People Aren’t Lying About Reading. You’re Just Insecure.: Some tough love around end of year reading wrap ups.

2026’s Most Anticipated Books That Are Perfect for Book Clubs: Jennette McCurdy is back with a taboo novel, Tayari Jones explores women in community, and we see what the stars have to tell us about art.

Knockout 2025 YA Debuts, Excellent Nonfiction, and More YA Book News: Let's wrap up 2025 with a look at the YA book news that's dropped in recent weeks, including several updates on forthcoming adaptations. https://bookriot.com...

6 Regency-Era Novels that Aren’t Romances: These Regency-era set novels look past the time's glitter to show the reality of social classes, capital punishment, and the Napoleonic Wars. https://bookriot.com...

HEATED RIVALRY Gets A Second Season and More Book News!: Queer hockey romance Heated Rivalry, adapted from the novel, is getting a second season on HBO! Plus, more of the latest book news.

Just a Lit-tle More: 5 Great Short SFF Books to Help You Meet Your Reading Goal: If you are looking to squeeze a few more books into your 2025 reading, pick up these great SFF books under 200 pages!

All of Oprah’s 2025 Book Club Picks: Oprah was the founder of the modern celebrity book club, and she's still one of the biggest names in the scene. Here are all her 2025 picks.

A Mirror to Society: On Lee Friedlander’s Many American Christmases: Whether or not you’ve celebrated Christmas at any point over the past seventy years—roughly the period covered by these photographs—you have no doubt encountered some of the things Friedlander shows… #ArtandPhotography #Features

Making Sense of Middle Earth: Exploring the World of J.R.R. Tol­kien: My first interest in J.R.R. Tol­kien was apparently caused by the infamous Barbara Remington artwork used for the covers of the Ballantine mass-­market editions. When my father bought his paperback… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Finding Love in a Poetic Hellscape: On a Thursday morning in August I’m at the gym, listening to the audiobook of Shane McCrae’s Pulling the Chariot of the Sun: A Memoir of a Kidnapping. The audiobook is narrated by the author himself, so when I check my email between sets and see the email from…

Mumbai, Mother, and Mental Illness: This Autobiographical Novel Will Live In Your Mind: This autobiographical novel lured me in with its beautiful cover, and I haven't stopped thinking about it three years later.

Knives Out Meets Sesame Street!: Plus Kermit in a graphic novel, disaster gays solving crime, and more news from the mystery world.

The Best Picture Books to Read in the Winter: Whether you're reveling in the joy of the season with kiddos or on your own, these are the best picture books to read in the winter.

An Updated Guide to Romance Tropes and Sub-Tropes: Looking at some of the romance bestsellers of the past five years, we can identify a bunch of new popular tropes and sub-tropes.

Why Has Criticism Always Been Such a Good Side Gig for Artists?: There might not be a more natural, if also more fraught, complementary profession to artistry than criticism. Who, after all, would have a better perspective on the necessary background and unique… #ArtandPhotography #CraftandAdvice

A Timeless Portrait of Black Life: James Baldwin on Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner: I received a questionnaire the other day—democracy prides itself on its questionnaires, just as it is endlessly confirmed and misled by its public opinion polls—and the… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Why Clearing Stormfall With a Chainsaw is a Lot Like Writing Prose: The forest had fallen sideways. The trees piled horizontal across the trail, tangled in brush and each other. This forest, on the eastern slope of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, had burned seven… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

There’s a New Perk for All Access: the New Release Index!: Great news! Book Riot All Access now includes the New Release Index! We’re all about bringing you the best bookish ...

Congressional Candidate Kat Abughazaleh on Parable of the Sower, and Her Love of Sci-Fi: I’ve been following Kat Abughazaleh’s career for years, starting with her work as a researcher and journalist for Media Matters. Her insights on politics and the American right, and her… #BookNews #Features

The Best Poetry for Dark Winter Days

The Most Popular Books In US Public Libraries in 2025: What were the most popular books checked out in US libraries in 2025? Here are the top fiction and nonfiction titles across 40 libraries.

From Hitchhiking the Sahara (and Storing Hash in the Garage) to Co-Founding MTV and Running Viacom: Unplugged: From MTV to Timbuktu begins on a hot Tuesday afternoon in 2006 in Tom Freston’s fifty-second floor office above Times Square, where he had run the entertainment giant… #Features #FilmandTV

Sara Martin on Communal Living as a Writing Practice: This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. The boarding house looks like the kind of place children are sent at the beginning of a story after their parents die in a car… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

Beyond Memoir: A Roundtable on Health, Identity, and the Invisible Injury We Aren’t Talking About: My new memoir, Fit Into Me, is about trying to write Fit Into Me: A Novel in the aftermath of a mild traumatic brain injury. It documents the years of my life, from the… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Five Books About the Most Important Photographs of the Vietnam War—and the Photographers Who Took Them: In April 2023, George Black wrote in an introduction to his reading list on these pages that “something like thirty thousand books have been written about ‘the… #ArtandPhotography #Features

Two stories about three brothers you should check out this holiday season.: I’m a devotee of two film series at my local Brooklyn indie theater: Ridiculous Sublime, a series highlighting “the most bombastic and confounding movies imaginable,” and Hubba Hubba, a series by my… #FilmandTV #History

The Top Bookselling Stories of 2025: Bookselling stories from the past year, one for the future, and one story I wish weren't true.

