It’s simple: travel cross-country together, steal Katie’s loathsome ex-husband’s VW camper, find her diabetic Great Pyrenees at a Utah rescue, and drive him back home to Wisconsin. If it’ll make Katie happy, no favor is too big (one hundred pounds), too daunting (two thousand miles), or too illegal (ish)....

Books I Was Reading at Age 8 (1999) The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling The Harry Potter series is obviously at the top of this list. But specifically, I would have been reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban at this age. And reading it again, and again, and again. Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis I remember so specifically being obsessed with this book. It is the story of 10-year-old Bud (“not Buddy”) and it takes place in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression....

Nowadays though, it’s not enough to simply have a villain; they have to be a compelling one. Sure, at one point, a bad guy was just a bad guy and that was enough to satisfy. But we’ve moved past the archetype of the sneering man with the handlebar mustache, laughing maniacally as he ties a damsel in distress to train tracks. So, with that said, what makes a good villain?...

The way I remember it, the whole class was transfixed. There was no fidgeting for the few minutes the story lasted. No one sat there whispering, as I was often known to do. Miss Clarke did not have to stop the story to tell someone to sit back down or keep their hands to themselves. We all listened attentively, and we laughed, a bit, when Max returned to his room to find “his supper waiting for him....

On its surface, that seems like just about the saddest birthday present someone could ever give someone else—“Hey, saw this, thought of you—bring it back in two weeks okay?” Luckily, that’s not exactly what happened. What Max actually gave Rose was a subscription to a circulating library called the Tabard Inn Library. The idea was similar to Little Free Libraries today, except that it wasn’t free. The circulating libraries had little branches in public places....

If so, I have good news, because Joe Abercrombie is releasing a new novel, A Little Hatred. It’s the seventh novel in an extended universe in which magic is as real and terrible as any weapon of mass destruction. (The people are even more terrifying than the magic is, but they have better one-liners. As in, there are some bad people in these books, but every single one of them is a comedian....

What transpired over the next few days is a mess of misinformation, resulting in a need by those working in the Metropolitan Library System for answers from administration, and an attempt to not only do damage control once the story leaked to Reddit but also question whether or not the library had to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request for information. An internal email on July 6 from Anne Hill, Engagement Manager of the Edmond Library, in the Metro Library System–which covers both the city and county of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma–asks for input on how to handle the new Supreme Court decision in light of information privacy....

And I’ll be honest, sticking my nose in a book has added benefits. I can shut out the low hum of irritable worker bees that commute with me and lose myself in a great story, even if it is only for half a dozen stops. I’m usually a much more patient person by the time I fight my way through the crowds to my desk if I’ve read a few pages along the way....

Milly, Aubrey, and Jonah Story are cousins, but they barely know each other, and they’ve never even met their grandmother. Rich and reclusive, she disinherited their parents before the cousins were born. So, when they receive letters inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer, they’re surprised. Their parents agree: not going is not an option. This could be the opportunity to get back into Grandmother’s good graces....

New York Times bestselling authors Barry Lyga and Morgan Baden have teamed up for the first time to create a novel that’s gripping, terrifying and more relevant every day. The Hive follows seventeen-year-old Cassie, who, after being “condemned” on social media, is on the run from a deadly state-sanctioned mob seeking to exact IRL punishment. Aided by a shadowy underground network, Cassie becomes an unlikely heroine, as her search for the truth makes her a threat to the entire unjust system....

So often, we listen to and talk about the bad stories. The ones that feature a single parent who can get a book pulled from a reading list or off bookshelves. Or the ones where a parent makes some outrageous statement, equating a scene with a teen boy masturbating to 50 Shades of Grey for kids. But rarely, too rarely, do we talk about the good things that come when you share dangerous books with teens....

This list is based on my own reading and is not complete. I intend this list to be supplemental to current reading lists. I did my best to not include books that are currently on high school reading lists, but as lists can vary greatly, there may be a book or two that are currently recommended or required in high schools. Regardless of your age, I think these books are great starting points for research and discussion on the themes they explore....

I’ve been a fan of the Best Translated Book Award for years and was thrilled to be chosen as a member for this year’s fiction jury. It’s a great honor to announce these winners and my immense congratulations to all of the authors, translators, and publishers that made the amazing longlists. (This year’s lists alone feature authors writing in sixteen different languages, from twenty-four different countries.) Best Translated Book Award 2019 Winners The award in fiction goes to Slave Old Man, written by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated from French and Creole by Linda Coverdale, and published by The New Press The fiction jury writes, “In turns biblical and mythical, Patrick Chamoiseau’s Slave Old Man is a powerful reckoning with the agonies of the past and their persistence into the present....

Get ready for the new school year with the Sora checklist – including new features, a Back-to-School Sale preview, trainings and more! On a personal level, the idea of library work having a draw for budding authors makes sense. As a writer myself, I have worked in libraries both public and academic in the past, and recently returned to working in my local library, a job I already love. I know several other authors who work as librarians or library assistants, and who, like the authors in Hershberger’s article, see a strong link between their writing and their library role....