Books & Literature
New books, literary reviews, author interviews, reading lists, book clubs and publishing news.
About this list
This reading list brings together items from the sources selected for Books & Literature. Open each item at its original source for the complete article, episode or video. This is a selection of current coverage, not a complete archive.
Stories from Kirkus Reviews. Show all stories · All sources
Latest stories
Newest first
Updates are delayed. Showing the last checked articles.
LOOK WHAT THE CAT DRAGGED IN
Working with artists Horner and Staehle, as he did for Hidden Pictures (2022), Rekulak uses illustrations to support a paranormal thriller plot. Penny Padgett, a 27-year-old cartoonist living in Philadelphia, has published three beloved graphic novels about her life with her cat, Popcorn, and is working on a fourth when Popcorn darts out the window during a snowstorm and disappears. When all efforts to locate him fail, Penny spirals into unproductive despair.
REALMSWEEP | Kirkus Reviews
Twelve-year-old Rowdy Buckner, who has dark eyes and hair and “the same brown skin passed down from ancestors who called this kingdom home long before it was a kingdom at all,” is sick of his pampered lifestyle as the future monarch of the Kingdom of Texas in the Allied Lands, a magical version of the U.S. He dreams of someday being an adventurer and gaining access to the alchemic tonics that provide gender-affirming and other physical changes so he can live as the man he’s long known himself to be.
UNAPOLOGETIC LOVE STORY
In London, Tom Branimir’s reputation as a journalist precedes him. Over the years, he’s increasingly devoted his career to writing exposés about fraudsters who push bogus health remedies and scam their followers. His cynical outlook and ruthless coverage have even earned him the nickname “King of Cancel Culture.” So he’s not expecting to find inspiration for his next investigative piece in someone who’s completely genuine.
MOTHSBLOOD | Kirkus Reviews
Larkspur Lee, a first-year American student on scholarship, is well aware of the precariousness of her situation at Université Meurdrac. Without social standing or family connections, Lark must use her fierce ambition and hard-earned knowledge of alchemy to survive. When the opportunity arises for a coveted apprenticeship with the immortal Petronelle Flamel, she grabs the chance to access the hidden web of alchemists that thrums beneath society;
LITTLE VOLCANO
In distinct contrast to the general run of introductions to volcanoes, which tend to be full of melodramatic images and tales of widespread disaster, this survey goes for cute. Wagstaffe does acknowledge the perils of being anywhere near an erupting volcano’s gigantic emissions of gas and flows of lava and ash, pyroclastic or otherwise, but Stevie turns out to be more lonely than dangerous, and her fiery Hawaiian neighbors throw her a welcome party when she emerges from the ocean at last.
MR. LEMONCELLO'S WONDERMOUS CHRISTMAS GIFT
Dishing up a lighter-than-air confection replete with homages to classic holiday tales, Grabenstein pits bookish 12-year-old Eloise Dobyns against spiteful failed author Roger Scobeenzee—who, having gained access to the source code for all the Christmas stories in existence, aims to overwrite them with his own dour vision of a Christmas Eve Martian invasion. Fortunately, Eloise has on her side an odd but helpful new schoolmate named (with shades of a certain well-known Christmas film) Clarence. She’s also helped by giddy bazillionaire Luigi L.
ABC JEWISH HEROES AND ME
This collective biography/alphabet book defines a hero as “someone who tries to be their best self, who helps others, who makes the world a better place.” One Jewish hero is included for each letter of the alphabet. The 14 women and 12 men featured vary in terms of race and ability, as well as occupation. Notably, fully half are living. “A, B, C—what type of hero will you be?” ask Cohen and Olitzky, encouraging readers to see themselves in the individuals profiled.
A DARKER ACT
That was, until last year, when she joined her school’s theatrical group and fell for their mysterious star, Roman Cavalero. Now, the British teen’s Type A skills are being put to the test as the Edgemoor Players venture out on an unchaperoned extra credit orienteering trip on their local moor. Faced with dangerous snowy conditions, the young actors become trapped in a creepy old abandoned church as they await rescue.
WRITTEN IN STARLIGHT
Della Farley embodies the classic fairy-tale heroine of a working-class woman whose dreams stretch far beyond her responsibilities of scrubbing floors and dusting shelves. When she discovers a mysterious book lying in the street, she’s captured by the tale of an intergalactic bounty hunter named Ansel Tulzok. In the next chapter, Ansel himself finds a slightly different book: The story within its pages is Della’s. They both quickly become aware that this isn’t an ordinary book.