The National Book Critics Circle Longlist for Nonfiction Is Here: Here are the works of nonfiction that the National Book Critics Circle have placed on their longlist.

Burn Harry Burn: Reckoning With My Harry Potter Fandom as a Trans Person: During the spring of 2020, as the world locked down and people were dead and dying and breaking apart and mourning and afraid and hiding, the British author J.K. Rowling decided to publish an… #CraftandCriticism #Features

On the Past and Present of Authoritarianism, War, and Literature in Europe: From the World Wars to today’s Russian invasion of Ukraine, conflict has shaped Europe’s cultures, politics, and language. Author Artem Chapeye (Ukraine), Peter Osnos (Poland) and Antonia… #CraftandCriticism #Features

Steamy Reads for Frigid Nights: The wintriest of conditions are no match for the heat in these steamy romances.

Elizabeth McCracken on Writing About Writing, At Last: Acclaimed fiction writer and long-time creative writing professor Elizabeth McCracken joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V. V. Ganeshananthan to discuss her ninth book and first volume about craft, A Long Game:… #CraftandCriticism #Features

An ode to the old-fashioned publishing holiday party, in photos.: Publishing people used to corner the market on yuletide bacchanals. You hear stories. Decadence was expected. HR, AWOL. In last year’s Cut, Emily Gould interviewed partygoers from previous epochs and… #ArtandPhotography #Design

The National Book Critics Circle Longlist for Poetry: Looking for great poetry collections to dive into? Here are the longlisted titles from the National Book Critics Circle.

The Groundbreaking Political Legacy of Theodore Roosevelt: American presidents occasionally perform roles that extend well beyond the formal obligations of their office. Thomas Jefferson’s tenure (1801–1809) embodied the broader progress of antebellum southern agrarian power,… #Biography #Features

The National Book Critics Circle Announces Its Longlist for Criticism: Read your way into this year's National Book Critics Circle picks for Criticism.

2025’s Best Cookbooks and Food Writing, BIPOC Edition: Learn how to make Sudanese doughnuts, birria tortas, incredible chutneys, and more in these amazing cookbooks.

Eye Fucking Men Across New York City: “Shapeshifter” by Maggie Love To hear a neighbor through the walls in my building, they need to be yelling, and we need to be right on top of each other. When I hear my downstairs neighbors fight, I’m usually in my breakfast nook. This morning, as I sip my…

A Deep Dive into the Rich History of Black Bookstores: Black bookstores are and have always been not only retail spaces, but spaces for community and revolution.

Words Between Worlds: Creative Writing in Sarajevo: 1. On the evening of 27 December, I couldn’t find a free taxi to take me from my apartment in Grbavica to Sarajevo center. I called several companies. Imate li nešto? Ne. Nothing. After nearly half an hour of trying, #Features #Memoir

The 50 Biggest Literary Stories of the Year: In 2025, we were surviving, if perhaps not always thriving. We sang along to “Golden” in the grocery store and hung Labubus from our bags. We reheated nachos. We saw Sinners in multiple formats and got our first American pope. #BookNews #FullwidthSlider

Nobody Knows Why the Caribou Are Disappearing: From this spot on the barren lands, Caribou trails run off like railways over the emerald hills. The paths are innumerable, deep and straight, suggesting mass transit and common purpose—timetables, maps, an orderly procession… #ClimateChange #Features

Together, a Father and a Daughter Break a Generational Cycle of Abuse: I didn’t realize my father had gone viral until 2022, when a decades-old video had already reached over a million views—a shocking number that rose steadily as if out of spite. By then, when I first saw the… #Features #Memoir

Ruben Reyes Jr. on the Second Person: First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the… #CraftandAdvice #CraftandCriticism

4 Nonfiction Books for Disability December: There are books discussing disability history, queer crip theory, and online disability activism. But first, Alice Wong's story.

On the (Book)Case: 6 of The Best Twisty Police Procedurals: Travel the world–and the world of crime–with these compelling, twisty police procedural mysteries.

On the Urgency of Climate Change, Creating Hope in a Crisis, and the Limits of Western Storytelling: It’s genuinely difficult to cultivate a hopeful perspective on the climate crisis, and prospects for climate action, in 2025. While I was writing this introductory note,… #ClimateChange #Features

Feeling Starry-Eyed: A Fairytale Retelling You Won’t Want to Miss: This historical fantasy novel blends themes of Cinderella and The Little Mermaid with a beautiful love story.

How Sam Shepard Became the Star Playwright of New York’s Counterculture: Charles Mingus marveled at his roommate’s self-assurance as a writer. “He could walk into a room with a typewriter and not leave until he finished a play,” he said. “No revisions, just typing.” Shepard… #Biography #Features

The NEW YORK TIMES’ Best Under the Radar Books of 2025: The NYT Book Review shares personal favorites that didn't make the Best Of cut, bestselling author Sophie Kinsella has died, and more.