Cozy, whimsical novels — often featuring magical cats — that have long been popular in Japan and Korea are taking off globally. Fans say they offer comfort during a chaotic time. Read more
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FX’s limited series Say Nothing is a gripping story of murder and memory in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. The 9-episode series is based on the book by Patrick Radden Keefe. Spanning four decades, the series opens with the shocking disappearance of Jean McConville, a single mother of ten who was abducted from her home in 1972 and never seen alive again. Watch trailer
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Since September 30, 1999, when New York Review Books Classics brought its first 10 titles into the world under the stewardship of founder and longtime editor Edwin Frank, the press has breathed new literary life into works spanning many and, along the way, invited a redefining of the word “classic” itself. Books by such canonical cornerstones as Dante, Balzac, and Stendhal find their place here, but so too do the stylish modernism of Robert Walser, the sociophilosophical experiments of Andrey Platonov, and the sideways histories of Iris Origo, authors whose positions as touchstones of American literary culture were earned more recently. Read more
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CONCLAVE follows one of the world’s most secretive and ancient events – selecting the new Pope. Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes) is tasked with running this covert process after the unexpected death of the beloved Pope. Once the Catholic Church’s most powerful leaders have gathered from around the world and are locked together in the Vatican halls, Lawrence uncovers a trail of deep secrets left in the dead Pope’s wake, secrets which could shake the foundations of the Church. Watch trailer
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A genteel lot of librarians, academicians, historians, and researchers, the civilians recruited to form the Office of Strategic Services (precursor to the CIA) in the early days of WWII had more experience lurking in library stacks than skulking around the grimy back alleys of foreign capitals. And yet it was precisely this expertise working among ephemera and archives that made them so attractive to those tasked with forming an intelligence-gathering organization that could provide information critical to winning the war. Read more
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The announcement was made at an event in Montreal on Oct. 30 by jury chair Rana Mitter. DuVal was named the winner for her book Native Nations: A Millenium in North America (Penguin Random House). The book is a 1,000-year history of North America. DuVal teaches early American and American Indian history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Read more
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In recent decades, the industry has woken up to the fact that literary legacies can be big business, allowing well-loved characters to live on indefinitely. In the UK, books enter the public domain 70 years after the death of their author. Before that, control is in the hands of their descendants, or whoever they have appointed to look after their estate. They are the guardians of the late writer’s characters, aiming to keep an author relevant to modern readers, without diluting their brand. They can veto or approve projects such as spin-off books and screen adaptations. Read more
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Halloween is just around the corner, so we turned to two great horror authors — Joe Hill (“The Fireman,” “NOS4A2”) and Stephen Graham Jones (“The Only Good Indians,” “My Heart Is a Chainsaw”) — for their recommendations of books to read this season. Read more
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American history is kind of terrifying: Native American genocide, slavery and witch trials; the Civil War, the Great Depression and Vietnam; AIDS, 9/11 and COVID. As Jeremy Dauber writes at the start of his casually magisterial, endlessly erudite “American Scary,” “You can write America’s history by tracking the stories it tells itself to unsettle its dreams, rouse its anxieties, galvanize its actions.” He then does just that, analyzing nearly 400 years of scary literature, film, comic books, television, video games, urban legends and just about anything else that might haunt you on a sleepless night. Read more
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Gary Indiana, the elfin novelist, cultural critic, playwright and artist whose crackling prose and lacerating wit captured the ravages of the AIDS crisis, Manhattan’s downtown art scene, lurid true crimes and his own search for love, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. Read more