THE DEEP DARK OCEAN
Setting her tone with the opening header “Weirdness All the Way Down,” marine biologist Scales highlights a select menagerie of strange-looking ocean fauna, from giant and colossal squid (which are actually different species) to bubblegum corals, E.T. sponges, and jellies called “larvaceans” enveloped in floating “snot palaces.”
HOLD STILL
When the muckraking journalist Barbara Ehrenreich died in 2022, her author son, Ben, decided to write a story every day to work through his emotions. The 85 pieces collected here all roughly qualify as flash fiction, though a few are ultrabrief wisps of ideas. (Complete text of one piece: “Again, it was supposed to rain, but it did not rain, again.”) Some pieces are intimately engaged with moments from Ehrenreich’s life with his wife and young daughter; others endeavor to evoke the language of myth and fable in narratives populated by magpies,
THE BOOKSHOP
Award-winning Scottish historian Pettegree offers an abundantly detailed history of bookselling, spanning the past 600 years. As far back as Greek and Roman times, there was a market for handwritten texts, and, even before the invention of printing, doctors, lawyers, and clergymen collected relevant tomes. Gutenberg’s invention, though, fueled the start of a book industry that involved printers, typefounders, binders, publishers, and sellers.
THE TRAVEL BOOK
This globe-spanning guide begins in Canada and circles the world in a generally easterly direction—leaving out the polar regions but fetching up at last with entries for Vanuatu and New Zealand. Each of the just under 200 single-page stops along the way presents a crowded but easily navigable mix of distinctive landmarks (portrayed in photos or Li’s and Andrya’s illustrations), updated fast facts (including a small map and flag), and notes on a choice selection of geographical, cultural, and historical highlights.
MIDNIGHT AT THE SAVOY
Bored with life in Toronto, attractive young Priscilla Tempest left Canada for London, where she’s serving as press officer at the famed Savoy Hotel. Her title might as well be Miss Fix-it, since she’s the one who’s called to deal with all sorts of problems, from hungover guests to temperamental actors who refuse to rehearse. Her current emergency, however, literally has her name on it, since a dead man has been found in a car in front of the hotel clutching a note to “my darling Priscilla.”
ONCE IN A TIMELINE
Laia Grace Shirzan lives a perfect, happy life in beautiful New York City with a daily routine involving meditation and manifestations, makeup and skin care (whale semen for the faceful of multivitamins!), the most delicious lattes, Pilates (where she never sweats), and content creation for her moderately successful profile. Tonight there’s an important brand event where she hopes to secure a yearlong contract as an ambassador.
SERLING | Kirkus Reviews
Rod Serling’s name is inextricably linked to The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), the groundbreaking science-fiction show he created; accordingly, journalist Sepinwall, author of TV (The Book), titles many chapters of his biography after celebrated episodes that offer sharp insights into Serling’s life.
GRACE & JO HAVE NEVER SOLVED A MURDER
Life is finally coming together for Grace Anderson, who left her parents thousands of miles away in Florida to launch herself in Philadelphia. And launch she has, almost immediately stumbling into a position assisting artist Garrett Baros, who’s having a moment of his own—he’s recently been selected as a featured artist by the Institute of Contemporary Art.
THE CONFEDERACY MYTH
In much of this book, historian Williams delivers a generally conventional history of the Civil War, reciting battles, casualties, and political milestones: Fort Sumter, the Gettysburg Address, 700,000 Americans dead.
UNTOUCHABLE | Kirkus Reviews
Hannah Kabbah loves working in child care, but due to that time she destroyed a man’s car with a cricket bat after he hurt her sister, she has a criminal record, making it hard to find a desirable job in the small English town of Ravenswood. When her teenage crush, Nathaniel Davis, now a tattooed photographer and widower, moves back to town to care for his ailing mother, Hannah accepts a position as a live-in nanny for his two spirited young children.
WHAT MARCEL FOUND
Evoking the excitement of discovery in his illustrations, Litchfield illuminates events both above ground and below with sparkles and broad beams of light. Walking through the woods to get away from the increasingly troubling war news in 1940, young Marcel Ravidat finds some unusual holes—which, as he learns when he returns with three friends to explore, lead to a subterranean wonderland of caves covered in painted animal images. “Arch of a neck,” Pruitt writes in enticing, breathless prose. “Flash of an eye.” “Elk, bison, a Great Black Bull.
You have reached the end of this list.
Showing 20 of 20 articles
Know a source we’re missing? Tell us about it